Fans of dance and spectacle take note: Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance is coming to the Paramount theater this November as part of its current world tour. Two shows on November 7th make up the entire local run, so if you want to go, you’ll want to be sure to get your tickets today when they go on sale at The Paramount box office or through STG Presents.

It’s 1922 and two British housewives, members of the same ladies’ club, read an ad for Italian villas for rent and, lured by the promise of sun and sea, decide to escape grey London for a while. To save money, they recruit two more women, a dowager and a young socialite.

The four women set out on a vacation that’s meant to be a break from their ordinary lives but once they arrive they find themselves on a journey that will transform them.

Enchanted April opens September 25 at Taproot Theater and runs through October 24, playing Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays at 8:00 and Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00.

One of my favorite movies from this year’s Seattle International Film Festival was Amreeka, writer/director Cherien Dabis’ debut feature, afilm about a single mother who leaves the tumult of the West Bank with her teenaged son in tow to reach the golden paradise of small-town Illinois. Well, okay, it’s not quite the Shangri-la that Muna imagined it to be. She’s welcomed to the United States by Customs agents who regard her home-made treats as a threat to safety and a fleeting moment of distraction wipes out her hard-earned savings, leaving her penniless. At least she has a place to go, the home of her sister and brother-in-law, whose ordinary middle class lifestyle is being threatened by all those “patriotic” Americans who suddenly can’t bear the idea of being treated by the friendly Palestinian dentist because, hey, all those Arabs are terrorists, after all.

Eager to get back on her feet, Muna looks for a job but all her skills and past experience count for nothing and the only employment she can find is working at a local White Castle, a state so embarrassing for her that she pretends to be working at the bank next door. In the meantime, her son Fadi is welcomed to his new high school by a group of kids fully willing to accept him as a potential suicide bomber. Dabis, who based the screenplay on her own family’s immigrant experience, doesn’t shy away from the bleaker aspects of being an immigrant, particularly an immigrant from the Middle East. Dabis was a teenager during the first Gulf War and her family was shunned, threatened and abused by people far too willing to believe the stereotypes fed to them by a biased media.

Despite all this, Amreeka is anything but dreary. Muna, whose character was based on Dabis’ aunt, is human enough to feel despair but has a cheerful, optimistic outlook and a strong spirit. She stumbles through her often confusing new home, a place where everyone else has mastered the unspoken rules that Muna doesn’t even know exist, but she manages to get back on her feet with her hopefulness intact. She’s not quite sure how she’s going to do it, but she is going to find her path, and if she has to flip burgers to survive, well, then, she’s going to flip burgers.

Fadi, in the meantime, not only has the face the usual tribulations of being a teenager (why do people over-sentimentalize these years as the “best days of [your] life”? Adolescence means too old to get the perks of childhood, too young to get the perks of adulthood but just the right age to get the short end of either.) but has to do it in a foreign country where people can’t even get some basic facts right – one of the most engaging scenes for me in Amreeka came when one of Fadi’s jerky classmates insists his brother might die because of [Fadi's] people and Fadi refuses to be gentle in explaining that Iraq and Palestine are hardly the same nation.

Muna and Fadi are strangers in a strange land, but they’re not alone. They have their family–Fadi’s cousin Salma has to take charge of his wardrobe to keep him from looking like a hopeless rube but she’s a genuine friend and ally and a strong voice of her own–and Muna’s warmth earns her friendship and support from a wide variety of people she encounters.

Dabis created Amreeka both as an expression of her own experiences melding two diverse cultures and as a way to counter the stereotyping and ignorance so often applied to Palestinians who are no more a homogeneous lot than are all Americans. Dabis believes that there are good and bad people everywhere–in Amreeka she gives us a look at both but it’s clear that the good people matter more.

Amreeka opens Friday night at the Neptune.

The Seattle International Latino Film Festival runs Friday through Sunday at NWFF, the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, and Cinerama presenting a variety of films that represent the vitality and diversity of Spanish-speaking communities around the world. Forget the stereotypes: these films present a broad range of Latino expression presenting multiple viewpoints and experiences. Some of the screenings include: Children of the Amazon is a documentary by Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol in which she travels a highway into the depths of the Amazon to find the Surui and Negarote children she’d photographed fifteen years ago and to document how their lives were changed when a road was built directly into the heart of the forest.

El Regalo, from Chile, is a feature about two men who try to cheer up their recently widowed friend by inviting him to the Chilean hot springs and bringing along the woman who was his first true love as a young man.

An upper-class young man from Bogota is kidnapped by a guerilla group and must struggle to hold on to his life and his soul in the midst of violent conflict in La Milagrosa.

Other films in the festival include documentaries and features both serious and comedic.

Midnight at the Egyptian: Cult sci-fi comedy adventure The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Midnight at the Neptune: Paranormal, a thriller about a couple who set up a surveillance system to gather evidence proving that their house is haunted almost universally described in reviews as one of the scariest films ever made even though (maybe because of?) its minimal gore.

photo by hillary harris, via grand archives.

• So perhaps you’ve heard of this band called Grand Archives who play multipart new americana harmonies that we’re all so incredibly fond of? And by now you must know that they released a new album this month called Keep In Mind Frankenstein? Tonight, they party it up at the Crocodile with the Most Serene Republic (a septet of heartfelt young Canadians from the Arts & Crafts stable) and “special guests” (maybe of the one-letter name variety, just a hunch). Be there, pick up an album, and be sure to wear your G.A. bandana. $12, 8pm. [crocodile]

Right after the fire in Hooverville Bar [by divide via our Flickr Pool]

Fans of Hooverville rejoice! According to their website; A Bar Called Hooverville reopens today at 2pm after months of remodel following a fire that gutted the place. Just about everyone I work with in SoDo is heading over there this afternoon to enjoy a drink to welcome Hooverville back.

While I can’t make it tonight, I will soon. Welcome back Hooverville. I’m sure many glasses will be raised to you in the coming weeks.

Hooverville is located at 1721 1st Ave S. and is open daily from 2pm until 2am

Now that fall has come, some of the farmers markets in our area will start to shut down. The first of those to go is going to be the new Queen Anne Farmers Market. The Queen Anne Farmers Market broke off from the Seattle Markets organization (who runs the Ballard, Wallingford, Madrona, and Fremont markets) and started their own, independent, non-profit market. They are really a plucky little organization, having started from the ground up late last fall and they’ve put on a consistently busy and decidedly Queen Anne type of market all summer long.

Go check them out during their last two weeks. Skillet is there serving dinner, and there’s Parfait Ice Cream as well. They always have music and their chef demos have been impressive and tasty every week.

Queen Anne Farmers Market
Queen Anne Ave and West Crockett
3-7pm, Thursdays

September 24th, Cold Stone Creamery locations, 5-8pm

Now that Summer officially ended yesterday and with a nice, warm day to send us off into Fall, what better way to celebrate (or mourn) than with free ice cream from http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/promos/makeawish/. They do ask for a donation, since the flavors they’re handing out were created by Make-A-Wish kids. But I remember partaking in my free cup last year without a dime on me and no one seemed to care. Yay free (or practically free)!

4:00 PM – Lorene Edwards: Canning and Preserving Your Own Harvest and Hortus Miscellaneous
Queen Anne Farmers Market
A canning demo and signing. Yum.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Samantha Scholfield: Screw Cupid: The Sassy’s Girl’s Guide to Picking Up Hot Guys
University Bookstore U-District
This is not flipping familiar gender roles. This is totally buying into gender roles. This is a literary Sadie Hawkins and it makes the top of my head pop off.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – George Bowering & Kathleen Flenniken: Poetry Reading
Elliott Bay Book Co.
Bowering, two-time Governor General’s Award winner, and the author of over 70 books, has also served as the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, was awarded the Order of British Columbia, has taught all across Canada and Europe, and has served as writer-in-residence at the University of Rome. He will read from his new collection of poems, The Box. Flenniken will read from her first collection, Famous.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Max Blumenthal: Crises Among the Radical Right
Town Hall Seattle
“Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal is famous for his left-leaning articles and videos, and lately he’s leaning even further—right into the personal lives of the Republican Party’s extreme right-wing forces. Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah, says the GOP’s leading figures have more in common than just their power in conservative ranks: personal lives stained by crisis, ranging from mental illness to murder. Inspired by the work of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who asserted that the fear of freedom leads anxiety-ridden people to embrace authoritarianism, Blumenthal maintains that a culture of personal crisis has defined the radical right, transforming the nature of the Republican Party for the next generation and setting the stage for the future of American politics. Presented by the Town Hall Center for Civic Life, with University Book Store.” -Town Hall
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Reading: Trading Places
Richard Hugo House
“Poet Daemond Arrindell, cartoonist David Lasky and novelist Cienna Madrid “trade” genres with each other and read from new work created in a form that isn’t their norm.” -RHH
[LINK]

5:00 PM – Workshop: Sound, Sentence and Form: Borrowing Moves from the Masters
Richard Hugo House
“In this workshop led by writer and instructor Waverly Fitzgerald, we’ll explore ways you can borrow moves from master writers and apply them to your own writing. We’ll undertake four writing exercises designed to help you explore qualities of language (rhythm, sound and sentence structure) and consider possible forms (story shape and genre). If you have a piece or poem you’ve been pondering, this is a great opportunity to put it through its paces. You can also bring a master work by a favorite author with you; examples will be provided if you prefer. Each participant will leave with new writing and story ideas plus four exercises you can use on your own or with your students.” -RHH
[LINK]

5:30 PM – Sheila Himmell: Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia
Elliott Bay Book Co.
“A courageous account of what it is to exist with a life-threatening eating disorder from two different standpoints—Lisa, the daughter who stops eating, and her mother, Sheila, a restaurant critic. The irony of this situation is not lost on neither, and both are unsentimental and deeply honest about their experience. … This book should comfort anyone confronted with this illness as well as provide much practical help for dealing with it.” – Marion Nestle
[LINK]

6:30 PM – Stephanie Kallos: Sing Them Home
Queen Anne Books
Everyone in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska, knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician’s wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope’s three young children, the stability of life with their distant, preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother’s spitfire best friend, is no match for their mother’s absence. Larken, the eldest, is an art history professor who seeks in food an answer to a less tangible hunger; Gaelan, the only son, is a telegenic weatherman who devotes his life to predicting the unpredictable and whose profession, and all too much more, depend on his sculpted frame and ready smile; and Bonnie, the baby of the family is a self-proclaimed archivist who combs the roadsides for clues to her mother’s legacy, and permission to move on. When, decades after their mother’s disappearance, they are summoned home after their father’s sudden death, they are forced to revisit the childhood tragedy at the center of their lives.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Mary Lou Sanelli: Among Friends: A Memoir of One Woman’s Expectations, Disappointments, Regrets & Discoveries While Searching for Friends-For-Life
University Bookstore U-District
The title still depresses me.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Rachel Simmons: The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence
Town Hall Seattle
“To dispel the curse of the good girl, and despite using those familiar, easily misconstrued labels as a touchstone, Simmons offers instructive tales out of school and workshops, revealing that flawed communication rituals and fear of confrontation contribute equally to a girl’s belief that it is more important to be liked than to be an individual … In [this] book, parents will find concrete strategies and tools … to help guide a girl’s growth into a young woman who can respect and listen to her inner voice, say what she feels and thinks, embrace her limits and present an authentic self to the world.” – Publishers Weekly
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Adam Eisenberg: A Different Shade of Blue: How Women Changed the Face of Police Work
Elliott Bay Book Co.
“A Different Shade of Blue is an excellent book that rescues early policewomen from the myth that they were only clerks and babysitters. Adam Eisenberg lets the women tell their own stories, capturing the wide range of police work they did—often unarmed and without glory. A fun and easy read, A Different Shade of Blue is a valuable addition to regional history, women’s history, and police history.” – Dorothy Moses Schultz, Ph.D
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Robert Spector: The Mom and Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving
Town Hall Seattle
Yup.
[LINK]

• Pearl Jam play another [mb] hometown show in Key Arena. If you didn’t buy ages ago, tickets might be a challenge to acquire, but sometimes persistence pays off. $66, doors at 7:30. With Ben Harper & Relentless 7. [tenclub]
• Throw Me the Statue return from their late summer tour for a show at the Vera Project. Creaturesque has been a near-daily listen for me, with my favorite track shifting around from week to week. Lately, I’ve been in a a “Waving at the Shore” run, though I fully expect something else to take hold as autumn settles in. Tonight, they’re accompanied by Nurses and the Brunettes; early next month they have a spot on the Crocodile’s calendar with support from Visqueen. It’s unlikely that any elephants or giraffes will be at either show, though with these guys, it’s sometimes hard to tell. $9-10, 7:30 pm [veraproject]