For Your Consideration: This Weekend At SIFF

This weekend the National Weather service is calling for mid-70s to 80 degrees. You may want to recover from heatstroke by rehydrating in an air-conditioned theater with other bepinkenned Seattleites, and their melanin-endowed friends savoring their little moment of schadenfreude. (Here's the Seattle Times cheat sheet on the various venues.)

· We caught the press screening for the not entirely laugh-free Death at a Funeral with a friend who said, summing up Frank Oz's direction: "This would have been funnier with muppets." But it's about sold out anyway. Haha, no refunds! (Friday, 7pm @ Lincoln Square)

- La vie en rose: the preview for this Edith Piaf biopic left us almost entirely uninterested in seeing it, but people do say if you see just one film about emotionally scarred French chanteuses this year, this is the one. (Friday, 6:30pm and Saturday, 3:15pm @ the Neptune)

- If you don't like that trainwreck of a vie, says director Olivier Dahan, perhaps you might like La vie promise. Isabelle Huppert plays a prostitute in Nice whose daughter is on the lam. (Hey! Self-defense!) The two head north and drama ensues when they meet a helpful stranger. One show only! (Saturday, 1pm @ the Neptune)

- For the panel discussion Casting Crash: A Case Study, moderator Abby Grenley from Indie Seattle talks with guests Mark Harris, producer, and Bobby Moresco, writer and producer, about casting Crash, presumably without mentioning what a travesty that Oscar was. (Saturday, 2pm @ NWFF)

- Rocket Science is the film high school debaters everywhere have been waiting for. From writer/director Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) comes this comedy about a stutterer (a stammerer, in England) trying to succeed in high school debate. (Saturday, 6:30pm @ the Neptune; Monday, 7pm @ Lincoln Square)

- Kurt Cobain About A Son delivers music, photographs, and new footage -- with candid, previously unheard audiotape conversations with Cobain. (Saturday, 9:30pm @ the Neptune)

- 2 Days in Paris is directed by Julie Delpy. Our friend Ian says: "Marion (Delpy) and her American boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) stop in her hometown of Paris on their way back to New York. At first, Jack’s encounters with Marion’s eccentric family & friends are humorous -- but then every other man they meet turns out to be one of Marion’s ex-boyfriends, and Jack’s insecurities start to overwhelm him." He gives it 8/10 stars. (Saturday, 8:30pm @ the Egyptian; Tuesday, 7pm @ Lincoln Square)

· Goya's Ghosts is "not worth the titties" (how Audrey boiled down our description). Milos Forman got a dream cast of Stellan Skarsgård, Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem, and Randy Fucking Quaid together, and wasted them on this grab-bag plot and its alarming number of coincidental meetings (more than Lost!). (Saturday, 6:30pm @ the Neptune; Monday, 7pm @ Lincoln Square)

· Invisibles has gotta be the better Javier Bardem project, which he produced with Doctors Without Borders. Five directors (Mariano Barroso, Isabelle Coixet, Javier Corcuera, Fernando Léon de Aranoa, Wim Wenders) have created short films around the whole humanitarian crisis thing and the people who care enough to send their enterologist. (Sunday, 6:45pm @ the Harvard Exit, Wednesday, 4:45pm @ SIFF Cinema)

- For the Bible Tells Me So is a documentary on how religious conservatives have "misled the public" in terms of what the Bible says about homosexuality. Like it really reads boil in oil then stone, or what? (Sunday, 1:30pm @ the Egyptian; Monday, 6:45pm @ SIFF Cinema)

- Everything's Cool covers the denial, deception and delay around dealing with climate change. The documentary focuses on a group of global-warming messengers searching for the right language and strategy to prompt action. How meta. Seattle should love it. (Sunday, 1:15pm @ the Harvard Exit)

- Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten by Julien Temple presents a look at the famed Clash-er. Performance footage, friends, collaborators, and fans, the usual. (Sunday, 4pm and Tuesday, 9:15pm @ SIFF Cinema)

- Nanking deal with how in 1937 the Japanese went medieval on Nanking's ass and everyone's still freaked out about it. "These real-life historic figures come alive in the voices and faces of concerned actors (such as Mariel Hemingway, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Dorff) who read their letters, journals, and such," says the Stranger. (Sunday, 7pm @ the Egyptian; Tuesday, 4pm @ SIFF Cinema)

- Waiter, the winner of two Golden Calves at the Netherlands Film Festival, is a black comedy that sounds miles better than Death at a Funeral. Tired of his miserable existence, a waiter confronts the screenwriter deciding his fate. (Sunday, 9:45pm @ the Neptune)