This is the end, the end of free movies, care of Scion. Single tear. Via their Route film series, the youth-oriented car company has already tackled the true-to-life topics of blood diamonds in hip hop and nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community. Now for something completely different: Daft Punk's Electroma is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become......

Well, it's been a month, and that can only mean one thing: time for the next free edgy youth culture documentary, care of Scion. Last time around, the topic was blood diamonds in hip hop; this time it's all about nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community. Paris is Burning is all about New York fashion houses, but not the ones you may think you know. African American and Latino gay men and......

Click-YAY! Click-YAY! Click-YAY! That's the Call of the Amazonian today. Amazon.com stock closed up 10%, at 100.96, after the company announced profits have quadrupled. It's not just well-wishers that are buying in on the stock, it's also panicked short-sellers. There's a 36.8 million share short interest that comes due at the end of September, and those who own a big or even small part of it are buying now so they don't lose their shirts.......

Scion's back in town bringing music, art, and culture to the kids. Sure it's subversive corporate lifestyle marketing to the coveted youth demographic, but we do like that it's free. Their art installation is at BLVD Gallery for a few more nights, while their film series is running once a month at the Harvard Exit. Somehow we missed the September film (Mayor of Sunset Strip), but we'll definitely be there tomorrow night for Bling:......

In the middle of Steven Pinker's talk at Town Hall last night, the lecture morphed into some surprisingly blue comedy. We'll warn you now: what follows is adult language content. Talking about an FCC ruling (on Bono's infamous "This is really fucking brilliant!" live outburst after winning a Golden Globe award), Pinker noted that the way the FCC saw it, Bono was employing "fucking" as an adverb modifying the adjective "brilliant" -- but "did not......

Famous neo-fro advocate Steven Pinker drops in at Town Hall tomorrow night, 7:30pm. Tickets are just $5. He'll be flogging his new book, The Stuff of Thought. Stuff? What's next, the Lintball of Thought? The Harvard psychology professor and writer has spent years learning how children acquire language and then writing books about it without cutting the kids in on a single penny: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate. An unapologetic......

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. LAist saw national headlines soar this week with......

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......

Tuesday night University of Washington biology professor Roger del Moral spoke at an uncrowded Town Hall about his findings in natural disaster-ology, covered in his new book (with co-author Lawrence Walker), Environmental Disasters, Natural Recovery and Human Responses. (On the plus side, we got in two questions during the Q&A, a first for us.) This will no doubt turn out to be the easiest Science Lecture to get a seat at: next week brings Harvard......

Sketch Fest Seattle is into its second (and final) weekend. Last year we wrote that the world is a sad place so you might as well laugh while you can. Well over the past 365 days, the world hasn't gotten much un-sadder--despite our ass-kicking in Iraq. So you can either watch the news and cry, or watch Cory and Doug bring the worlds of sketch and improv together. If they can do that, well, maybe......

Rachel Hynes is a former barista and yet still enjoys spending time in espresso places. She will review them. This is her first such review. We've got a morning to kill and Broadway is hot and dirty. We spurn the main drag and stroll up shady, tree-lined Harvard to Joe Bar, right across the street from the Harvard Exit. The shop's unusual layout--there are two separate balconies that overlook the rest of the store--charms us,......

Jen Graves posted about this on the Slog on Tuesday and we've got a bit of a beef with everyone's beef about it. When the Gates Foundation's new headquarters open across from Seattle Center in 2010, visitors will be able to visit a 15,000 square foot interpretive center dedicated to educating patrons about the work of the Foundation. We're with Jen on this one: we're pretty intrigued by the idea of a museum dedicated......

It's SIFF's last bleary-eyed, numb-assed, popcorn-butter-fingered weekend, so if you haven't stopped in for some film-festy fun, you gotta act fast. We held Audrey upside-down and shook her until she gave us some selections -- no, no, you deserve the best. There's no telling how far we'd go to make you happy. Before we get to that, here's some film-related goings-on that you might like: Friday night there's Kinski performs Berlin: Symphony of a......

Sniff sniff, single tear. It's the last full week of SIFF, so you're well approaching your last chance till next year to take in some of that sweet filmy goodness. SIFF's not just movies; this week offers both the Opticlash 2 VJ battle at the CHAC and the Face the Music party at Neumo's, the latter of which includes performances by Viva Voce, Jesse Sykes, and Siberian. Tickets for both are going fast! Seattlest......

We are, in fact, over half-way there, and yet we continue to live on a prayer--a prayer that the latter half of SIFF contains nearly as many fine films as what's been shown thus far. Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order to point out some notable films playing this weekend: · Children of the War We've heard good things about this powerful documentary on the......

This week the weather's cooperating a bit more. Nothing like escaping rainy days with a film festival (except if you get stuck in a downpour while waiting in line, so pack that umbrella). Once inside you'll be golden thanks to your perusal of Seattlest picks. Trust us. Golden! But first, we want to highlight some special events: · A Conversation with Julien Temple, with musician/critic Sean Nelson, will no doubt cover Temple's three music......

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......

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......

Now that the opening gala has kicked off SIFF all proper-like, it's time to join the orgy of cinema for the next 25 days. For all film screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $10/$8 (and matinees $7/$5), except for gala screenings, which are $25/$23, and the closing night film event, which is $40/$35. If you really want to be prepared for this year's fest, check out Microsoft's Live Search Maps SIFF collection. Unlike most......

Now that the UW finally picked a commencement speaker (they settled on Congressman Norm Dicks after Doug E. Doug cancelled), we've compiled this list of 2007 grad day yakkers at all local colleges (source: The Chronicle of Higher Education). Please let us know if we're wrong or if we left anyone out. Local colleges Bastyr College: Joycelyn Elders, masturbation proponent City University of Seattle: James Donaldson, ex-NBA player Evergreen State College: Maxine Mimms, education expert......

BENEFIT: The Clif Bar Save Our Snow Tour, featuring DJ Sabzi from the Blue Scholars, stops by Fremont to help start global cooling. First they came for the snow, but we said nothing, because we follow the sun. 7-10:30pm // Evo Gear in Fremont 122 NW 36th St. // $5 BOOK:Journalist and activist Ann Jones talks about her book Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan, her account of volunteering to teach English to......

MUSIC: Carrie Clark & The Lonesome Lovers. Memphis Radio Kings headline this show, but we're here for Carrie Clark all the way. Clark's been wooing Seattle crowds with her superb voice -- both playful and brooding for over ten years now. Backed by her band, The Lonesome Lovers, things seem to be coming together beautifully for Miss Clark; her new album, Seems So Civilized, produced by Darryl Neudorf (Neko Case, Kinnie Starr, The Sadies, The......

THEATER: You have only five more chances to catch WET’s latest offering, In Disdress Now: Redux. Marya Sea Kaminski’s one-woman show was originally developed as as part of On the Boards' Northwest New Works Festival in June 2006. Now the “story of a girl wrestling meaning out of love, porn, and the folds of an enormous red hoop dress” has been expanded into a full-fledged tour de force. 8pm // Washington Ensemble Theatre // 608......

The Seattle P-I reports that Tay Yoshitani, who will succeed Mic Dinsmore, "was the Port of Seattle Commission's unanimous choice from more than 70 possible candidates generated during a 6-month-long national search." Does this mean he'll help the Port understand that it's not got a monopoly, as Bill Virgin was saying the other day? The Northwest Progressive Institute emphasizes his consultant/lobbyist credentials, without mentioning that what he's been doing for the last two years......

The title is a little pun about the Dyson sphere, Freeman Dyson's main claim to fame and the source of his name-check in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Outside of the ranks of science fiction fans, Freeman Dyson is known for being an award-winning physicist and the author of several popular science books. Dyson spoke at Town Hall on Monday to promote his latest collection of book reviews and essays, The Scientist As Rebel. Dyson......

The Scion film series comes to an end Tuesday night at the Harvard Exit with Pablo Aravena's graffiti documentary Next: A Primer on Urban Painting, featuring interviews with the likes of Futura, Lee Quiñones and Doze Green, as well as younger art collectives like the Inkheads, the Barnstormers and Heavyweight. Apparently Aravena scoured the globe, talked to like-minded artists from North and South America, Europe, and Japan, and collected an oral history that traces......

Wednesday, November 8 >>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. >>>Pacific Science Center......

Last week we caught a free showing of the Brazilian documentary Favela Rising, courtesy of Scion's marketing machine. With the promise of free cocktails beforehand, we trundled down to the Harvard Exit about a half hour in advance of the show. Upon making our way upstairs to the top floor, we felt a bit like we'd crashed someone's party where we quickly realized we knew no one there. The atmosphere was more "Yo check out......

Another month, another free Scion-sponsored documentary at the Harvard Exit. This time around (tomorrow night), it's Favela Rising. Favela Rising documents a man and a cultural movement, a city divided, and a Brazilian ghetto (or favela) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and friends, Anderson Sa leaves his drug-dealing days behind him, and instead chooses to lead a social revolution in Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slum. Through his unique Afro Reggae......

Went to this NetGreen thing today at Bergen Park in Ballard. Took the bus, even. Dozen or so "electeds" on hand (city, county, federal) with their attendant staffers. Lots of bikes. An electric Xebra Zapcar. Lots of self-congratulatory speeches. Did you know Seattle has an Office of Sustainability & Environment? Dude who runs it, Steve Nicholas, holds Master's from Harvard, no less. He's all up for this project, whatever it is. So's city councilman Richard......