Face it, folks: it's fall in Seattle, and along with cooler nights, leaves changing color, and the beginning of football season, fall also marks the annual Scion independent film series. Yes, it's corporate-sponsored lifestyle marketing aimed at the hip youth demographic, and yes, they just want the kids to buy their damn cars, but we're willing to shill for it when 1) it's free and 2) the films shown are actually worth seeing. The series kicks off tonight with Heavy Metal in Baghdad, the first full-length film made by the good people at Vice: more ›

The Saturday night SIFF Cinema screening of the documentary Heavy Metal In Baghdad provided the best possible antidote we could have hoped for to the asinine and maudlin SIFF opener Battle in Seattle: Stuart Townsend's misfire was so bad it may have actually inflicted a deeper scar into our collective psyche than the actual WTO riots ever did. While both films aspire to show an up close and personal look at what it’s like when real people are caught up in conflicts of geo-political significance, only one of these efforts doesn’t suck. We'll take it a step further and say that Heavy Metal In Baghdad is the best film we've seen all year. more ›