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How Marriage Equality Was Steamrolled in Maine

How Marriage Equality Was Steamrolled in Maine

(And How We Can Keep the Same Thing from Happening Here)


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Friday, May 25, 2012

The Other Dream Team

Posted by on Fri, May 25, 2012 at 10:20 AM

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You may not think a documentary about Lithuanian basketball players sounds very enticing, but The Other Dream Team is terrific.

What does the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team have to do with the Grateful Dead? Find out in this documentary that mixes basketball, international politics, and the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the 1988 Olympics, the USSR won the gold medal in basketball over the US, but many of the main players were Lithuanian, made to compete for their Soviet occupiers. The emergence of an independent Lithuania, the stories of the players, the country’s basketball fever, and an Olympic comeback make for an exciting story.

The Other Dream Team plays:
Fri May 25, Harvard Exit, 8:30 pm
Sun May 27, Harvard Exit, 3 pm
Thurs May 31, Harvard Exit, 9 pm

Director Marius Markevicius scheduled to attend May 25 and 27 screenings.
Tickets here.

Find tons more movies in our SIFF Guide.

People Who Searched for Me

Posted by on Fri, May 25, 2012 at 9:27 AM

Also searched for:

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Before the haters hate, I Googled myself because I need a bio for an event
("From Failure to Hollywood: A loose evening of poetry, writing, and film, June 11, 2012) at Hugo House with the Grassroots people—Phil Campbell, Grant Cogswell, and Stephen Gyllenhaal.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

What's GI Joe: Retaliation's Holdup?

Posted by on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 2:48 PM

Movie release dates get pushed around a lot. Sometimes, studios play chicken with specific dates, with one studio bumping a movie by a week or two at the last minute. Sometimes, a movie will get bumped to a different season because it tests better for a more serious fall audience, say, or a more fun-loving summer audience. But I've never heard of a movie getting bumped a month before its release date. Especially when that movie had a high-profile (and well-received) Superbowl ad, and the bump is more than nine months long. The movie is GI Joe: Retaliation, and here are the details:

For those of you who were eagerly anticipating the June 29 release of the "G.I. Joe" sequel, your wait just got longer. In a surprise bit of movie-schedule shuffling, Paramount has pushed back the release of "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" from this summer to March 29, 2013.

Why the nine-month delay? The studio wants to convert the film into 3-D. According to Deadline, Paramount made the move in hopes adding 3-D will translate to more impressive box office numbers internationally.

The trailer for Retaliation made it look way better than the original GI Joe movie, but most of us have had bowel movements that were more narratively satisfying than the original GI Joe movie. Slog voters narrowly leaned positive on the trailer when it debuted in December. The Rock, who stars in the movie with Bruce Willis, says they'll be reshooting several scenes to take advantage of 3D technology. But this all smells funny to me. Either the studio is telling the truth, and they just suddenly decided that this movie had to be in 3D, or the movie is even worse than any of us suspected and the studio is desperately trying to save it before dumping it in March, when shitty movies do slightly better due to lack of competition. (It's important to note that Hasbro's most recent property to be transformed into a movie, Battleship, was a huge bomb in the United States, which may have made them extra gun shy about GI Joe.) But what do you think is going on?

Pakistani Women Acid-Burned by Their Husbands Fear Oscar-Winning Film Will Now Be Shown in Their Homeland

Posted by on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:29 AM

Um, yeah. This is a case where the art, regardless of how good it is, should be stopped from being seen.

Two Pakistani women who were attacked with acid by their husbands agreed to be part of a small film. They had no idea it would become an Oscar.

Now the filmmakers want to show the film in Pakistan, and the women fear for their lives.

They may even have to file an injunction.

Seriously? DON'T SHOW THE FILM IN PAKISTAN, JERKS.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Is It Time to Retire the Wilhelm Scream?

Posted by on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:26 PM

Always-entertaining nerdblogger MightyGodKing wants Hollywood to stop sticking the Wilhelm Scream into their movies. (For a brief history of the Wilhelm Scream, this very-low-resolution video will explain all you need to know.) MGK writes:

...the problem is this: whenever I hear a Wilhelm Scream I am taken out of the movie experience. My suspense of disbelief ends and I am just a guy sitting in a movie theatre who realized he just heard the same damn scream for the umpteenth time, because I recognize it. Every time.

I get his point, and the movie that inspired his post—The Avengers—does have an especially noticeable Wilhelm Scream in it. But I like the Wilhelm Scream. I think it's an endearing part of moviemaking. It's a split-second salute to all the people who work behind the cameras, and it's a tradition that has stretched through decades of filmmaking. Sometimes, a good Wilhelm Scream can be the only refreshing organic moment in an otherwise-stultifying CGI death march. I agree that it's a shame that the in-joke has gone public in such a huge way, but it's more than an in-joke now. The Wilhelm Scream is that one shared moment where we all, filmmakers and filmgoers, come together to recognize that we're watching a movie, and movies are fun, dammit.

But which side are you on?

Announcing the 30-Second Exorcist Video Contest!

Posted by on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 3:09 PM

Top this, bitches!
  • "Top this, bitches!"

Everything you need to know:

William Friedkin, aka the guy who directed the best horror movie EVER, is coming to SIFF this year to receive a lifetime achievement award. We DARE you, Seattle, to make a short video that will entertain us so severely that it causes our heads to spin around and green soup to shoot from our mouths fire-hose-style.

RULES OF THE CONTEST

Your film must be 30 seconds or less.

Your film may be live-action and/or animation.

You may not simply edit together fragments of scenes from The Exorcist.

Points will be awarded for originality.

Deadline for entry is June 4, 11:59:59 p.m.

Upload your video to a site with no password restrictions. (YouTube, Vimeo, your own website, etc.) After you have done this, e-mail the link and your contact information to promotions@thestranger.com with the subject “exorcist.”

The Stranger will use this link to show off your work to our readers! We will announce the winner on June 5 on SLOG!

Get hopping, and may God have mercy on your souls.

What Do You Think of the Great Gatsby Trailer?

Posted by on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:18 PM

The Great Gatsby directed by Baz Luhrmann will be in movie theaters this Christmas in 3D. (WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WRITE?) It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. Here's the trailer:

Those are some very good actors (Mulligan, as far as I'm concerned, hasn't made a misstep yet; even in terrible movies, she's exceptional) but they have a lot of work to overcome the basic premise of the project.

Sleepwalk with Me

Posted by on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:45 AM

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Highly recommended for tonight, Mike Birbiglia's entertaining mashup of reality and fiction, Sleepwalk with Me.

This American Life regular Mike Birbiglia writes/directs/stars in a dramatization of stories from his own life. He plays Matt, a guy working as a bartender and trying to start a comedy career; his longtime girlfriend (played by the adorable Lauren Ambrose) is ready to grow up and get married. As his anxiety about his life gets worse, he develops a sleep disorder where he acts out his dreams physically, eventually resulting in the infamous “La Quinta Inn incident.” The film is funny and interesting and full of cameos by some great comedians.

Sleepwalk with Me plays tonight, Wed May 23, SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, 9 pm. Tickets here.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Tonight at SIFF: God Bless America

Posted by on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 3:25 PM

As I noted on Twitter, standing in line to see a Bobcat Goldthwait movie today says something very different about you than standing in line to see a Bobcat Goldthwait movie in the 1980s. Goldthwait is way better behind the camera than he is in front of it. His best movie, Sleeping Dogs Lie, is at once a rude, raunchy sex comedy about a woman who gave a blowjob to a dog in college and a quiet character study exploring why you shouldn't be completely honest in relationships. It's very much the work of a writer/director, and it doesn't feel quite like any other movie.

Goldthwait's new movie, God Bless America, is already available on pay-per-view and through various online rental services, but seeing it as a midnight movie at the Egyptian as part of SIFF was the perfect viewing experience for the film. The premise is Idiocracy meets Falling Down: A man named Frank gets fed up with how stupid the world has become. With a teenage girl as his improbable sidekick, he decides to do something about it, by killing idiotic reality-show "celebrities" and people who talk in movie theaters. Occasionally, Frank would go off on a rant about civility and shame and dignity, and the packed-out Egyptian audience would loudly applaud those monologues with such obvious excitement that the violent revenge sprees that followed the applause made the whole house feel complicit in Frank's crimes. (It helps with Seattle audiences that Frank is the rare left-leaning movie killer—targets of his rage include a Fox News riff and teabaggers.)

This isn't Goldthwait's best movie. It stalls out in the middle and doesn't have much to do once it establishes its premise. But it's a lot of fun—a road-trip movie, a Bonnie and Clyde riff, and a plea for civility disguised as a serial killer flick. In your living room, I expect the flaws would be magnified. In a theater full of people who sympathize with Frank's schlubby outrage, it's a wonderful treat. God Bless America is playing one more time at SIFF, this time at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown at 9:30 tonight. Rumor has it, it'll be back at the Uptown next month, just in time for the 4th of July.

Monday, May 21, 2012

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Friday, May 18, 2012

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The Intouchables

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Short Film Fridays

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Thursday, May 17, 2012

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

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SIFF Notes 2012!

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Monday, May 14, 2012

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Friday, May 11, 2012

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Short Film Fridays

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Thursday, May 10, 2012

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