As those of you who take the Times already know, the schedule for this year’s Seattle International Film Festival is now available. Zee already gave you the bird’s eye view of some of the major highlights and structure of this year’s festival, now you can dig in and start planning all of the ways that you can avoid the great outdoors between 22 May and 15 June, from the kick-off gala presentation of Battle In Seattle to the pre-closing bender of Bottle Shock and everything in between. From the preview reel at the Press Launch, I think I’m most excited about mumblecore-meets-horror Baghead, ultra-saturated fairy tale the Fall , high-school documentary American Teen , and super stylish dystopic thriller Chrysalis. Oh, and the Album Leaf is providing a live score to Sunrise at the Triple Door [#]!!

SIFF members can start shopping today [SIFF], the rest of you should either (1) buy yourself a membership now or (2) start plotting for when ticket sales open to the general public on Sunday. If you’re not obsessive enough to dive into a full pass, I recommend starting with a couple of six packs or filling out a 20 pack. You save a bit of money and it motivates you to see a not unhealthy number of films. If you’re feeling frisky, go with a Secret Festival pass and be sworn to never speak of the films you watch on Sunday mornings, or if you just like drinking, seeing, and being seen, grab tickets to a gala or gay-la as the case may be. Sadly, the number of galas have been significantly cut this year. You’ll have to make up for it by hanging out post-screening at the SIFF lounge at MOE instead.

Press and full-series afternoon screenings have already started; so we’ll be putting together our usual slate of recommendations once it gets closer to showtime. But obviously, we can’t see everything. If you’re writing about SIFF on your own ‘blog, let us know and we’ll try to highlight SIFFblogging near and far throughout the 25-day movie orgy.

Related posts:

1. Let’s Go To The Movies
2. SIFF : the galas
3. Get a head start on the Bumbershoot complaints!
4. Northwest Asian American Film Festival Jan 25 -28
5. SIFF : countdown begins, trailers online, dvds in store