Personally, I tihnk the Jasper Fforde books defy a standard classification. There are the nursery crime books, the first focusing on who pushed Humpty Dumpty off of that wall, and the second on Goldilocks and those bears. Then there are the Thursday Next books, which are” literary detective” novels complete with the ability for the lead character to jump in and out of works of fiction. Strictly, the are fantasy, but really, they are so much more.

Mr. Fforde has a new book out, Shades of Grey, and he’s coming to Third Place Books tonight at 6:30 for a reading and talk. If you’ve never been to Third Place Books (either Lake Forest Park or Ravenna), you’re missing out. They have a fantastic selection and are really a neighborhood hangout location. Shop local and show your support for your local booksellers.

Third Place Books
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155

Stanley Pleskun is on a quest for fame. His talent is his physical strength–he can do things like lift trucks with his legs, hoist three adults using a single finger, and bend heavy metal objects–horseshoes, pipes–with his bare hands. He’s tough. He’s determined. He’s proud of his self-professed title of “Strongest Man in the World at Bending Steel and Metal”. He’s determined. He’s…well, he’s something, alright. In his debut film, Strongman, making its Seattle debut Friday night at NW Film Forum, director Zachary Levy follows Stan on his quest for success as he defines it, showing Stan out on the entertainment circuit and at home. Stan’s an idealist, but the struggles he faces may be too heavy, even for him. While focused on this one man and the people in his life, Strongman isn’t just about Stanley Pleskun, it’s about trying to follow a dream, something we can all understand. Strongman won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary feature at the 2009 Slam Dance Film Festival. Director Levy will be on hand Friday and Saturday night and is offering two documentary workshops Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Take a friend – Levy says, “This is a film you will want to talk to someone about after you see it!”

Also at NWFF: Alexander Sokurov add to his series of films about powerful historical figures with 2005′s The Sun, an examination of the fall of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito at the end of World War II when he gave up his status as divine ruler to face an unknown future.

The Grand Illusion hosts the Seattle premiere of Died Young, Stayed Pretty, a new documentary by director Eileen Yaghoobian about “the underground indie-rock poster subculture in North America”. If you’re one of those people whose favorite part of Bumbershoot is Flatstock, or simply curious about the art of the rock poster, this movie is for you. Features interviews with such luminaries of the scene as Tom Hazelmyer, Art Chantry, Brian Chippendale, the Ames Brothers, Jeff Kleinsmith, Jay Ryan, Print Mafia, and Rob Jones. Friday night’s screening features a poster sale with work by local artists Jeff Kleinsmith and Jesse LeDoux and a post-screening director’s Q&A.

The grand champion of all midnight cult movies and THE audience participation movie of all audience participation movies, The Rocky Horror Picture Show plays at 11 pm at the Grand Illusion Friday and Saturday, this weekend and next. Rocky Horror fans don’t need my recommendation, but for anyone out there who hasn’t partaken of the Rocky Horror experience and is wondering if it’s worth it, let me share a personal anecdote. My older brother became a Rocky Horror devotee back in the late 1970s while it was still a truly “cult” movie phenomenon and not the major piece of pop culture it has become and no matter how many times I begged him to take me, he always insisted I was “too young”. Eventually I got older, of course, but one complication followed another and another in a long enough string that when I finally got to see Rocky Horror for the first time it was on video at home. “Underwhelming” is an understatement, believe me. “People go crazy for this?” I scoffed. Fortunately for me, upon hearing this a friend insisted I go to a theater-screening and that is where I discovered what a truly brilliant piece of trashy film-making The Rocky Horror Picture Show is. Make no mistake, it’s a bad movie, but you don’t go to Rocky Horror because you’re looking for cinematic brilliance. You go because all the silly audience participation rituals are great fun. You may not end up dressing as your favorite character and acting out the film, you may never see it more than once, but unless you’re anti-fun, you will have a good time. Go. Really. Go.

Meanwhile over at Central Cinema, they’re screening another movie where people like to recite the lines along with the actors. Every single one of you who has ruined Monty Python and the Holy Grail for me (and you know you who are) with your insistence on quoting the movie’s lines over and over and over again at the slightest suggestion of a hat dropping, you had darn well better be at Central Cinema Saturday and Sunday for their Monty Python and the Holy Grail Quote-a-long screenings this Saturday and Sunday and next Saturday and Sunday. (Sunday screenings are all ages, Saturday’s are 21+). Zombie fans will also want to be on hand for the week long screenings of Shaun of the Dead.

The Egyptian‘s Midnight Movie this weekend is Steven Spielberg’s classic Jaws, a movie whose power is oddly undiminished by all the crappy sequels that followed it. Dare you to go dressed up as a Great White.

The final film role of the late, lamented Heath Ledger was in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, a movie directed by the always-imaginative Terry Gilliam that tells the twisted tale of the titular magician (Christopher Plummer) desperate to avoid giving the Devil (Tom Waits) his due in the form of his lovely young daughter, played by Lily Cole. The movie’s gotten a lot of attention for the way Johny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law all stepped in to help complete it after Ledger passed away before filming was complete, but it looks to be worth seeing on its other merits as well. At Metro Cinemas, the Meridian on 7th Avenue, and the Alderwood 16.

Queen Anne restaurant Sorrentino is kicking off the new year with a new name and a new menu. Enza Sorrentino, known in the Italian restaurant community as chef at la Vita è Bella, Mondello Ristorante, and la Mondellina, reinvents the space at 2128 Queen Anne Ave N by paying tribute to the food of her native Sicily with Enza, offering a redecorated interior and a menu that includes such choices as Calamari w/small risoni pasta, anchovies, crushed tomato sauce, chili peppers, garlic, lemon peel, toasted breadcrumbs, raisins, and lemon juice, Chicken in salsa golosa – sweet & sour sauce of crushed tomatoes, shallot, parsley, sage, rosemary, sugar, toasted almonds, cinnamon and a side of grilled polenta, and Calamari w/small risoni pasta, anchovies, crushed tomato sauce, chili peppers, garlic, lemon peel, toasted breadcrumbs, raisins, and lemon juice. To keep the selections fresh, the menu will change every three weeks, offering customers selections of pasta dishes, entrees and soup.

There will be no appetizers, instead Enza will offer a prix fixe appetizer table with a changing selection of items that might include gorgonzola with pear jam and pine nuts, Pecorino Romano with apple jam and walnuts, prosciutto di Parma on breadsticks with cantaloupe, or cacciatorino Italian salami with green onions and grilled garlic.

An ever-changing menu can present a real challenge to a chef: it will be interesting to see how this plays out at Enza. Will diners appreciate the variety or will they long for greater constancy? As someone who has a tendency to get stuck in food ruts, it’s nice to get a nudge toward something new from time to time, but I do like to have a few fall back items. Enza is definitely worth checking out, anyway; an added bonus is the happy hour offering of $4 Italian cocktails and country wine all January long, not to mention the complimentary hot chocolate at the end of every meal.

Reservations are available at 206.694.0055; for more on Enza Sorrentino, check out the Sorrentino website.

Today, Full Tilt Ice Cream is opening in the former Pretty Kitty space in the University District.

It seems that ice cream has replaced cupcakes as the new hot (or cold) shop to open in Seattle. Hopefully Full Tilt won’t suffer the same problems that Pretty Kitty did in that space. I’d just discovered Pretty Kitty when they mysteriously shut down overnight and never came back.

Follow Full Tilt’s Facebook page for more updates.
For the first week, they are planning on being cash only.

Full Tilt Ice Cream
4759 Brooklyn Avenue NE
Seattle, WA 98105-4410

Medieval mystery plays presented Christian bible stories as tableaux in churches and were popular until about the 15th century, replaced by the rise of professional theater. Professional theater troupes in the 15th and 16th centuries furthered the telling of stories by presenting a protagonist who was influenced toward righteousness by his encounters with various embodiments of moral principles in productions that were known as morality plays. By the 17th century, plays had gotten even more abstract; William Shakespeare’s 1603 (or 1604) play Measure for Measure considered issues like mercy, justice and truth by presenting a variety of characters whose complex personalities and interactions gave audience a reason to consider what is right and what is wrong not just as broad concepts but also in how they apply to real life.

Theatre Verity’s Mr. Angelo puts a modern spin on the issues in Shakespeare’s play. Daniel Tarker’s reinterpretation of Measure for Measure asks: “Is there ever a time to compromise our ethics for the greater good?” with the story of Clay Stephens, arrested for statutory rape after getting his sixteen year old girlfriend Julie pregnant. He asks his sister Isabelle, a popular local pastor, to persuade the district attorney, Mr. Angelo, to drop the charges. DA Angelo has his own agenda in mind for Clay and Isabelle, sending Isabelle on a twisted journey through a nightmare.

Mr. Angelo opens January 14 at Odd Duck Studios on Capitol Hill (1214 -10th Ave) and runs through February 7, playing Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 2:00 pm. Advance tickets can be found at Brown Paper Tickets.

Edited 01/08/2010 to correct the character names for Isabelle and Julie.

Taproot Theater will be back in action later this month, re-opening its newly-restored Greenwood playhouse damaged in the October fire. Single show tickets are now on sale for all five plays by phone at 206.781.9707 and online at their website. As the final finishing touches are put on the restoration work walk up sales are delayed until the theater reopens in late January.

The first show in the 2010 series is The Great Divorice, running from January 27 through February 27. George Drance and The Magic Theater have adapted C.S. Lewis’s original work in which the author spends a drizzly afternoon going on a fantastic bus ride from the mysterious “grey town” to a beautiful destination that seems to be just ever-so-out of reach, a journey through heaven and hell with a cast of eccentric and funny characters who just might remind you of people you know.

March features Brooklyn Boy, a story of growing up, coming home and making sense of it all; May features the charming classic Charley’s Aunt. Mad Don Quixote tilts at windmills with his trusty sidekick Sancho Paza in a restaging of Man of La Mancha, opening in early July and the season wraps up late September through October with the regional premiere of Wedding Belles, a sweet new comedy by the creator of Smoke on the Mountain.

Hot on the heels of the call for art for the Cheshiahud Trail Loop, the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, in association this time with the Seattle Department of Transportation, has a call for artists for a project close to my heart: the First Hill streetcar.

Construction doesn’t even start until 2011 for a project expected to be completed all the way in 2013 but I’m very excited about being able to take a single streetcar down to the International District; instead of the current take the route 60 to 12th & Jackson and then wait for another bus or walk down to Uwajimaya, I’ll be able to get there much faster and more conveniently which means I’ll be able to indulge my Beard Papa habit at a moment’s whim.

Anyway, the call for art and details on how to enter can be found here. This call is open to all professional artists living in the United States, but I’d like to put out a special plea for local artists to submit their work, particularly those who live in the area and most especially those who understand that First Hill ISN’T Capitol Hill and ISN’T the ID, but is its own unique neighborhood with its own special character.