Two Fests Feature French, Famous Art House Films

We spent the weekend camped out at NWFF, watching the beginning of their 12-film Jacques Rivette celebration, Lighter Than Air. If you struggle with ADD, this is not the festival for you; we put in 462 minutes and only watched two films, 1970's Out 1: Spectre and 1974's Celine and Julie Go Boating. A Rivette film is brief at two hours, usually runs at least three, and hits its stride around the 4-hour mark. There's also typically a sinister cabal, a theater group rehearsing, and an extended allusion to some literary source. Next weekend there's The Gang of Four and La belle noiseuse, in which Rivette spends most of 238 minutes employing Emanuelle Béart as a nude model and making himself, in our eyes, a filmmaker to follow. Tickets are $8.50 general/$6 seniors/children/$5 NWFF members.

Meanwhile, across town SIFF is marking 50 years of Janus films -- and inaugurating their new space at McCaw Hall -- with a lineup of classics that includes The 400 Blows, Fanny & Alexander, High & Low, The Seven Samuari, and so on. It runs through April 22. DAMN YOU, SIFF! Transmogrify all our leisure time into a film schedule database, will you? No, no, it's fine. Let's, see, Cranes Are Flying, then Day of Wrath, maybe Fires on the Plain if we can just...but wait, what about Knife in the Water and The Lovers? Ah crap. Admission is $9/$7.50 for SIFF group members and students (with valid student ID).