Climates, part of SIFF's Zeitgeist series

• Zeitgeist Films is an independent film distributor that for 20 years has been presenting the best of world cinema, reviving the movies of established master filmmakers like Jacques Demy and Derek Jarman, as well as providing a launching pad for current creative artists like Todd Haynes and one of my favorites, Guy Maddin. SIFF Cinema pays tribute to Zeitgeist with two weeks of their films, starting this Friday with the lovely Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the complicated romantic musical that established a young Catherine Deneuve as an international star for her turn as a young woman whose seemingly simple love affair creates complications for everyone in her orbit. Saturday sees screening of Guy Maddin’s deliriously fun Careful along with two of his short films, The Heart of the World and My Dad is 100 Years Old. Naturalistic documentary Into Great Silence, about an austere monastery in the French Alps, and film-within-a-film satire on French cinema Irma Vep play Sunday and Monday. Tuesday is Manufacturing Consent, an examination of the ideas of Noam Chomsky, Wednesday is Climates, a film about loneliness, loss, and love gone awry on the beautiful Aegean coast, and Thursday brings Francois Orzon’s nailbiting thriller, See the Sea, particularly recommended to anyone who enjoyed his Swimming Pool and Under the Sand.
• SIFF’s Films4Families series continues Saturday morning with To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic film rendering of Harper Lee’s classic novel, starring Gregory Peck in a masterful performance as a man driven to do the right thing no matter the cost. This is an exceptionally good movie choice for parents of kids in the upper years of grade school or the early years of junior high who will find the film an excellent springboard for discussions about morality and manners.
• NWFF kicks off their own excellent film series on Friday night with a reception for their Festival of New Cinema from Spain. In recent years, Spain has become a true hotbed of cinematic creativity with a host of artists pursuing a wide variety visions and challenges. An eclectic selection of films includes opening night feature Under the Stars which combines family drama with a depiction of the surprising friendship between two completely different people. Other films in the series include a surreal exploration of the self in Me, a struggle to dust off the relics of the past and transform them into a brighter future with Seven Billiard Tables, a collection of refreshingly original shorts, the ineffable joy of falling in love In the City of Sylvia, and more.
• Halloween’s been over for a while now, but horror fans can still get some thrills at The Grand Illusion with a pair of Stuart Gordon flicks from the 80s: The Re-Animator and From Beyond, both adapted from HP Lovecraft stories and best appreciated by those with a strong stomach for gore.
• Swing by the Grand Illusion late nights this weekend for 1976 “blaxploitation” shocker Dr. Black & Mr. Hyde, both cheesy and creepy.
• Who you gonna call late night at the Egyptian this weekend? Ghostbusters, of course. Oh, sure, the special effects that seemed so nifty at the time of its original release look majorly schlocky now but the goofy charm remains as strong as ever in this movie where every character is perfectly played.

It seems like only yesterday that I was gushing about Jens Lekman playing in Seattle. [mb] In fact, nearly a third of a year has passed since he and a troupe of white-clad backing band members charmed Seattle senseless at Nectar. Like Michaelangelo Matos [stranger], I can see how easy it would be to simply focus on the tremendously inventive sampling and arrangements on Night Falls Over Kortedala, but that’s only the better half of what made it my favorite album of 2007. It’s a testament to Lekman’s writing that the sincere, buoyant, funny, and just-the-right side of clever nearly outshine everything else. When he says things like “but the ocean made me feel stupid” you know exactly what he means. $12, 8pm (remarkably not yet sold out!), with honeydrips, marla hansen. [neumos]

clash photomontage via st. vincent [myspace]

• Us, wonderful us. It’s our rescheduled monthly Metroblogging super fun drinky times. Tonight at Bimbo’s. We’ll be pouring over the latest in the Tournament of Blogs showdown over margaritas and nachos. Drop by to say hello, influence the polling, protest the results, or just sit quietly and observe from the bar. And yes, there will be snacks. 6:30 pm [facebook]
• Ignite, part the fifth. Another sure-to-be crowded parade of breakneck paced PowerPoint presentations about topics deserving of more time. For instance: Dick Carlson on “Bad Powerpoint! Bad! Bad!”, Mónica Guzmán on “How to be an awesome news story commenter”, Justin Martenstein on “the six hour startup”. So much excitement jam-packed into so little time. 8 pm, Capitol Hill Arts Center [igniteseattle]
• Charles Muedede, Kathy Fennessy, and Jay Kuehner face off at the Northwest Film Forum on the topic of whether film criticism is still relevant now that everyone has a ‘blog. $3/5, 8pm [nwff]
• Grand Archives begin their world-conquering record rollout campaign today. Their almost self-titled release (the Grand Archives) from Sub Pop hit finer record stores across the country this morning. They’ll be on KEXP today at three, KNDD tomorrow Thursday, and playing a double-header at the Triple Door tomorrow. Tonight, you’ll find them playing a free in-store at Sonic Boom in Ballard. If you thought the four song demo EP was nice, just wait until you hear the album. It is excessively full, rich, and gorgeously produced: old Carissa’s Weird pals Sarah Stoddard, Jenn Ghetto, and Sera Cahoone show up all over the place and one song even has a Flugelhorn! [myspace]
• St. Vincent is the band configuration of sometimes Polyphonic Spreester, occasional Illinoisemaker, and always incredible Annie Clark. Aside from being spooky, dreamy, and lovely, her latest album (Marry Me) is named after a running joke on Arrested Development. With Foreign Born. $12, 8pm. [neumos]

Super Furry Animals love you. The long lived Welsh psych-pop (whatever that means) love you so much that they opened the business of setlist selections to their most devoted fans [beggars]. We’ll have to wait and see what expansive melodies Seattle chose for Gruff Rhys and company to play along with technicolor projections. Will it be heavy with stuff from Phantom Power like “Hello Sunshine” (forever imprinted in the collective memories of a nation as the first time that we saw Summer Roberts with her shirt off? [salon] ), more difficult selections from deep in the back catalog, or fresh off the record shelves dreamy material like “Run-Away” [mp3] from this year’s Hey Venus!? I’m sure it will tell us a lot about ourselves. Opening is Holy Fuck whose free-wheeling, high-intensity indie electronics on headphones sound like what it feels like when you’re trying to spin a dozen plates and make computers do a whole bunch of awesome things at the same time. In person, it sounds like a post-future dance party. “Lovely Allen” [spinner,mp3], in particular, with its glorious major swells erupting from a glitchy mess sounds like the happiest of heavenly triumphs. I listened to it on the way to the Obama rally. $15, 8 pm. No costumes required. [neumos]

liars at wamu in october 2007 [flickr]

Follow Donte’s advice [seattlest] and go see Liars tonight at the Showbox (classic). Most of the people who complained about their show at WaMu [mb] were probably there to see Interpol anyway; so you should take their comments with a post-punk, mope-polished, disaffected grain of salt. The more intimate confines “at the Market” are likely to be a much better setting for the jumpy garagey mess and Angus Andrew’s “onstage leaps, falsetto howls, big smiles, double drumming, suggestive calf-bearing”. With No Age, Past Lives. $15, 8pm [showbox]

• One of the most interesting worlds within the world of filmmaking is known as “grindhouse” Used first to describe the often seedy theaters that played B movies, Z movies and the “exploitation” type of films (often a hybrid of horror and schlock, usually made on the cheap and appearing so on screen), the term eventually came to encompass the films themselves as well. The Grand Illusion in association with the Portland Grindhouse Film Festival presents a one night only special double bill of kung-fu movies that ably represent the grindhouse experience on Saturday, January 26th. Mark your calendars now because you might not want to miss this.

  While you’re waiting, be sure to stop in at the Grand Illusion to check out the current two-fisted features: evenings give you a choice of two films by director Walter Hill (why not see them both?): The Driver starring Ryan O’Neal as a master getaway driver and Bruce Dern is the detective obsessed with bringing him down, and Hard Times, Hill’s directorial debut in which Charles Bronson and James Coburn scheme to win their fortunes. Late night it’s Ivan Hall’s Kill or Be Killed, a martial arts epic in which ex-Nazi Baron von Rudolf seeks revenge against Japanese karate master Miyagi and “white Bruce Lee” Steve Chase must make a daring escape.

• Into the West, a sweet and beautifully filmed fable about Irish Travelers and a magic horse, plays January 20 at Central Cinema as a fundraiser for Tent City. Animated sci-fi adventure The Iron Giant plays January 18 and 19.
• Northwest Film Forum has some seriously good programming–stop in Saturday night for an evening with Bruce Baille, founder of avant-garde film distributor Canyon Cinema who will introduce several of his stunning films.
  Also at NWFF is Deep End, a rediscovered quirky black sex comedy from the 1960s by Polish director Jerzy
  Skolimowski in which teenaged Mike gets a job as a bathhouse attendant in London. War Made Easy, a documentary about the US government’s involvement in war, has been held over through January 21. After the weekend ends stop by Tuesday or Wednesday for Prefab People, Béla Tarr’s look at at unhappy family trying to survive in 1982 Hungary.
• SIFF and the AJC Seattle Jewish Film Festival present the highly-acclaimed documentary Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust which tells “a provocative and largely unknown story of the 60-year relationship between Hollywood and the atrocities of
  Nazi Germany.” The documentary includes scenes from films, rare newsreels, and interviews with key figures from Hollywood and history.
• After all this intensity, yoiu might want something light and frothy to cool down your brain. I suggest droping by at midnight to The Egyptian for Strange Brew, the story of two famous fictional Canadians (played by two famous actual Canadians) and beer, lots of beer.

• The Egyptian’s Midnight Movie this weekend is the extended (12 additional minutes) European version of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a film about a civil servant in an Orwellian future who escapes into fantastic daydreams in between bouts of trying to escape from a nightmarish bureaucracy.

• Is it just me or have there been a lot more musicals being released than normal lately? I’m not complaining, I’m (usually) a big fan of musicals. I also very much enjoy the work of Kate Winslet, who stars in Romance & Cigarettes as the illicit lover of James Gandolfini who is forced to choose between her and his wife, played by Susan Sarandon. The film is directed by John Turturro and opens Friday at the Varsity.

• Around the corner at the Neptune they’ve got Juno starring the charming Ellen Page as a pregnant teenager who thinks she’s found the “perfect” parents to adopt her child.
• If you’ve never seen the wonderfully horrible Santa Claus Conquers the Martians do yourself a favor and get to the Central Cinema Friday or Saturday night to see it. Saturday evening they’re hosting a SIFF poster auction, so you could always go early for the auction then stick around and enjoy a pizza and a beer as you watch a film so shamelessly awful that it makes Ed Wood look like Stanley Kubrick.
• Speaking of Kubrick, everyone knows he made a film version of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange, but did you know that Andy Warhol made one, too? Inspired by Warhol and in conjunction with the Northwest Film Forum, the Seattle School are making their own version, as well: A Clockwork Reduction remakes Waholl’s Vinyl by disassembling it into parts with the assistance of a great deal of audience participation in three separate studios. When the film ends there will be waffles and cool whip. Ticketholders from Friday and Saturday are invited back on Sunday for a free special screenings of the completed films.
• Just in time for holiday rejoicing, the Grand Illusion is back in business. As has become tradition, they are celebrating the season with showings of Bad Santa and It’s a Wonderful Lilfe. If you can’t make it this weekend, or even if you can, stop by Tuesday and Wednesday night for free showings of It’s a Wonderful Life with free food, drink, and good cheer.

Okay, it’s Tuesday, not normally the most exciting of days, anyway, and it’s the first day after the storm. You’re thinking there’s nothing better to do than go home after work and veg out in front of the TV. Well, you’re wrong. There’s plenty to do in Seattle on a Tuesday night

You could head over to the Seattle Center tonight to check out this year’s winter train and village display on your way to Teatro ZinZanni’s performance of Hearts on Fire. You could go skating at Fisher Plaza, watch the Seattle Thunderbirds take on the Tri-City Americans at Key Arena, or walk over to SIFF Cinema to check out the gloriously weird La Vie de Boheme and the weirdly glorious The Match Factory Girl.

You could take Josh’s advice to go see Voxtrot at Neumo’s or go get all rocked out at Studio Seven with As Blood Runs Black, Walls of Jericho and more.

You could also go see Ted Van Dyk speak at Town Hall. He was a senior advisor to presidential candidates Humphrey, McGovern, Carter, Kennedy, Mondale, Hart and Tsongas, so you know he’s got some dish.

If you just can’t bear the idea of going out in the rain, you could stay home and get a head start on the 2008 “Seattle Reads” book, Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, which tells a story of the African immigrant experience in the Other Washington. Since I haven’t read any of the previous Seattle Reads books and am unlikely to break that streak any time in the foreseeable future, let me know how it is.

photo by Rebecca Miller via voxtrot [myspace]

I’m not sure who thought that four bands on a Tuesday was the best idea, but it’s hard to find fault with the lineup at Neumo’s this evening. Local preciousness in a bottle Math and Physics Club bid a fond farewell to their violinist Saundrah before she ships off to the U.K. and out of their live lineup; Tullycraft are highly likely to inspire some hand gestures and giant smiles from Samantha [mb]; and we we can really hope that late-additions to the bill Division Day treat us to their dreamy narcotic cover of “More Than This” (which puts even Bill Murray’s Lost In Translation version to shame. Once those three bands have warmed you up, or dried you off (depending on the weather), it’s time for Voxtrot. After they got swept up into the west coast Arctic Monkeys tour experience, they’re fulfilling their promises to reschedule headlining slots in smaller venues. Once this tour is over, they’re holing up to work on writing songs for another album; so you don’t want to miss out. On stage, they rock their sensitive lyrics senseless like kids hopped up on sugar at a pajama party.

$12, 8 pm [neumos]

listen: Voxtrot — “Kid Gloves” [mp3] (warning: this got stuck in my head and on my ipod for about two straight weeks this summer. download with caution.)