FILM: If you see only one documentary about fonts this year, make it Helvetica. New York taxi numbers are also in Helvetica. The font is on IRS tax forms, U.S. mailboxes, and ConEd trucks. The 50-year-old sans serif font spells out countless logos: Sears. Bloomingdale’s. JCPenney. Crate & Barrel. Target. Fendi. Jeep. Toyota. Energizer. Oral-B. MetLife. Nestlé. Once you realize Helvetica is everywhere, says Hustwit, "you just can’t stop thinking about it." 7:15, 9pm......

POETRY: Eavan Boland is from Dublin, Ireland, and we take it that "Eavan" is a girl's name there. It's not immediately obvious, it it? She carries more of a charge in her than that boggy, peaty, old Seamus Heaney. One of her poems, The Pomegranate, begins: The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell. And found and rescued there. Love and blackmail are the gist of......

Friday Theatre: The Solo Performance Festival, SPF2: Sweatproof!, returns to the Theatre Off Jackson with a terrific lineup of uni-personned shows. In fact, tonight has a terrific lineup all on its own, thanks to the Unicycle Collective. Their MonoLodge 4 is an evening of solo shorts from Seattle veterans and up-and-coming talents: Keith Hitchcock, Jennifer Jasper, Troy Mink, K. Brian Neel, Becky Poole, Mary Purdy, Seth Rosenbloom, Mark Siano, and Jenna Bean Veatch. (Saturday......

Documentary: Los Angeles and art don't have the strongest association. (Glen Hansard at the Oscars, shaking his statue at the audience, "Make art! Make art!") But it's more of a signal-to-noise problem. The documentary The Cool School explores the lives of the founders of L.A.'s artistic "cool." Regina Hackett describes the situation: Back to L.A. in the early 1950s: Progressive artists had nothing going for themselves except themselves. New York didn't bother to spit......

The Irish writer whom we hadn't heard of until writing this, Anne Enright, is in town flogging her fourth book, The Gathering, a Booker Prize winner. (Which reminds us that Eavan Boland is visiting this March 3.) Her book, says the NY Times:...inhabits the restless, angry consciousness of Veronica Hegarty, one of a dozen children of a “vague” mother — a “piece of benign human meat, sitting in a room” — and a mannerly,......

If you were fidgeting during There Will Be Blood thinking, "GAH! This isn't obscure enough! Where are some old Finnish movies?" the Northwest Film Forum can help. As that is no more than two people, tops, and one lives in Finland, we're providing some friendly hype for their Finnish New Wave series. Today they're screening Eight Deadly Shots, which gets 8.8 out of 10 stars on IMDB:In a small Finnish rural community in the winter......

We caught War Made Easy at the Film Forum last night, but we weren't in the big hurry we thought because its run has been extended through Monday, the 21st. Despite being narrated by Sean Penn, it's fairly lo-fi -- a cool-headed interview with media critic Norman Solomon intercut with film and video footage to illustrate salient points on how gullible/acquiescent the American public is when it comes to run-ups to war and how supine......

Last night, a besuited Crispin Hellion Glover took the stage at Broadway Performance Hall with the perfunctory greeting: "Good evening. Presently, I will read to you from eight books." And he did. Now, we were kinda expecting something along those lines, as the Northwest Film Forum's blurb on his film events this weekend announced: All performances preceded by Glover’s one-hour slide show, which consists of ten eight different stories dramatically narrated by Glover himself.......

"They should take off their left socks." "Let's dance to Jesus." "Let's talk about Jesus." "It's a time to be jolly after all." "It's like a wine disco." "It's like hanging out covered in blood." "We need some leap frog!" "We need some Percosets." Seattlest actually heard all of the above during Clockwork Reduction Live Friday night at Northwest Film Forum. Some of the words came from the mouth's of performers, others came from the......

Making up for weeks of hibernation and workaholism, Kim will hit the parties this weekend. Tonight, she’ll don her Groucho glasses for a lesbian function at Jabu’s celebrating the births of her two favorite Sagitarii. Saturday, it’s to the War Room for a company party with the missus and her workmates. Finally, she’ll ship off to the sub-tropics on Monday, where she’ll spend what remains of 2007. While his wife is taking a Wilderness......

We have to be honest: We were slightly annoyed when we read the email promoting Seattle School's (of Motel fame) latest event. Anything that calls an organization "insanely exuberant" and says that it is putting on one of the "craziest film events in the history of the city" is trying pretty hard to sound zany and exciting. But as we told Seattlest Audrey, we're a sucker for weird (you should have seen us in college)......

With all the great films finally starting to hit the mainstream theaters, it's certainly the most wonderful time of the film year™. But don't forget your local indie moviehouse, as the NWFF kicks off their 10th annual Northwest film fest, Local Sightings: Northwest Film Forum's premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever, October 4-11, 2007. The festival, which happens at NWFF's theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest......

Monday the 10th, at 7pm, the Paramount Theatre presents Charlie Chaplin's 51st, 52nd, and 53rd films, all from 1916: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, and The Vagabond. They're all half-hour or so shorts from early on in his Mutual Films era, and feature Chaplin's genius for environmental comedy, with mishaps with escalators and fire poles. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote that his notion of humor was based on "the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears......

Seattlest's heart's cockles always get warmed when we see a bunch of people who choose to ride their bikes to get around get together, so we were predisposed to love Northwest Film Forum's Second Seattle Annual Bike-In last night. (Almost getting slammed by a driver opening her car door while riding over probably added to our joy at making it there.) Unlike most communal bike events in Seattle (Critical Mass, Bike to Work Day), the......

Memorial Day weekend is finally behind us, so it's time to settle into SIFF. Yes, it's absolutely lovely outside, but Seattleites can only handle so much sun. Get away from all that UVA/UVB exposure and spend your time in the theaters' comfortable darkness. This week brings the opening of SIFF on the Eastside, starting Thursday at the Lincoln Square Cinemas in Bellevue. And tomorrow night, Anthony Hopkins is in town to pick up his......

FILM: The NW Film Forum is screening the potentially watchable Climates, which won a less than inspiring 71% at the rotten tomato site. Of course you can't go by those ratings since a masterpiece like Anchorman scored a feeble 64%, but an over-rated gorefest like Pan's Labrynth won a ludicrous 95%. That's worse than Al Gore losing to George Bush. 7, 9:30 // 1515 12th Ave // $8.50 MUSIC: The last time we did......

MUSIC: Other than at Sasquatch in May, tonight's your only chance to see Smoosh on their current tour, when they open for Bloc Party at the Paramount. Yeah, Bright Eyes are also playing over at the Showbox, but seriously, you'd try to get scalped tickets to go see them over Smoosh? Whatever. 8pm // The Paramount // $25.50 plus fees FOOD & FUNDRAISING: Tarragona Wine and Food on Capitol Hill is hosting a wine tasting/auction......

FESTIVAL: The first-ever (official) Lebowski fest in Seattle kicks things off at the Showbox. Tonight's the chubby dance-rock of the oft tighty-whitey-clad Har Mar Superstar and a screening of the Coen Brothers' classic. Tomorrow's bowling with The Dude at Kenmore Lanes. Wear your best bathrobe and pound some white Russians, or you'll be out of your element, Donny. 8pm doors // Showbox // $15 MUSIC: We still haven't gone to a show at the......

PUPPETS: Puppets are cute when you're a kid, but when you get older they're a bit creepy. Creepy though they may be, Drunk Puppet Night removes the kid context and serves up "mature" puppetry, which may or may not involve tales about puppets trying to make rent. Continues March 2, 3, 9, 10. Doors 7pm, show 8pm // Rebar, 1114 Howell @ Boren // $15 MUSIC: Buttrock Suites sets modern dance to live renditions......

MUSIC MOVIE: Danielson: A Family Movie follows musician/multi-media artist Daniel Smith as he endeavors to create art with his siblings and friends while also balancing his love for Jesus. Including appearances by Sufjan Stevens, Rick Moody, Daniel Johnston, and Steve Albini, tonight’s the documentary’s Seattle premiere. 7pm, 9pm // Northwest Film Forum // $8.50 SHOPPING PARTY: Galactic Boutique teams up with local artists MasterCraft for its holiday party/craft extravaganza GalactiCraft. Check out the latest fashions......

Northwest Film Forum is currently showing films that were directed by the man who made the best television ever, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Screw you Twin Peaks, Monty Python, Thirtysomething, Kids in the Hall, Buffy, Frasier, Sopranos, Arrested Development, Lost, Best Week Ever; Kieslowski's Decalogue is the best TV ever. Tonight we're going to see The Scar, which is not a part of Kieslowski's made-for-TV series. It's his first theatrically released film and it's about a guy......

Hollywood babbles on: Babel [info and showtimes] Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [info and showtimes] Flushed Away [info and showtimes] The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause [info and showtimes] Indy films and the temple of the marketplace: Central Cinema Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick): 7 and 9:30pm Fri-Sun The Harder They Fall (Bogart!): 3pm Sunday The Egyptian The Monster Squad ("Wolfman's got nards!"): midnight Fri and Sat Grand......

Direct from Hollywood: Catch a Fire (Philip Noyce): Several theaters, including Pacific Place and Metro. Running with Scissors (Ryan Murphy): Several theaters, including Oak Tree, Meridian 16, and Metro Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman): Several theaters, including Oak Tree, Pacific Place, and Metro Indies, revivals, and other abominations against the studio system: Bad Taste (Peter Jackson): Central Cinema Blue Velvet (David Lynch): Central Cinema Camp Death (Blood Squad): Grand Illusion Conversations with God (Stephen Simon):......

You be the judge. This Saturday, two wheel-obsessed events face off at Magnuson Park. In one corner we have the Northwest Film Forum's Bike-In, an outdoor event with music, bike-related demonstrations, beer garden, raffle, and screenings of bike-themed films on a large outdoor screen. The event is co-sponsored by the Cascade Bicycle Club. In the other corner, we have the ball-bearing-busting Rat City Rollergirls. Bout 5 of Season 2 features, well, do we really have......

Occasionally we drop in to see something we've recommended in advance to check if it's worthy of the Seattlest Seal of Approval. Sunday night we took in Chris Jeffries' Kaleidoscope Eyes: Songs for Busby Berkeley. We weren't quite sure what to expect when we walked in. What it turns out to be is a pianist and six vocalists performing "alternate" soundtracks to actual Berkeley-choreographed movie clips -- so it really is a celebration of......

If you laughed milk through your nose at Lawrence and Gerald, then you owe choreographer Busby Berkeley a great big thank-you. Synchronized swimming was nowheresville until he turned his birds-eye-view camera on the glamor of dancing in and around pools. There's probably no better way to express your gratitude than by attending Chris Jeffries' Kaleidoscope Eyes: Songs for Busby Berkeley. That's at the Northwest Film Forum, July 20-23, 27-30, at 8pm. Tickets are $15......

What better way to kick off Pride Weekend than with a parable about the gay recruitment agenda -- incidentally we hear David Bowie modeled his Goblin King performance after Johnny Depp -- and another one another one about Republican oilmen clashing with Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon? We'd like to thank Metrobloggist Zee, who yesterday informed us that Labyrinth was coming to town. Then we heard that this Friday and Saturday's midnight movie at......

Monday's farm report continues with coverage of The Real Dirt on Farmer John, which played at the Northwest Film Forum over the weekend, thanks to the itvs people. The hour-long documentary (see the trailer) is scheduled to play on KCTS sometime in June as part of the Independent Lens series. (It played at SIFF last year.) John Peterson is a third-generation farmer behind Angelic Organics. (Locals Pioneer Organics were at the post-screening Q&A.) Thanks to......

In which Seattlest contributors divulge their weekend plans and disclose their favorite things to BBQ. Friday afternoon means it's time for the MADCAP Hill Farmer's Market at Madison and 20th, 3pm - 7pm, so MvB is off to find ingredients for his mad scientist smoothies. Saturday at 4pm The Real Dirt On Farmer John plays at the NW Film Forum (free if you RSVP). MvB grew up on a farm, and you'd think he'd be......

Classe Tous Risque has two more nights at the Northwest Film Forum, Wednesday and Thursday, so get on it if you're gonna. It's French film noir meets neo-realism. No, wait, don't run. Um, it's a documentary-style black-and-white film -- crap. A tense drama about the downfall of a legendary gangster? Damn, this is hard. Sautet (director of Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud) made the film in 1960, to chronicle what he saw as the end of......