A free movie, free booze, and DJ Cide spinning while you socialize beforehand? Say yes to Scion's Route 08, an independent movie series showing in Seattle at the Harvard Exit. Audrey discussed the ins and outs of corporate-sponsored lifestyle marketing events in preview of the last film, Heavy Metal In Baghdad; go read that again so you're spiritually prepared for the onslaught of Scionism, and then RSVP on the Scion website by 5 p.m. tonight......

YOU BETCHA: As far as Seattlest is concerned, there really is nothing worth doing tonight aside from watching the Sarah Palin show. Will she deliver endless bullshit answers full of noun phrases that seem to have nothing to do with one another? Will she address that "Putin flying over Alaska gives me foreign policy cred" absurdity? Will Joe Biden totally slaughter her, or will he make some "woops" remark that actually makes her come out......

It's a live question. Still Life is a docudrama about the aftereffects of China’s Three Gorges hydro project: a 2,000-year-old town has been submerged, the new version isn't quite built yet, and people are feeling more than a little rootless. The drama comes from Sanming, a miner looking for his ex-wife, and Shen Hong, a nurse looking for her husband. No less a personage than Manohla Dargis called the film "a human triumph," but it......

Over three weeks, SIFF Cinema is showing a really gorgeous black-and-white CinemaScope print of Masaki Kobayashi’s 10-hour 1959 epic The Human Condition, starting with the 208-minute Part 1: "No Greater Love." That closes this Thursday night, so if you want to catch it, get thee to McCaw Hall. It's the unrelentingly grim story of Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a rebel-with-a-cause conscientious objector who is a "nail that stands out" in WWII Japan. In Part 1, he......

Ah, the '70s. A time of economic insecurity, political cynicism, energy crisis, and overarching global anxiety. It seems like the decade never ended, but you can still take a stroll down Nostalgia Lane with the final showings of Network tonight (7, 9:15 p.m.) at the Northwest Film Forum. The NWFF has a new 35mm print of the film, which is downright immaculate, though the movie itself is less so. Don't get us wrong; Network's......

By now the word has probably reached you that Robin Williams, he of Mrs. Doubtfire and The Bird Cage fame, is in Seattle to shoot footage for a film. MyBallard took some extra bloggerly initiative and shot some of their own footage of the man! (And then got politely ejected from the set.) Check out their photos and story about the encounter, including details about a dog, a French fry, and where Williams will be......

"@ the movies. Milk Duds. Swedish Fish. Sour Patch." by ascheele100 Since we've already used this pic, we have to use the above as a subtle reminder to get you out to go see The Dark Knight. We've seen it - it's excellent. It's only improved by getting hopped up on candy. Post your own candy-filled (or candy-fueled) gems in the Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

Right off the bat (ha!), here it is: We are so fucking excited about The Dark Knight. In fact, we haven't been this excited about a movie in we don't know how long. We're not, however, going to see it tonight, nor tomorrow, nor this weekend. We're waiting until Tuesday. But that's because we're old and crusty and don't like standing in line for things. The Cinerama has show times tonight at 12:00 a.m. and......

Seven facts in honor of Little Miss Seattlest's first-ever movie, WALL-E, which we saw at the Cinerama—one of three three-panel Cinerama theaters left in the world. FACT: The Seattle Cinerama is not Seattle's original Cinerama. That'd be the Paramount, which sacrificed 1600 seats to fit the screen and three projection booths required. They screened Cinerama films from September 1, 1956, to January 26, 1958. The Cinerama we know and love today opened January 24,......

The end is near. Come Sunday night, this year's SIFF will come to a close. There are still plenty of great films showing, so if you haven't hit the fest yet, you've still got time to catch a flick or two before the movie fun is done. Saturday's closing night film selection is Bottle Shock, based on the true story of how the Napa Valley wine industry made a name for themselves: by beating......

Here we are at Day 16 of the Festival. If by now you're long tired of SIFF, you're in luck: STIFF starts tonight. And if you're tired of our takes on this year's festival films, check out reviews by Blue Scholars' MC Geologic. In addition to everything below, this weekend also offers the last chance to hit up two great documentaries, both of which we've previously mentioned, and both of which deserve another shout-out.......

TALK ABOUT YOUR HEALTH: Founder of Bastyr University and chief science officer for Metagenetics, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D., thinks we should be focusing on "biochemical individuality derived from genetic and environmental differences." Seems practical enough. He'll be speaking on the matter tonight and, if you're interested in the ongoing debate about how to fix our healthcare system, you should check out his talk, entitled Healthcare Reform 2008: Creating a True Health Care System. 7:30 p.m. //......

Another weekend, another opportunity to check out the films at SIFF. If you're into the short film genre, SIFF Cinema hosts ShortsFest all weekend long, with short films packaged by theme in approximately ninety-minute blocks. For all SIFF screenings, the general/member ticket prices are $11/$9 (and matinees $8/$7), except for gala screenings and other special events, which cost more. Seattlest applies our well-honed knowledge of all things cinema to the SIFF catalogue in order......

NOT REINVENTING THE WHEEL: If you're considering quitting your corporate job--you know, the one with benefits and a customer lunch expense account--to build your own business from the ground up, you're crazy. Have you read the financial pages in the newspapers of late? Sometimes, however, it takes exactly that edge of craziness to make your dreams come true. In that case, let us direct you to the Six Hour Start-Up Conference this weekend. Your bucks......

SIFF WILL NEVER FORGET '99: SIFF kicks off its annual festival tonight with a showing of Battle in Seattle, about the historic 1999 WTO protests. According to the listing, "Weaving multiple storylines with a star-studded ensemble cast this imaginative drama revisits fact, fiction, and many myths surrounding those tumultuous few days." There will be a red carpet gala, and the whole nine—a good opportunity to elbow-rub with stars of those moving pictures all the kids......

There's just a little bit of time left before SIFF 2008's opening night, and in between now and then, SIFF Cinema is hosting the United Artists 90th Anniversary film series. To celebrate the studio's 90th birthday next year, the touring tribute covers films from the mid-'50s to 1980, the decades when UA was at the height of its powers. Not like right now, when the relaunched studio's attempt at a comeback (Tom Cruise's Hitler-killing......

Now that whoredom is all over the news, won't somebody think of the children? On Saturday, April 19th at 10am local time in select movie theaters nationwide, the highly popular BRATZ dolls star in their first animated musical BRATZ: Girlz Really Rock, featuring 8 new songs and a new character in a one-day special event. BRATZ: Girlz Really Rock shows girls that winning sometimes isn’t everything. Although the Bratz get wrapped up in the......

Girls Rock! is a documentary about a week-long summer camp in Portland where girls between the ages of 8 and 18 go to learn how to make music, form bands, and perform in front of a live audience at a showcase. Tonight it opens at SIFF Cinema. We got to watch the movie earlier this month and loved it. The stories of the girls the filmmakers followed were funny, touching, entertaining and illuminating. The movie,......

It's only playing for one week, so be sure to check out Nanking, a moving documentary about the 1937 Japanese invasion of the titular Chinese town. The film begins its theatrical run in Seattle this Friday, February 1st. The story is told through emotional interviews with Chinese survivors, archival footage, and chilling testimonies by Japanese soldiers, interwoven with readings of Westerners’ letters and diaries as performed by Woody Harrelson, Mariel Hemingway, Jurgen Prochnow, and......

Recently, we've been spending a lot of time talking about films not yet (if ever) released, but now it's time to turn our focus back to movies actually playing in theaters. Nanking, a moving documentary about the 1937 Japanese invasion of the titular Chinese town, won an editing award at last year's Sundance and also played SIFF 2007. Now the film begins its theatrical run in Seattle this Friday, February 1st. The story is......

We haven't yet seen The Battle of Algiers -- we weren't alive in the '60s, we weren't working at the Pentagon in '03, and last time we checked the Criterion release out of the library we never got a chance to watch it. So we're happy to see it turn up on local screens again this Sunday, at the SIFF Cinema. We could point you to a bunch of reviews that mostly tell you......

George Franju's Eyes Without a Face includes one of the most horrifying sequences we've ever seen in a movie theater. It was #1 until Irreversible came along, and this is a different kind of horror, so don't let any lingering Gaspar Noe trauma dissuade you from heading to SIFF Cinema this afternoon. It's horrifying the way Psycho would've been horrifying if we hadn't been spoiled on that film's secrets long before we actually watched it.......

Among the best movies we've seen at this year's festival is Sugar crafted with care by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the filmmaking team responsible for Half Nelson. The title refers to the nickname of our protagonist Miguel, a young Dominican hoping to make it big in baseball. When we first meet the twenty-year-old pitching dynamo, he's about to leave his homeland for a minor league farm team in small-town Iowa. Of course, he barely......

We just barely made it into Be Kind Rewind. Due to the previous night's snowstorm, director/brilliantly weird little man Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) didn't make it all. It's too bad, since his creative vision is what makes this film worth a viewing (in theaters soon). The cheesy storyline--after erasing the VHS inventory of a dying video store with magnets, Mos Def and Jack Black have to......

We caught War Made Easy at the Film Forum last night, but we weren't in the big hurry we thought because its run has been extended through Monday, the 21st. Despite being narrated by Sean Penn, it's fairly lo-fi -- a cool-headed interview with media critic Norman Solomon intercut with film and video footage to illustrate salient points on how gullible/acquiescent the American public is when it comes to run-ups to war and how supine......

Depending on how excruciating your teenage years were, the documentary Billy the Kid [blog] will have a different effect on you. Certainly if you have or know someone who has Asperger's syndrome, it'll make you squirm a bit. But it's also about being an outsider in a small town. About wanting to share interests. About negotiating the changes life throws at you. About falling in love for the first time and emotional insecurity. Except for......

What it is ain't exactly clear, however. Back on December 2, PopMatters published "So Long, Something Weird," which made it sound like locally based exploitation/sexploitation distributor Something Weird Video was going out of business. It’s time to call out the carnal color guard and get the bugler to blow a rather trashy and tawdry Taps. After nearly seven years celebrating the best of exploitation, Something Weird Video has parted ways with chief home theater......

The 1968 film version War and Peace, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, with the participation of over 100,000 Red Army soldiers, is in a class by itself, not least because it runs 411 minutes and is being presented in Russian with subtitles. We're not sure how to recommend a 7-hour movie, except to agree with Roger Ebert that it does "take the enormous bulk of Leo Tolstoy's novel and somehow transform it into this great......

This is the end, the end of free movies, care of Scion. Single tear. Via their Route film series, the youth-oriented car company has already tackled the true-to-life topics of blood diamonds in hip hop and nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community. Now for something completely different: Daft Punk's Electroma is an odyssey of two robots who journey across a mythic American landscape of haunting, surreal beauty on a quest to become......

Tonight and tomorrow, it's your last chance to see one of the year's best-reviewed documentaries at the Grand Illusion. King Corn follows two friends who move from the East Coast to the Iowa heartland to raise an acre of the highly-subsidized titular crop and follow it through the "corn industrial complex." It ain't pretty, but the film helpfully points out the extent to which corn is a part of the average American (and the......