Seattlest will be counting down to 2011 with a series of posts on our highlights of this year and what we're looking forward to in the next. Got a list to suggest? Send it our way. See the entire series here. more ›

The Frames have been an influential rock band for a very long time, as a matter of fact this is the 20th year that the band has been together. They're based out of Dublin, Ireland and so tend to be overshadowed by their musical big brother U2. They've made a solid name for themselves in Europe as well as North America despite that fact. However, you may not have heard The Frames so much as you've heard Glen Hansard or perhaps his side project The Swell Season. Glen was one of two main characters (but basically playing himself in personality and charm) in the movie Once. It was an independent film that found international fame due to it's heart and beauty both visually and musically; if you haven't seen it, we highly recommend you watch it over the long weekend. The other lead in the film was Marketa Irglova, a singer/songwriter from the Czech Republic (also basically playing herself in personality and charm). Out of that film came an amazing group called The Swell Season. All the music in the film was written and performed by the duo and was so successful they decided to pursue it as a band. After a couple years they decided it was time to move on, and thankfully Glen fell back to working with The Frames (though, most of them were helping out with the backing instrumentation in The Swell Season anyway). more ›

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You begin to see why a girlfriend might leave him. "And how in the world did you come / to be such a lazy love?" he sings with Cat Stevens' flair for passing judgment, or pleads for time with a barbed hook on the line: " Maybe if you slowed down for me / I could see you're only telling / lies, lies, lies." more ›

About three lives ago, when we were living in a scientific research station in Ecuador, we watched The Postman (Il Postino) with a group of Westerners. After the movie, which is one of our favorites, we were sitting there, wondering why the room had suddenly gotten all dusty, when a privileged teenage British hipster/tourist named Aelys (pronounced like Alice, but her parents preferred the Welsh spelling) announced that she hadn't liked the movie because it was too slow. Charlie's Angels 2, she liked, but not this. more ›