From SF Chronicle:

"Kevin Kline is one of the few actors who can pull off being dapper and eccentric simultaneously. Now he's older, grayer, dandier - and even more persuasive as a dashing gentleman nutcase.

His performance in "The Extra Man" offers a highly specific movie-going joy: the chance to watch a great actor gobble up a role with mincing delicacy. As Henry Harrison, a washed-up playwright-turned-gadabout, he savors his lines like a foodie sucking dark meat off a chicken.

For Kline's performance alone, "The Extra Man" is well worth seeing. It's also worth seeing for its old-fashioned charm, for its sweetly peculiar New York Upper East Side ambience and for the literate, comic elements of its screenplay - adapted from Jonathan Ames' novel by co-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini..."

Oh, Tilda Swinton. How do we love thee? Let us count the ways. From a gender-bending time traveler to a self-doubting yet ball-busting corporate lawyer to the iconic White Which, it seems there’s no role this Oscar-winning actress can’t immerse herself in and pull off with effortless precision. Case in point: in this Italian drama, Swinton speaks perfect Italian with a Russian accent. This is made all the more astonishing by the fact that, before the start of filming, Swinton spoke neither language. However, I Am Love isn’t just a silver-screen linguistics course. It’s a complicated, moving, visually arresting love story, one in which Swinton, as Emma Recchi, has an emotional and sexual awakening that, in the hands of Swinton and director Luca Guadagnino, is the stuff exquisite filmmaking is made of. (C. Ross)

Advance Tickets available now at Brown Paper Tickets

Local director Sidra Villasana has made a compelling relationship drama illustrating the difficulty of change. As changes in Parker become more and more distinct, the differences start to affect the people around him. With an inability to explain his transformations, and his unsuccessful attempts to come to terms with the gap forming between him and his loved ones, Parker finds his environment increasing in confusion and hostility.  Mental growth or a mental breakdown, things become more and more tumultuous.  Starring Glyndon Jewel, Neill McLaughlin, Terra Sharp, and Hunter Jackman, this surreal and disturbing film shows the effects of radical change to a simple life.

Please note: Opening Date on this title is subject to change.

When a Pickford volunteer took a week off from his popcorn duties to attend SIFF, this was the film he came back from Seattle praising most highly. Patricia Clarkson--who always shines regardless of the size or nature of the part she’s playing--travels to Egypt to meet up with her husband, a U.N. official. When he’s delayed, he entrusts her to his friend Tareq (Alexander Siddig). He shows her the sights, helps her navigate the unfamiliar culture and, as sometimes happens when two attractive folks are thrown together in these kinds of situations, one thing leads to another and a flirtation develops. Almost as romantic as the storyline itself is the film’s exotic location, which lends much to mood of the movie. If you won’t be spending your summer traveling to a sun-soaked hotspot, Cairo Time might just be a worthy staycation substitute.

Performed at Teatro Comunale, Bologna, Italy

”In Bologna [Kate Aldrich] is a beautifully burnished Adalgisa, perfectly holding her own opposite one of the great singers of today, Daniela Dessì (…) attacking her part with confidence, sporting a beautifully burnished voice.” -(Opera Chic)

Bellini wrote “Norma” at age 30. It became his greatest achievement, and it is now regarded as an example of the supreme height of the bel canto tradition. The title role is generally considered one of the most difficult in the soprano repertoire. It includes the famous aria “Casta Diva,” which is often associated with opera legend Maria Callas.

He was called the “new Hemingway” after he penned The Perfect Storm, now noted nonfiction author Sebastian Junger has journeyed into the realm of documentary filmmaking, with similar results (Restrepo won the 2010 Grand Jury prize for domestic documentary at Sundance and opened the festival). Junger and cameraman Tim Hetherington spent a year embedded with a platoon in Afghanistan’s deadly Korangal Valley, cameras rolling the entire time. Far from a polemic about the war, Junger describes their efforts as “purely experiential,” and says “there are no interviews with generals; there is no moral or political analysis.” Instead, what we get is an insider’s view of both the horror and the horrible monotony of war, but, more than that, a look at the men who fight and the lives they forge together while making the best of an impossible situation.

When a teenage couple accidentally runs over a Martian in a wooded necking area, the Martian’s friends enact revenge by injecting their victims - via special needle-like fingernails - with alcohol, getting them drunk to death. The only witnesses are a group of teens hanging out at the nearby Lover’s Lane. However, the authorities disbelieve the teens’ story. The only hope is for the teenagers to band together to defeat the menace themselves. Low-budget fun.

Join marine biologist and cinematographer Florian Graner on an underwater odyssey through Puget Sound and discover the wonders living around Whidbey Island, Hood Canal, and in the greater Salish Sea. Packed with information about life in the oceans using the latest stealth diving equipment and state of the art HD cameras, get close and personal with our local world of fish. Co-sponsored by the Northwest Straits Commission and the Whatcom County Marine Resources Committee

Tosca was called a “shabby little shocker” by one English critic, but that’s an understatement: Tosca is a fiercely effective masterpiece of music-drama. Puccini had been interested in the Sardou’s play La Tosca for some time, but by 1895 the rights belonged to another composer, Alberto Franchetti. However, the publisher Ricordi and librettist Luigi Illica had no trouble persuading Franchetti to surrender the rights, telling him the subject matter – rape, murder, warring political factions – were far too vulgar for the Roman public’s taste. Soon after, Puccini was busy at work with the complete libretto in hand. Puccini approached the opera with his usual meticulousness – travelling to Rome to hear the tones of the bells in Castel Sant’Angelo, marking the exact pitch of the bell at St. Peter’s. Puccini also made two important changes to the libretto. He rejected an aria sung by Cavaradossi under torture, instead replacing it with the quartet; he felt that the static nature of the aria would slow the drama. Likewise, Puccini rejected both a poetic aria and transcendental love duet for the couple before Cavaradossi’s execution. Ricordi found the “acting lesson” scene too perfunctory, but Puccini insisted that Tosca would not waste her time on flowery language – and of course, the drama proves that he was right.

From Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa, Italy. Recorded live on June 10, 2010

Special Sneak Preview Screenings

Director Caleb Young has fashioned a mesmerizing, beautiful, gem of a film. Two years after the death of Jonathan, his fiance, Christian, plans to steal the urn. Christian convinces Michael, Jon's twin, to come along, and they take a road trip, scattering the ashes in all the places Jonathan was never able to see. The two begin an affair in an attempt to understand a part of Jonathan they never knew before.

"An expansive take on the world in miniature, Jessica Oreck's documentary debut pursues all angles on a novel subject—the Japanese obsession with insects—until it assumes a worldview. That such an approach could work for just about any aspect of existence—academia subsists on such blinkered, max-effort specialization—doesn't make its conviction of purpose any less admirable or, in the case of Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, anything short of bewitching." The Village Voice

“Life is a progress, and not a station,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Life ebbs and flows with change. There are hurdles that must be scaled and personal character is built through adversity. People adapt their behavior to get through everything from war to displacement to growing up. These four films capture stories of people’s survival and their ways to cope with self-preservation.

Doxita is a traveling festival of documentary films that are under 40 minutes in length. The program, comprised of approximately 90 minutes of film, represents a wide variety of documentary – domestic and foreign, short and longer format, serious and funny. It is designed to profile the great content and artistic vision that non-fiction short films provide, but that people don’t often get a chance to see.

Steel Homes (UK, Eva Weber, 10 min.) Storage lockers provide a holding ground for memories of long-gone loved ones and dreams that still live. Striking cinematography and sound evoke the minds and personal spaces of average people.

Slaves (Sweden, Hannah Heilborn and David Aronowitsch, 15 min.) Colorful animation brings alive the tale of two Sudanese youth who were captured for slavery. The animation and documentary interview technique mask the children’s identity while also creating an engrossing story of survival.

The First Kid to Learn English From Mexico (USA, Peter Jordan, 20 min.) 9-year-old Pedro Lopez wishes he never left Mexico. Lush camera and music create this almost-surreal, yet honest and charming portrait of this struggling boy.

12 Notes Down (Denmark, Andreas Koefed, 30 min.) Jorgis is the star of his boys choir, until the onset of puberty affects what he loves most: his ability to sing. This beautifully tender portrait

In addition, six Doxita mini-documentaries are also screening as part of our “Short Attention Span Cinema” series, with shorts playing before our regular features through late August:

Loop Loop (Canada, Patrick Bergeron, 5 min) The view from a train, transformed. Winner, Innovation Award, Sheffield Doc/Fest; official selection: SXSW, True/False Film Festivals.

Close to Home (USA, Theo Rigby, 6 min) A father’s quest to find his son’s killers. National finalist, Student Academy Awards.

The Herd (Ireland, Ken Wardrop, 4 min) A brief portrait of a deer who thinks it’s a cow, from the director of His & Hers. Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Seattle Film Festival.

Trash-Out (USA, Maria Fortiz-Morse, 5 min) Cleaning out a foreclosed home. Official selection: Silverdocs, True/False.

Sell It to the Hedge Funds (USA, Haven Pell, 4 min) The hustle of cold calling. Official selection, Florida Film Festival.

Home (USA, Matt Faust, 6 min) An evocative memorial to the filmmaker’s Katrina-flooded home. Winner, Best Short documentary Tribeca.

In Person: Director Bradley Beesley (director of Okie Noodling, Summercamp)

“one of America’s most interesting, contemporary nonfiction filmmakers…
as pure a piece of movie-making that you will see…
one of the best films of the year.”
- A.J. Schnack, All These Wonderful Things

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo. In 2006, female inmates were allowed to participate for the first time.

In a state with the highest female incarceration rate in the country, these women share common experiences such as broken homes, drug abuse and alienation from their children.  From 1940 – 2008, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary held an annual ‘Prison Rodeo’. Part Wild West show and part coliseum-esque spectacle, it was one of the last of its kind – a relic of the American penal system. Prisoners compete on wild-broncs and bucking bulls, risking life-long injuries. For inmates like Danny Liles, a 14-year veteran of the rodeo, the chance to battle livestock offers a brief respite from prison life.  Within this strange arena the prisoners become the heroes while the public and guards applaud.

Encore Screening for Doctober!

This gorgeous, historic, and inspiring new film from director & surfer Chris Malloy and his collective at Woodshed Films, documents the adventures of surfer and climber Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard (rock climbing legend and founder of Ventura-based Patagonia) and Doug Tompkins, on which they drove, mountain climbed and surfed their way to Chilean Patagonia. Along the way, Jeff encounters big surf, snowy mountains, a dangerous ocean crossing, pulp mills, cowboys, dams and more on his way to climb Cerro Corcovado in Patagonia. Jeff's life takes a turn when he meets up in a rainy hut with Chouinard and Tompkins who, once driven purely by a love of climbing and surfing, now value above all the experience of raw nature and have come to Patagonia to help use their influence to help protect it. The film is a road trip movie, a historic document, and an environmental call to arms, but mostly a meditation on what matters most in life –staying true to one's own vision and values.

"One of the more disturbing environmental documentaries in recent years — and that’s after we’ve already learned about global warming and peak oil and the destruction of the oceans — Gasland explores the widespread effect of hydraulic fracturing on people who have no apparent recourse for the damage that’s being done to their health, their environment and their rights as US citizens. Fox travels the country, meeting folks whose drinking water has been contaminated by natural gas extraction — we’re talking tap water that you can light on fire — and communities dealing with the chemical waste being evaporated into their atmosphere." Eye Weekly

The first film noir? John Huston, a first-time director, “defines film noir” by masterfully manipulating “light and shadow, utilizing drastic camera angles, and introducing Bogart's Sam Spade. Bogart's iconic performance as an emotionally detached PI thrust into the murderous pursuit of an ancient relic was equally revolutionary. Bogart made selfish and unredeemable likable, and the antihero was born” EW. Features a second amazing performance from the femme fatale, Mary Astor, who’s somewhat sordid personal life had made the headlines--and gives her even more allure here. 1941. USA. English. 101 min. Unrated. 

Features Director Scott Crocker in Person

Generally speaking, bird-watching is a pastime that is extremely interesting to a few people and not at all interesting to anyone else. But Scott Crocker has turned a bird-watching tale into a multilayered story that will fascinate practically everybody in “Ghost Bird,” a witty, wistful documentary about the supposed rediscovery in Arkansas of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought to have been extinct for decades.

A film of startling craftsmanship and design, Bury Me in Redwood Country is destined to go places—its assured cinematography, accomplished sound design, and methodical pacing suggest comparisons to films like Rivers & Tides. The story of “the Redwood tree is a meditation on extremes: Its genus evolved hundreds of millions of years ago in Antarctica and persisted through the coming and going of the dinosaurs. Many still alive today are older than Christ. It is the tallest and largest tree on the planet, the scaffolding of complex ecosystems, and it is the most valuable timber known to man.” A meditative yet thrilling film that lets the trees, and a few select aficionados, tell their own story. 2009. USA. 60 min. Unrated.

An Encore screening for DOCTOBER

The Bellingham Ukulele Group (BUG) will be performing pre-show!

Until the 20th Century, if you wanted music, you had to make it yourself. Back then, music was embedded in our families, our communities, even our work. When the phonograph came along, none of us was good enough anymore and many became passive in relation to music: consumers rather than participants. Now, in the 21st Century, people are taking back the music, learning to make their own, forming communities, and the easy-to-learn ukulele with its wealth of old-time tunes evoking simpler times, is the instrument of choice.
Mighty Uke is a visual feast, filmed in vivid HD,counterbalanced by B/W historical footage and original animation, and accompanied by music, played, composed and introduced by the characters themselves.
Mighty Uke  travels the world to seek out ukulele players, documenting this third wave of popularity, exploring the rich history of the uke and learning about the healing effect of music self-played.

Director Lee Storey will be at The Pickford to answer your questions!

"Storey knows that the Up With People volunteer organization inspires giggles and derision in equal measure, so he opens with old footage of the troupe singing and dancing at the height of their late-'60s/early-'70s visibility and gets (most of) the chuckles out of the way early. What follows is a film that offers a withering critique of the organization's religious cult roots, right-wing political subtext, and insipid music, while also being very respectful of the fact that, to a lot of the young folks who signed on, the group offered the chance to affect positive, even progressive, change in the world." Village Voice