Tag Archives: cinema

Drinks, Food, Restaurant

Central Cinema to Liquor Control Board: Seriously, It’s Cool, We Got This

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Full disclosure: Here is an image from SunBreak commingling at Central Cinema at our Northwest Harvest fundraiser in 2009.

Kevin Spitzer, owner of the Central District entertainment mainstay Central Cinema, is counting the days until April 7. That’s when he is supposed to hear back from the Washington State Liquor Control Board about the legality of Central Cinema staying open and operating as it has since 2005.

In May 2010, the Liquor Control Board tightened the rules around movie theaters and alcohol service to keep children and adults drinking anything alcoholic (including beer and wine) from “commingling in a darkened house.” If a theater serves alcohol:

(3) Alcohol may be consumed only in the theater rooms approved by the board.

(4) Minor patrons and employees are prohibited in the individual theater rooms that allow alcohol service and consumption.

Oddly, though the rules would seem to address a facility like Central Cinema, being “requirements/restrictions for a beer and wine restaurant license at a cinema with a dinner theater venue,” they don’t take into account the fact that Central Cinema has just one screening room. All the examples are for multiplex-style theaters, which would be allowed to designate 21+ rooms–a solution that doesn’t work if you have just the one room.

Spitzer says he wasn’t contacted to comment on the rule change, despite being, arguably, Washington’s most visible dinner theater cinema. It was only when he applied for a hard liquor license to serve cocktails that the Board notified him he was technically in violation of the new rule, despite having renewed his existing beer and wine license without difficulty.

With the City Council and Mayor on his side, Spitzer hoped that House Bill 2558 (“Establishing a theater license to sell beer, including strong beer, or wine, or both, at retail for consumption on theater premises”) would have resolved this tension (reported the Slog)…but it was “a casualty of Friday’s budget carnage” (reported Publicola).

So now Spitzer is gamely waiting to see if the Board will revisit the rule, and provide a work-around. His supporters, including the Central District Neighborhood Association, are willing to rally and petition, but Spitzer counsels patience, believing that the Board will find a way to allow the cinema, which has never previously had a problem with underage drinking, continue to serve its neighborhood. In his view, children and their responsibly-drinking parents “commingling” is a benefit to everyone involved.

Blogger Seattle Moxie describes just how that works:

One of the gems of the C.D. is the Central Cinema theater. At Central Cinema, you can watch movies from the comfort of a booth while a server brings you food and beer.  I met up with Seattle Dad at Central Cinema Thursday for “Cartoon Happy Hour.” This is an inspired event where they play free cartoons for the kids and serve delicious cold brews for the adults.

(Central Cinema also hosts events such as sing-a-longs, quote-a-longs, and something called “hecklevision.”)

For Cartoon Happy Hour, Seattle Dad and I shared a booth with our combined five children. We also shared a pitcher of Mannys Pale Ale and a few laughs over Scooby-Doo. Scooby-dooby-doo! Ruh-roh! Hilarious.

One little boy in front of us couldn’t stay in his seat for all the popcorn in the world.  His parents would sit him in his seat and–thunk–that kid would go straight over sideways onto the floor.  Sit up–thunk–sit up–thunk. It would have been downright distracting if my own child hadn’t been trying to drink milk through a straw stuck up his nose.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

Seattle’s Film Lovers Returning to the Uptown

(Photo: MvB)

We have been documenting the Uptown’s revival as a SIFF property for some time (before, before, and after), but this weekend I had the chance to visit not for any special event, but because I wanted to see a movie or two, and they happened to be showing at the Uptown.

In the lobby a group of a half-dozen 50-somethings had just met en route between theatres (the Uptown has three salles), and were comparing notes. It seemed half had come from Elite Squad 2 and were headed into London Boulevard, and half were headed the other way. “Have you seen Le Havre?” someone asked, and there was a discreet pause. It developed that some people had loved it, but not the speaker.

On the box office window, a paper sign with showtimes was taped up that listed a Le Harve, and I felt keenly the lack of a French version of Harvey. Next door at the Uptown Espresso, a trio were catching up before their film started. The Uptown Espresso is home of the Velvet Foam, which they will scoop onto your hot chocolate without asking, even if you think that overly steamed milk has little to recommend it over whipped cream.

The threesome were going to see Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, two assuring the third that you didn’t need to have see the first installment–chronicling Captain Roberto Nascimento’s mounting pressures in an elite Brazilian anti-drug unit, and his rookie protegé André Matias’s struggle to remain a law-abiding officer in the face of his unit’s torture and killing of drug suspects. (Here I refer you to the BOPE Tumblr.)

The second Elite Squad, like the first, makes a point of emphasizing that any similarity to reality is purely coincidental. (In the first, Nascimento is clearing favelas in preparation for a papal visit; these days, Rio is gearing up for the Olympics.)

It plays a bit like a Brazilian take on The Wire: After a prison riot debacle, Nascimento is demoted upward, to running surveillance, and begins to understand that there are political realities behind the directives he used to execute in BOPE. A cabal of corrupt militia, a Rush Limbaugh-esque TV politico, a law-and-order candidate, and a governor who never stops campaigning for reelection conspire to complicate Nascimento’s life yet again.

With Nascimento, director José Padilha pursues an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China strategy, in that the captain is the kind of guy who believes wholeheartedly in torturing scumbags if that’s what’s needed, but grudgingly comes around to see that unchecked police power brings its own drawbacks. But where Elite Squad 1 was a blow-the-covers off, first-person exposé, trading on cops-and-robbers charisma, The Enemy Within feels like any number of movies about upright men discovering there are crooked pols, and lacks some of the lived-in authenticity of the first.

It’s still a better film in its way than London Boulevard, an idiosyncratic mash-up of Sunset Boulevard and one of those ultraviolent-Cockney movies from Guy Ritchie. Colin Farrell is Harry Mitchel, a “made man” of sorts just released from prison, who stumbles into a Someone to Watch Over Me gig with a model-actress-painter who’s been hounded to housebound-ism by paparazzi. Farrell is engaging enough–he gives good rageaholic–but the film becomes such a stringing together of unlikely events that by the time Keira Knightley falls for Farrell, you realize you’ve missed it, and have had to have it mentioned to you via exposition. Ray Winstone and David Thewlis deliver fine performances, but screenwriter-turned-director William Monahan’s overstuffed neo-noir gradually flies off in all directions.

This is the kind of thing you talk about later, in the lobby, as if it were old times in the Uptown, only everything now is sparkling, and the films look great on screen (SIFF insists on creating trailer collages that almost never display at the right resolution, all jaggy and pixellated, but the films themselves show well.) It’s early, but the move to the Uptown seems likely to pay off  in attracting the social film-goer, the kind of people who go to films because it’s fun for them, and who have made SIFF-the-Festival such an attendance colossus.

The antisocial film-goer can be found, apparently, at the Majestic Bay, but I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s the choker or choked.

That leaves just one problem, as I mentioned in an earlier post, which is parking in the area:

While SIFF‘s new digs at the Uptown Theater offer tons of seats inside, they didn’t come with any on-street spots. Parking in Lower Queen Anne is a bear even when the weather’s nice–just assume that you’re going to pay for parking in a lot (here are Seattle Center-run locations), or take public transit (the Monorail is nice this time of year).

I’ve been nosing around looking for parking spots of note, and so far the best I can come up with is the parking garage at the Market at 1st and Mercer. If you buy something–Raisinets? Licorice?–at the Market, you can get two hours’ parking for free, and it’s open until midnight seven days a week.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

SIFF Hosts Cinema, Italian-Style, at Freshly Scrubbed Uptown

(Photo: MvB)

Public service announcement: The opening night of the Seattle Italian Film Festival started late, last night, because so many people were still circling the block looking for parking spots. While SIFF‘s new digs at the Uptown Theater offer tons of seats inside, they didn’t come with any on-street spots. Parking in Lower Queen Anne is a bear even when the weather’s nice–just assume that you’re going to pay for parking in a lot (here are Seattle Center-run locations), or take public transit (the Monorail is nice this time of year).

Films at the festival are $10 ($5 for SIFF members). It opened with Italy’s Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film, Emanuele Crialese’s immigration-and-its-discontents drama Terraferma, and closes on November 20 with Nanni Moretti’s comedy about a reluctant cardinal Habemus Papam (We Got a Pope! in my personal translation).

As you can tell from the marquee, other films are showing throughout the festival at the Uptown–the extra cinema salles make it possible for life to go on, even with the festival in progress. Le Havre, from Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, explores immigration issues in the French port city.

While some festival films get screened twice, Terraferma, sadly, is not one of those. (Make Scarecrow get it for you.) From director Emanuele Crialese, it’s set on the island of Linosa, south of Sicily, not far from Lampedusa, where Crialese’s Respiro was set. Crialese attended the screening last night–he speaks English well, and fielded questions from the audience after the film.

For a man who claims to be making films “from the gut,” working with untrained actors, and rewriting scenes constantly in collaboration with his cast, Crialese nonetheless has created a film that, from its opening shot of a fishing boat at sea, suggests an almost classical mastery. One audience member had a question for Crialese about the film’s steadily racheting anxiety–it’s almost as if a horror film had been transposed into the key of everyday life on this little, hard-pressed island.

Crialese gives you that rarest thing these days, a taut first act, that establishes how close to the margins life is lived on Linosa–fishermen make more money “retiring” their boats, and more and more the island is shifting to a tourist-fed service economy. Young widow Giuletta (Donatella Finocchiaro) decides to rent out her house for the summer; she and her son Filippo (Filippo Pucillo) will bunk in the “garage.”

Filippo has an uncanny way of acting and sounding like he’s from a ’50s teen movie–it’s as if Italian neo-realism has holed up on this particular island.

Then the tourists and illegal immigrants appear, and it’s a volatile mix. Crialese is not disinterested; he said after the film he was interested in “solidarity.” Terraferma is not a faux documentary, but a dramatization, a hypothesis, of human behavior as ultimately generous and helpful. That’s in contrast to political machinations and the law (Italy was drawn into the recent Libyan uprising in part due to immigration concerns). You cannot stand by and let another human being drown, is how the grizzled fisherman sees it. It is not an allegory, for him.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

SIFF’s Grand Re-Opening of the Uptown is October 20

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Still a few improvements to make before the grand re-opening (Photo: MvB)

SIFF's Carl Spence and Deborah Person at a media tour (Photo: MvB)

During the tour, the neon popped into life. (Photo: MvB)

SIFF's Carl Spence in the main theater (cap. 515) (Photo: MvB)

Upstairs at the Uptown #1 (Photo: MvB)

Upstairs at the Uptown #2 (Photo: MvB)

Are you *seeing* the price for Dasani water? (Photo: MvB)

In the projection booth for the main theater (Photo: MvB)

This is what a digital projector looks like. (Photo: MvB)

This is a 35mm projector but it can also handle 70mm (see extra set of threaded wheels) in case SIFF wants to get fancy. (Photo: MvB)

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SIFF invited a few media representatives over for an early sneak peek at their takeover of Queen Anne’s Uptown Theater. There’s still plenty of renovation to be done before the doors open officially at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 20, for a Hedwig and the Angry Inch sing-along (followed by a Purple Rain sing-along Friday night, and a Grease sing-along on Saturday). For the full Grand Re-Opening schedule, scroll down to the bottom of this post.

With its jewelbox SIFF Film Center cinema on the Seattle Center campus, which has 100 seats, SIFF will now have theaters of about 200- , 300-, and 500-seat capacity–for the next five years, at least, the length of their lease with AMC.

SIFF’s Carl Spence says they swooped in so quickly, once previous-operator AMC decided to close, that they were able to negotiate AMC simply leaving everything as is, saving SIFF an enormous amount of money on the renovation. He estimates that SIFF will have spent just $60,000 on refurbishing the theater, with–adding in the installation of the digital projection system previously at SIFF Cinema at McCaw Hall–the whole project coming to $200,000.

Sellen Construction has been helping SIFF with countertops for the front-of-house, while the original makers of the Uptown’s neon signage are still around, and helping update that as well. Starbucks Coffee was setting up in the concession area (I think the Top Pot doughnuts were a one-time deal, though).

To emphasize the community support for the Uptown coming back to life, SIFF is making a special offer for the re-opening week’s showings: Show a same-day sales receipt from a Queen Anne business, and you get in free.

Inside the main hall, SIFF’s Sony SRXR210 digital projector delivers four times the resolution of HD. The sound system meets or exceeds LucasFilm THX Sound specifications, featuring JBL 3-way speakers and surround system powered by Dolby Digital Sound processing with Crown’s DSI cinema amplifiers.

Spence was enthused about the 35-mm projector, too, as that will allow reel-to-reel screenings of rare, archived prints (reel-to-reel is less wearing on the print than spooling it onto a single platter, which requires manual splicing), but I also learned, during a tour of the projection booth, that the old 35-mm projector is 70-mm ready as well, should SIFF ever decide to bump chests with the Cinerama.

A Barco projector for one of the upstairs halls will also handle 3D movies, allowing Spence to bring Wim Wenders’ PINA to Seattle. Taking a page from ACT Theatre’s playbook, SIFF will offer monthly $25 passes that let you in to see any regular-priced screening, for as many times as you want.

You’ll want to purchase that in advance of the Muppets retrospective: The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and Muppets Take Manhattan, a Labyrinth quote-along, and eight different collections of classic shorts featuring The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and other “rarities.”

Uptown Grand Re-Opening Schedule

Selected films that previously played at The Uptown. Free with a same-day receipt from any Queen Anne area business (or $5 general paid admission)

Sunday, October 23

12:00pm – Twentieth Century

1:00pm – West Side Story

2:00pm – Monty Python & the Holy Grail

3:00pm – Singin’ in the Rain

5:00pm – West Side Story

6:00pm – Monty Python & the Holy Grail

7:00pm – Singin’ in the Rain

Monday, October 24

5:00pm – The Royal Tenenbaums

6:00pm – Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

7:00pm – Citizen Kane

8:00pm – Annie Hall

9:00pm – L.A. Confidential

Tuesday, October 25

5:00pm – Annie Hall

6:00pm – Singin’ in the Rain

7:00pm – The Godfather

8:00pm – Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

9:00pm – Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Wednesday, October 26

5:00pm – Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

6:00pm – Twentieth Century

7:00pm – L.A. Confidential

8:00pm – The Royal Tenenbaums

9:00pm – Citizen Kane

Thursday, October 27

6:00pm – West Side Story

7:00pm – The Godfather

8:00pm – Bob and the Monster Film and Concert (separate admission)

Thursday October 27 at 8:00 pm

BOB AND THE MONSTER##

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

Subject Bob Forrest and director Keirda Bahruth in person

With special performance by Thelonious Monster

$15 / $12 SIFF Members

Charismatic singer/songwriter Bob Forrest went from indie rock icon with his band Thelonious Monster through a life-threatening struggle with addiction, emerging as an influential counselor on Celebrity Rehab. Bob and the Monster unravels his story, revealing a complex and optimistic soul. (US, 2011, 85 min)

GRAND OPENING AT SIFF FILM CENTER at Seattle Center October 23

The general public is invited to tour the new film center on Sunday, October 23 during an open house from 12:00pm-5:00pm.

Opens October 28 (open ended run)

THE RUM DIARY

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary follows an itinerant journalist (Johnny Depp), who finds a new life in wild Puerto Rico. When he discovers an unsavory capitalist scheme, this gonzo journalist does what he does best: takes the bastards down. With Aaron Eckhart and Richard Jenkins, directed by Bruce Robinson. (US, 2011, 110 min)

Opens October 28 (open ended run)

JANIE JONES

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) gives a magnificent performance in this tender musical drama about the unlikely bonds of family. Struggling rock star Ethan Brand gets a surprise on the opening night of his new tour when he suddenly discovers that he has a 13-year old daughter with her own musical talents. Directed by David M. Rosenthal. (US, 2010, 107 min)

October 28 – November 3

TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

A SIFF Midnight Adrenaline favorite, this hilarious splatterfest returns just in time for Halloween. Hillbillies Tucker and Dale have found their perfect “fixer-upper” cabin, but remodeling is never easy, particularly when a group of college co-eds on Spring Break start killing themselves off all over your property. Directed by Eli Craig. (US, 2010, 86 min)

Friday October 28 at 7:00pm

SUSAN ORLEAN PRESENTS RIN TIN TIN: THE LIFE AND LEGEND

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. Co-presented by Elliot Bay Book Company $15 / $10 SIFF Members

Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, returns with a celebrated new book about the first canine superstar: Rin Tin Tin. Orlean joins us in person to read from her book, and present a rare archival screening of Rin Tin Tin’s heroic 1925 film Clash of the Wolves Film courtesy of the Library of Congress.

October 28 – November 3

THE MAKIOKA SISTERS

SIFF Cinema at the Film Center

New 35mm print!

This lyrical adaptation of the beloved novel by Junichiro Tanizaki follows the lives of four siblings who have taken on their family’s kimono manufacturing business. A late-career triumph for director Kon Ichikawa, the film is a poignant evocation of changing times, shot in rich, vivid colors. In Japanese with English subtitles. (Japan, 1983, 140 min)

Sunday October 30 at 1:00pm & Tuesday November 1 at 7:00pm

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: THE KITCHEN

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

$20 / $15 SIFF Members, Series pass: $100 / $75 SIFF Members

The new season of stage performances from the National Theatre of London presented in stunning high definition continues. The Kitchen takes place behind the scenes at an enormous West End restaurant in 1950s London, where the orders are piling up in a blackly funny and furious examination of life lived at breakneck speed. Arnold Wesker’s extraordinary play features an ensemble of 30 actors actually cooking and preparing food on stage. A tour de force spectacle! (180 minutes, with intermission

Monday October 31

WILLIAM CASTLE HALLOWEEN DOUBLE FEATURE

13 GHOSTS AT 7:00PM and THE TINGLER AT 9:00PM

SIFF Cinema at the Uptown

$12 / $7 SIFF Members / $11 Senior and Youth

Celebrate Halloween with the master of schlock shock, William Castle. 13 Ghosts, originally filmed in “Illusion-O” follows a family who inherits a spooky haunted house. The Tingler stars Vincent Price as a scientist who has discovered the living embodiment of fear – and we’re passing out joy buzzers so you can experience your own Tingler during the film! (13 Ghosts: US,1960, 82 Minutes, The Tingler: US, 1959, 82 min)

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

Spanish Film Festival Opens at SIFF Cinema

SIFF presents the Festival of New Spanish Cinema–a 10-film compilation–beginning tonight at SIFF Cinema in McCaw Hall. A full-series pass is $60 ($40 if you’re a SIFF member).

The Opening Night film, screwball comedy With or Without Love (7:30 p.m.), includes a post-film reception at Ten Mercer with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and  Spanish wines. For that, it’s $25 ($20 for SIFF members). If you’re just interested in the film, it’s the usual $10.

Colombian star Angie Cepeda is “expected to attend,” which should be a treat. The English translation of the title is the only thing clunky about With or Without Love, which packs about six hours of zany romantic comedy into 97 minutes.

The marvelously expressive Cepeda plays self-interested raving beauty Claudia, who is upset by her lover-on-the-side Pablo (Quim Gutiérrez) deciding to take up with a girl who’s actually single (Miren Ibarguren from the Spanish TV show Aída). Claudia enlists her theoretically more demure, grounded sister Monica (Juana Acosta from the TV mini-series Carlos) in a harebrained scheme to separate Pablo from his new love interest, and there is also singing and dancing, except for that one time Claudia is trying to talk and yells at the music to shut up.

It’s something like if Howard Hawks had decided to rewrite and direct an Umbrellas of Cherbourg set in Spain and the Canary Islands. Stay far away if you dislike gorgeous people, rapid-fire dialogue, general hilarity, and picture-postcard settings.

At 9:30 p.m., you get a distinct change of pace in the melancholic Every Song Is About Me, a first-novel of a film about a young couple who separate after six years, only to find that not only is the grass not greener, but it’s really difficult to figure out how to get back to the old patch of grass.

Your guide is Ramiro, who seems like your typical late-20s humanities major, working in his uncle’s bookshop and feeling put upon and out of joint re: the world at large. You may read that the movie is Woody Allen-esque, but if so, it’s Woody from his Bergman phase. More accurate is that it’s an homage to the French New Wave.

If you stick out the lugubrious first 20 minutes, with Ramiro in a gray, downcast mood about separating from Andrea, his self-involvement lessens and you begin to glimpse his world: his friends, their social lives, and how destabilizing that moment is in life when adulthood beckons, and a fraying post-graduate social circle begins to pull apart. Since Ramiro spends a good deal of his “moping” sleeping with very attractive women, your sympathy for him and his picaresque tale may be strained, but there are moments of quiet truth here.

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

Inside the SIFF Film Center at Seattle Center [Slideshow]

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The front desk at the new SIFF Film Center

SIFF Film Center

SIFF Film Center

Upstairs in the SIFF Film Center

The jewelbox cinema space at the new SIFF Film Center

New SIFF Film Center layout

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SIFF has officially moved their offices into the new SIFF Film Center at Seattle Center. They’re taking up residence in what was formerly known as the Alki Room in the Northwest rooms. There they will offer exhibits, presentations, and film programming, as well as educational programs.

The heart of the new Film Center is a jewelbox cinema seating about 100–they’ll continue showing film at SIFF Cinema in McCaw Hall, but this smaller space will be a better fit for niche interest screenings. If you like the Northwest Film Forum, you’ll be right at home in this space,

SIFF phone, fax, and emails all stay the same, but the new mailing address is: SIFF / 305 Harrison Street / Seattle, WA 98109. Phone: (206) 464-5830 / Fax: (206) 264-7919).