The last film we caught at the festival was The Visitor, written and directed by Tom McCarthy, best known for his 2003 Sundance darling The Station Agent. Like the previous film, McCarthy's sophomore piece is a well-crafted work about how people from disparate backgrounds can come together and form an unconventional family. Walter Vale, an uptight widower and bored college econ professor, has totally shut down and withdrawn from everything in his life, but when he heads to NYC for a conference, he finds a young Muslim couple, Tarek and Zaineb, living in his usually-empty apartment. He takes pity on them and lets them stay, and a friendship develops--until Tarek becomes a victim of racial profiling and is sent to an immigrant detention center, and Walter decides to take responsibility for his new friends. The Visitor is such a quintessential indie picture: the cast, led by Richard Jenkins, is strong, the writing is elegant, and the cinematography is simple yet effective. Most importantly, the film doesn't beat you over the head with immigration issues or over-the-top commentary on the war on terror. The messages here are nuanced, and conveyed more through subtle camerawork than bloviated speechifying. Thank god. more ›

The oddest thing about watching last night's Iowa caucus coverage along with the Sonics game is that we had one TV tuned to TNT, and one TV tuned to CNN--and Chuck Norris was on the latter one. more ›

Conventional wisdom says these days ain't happy ones for pulp-and-print publications. Circulation's down. Ad revenues are down. Everyone wants to read online. So nearly every newspaper, magazine and television news program has a host of blogs these days, to compete with the millions of self-described experts, autodidacts, conspiracy theorists and Chuck Norris-aficionados who propagate the blogosphere with their own brand of citizen journalism (read: poor spelling and poorer grammar). more ›

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So we'll begin, the guy at the podium said, the huge black blast door in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Downtown Library eased down its track, slowly cutting off our view of the lobby, and we shivered. more ›

The Summer Fiction issue of the New Yorker showed up in the mail box yesterday and the Pacific Northwest (ok, Portland, really, but so what) is well represented. Miranda July, of Portland, has two pieces; one a short story called "Roy Spivey" and the other a recollection of summer movies called "Atlanta." It starts: more ›

Yes, technically it’s spring, but here in Seattle temperatures are still bouncing from arctic to downright balmy and almost everyone we know (including yours truly) is sick, so we’re going out on a limb and declaring Seattle safely inside the Chicken Soup Zone. more ›

BOOK CRUSH: Librarian Nancy Pearl´s latest book is Book Crush, a guide to books you loved when you were growing up. How does she know? Head over to the launch party and find out. more ›

One of the weirder blog posts about the Seattle Weekly "expose" of Real Change is over at Crosscut, courtesy of ex-Weeklyite Chuck Taylor. (We'd point you to the Metblogs recap but it's fatally flawed, in that it's missing one of the seminal posts on the subject, namely ours. So no can do. But here's Real Change's take on the kerfluffle-thus-far.) more ›

Kid-friendly restaurants have a children's menu with macaroni and cheese and other toddler staples. They welcome families and have more than one high chair and booster seat. Most have crayons and some have craftier stuff, like Tutta Bella's wiki stix. That is usually as far as the accommodation goes--unless you frequent suburban junk food hell-holes like Chuck E. Cheese. more ›

Jesse Thorn, member of sketch comedy group Prank the Dean, produces his public radio show from his own living room in Los Angeles. At first, Seattlest thought that was code for "I am unemployed and play a lot of XBox" but it turns out he actually does have a radio show (this is still ambiguous on the "unemployed" detail), and even more to the point: it is very good. more ›

--Chuck Klosterman in Esquire: It has now been five days since Britney Spears became Xavier McDaniel. more ›

[Brewster] has enlisted two other Seattle Weekly veterans to work on the venture. more ›

Yesterday, the Mariners signed closer J.J. Putz to a three-year contract with a team option for the fourth year. The contract's worth $13.1 million, and includes a $1.5 million signing bonus. We've got a feeling J.J. will just be randomly checking his balance at pretty much every ATM in the city the next couple of days. more ›

Wednesday, January 17 more ›

This is Tom Landry, the greatest coach the Dallas Cowboys ever had.
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RSVP is req'd. more ›

Things we learned at trivia last night: more ›

The answer is clear: Chuck Palahniuk would beat Charles Burns in a fight, if the outcome was decided by audience vote. Charles Burns, author of Black Hole is funny, local, and writes and created fantastic, morbid art. But Chuck Palahniuk, author of among other works , a short story famous for making people faint and barf (or pretend to - it's unclear). Chuck wrapped it up by tossing out a dozen latex severed arms and marched to the lobby to sign books for his adoring fans. more ›

-This item has musical accompaniment, but it's going to have to be user supplied. Hum "Taps" while you read. Today's issue of the Seattle Weekly will be the last from the intrepid Knute Berger, Chuck Taylor, George Howland, Geov Parish team. more ›

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. more ›

There's been a lot of talk about playwright Elizabeth Heffron's decision to use "abortion" in the title of her play. We're concerned about the use of the name "Mitzi." As you no doubt know, Mitzi reached its height of popularity in the 1960s (481st out of the top 1,000 girls' names), then fell off a cliff by the 1980s, no longer in the top 1,000 at all. What was Heffron thinking, picking such an unpopular name? more ›

-Seattlest once did this, except instead of falling asleep and hitting a cop we hit our dad. Not sure which is worse. more ›

Word is that Chuck and Knute were burning the midnight oil in the Seattle Weekly metallurgical laboratory recently when an experiment intended to result in a bronze alloy went awry. The smoke cleared and three blogs with attending RSS feeds lay in the bottom of the cauldron. Should be fun. more ›

TicketBastard just emailed Seattlest HQ to tell us "Don't Miss Kenny Loggins!" And thank goodness, because Seattlest most certainly doesn't. Miss Kenny Loggins, that is. more ›

Back in our freelance days, Seattlest was happy to get 50 cents a word. So imagine the triple cherries that flashed before our eyes when we learned that down in PDX you can get 250 writers for three measly bucks! more ›

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. more ›

Whenever a big-time sports team gets in some serious championship contention, local radio starts playing quickie novelty songs inspired by (or exploiting) the team in question. Usually some unknown artist will give a popular song the Weird Al treatment, altering its lyrics to fit the team, and often enhancing the tracks with fake play-by-play announcers and crowd cheers. The earliest example we recall is “Husky Fever,” adapted from "Boogie Fever,” the Sylvers’ #1 disco hit from 1976. It was played incessantly on local radio as the Huskies approached their 1978 Rose Bowl victory, and it’s still a staple of the UW marching band. more ›

The first time we saw the Young Fresh Fellows, at the UW’s HUB Ballroom in 1989, frontman Scott McCaughey had that cryptic “poop” phrase scrawled on the face of his acoustic guitar. Near the end of the joyously ramshackle set, he smashed the instrument onstage and flung its tangled scraps over drummer Tad Hutchinson’s head. more ›