Results tagged “film”

WORLD SERIES GAME 1: It's the defending World Series champs against the reigning payroll champs. We're cheering on Ibañez with the hope that he will someday return to Seattle where we spell his name right.

Handmade Nation - a documentary about the flourishing do-it-yourself art, craft and design community - has been a labor of love for first-time filmmaker and director Faythe Levine. The idea for the film was conceived in 2003 during Levine’s trip to Chicago's Renegade Craft Fair and production began in 2006 when Levine and her director of photography, Micaela O’Herlihy, spent a year and a half traveling around the country, interviewing over eighty independent DIY-ers. We first heard about the project last year when Levine and her team were screening clips of the film while trying to raise money to offset the remaining production costs.

SHE GOT SOUL: Bettye Lavette, a Detroit native and prolific singer-songwriter well known for her work in the Motown era, is visiting Seattle tonight and tomorrow night. Though Lavette toured in the 1960s with the likes of Otis Redding and Ben E. King and even had a short stint with the James Brown Revue, she always flew under the fame radar until 2005, when she released her album, I've Got My Own Hell to Raise. While in Seattle, Lavette will be singing songs from her latest album, The Scene of the Crime, along with old favorites from the '60s.

WAYZGOOSE!: We swear no geese are involved (or will be harmed) during Saturday's 8th Annual Letterpress Wayzgoose, a day to creatively honor the letterpress; expect demos, shop tours, and cool designs. Make sure not to miss the Steamroller Letterpress Smackdown! There is nothing cooler than blending the letterpress traditions of the 17th century with the 21st century techniques, design, and horsepower. You'll watch design teams create a poster and then try printing it with a two-ton steamroller, used in place of the traditional printing press.

WHERE DOES CREATIVITY COME FROM?: For a city filled with a decent amount of creatives, advertising folks, and clients that always want the Big Idea, newest movie Art & Copy is a must see. The film, created by acclaimed documentary director Doug Pray (Hype!, Scratch, Big Rig), riffles through the minds of the ad industry's most creative and iconic product pushers. After tonight's 7:00 p.m. showing, select Seattle creatives and ad folks will host a discussion panel about the film.

YOU AND EMILIANA: Supercute Italian-Icelandic chanteuse Emiliana Torrini hits the Croc tonight, still touring on her 2008 album Me and Armini. Emiliana ain't no Bjork; her music is a mélange of genres: a little trip-hop here, a little folk there, with a smattering of ska, psych-rock, and bossa nova for good measure. Here's proof of her musical diversity: Torrini both sang "Gollum's Song" over the credits of LoTR: The Two Towers and wrote "Slow" for Kylie Minogue. Now that's what we call delightfully all over the place. 9 p.m. // The Croc // 2200 2nd Ave // $15, 21+

Sci-fi as a genre really shines when it addresses social issues via metaphor, which has really been lacking in recent Hollywood films--and no, Transformers 2 is not chockful of metaphor. Lucky for us, there's alien apartheid allegory District 9 (opening tomorrow at the Neptune and the Meridian).

Knowing nothing else about the film Julie & Julia, aside from the fact that the screenplay is by the same person that wrote When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail, you could safely assume it’s a chick flick.

When you talk great sci-fi movies of the 1960s, a few titles--Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fantastic Voyage--spring immediately to mind. But the Grand Illusion plays host to one of the era's most overlooked gems for much of this week.

BLOCK PARTY: Yep, it's this weekend. Jesus Lizard, Sonic Youth, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's a big deal, go watch a concert in the street. Changes to the layout of the party are being hyped as solving the extended misery problem that virtually everyone who's ever been to the Block Party over the last couple years has complained about, so please some let us know if you can actually move once you're on the inside. Fri. doors 3 p.m., Sat. doors 1 p.m. // Capitol Hill Block Party // 12th Ave. & E. Pike St. // tix $23 per day, $42 for both

(via PubliCola) We were just reminded that French New Waver J-L Godard's tribute to The Big Sleep and sociocultural criticism, Made in the U.S.A., is half-price ($4.50) at the Northwest Film Forum tonight (7, 9 p.m.). Hard to say no to that, especially since you won't see it anywhere but in a theater. The New York Times--you wouldn't argue with an old gray lady, would you?--says, "Godard’s ultimate statement about his love/hate for the aesthetics/politics of American movies/life is an event to be savored and celebrated." (Mondays--if you were as unaware as we were until just minutes ago--are Happy Mondays at NWFF, and you can get tickets at the box office for half-price.)

NOLLYWOOD!: Since the weather's perfect, contrarians will want to shoebox themselves inside the U District's tiny Grand Illusion Theatre to catch a documentary about Nigeria's burgeoning B-movie film industry. Nollywood Babylon, which Film Threat calls "Irresistible," is about to close, and you don't want to make a liar of Film Threat, do you? No, you do not. Also it's a Canadian documentary, and it's Canada Day. If that doesn't get you there, we throw our hands up.

PSYCHEDELIC CULT CLASSIC: Bob Dylan-esque Rodriguez is finally coming to Seattle, and KEXP is surely happy. We say this because anytime we've turned it on lately, he seems to be there, soulfully singing all the songs we love, which makes us happy as well. In the past couple years with Light in the Attic's re-releases of albums such as Cold Fact and Coming From Reality, he has gained a wide array of new fans, which makes it hard to believe that up until the late '90s he was just hanging out in Detroit doing menial labor, with no idea that his music career would ever make a comeback. (He found out only after Cold Fact had gone multi-platinum across the world in South Africa.) 5:30 p.m. doors, 7:30 p.m. show // The Triple Door, 216 Union Street // Tickets: $20/$23, 21+

Joe Dallesandro—former bodyguard at Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory, star of several key Warhol-sponsored cult films in the sixties and seventies, and accidental avatar of the Sexual Revolution—stands outside the W Hotel in downtown Seattle, his back to me. He cuts an almost dangerous-looking figure.

Special to Seattlest: Tony Kay.

IN FULL GIAMATTIVISION: Cold Souls is the too-grimly titled existential comedy starring Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. While rehearsing Uncle Vanya, Giamatti begins to lose himself in his character's depression, and looking for a temporary fix, stumbles across the new process of "soul extraction," as detailed in the New Yorker. While the movie is deadpan, Giamatti is not. His off-kilter spiral into soullessness is by turns hilarious and touching.

Seattle-born and Mercer Island-bred, Burnett’s the kind of guy you want making movies—He’s genuinely in the business for the love of it, but he still possesses enough savvy to endure amidst the industry rat race. And when you ask him about screening his horror movie The Hills Run Red at the Seattle International Film Festival, he’s pretty much over the moon.

Sügisball (Autumn Ball) shows at the Uptown at 4 p.m. today. Set in and around crumbling Soviet-era tower blocks in Estonia (which is a real country!), this Cassavetes-like, slice-of-gritty-life drama follows an almost bewildering number of lonely, yearning, unfulfilled people around. At two unflinching hours, it's not for the faint of heart or saddlesore, but it's a beautiful portrait of what you might call social architecture. And then there's Dead Snow, which we previewed and we're pleased to report our high hopes for Nazi zombies were completely justified. That's spattering the Pacific Place with gore and gray matter at 9:30 p.m. Be there.

SIFF's first full week is underway, so here's glimpse at some of the films coming up this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for gala screenings and other special events, which of course cost more. Here's what jumps out at us from the SIFF catalogue:

Leave it to Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola to resuscitate (sorry) the sub-genre with Dead Snow, and leave it to the Seattle International Film Festival to bring it to local audiences twice in the next two weeks (once on May 23 for an Egyptian Theater midnight screening, and once at 9:30 p.m. on May 27 at Pacific Place).

So you still haven't seen Anvil: The Story of Anvil yet, huh? Well, lucky for you, it's around for at least the next few days, so you've got some time to go and see one of the most entertaining documentaries Seattlest has seen recently. If you've been holding off (or have been unaware), we hope you take the opportunity to catch Anvil before it finally leaves Seattle theaters.