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.) more ›

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. more ›

Seattlest is a big fan of kids. And writing. And learning. And, like, the future. Kids are the future, we are the past, and so it goes. more ›

Up next was The Shins, fresh outta P-town. Is it too much to say that their warmth and good humor revived the audience, saving lives most likely lost to hypothermia otherwise? No, it is not. It's not true, exactly, but there you go. Anyway, their set was varied, they tried out two brand-new songs that didn't suck, and as Natalie Portman promised in Garden State, they changed our lives. more ›

Ok, we'll just admit up front: we killed your puppy. No, it's worse. We didn't really... well, ok, we didn't like The Matrix. Even the first one. There, we've said it. So we weren't exactly jonesing for a new Wachowski Brothers joint. We do, however, like Alan Moore, and we like when movies try to be subversive, so off to see V for Vendetta we went last night. (Moore wrote the graphic novel on which the movie's based, but he requested that his name not be associated with the film). We took it in at the Cinerama, where we joined a host of folks that most clearly trust Los Hermanos Wachowski. Black clothing and skull imagery and general hip geekiness and geeky hipness abounded. They cheered and sqeeed their way through most of the summer blockbuster sequel previews: lots of love for X-Men: The Last Stand (not surprising given the crowd), almost as much love for Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (a little surprising, no?), and even some busses for ol' Tom and MI:III (really? Tom? Still?). Though no applause for Superman--people seem to be withholding judgment on that one. more ›

Seattlest went to see the allegedly brand new, fully-restored print of the 1959 Robert Bresson classic Pickpocket at the Northwest Film Forum Tuesday night. We havent seen the French masterpiece since the late '90s when we caught at least part of it at the Grand Illusion, but we must not have stayed for the whole thing because we don't remember falling this madly in love with distressed ultra-goddess Marika Green (move over, precious Natalie Portman!). Seattlest will defer film criticsm to the experts, but for our money, it is indeed a classic: the much-hyped, convincing naturalism by way of Bresson's stylized minimalism, and intense visceral tension in all the close-ups and intimacy with the stealing tradecraft, etc. As for the film's alleged print restoration: to our layman's eyes the picture seemed pretty clean, but the sound quality was mired by the aged hissing/static noise that kind of subsided toward the end. But what can you do? It's an old, old movie. C'est la vie. more ›