Yay, free stuff! 6/29 - The Best Films You've Never Seen @ Roy Street Coffee

I like free stuff and I like independent film. Roy Street Coffee & SIFF's Best of Fest has done the courtesy of putting those two things together with "The Best Films You've Never Seen", showing next Tuesday, June 29th at 8pm. Roy Street hosts the BFYNS every last Tuesday of the month in addition to their Wednesday and Sunday night 8pm Indie Flick.

In case you missed it: Article and Video on CHCC sponsored Mayoral Candidate Forum

Last Saturday's Mayoral Candidate Forum went remarkably well, especially considering it was the Council's first venture into wrangling political candidates to be at the same place at relatively the same time. We had a good crowd (approx. 100) and good press: CHS blog sent along their intern and their videographer to cover the event. You can see Lucas the intern's article here and cheesecake's video here.

No HUMP for you >:(

Gay Cap Hill just reminded me that HUMP 5 is next weekend....and that I can't go because I'm flying home for a friend's wedding at noon on Friday. Please, The Stranger, add a Thursday showing! Maybe Sunday night?

For all of you staying in town from October 9 - 10 who haven't yet gotten their tickets to everyone's favorite amateur porn film festival , it's your lucky day - The Stranger just added two matinee showings on Friday because all the other ones sold out. Act now or forever hold your...hump?

What to do?

VS

I'm conflicted on what to do tomorrow night. Should I got to Viva VHS! at the Northwest Film Forum (which needs the money desperately, by the way) or should I attend Theater Schmeater's The Twilight Zone Live! Marathon? Decisions, decisions...

Back in town

Hello, faithful readers - I'm officially back from an exceedingly mellow week on Orcas Island. Vacation slides are coming soon. I don't have any news of my own yet, but here's what other people are saying:

VOTE! (even if you don't lockstep it with the flaming liberals). I recommend supporting the bag fee, but you know that.

Dun da da dun da da dun da da dun da da da DAH!

The Northwest Film Forum needs YOU!

In Local News

+ Don't you just love Light Rail? The Stranger does, you can guess what the Seattle Transit Blog thinks of it (hint: I'm surprised none of them got arrested for indecent activities with public transit property in public), and the aforementioned both say that Seattle Times is being too mean to their sweet baby. All in all, it looks like the public is siding with The Stranger and STB, big surprise there. Three cheers for public transit!

+ Follow the District 5 (that's us!) School Board Forum online, cuz it's a little bit late to attend it now.

+ The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - saving you from STDs since 1979 and ATM robberies on Capitol Hill since this weekend.

+ It's that time of year again, boys and girls - The Stranger is accepting submissions (emissions? transmissions?) for Hump! 5, the world's largest amateur porn film festival! You have until September 21st to create your five minutes of sweet, sweet amateur lovin'.

+ Ice Cream Party for Great City Seattle at Molly Moon's on Friday - sustainability and tasty dairy treats, hurray!

+ Coming right up: the Fairness Teach-in this Saturday at the Cap Hill Library, bright and early from 10 to noon. Unite for equality and learn more about legislation that affects the LGBTQ community.








+ It's cooommmiinnnnng....

Local News Links

Sign up for the 2nd Annual Cap Hill Garage Sale already! It's on June 13th!

Doug Schwartz reviews the new SU Master Plan

East Precinct Crime Prevention Update

Parking Demands from SPD puts CHHIP Development at 12th and Pine on Hold

Dan Bertolet of hugeasscity to go on blogging sabbatical - whatever shall we do?!

Seattle Metblog's review of the disturbing SIFF film Dead Girl

Hurray! Cupcakes for Everyone!

SIFF Reviews: Short in the Dark and Dead Snow

Instead of virtuously attending the 12th Ave Stewardship Council meeting last night like I meant to, I was gang-pressed into taking in a SIFF double-feature: Short in the Dark at the Northwest Film Forum and Dead Snow at Pacific Place.

I just barely made it into Dead Snow, even with friends waiting for me in the Will Call line way ahead of time. Seattle likes their foreign, friends-go-to-an-isolated-cabin zombie films that much. We were not disappointed, though the short film that accompanied Dead Snow might have been better than the feature we came to see.

Full Employment is a German short about an employment assistance agency for the elderly who still need to make money but aren't getting around so well anymore. It's full of mockumentary goodness and jokes about how all young people in Germany are unpaid trainees or volunteers. And the best part: Mr. Jones, the elderly man who's day we get to follow...is a zombie hunter.

Short in the Dark is a series of experimental short films, some of which were really great, others of which were...definitely experiments.

1. SHU (dir. Philipp Lachenmann, 12 min.)
   12 minutes of time-lapse filming watching night fall over an isolated high-security prison in the Mojave Desert. Mostly, you just hear the wind. It is quiet and beautiful. It is frightening to stare into the vast clear vault of the desert sky as it turns to night.

2. Puccini Conservato (dir. Michael Snow, 10 min.)
   Oh man... ten minutes of fuzzy closeup pans of someone's Panasonic stereo system as Puccini plays in the background. It was so bad. The sudden, silent cuts to a fireplace, flowers, and open water were so unexpected and bizarre that the threater burst into laughter.

3. Garden/ing (dir. Eriko Sonoda, 6 minutes)
   The whole short is a constant loop around a glass door that looks into a garden. The viewer seems to be approaching the door, only to go through it and see that they're looking at the same door again, somewhat like an inescapable revolving door that just keeps dumping one back into the lobby over and over again. Over time, the view of the garden through the door switches from the "real" view to a projection of that view to the entire screen being a projection of the "real" view of the room and the view. It was a fascinating study, although the constant circling motion made me rather queasy.

4. Dig (dir. Robert Todd, 2 min.)
   A seizure-inducing series of signs painted on the street to guide road construction is accompanied by the sound of jackhammers. It works - it does indeed "[reveal] a restless array of mysterious geometries". Thankfully however, it was kept to two minutes so that the audience did not succumb to seizures or sensory overload.

5. Slow Boat to Thassos (dir. Jon Behrens, 7 min.)
   Speaking of seizure-inducing... seven minutes of rapid-fire reverse colored photographic images with weird-ass noise in the background. This film would be perfect for brainwashing and hypnotic suggestion.

6. Horizontal Boundaries (dir. Pat O'Neill, 23 min.)
   This one nearly killed me. It certainly brought back ten-fold the queasy feeling I got from Garden/ing. It was supposed to be some kind of statement about LA's cityscape, since all the images used in this unending brainkill were of that particular metropolis. What it was was an eternity of vertically overlapping images of the city accompanied by a mind-breaking soundscape of music/noise/old radio plays/dogs barking. I would be interested in 2-5 minutes of this. I could stand 2-5 minutes of this. But after nearly half an hour I was surprised I didn't have a migraine from my body's rebellion against the aesthetics of the piece.

7. Somewhere (dir. Salise Hughes, 4 min.)
   Roy Rogers and Maria from West Side Story, cut directly from their native film stock and pasted onto a brightly colored backdrop, sing "Somewhere". Clunky and meh.

8. Adulte (dir. Carlos Reygadas, 7 min.)
   Very, um, experimental. It certainly was surreal watching a naked man sitting in a coffin, lamenting, rolling himself and the coffin to the cliff, and then throwing the coffin over the edge while wearing a (miraculously self-attiring?) suit.

9. Bedtime Story (dir. Sarah Jane Lapp, 2 min.)
   It's great, mostly because its a cute little story with a plot.

10. The Chronicles of Cleo and Jack (dir. Karn Junkinsmith, 15 min.)
    Hands-down, this is what made Short in the Dark worth my while. Well, and SHU too. Two young hipsters skateboard all around Seattle trying to deliver a package and get away from Hari-Krishna types that dance like the hippies in Hair. It's lovely in black and white, and Karn Junkinsmith is right - skateboarding is like dancing, at least when she films it.
    

Sweet, delicious SIFF

I'm heading to my first Seattle International Film Festival flick of the year this afternoon - Bluebeard at the Egyptian. I'll tell you how it goes.

UPDATE: Hmmm...it was interesting, and I thought it was worth seeing. I don't know that I'd recommend anyone else to see it though, even though it was a decent treatment of the fairy tale. I guess it's because I have higher standards when it comes to SIFF.

Guess what I get to do tonight

SO EXCITED! SO VERY EXCITED!

AFTER THE MOVIE UPDATE: That was one fine Star Trek film. I liked it so much I might actually shell out the ridiculous price of a movie ticket to see it again in the theater.

Spoilers: Stone cold fox + stone cold logic = HAWT. Also, loved seeing the young Kirk getting whupped several times in the course of the movie. The character is great, but let's be honest - Kirk needs to be taken down a notch at least once a week.

The way the characters were played was delightful. It was refreshing, but you could still see the old Trek cast right there on the screen. And the whole movie was as funny as fuck, especially with the addition of the in-jokes (hee hee, red shirt).

Oooh, this looks like fun

2008 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival - October 17-26, 2008

Mischief Night - DIY Horror at Central Cinema (Thurs, Oct. 30th)

From CHS Blog to you, courtesy of Central Cinema.

Break out the fake blood and rattle some door knobs! Make a short horror film in any genre from Gore to Psychosis to Zombies. Keep it under 10 minutes-ish. Burn it on a DVD and submit it to Central Cinema before Midnight October 26th. Extra credit for including a STIFF Festival T-shirt, STIFF Poster, Central Cinema T-shirt, or Central Cinema Sticker somewhere in your movie.

Bring your friends ready to SCREAM on Mischief Night Oct 30th. The judging will be heavily influenced by the Scream-o-meter! Drink Beer! Eat Pizza! SCREAM! Win Fabulous Prizes!

Watch the trailer:
http://www.centraldistrictnews.com/2008/09/28/centralcinema/

I know what I'm doing the night before Halloween. You?