Singing in the Rain, this weekend at SIFF

• If you missed seeing Sergei Eisenstein’s classic 1938 epic of thinly-veiled anti-German aggression propaganda Alexander Nevsky at this summer past’s SIFF festival, don’t despair - SIFF Cinema is giving you another shot at taking in the spectacle starting this Friday, December 12. The heroic Alexander Nevsky raises a ragtag army to engage invading Teutonic knights in true style, with breathtaking battle scenes, gorgeous costumery, and a rousing classical score.
• Also at SIFF: this weekend’s Films4Families feature is the eternally charming comic musical Singing in the Rain. The dance scene where Gene Kelly gleefully sings the title tune is one of the most recognizable scenes in American film but the whole movie is lively and fun and is a great example of how funny Hollywood can be when it’s willing to poke fun at itself. (Saturday, 12/13 at 10 am).
• Everyone’s heard by now the story about how It’s a Wonderful Life was a failure when it was originally released, a story that everyone who hears it seems to simply take for granted. Actually, while the film always has had its critics, it’s always had its champions, too–in fact, it sold more tickets during its initial release than Miracle on 34th Street, released the same year, and garnered five Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor and Best Director. It’s not one of the best known, best loved novies ever made for nothing–It’s a Wonderful Life is a heart-warming tale about hope, redemption, and community that doesn’t flinch from showing the sour as well as the sweet. The Grand Illusion continues its annual tradition of screening this fine film from Friday, December 12, through Christmas Day. Stop in at 7pm on Tuesday, December 16, for the Grand Illusion Holiday Party featuring free admission, food and drink and the naming of this year’s winner of the George Bailey Award.
• At NWFF the At the Crossroads: Slovenian Cinema series continues Friday with Raft of the Medusa, a 1980 movie in which a troupe of avante-garde artists travel the provinces with a pair of young schoolteachers inspired by their introduction to Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism to believe that making art can cause a revolution. Swing by Saturday for Idle Running, an utterly engaging movie about a lazy college student named Dizzy who is perfectly content to drift along in a slow-moving stream of life going nowhere until his encounters with a studious new roommate, his roomate’s pregnant girlfriend and his own frustrated girlfriend force him to take a more serious stock of his self.
• Also at NWFF: Ever wonder just how important the US President really is? Virtual JFK ponders that very issue by offering up the best and worst moments of over 250 hours of archival material regarding President John F. Kennedy to illustrate how the decisions and actions of his tragically abbreviated term literally changed the world.
• Will Ferrell has the title role in Elf, starting Saturday at Central Cinema.
• People often refer to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Egyptian Theater ’s Midnight Movie this week as one of the better teen sex comedies of the 80s but I’m not really sure that “teen sex comedy” is the best label for the flick, even though it does contain teens, sex and comedy. Mixed in with sight gags and other forms of humor both light and dark, Fast Times, adapted from Cameron Crowe’s book of the same title based on his experiences while masquerading as a high school student, also shows some of the more unpleasant aspects of being a teen–heartbreak, romantic rejection, unplanned pregnancy, the struggle to fit in and the quest to figure out just who you really are. Make it a Sean Penn double-featurie by getting over to the Egyptian earlier in the evening to see Milk, the excellent biopic of slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk that has what may be Penn’s greatest performance on film yet and is my pick for best movie of the year.