SIFF's opening night film was, as I'm sure you've heard, Much Ado About Nothing -- a title which we're all hoping doesn't apply to the ever-varied lineup of this year's iteration of our beloved local cinema gorge-a-thon. Whether or not you were lucky enough to get tix to opening night's Whedonverse fantasia (or the following evening's 'secret' screening), there'll be plenty of filmic wonders for you to choose from this year -- and the TIG SIFF crew is here to help. Here are seven features to see, three to avoid, and four to be cautiously optimistic/pessimistic about, all screening at some point in the coming festival week (May 17-23).

DON'T MISS:

Frances Ha
{screens May 17 at 9:45pm and May 18 at 4pm at Pacific Place}
Imaginary Amie and I appear to be in agreement on this one. It's another delightful New York story from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), this time focusing on the post-college, aspiring-dancer title character (indie it-girl du jour Greta Gerwig) throughout a series of struggles after a best-friend breakup. The film does right by the cinematic institutions it so lovingly references -- Manhattan-era Woody Allen and the French New Wave among them -- and distinguishes itself with a sweet, melancholy charm all its own.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company
{screens May 17 at 6:30pm at the Egyptian, and May 19 at 4pm at the Uptown as part of An Afternoon with Peter Greenaway}
Consistently intriguing auteur Peter Greenaway's latest film follows a late 16th-century Dutch printer/engraver as he attempts to convince a powerful margrave to fund the production of a nekkid-illustrated Old Testament. When the margrave balks, Goltzius's employees (the Pelican Company part of the title) agree to entertain the court with six titillating (and, yes, dong-illating too) evenings of erotic biblical reenactments. Playful provocations -- of the characters and the audience -- ensue. Greenaway's unmatched visualism rarely fails to stun, and he utilizes it to great effect here in exploring the narrative's sacred-vs.-profane themes. Crazy, nasty fun.

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{The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in Seattle on Friday, 12/14 and is screening pretty much everywhere, but I personally recommend the Cinerama}

In order to talk about Peter Jackson’s much-anticipated The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, you have to talk about the craziness of him creating a new 3D film technology and deciding to use it—even at the risk of alienating some hardcore fans, and also, uh, making some of them literally throw up. But, we’ll get to that later. Let’s start with the actual plot first.

I was worried going into this that the dwarves would mean a lot of slapstick-y nonsense, and my fears were proven true as soon as the prologue about the dwarves was over, and they reached Bilbo’s house. It’s absolutely true that the dwarves are so similar that outside of the leader, Thorin, you can’t really tell them apart. It’s also absolutely true that the quickest way to make me facepalm is to have a bunch of characters sing while juggling dishes, but I digress.

The plot (like any of you going to see it DON’T know—humor me here) is thus: the dwarves were once rulers of this incredible mountain kingdom, and had more gold and jewels than they really knew what to do with, which unfortunately attracted a greedy dragon named Smaug who forced them out in order hoard the treasure.

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Nothing like a mini-film festival in April to get us prepped for both STIFF and SIFF, which arrive in May.

NFFTY (pronounced “Nifty”) is the “National Film Festival for Talented Youth”, and showcases the best young directors 22 and younger from around the world. This 4-day festival takes place April 26-29, with films and events at the Cinerama, SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, and the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. I'm probably also supposed to say it's "presented by bing(tm)" (HI MICROSOFT). 

I'm always excited to see fresh talent, but this year I'm most stoked about the music video mixtape on Saturday 4/28: 90 minutes of original music videos with music from the White Stripes, Cults -- and a bunch of other bands I'm not cool enough to know of, but I'm sure are great. Seems like an awesome way to spend $11 to me! 

And in case you feel like getting extra nerdy, there's also a FREE music for film panel at 12:45 on Saturday, where you can learn about options for scoring the best music for your...um. score. Or something. Listen and learn! For free! YAY! 

There are a lot of other great films and events happening too. Check the full schedule online so you can plan your own awesome NFFTY weekend. 

{Music Video Mixtape | Saturday April 28, 3:00 pm | 90 min | SIFF Uptown 2 }

Back from SXSW last week, and I feel I have a lot of movie watching catching up to do. It seems as if Seattle theaters are stuffed with interesting things to checkout. This weekend isn't making things any easier. I've tried to narrow down to three sets of suggestions - but it wasn't easy.

In the "maybe one needs to look deep into their soul to see if something broken beyond repair" option, there's the kids killing kids onscreen category. Or as the Hollywood marketing machine calls it, The Hunger Games. I haven't seen it, but I'm certainly looking forward to it. Especially on the beautiful screen of the Cinerama. Those books were great - I mean common, who wouldn't shed a tear for the relationship problems Katniss has to deal with. Seriously. If you'd like to catch it without the non-drinking crowd then The Big Picture will also be hosting 21-and-over screenings all week. If that's not enough for you in the way of young adult bloodsport, you'll want to make a double feature out of it with Battle Royale, the legendary Japanese film that's similar, yet I'm sure quite different, finally available in the US. You can choose between home video, a Friday 11pm screening at the Northwest Film Forum, or midnight presentations both Friday and Saturday at the Egyptian.

More movie madness after the jump...

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{The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  opens in Seattle area theaters on December 21st - with some theaters hosting post 7pm screenings on the 20th}

A crusading journalist and an antisocial master-hacker with a photographic memory whose approach to justice is refreshingly direct return to the big screen in David Fincher's adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Fincher has fashioned a good looking and relatively tight presentation of an enjoyable book that's a bit of a kitchen sink sort of mess.  The film even manages to poke at the source material with good natured humor. Most memorably when Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) explains his family tree to Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) who mutters he's never going to keep everyone straight. That's OK we want to assure him. Most readers couldn't either. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself - what with assuming folks already know the story. If you haven't read the book, so let me back up...
 
The picture opens with a man unwrapping a framed pressed flower on his birthday. He's Henrik Vanger, the patriarch of a large, wealthy Swedish family. Such a gift is an annual tradition going on forty years. Beautiful as the flowers are they're not a welcome arrival.  His niece Harriet had given him the original versions in his collection. But after her disappearance and presumed death they continued - a mocking reminder from her killer.  Henrik has spent considerable time and wealth attempting to unravel the truth of what had happened to Harriet so many years ago. His latest approach is to recruit Mikael Bloomkvist, the coolest middle aged liberal leaning crusading journalist of all time to try and crack the case. Normally Blomkvist wouldn't take such work, but he's just gotten himself in a mess of trouble over a libelous story against another industry tycoon. With the promise of dirt on the industrialist who burned him and a fat payday Bloomkvist agrees to take on the forty year old mystery. He doesn't really expect anything to come of it but he dives into the investigation with gusto. It's a closed box mystery - Harriet disappeared on a family owned island whose exit was blocked by an accident. So the most reasonable belief is that one of the family members killed her and got away with hiding the body. It's a pretty dysfunctional family. Even if you think yours is bad - odds are the Vangers are worse. Or at least likely beat you in a 'how many Nazi's are in your family?' contest. Hence there are many suspects to choose from.

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{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 opened in Seattle on Friday, July 14 and is playing at the Majestic Bay, the Pacific Science Center IMAX®, the Cinerama, and other area theaters}

THE END of Harry Potter is here. And as I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan. But Amie! You’re nerdy. And you love supernatural things. And you heart the crap out of reading. All this is true, but the first 5 HP books (won from a work contest many years ago) sit dust-covered and untouched on my bookshelf.

See, Harry Potter is one of those things where every single person and their brother’s brother said some variation of this to me, “OMFG they are so amazing you will totally love them read them all right now whatiswrongwithyou?” - which is the best way to make sure I NEVER do something. So instead of reading, I just went ahead and cheated by seeing all the films. And while there were a few moments I appreciated, they kind of all blended together and I just wasn’t that impressed.

So I wasn’t really expecting to be blown away by this, but I joined in the hype just because it was fun. And on the day of the press screening for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, I had to go ahead and post this smartass tweet:

Which naturally totally screwed me, because I ended up pouring out some serious waterworks over the course of 2 hours and 5 minutes. So I’ll just say it: this movie surprised me.

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Dudes. The Shining is playing at The Cinerama today/tonight! I'm sad I missed the chance to see Kubrick's Lolita on the big screen (it played Weds), but you know I love me some bleak horror films with loads o'splatter.

Jack Nicholson has never been scarier than he is as Jack Torrance, slowly losing his mind in a deserted hotel in the middle of nowhere during a crazy snowstorm (aka Colorado). And of course, there's the twins (aiiieeeee!), the blood-filled elevator, the soul-sucking bartender - and the sheer awesomeness of seeing Scatman Crothers 70s-motif apartment in all its glory (best paintings ever). If you've only seen the clips, you're totally missing out. Go see the whole thing! Trust me. It's fantastic and absolutely worth your $8.

You can skip out of work a little early today and see it at 3:30, or wait 'til later and catch the 10:15 showing...I guess I should probably mention that A Clockwork Orange is also showing at 12:15 and 7 - that one's a bit too rapey for my enjoyment, but I know lots of people love it.

REDRUM   REDRUM   REDRUM

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{Green Lantern opens in Seattle on Friday, June 17 and is playing at the Metro, AMC Pacific Place, the Cinerama and Oak Tree Cinemas}

Even though I have a comic-nerdian background, I’m only slightly familiar with this particular superhero's lore, and thus probably not qualified to judge whether Green Lantern does it justice or totally ruins it—that said, I found it to be pretty damn entertaining.

The whole thing reminded me of vintage Superman (as in Richard Donner’s 1978 version), with a lot of exposition at the beginning explaining the origin of the Green Lantern Corps, and a ton of space exploration with prettily colored stars and crystalline spaceships. With uh, much more advanced special effects and some pretty damn fantastic alien makeup.

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I always feel like the festival has gone by too fast, but this year's closing weekend snuck up on me! Holycrap, you guys. The 37th Seattle International Film Festival wraps up this Sunday night, with the Closing Night Gala, and a screening of Life in a Day at the Cinerama - which consists of clips from over 300 home videos all filmed on a single day: July 24, 2010. I know I'm psyched for this (and bringing a box of tissues!), and Embracey liked it, so you should get a ticket and go!

Your $40 admission price ($35 for SIFF members) also gets you in to the after-party at the Pan-Pacific Hotel, which is honestly the best way to close out the fest. There will be drinks (2 complementary), food, laughter, tons of nerdy cinephile conversation - and oh yes, there will be dancing. Come celebrate with other SIFF-goers, staff, and TIG!

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{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 opens in Seattle 11/19 and is playing at the Metro, the Neptune, the Majestic Bay, Pacific Place, IMAX® at the Pacific Science Center, and the newly re-opened Cinerama}

As anyone who pays even slight attention to these things knows, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is just a set-up for the LAST HARRY POTTER MOVIE EVER (queue shrieking teenage girls), so it’s one long 146 minute tease with a huge cliffhanger at the end, and you won’t find out what happens until next year….unless you read the books, that is.  Since I’m assuming almost everyone in the audience HAD read them, I guess it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone there that 3 people die within the first 20 minutes, although the hysterically sobbing girls next to me seem to suggest otherwise.

Anyhoo, HP & the DH showed some promise initially, starting out with a bang in the form of the Potter kids organizing the removal of Harry to a safe house in the country, juxtaposed against a long table of gothy villains led by creepy no-nose Lord Voldemort. All the “volunteers” change into Harry doppelgangers (which leads to some obligatory laughs), while the bad guys discuss some mumbo-jumbo about how Voldemort’s wand won’t work against Harry’s so he needs a new one (HELLO FORESHADOWING)—and oh yeah, they murder someone too and feed them to a snake.

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