Through Rain And Wind Today: U.S. Postal Service hosts a public meetings tonight on its proposal to close its mail-processing center by the Tacoma Mall. (News Tribune)
Now With More Daffodils: City of Puyallup annexes farmlands. (News Tribune)
Because It's So Huge: Help design wayfinding signs for downtown Tacoma. (News Tribune)
Stick Up, Stick Up: Puyallup police are searching for a man who held up a Little Caesars Pizza last night. (News Tribune)
Wow: Ricky Gervais to return as Golden Globes host. (Coming soon)
Super Mad: PETA has turned its wrath on classic video-game character Mario, who wears a Tanooki raccoon suit in Nintendo's new 3DS game Super Mario 3D Land. (Time)
We Finally Will See What They Look Like:Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me is coming to television. (Yahoo)
Darn! Darn! Darn!:The Munsters is getting a reboot at NBC. (Zap 2 It)
1. It's Wednesday, which means it's time for another Wednesday Session at Jazzbones. Tonight, Roman Holiday takes to the stage, promising to rock like few things will this Hump Day.
2. The real appeal of Puget Sound Pizza's karaoke is its inimitable host, the Reverend Colin. A tall, bearded man who always sports a utilikilt, Rev. Colin possesses a wealth of oddball musical knowledge and a disarming ease for calling everyone "baby." Having hosted karaoke for a little more than 12 years, Rev. Colin conducts karaoke with a sure hand and a sense of fairness with who gets to sing and how often; he once told me that he prides himself on not accepting bribes from people to be moved to the top of the singing rotation. See for yourself tonight at Puget Sound Pizza, when Karaoke with Colin kicks off at 9 p.m.
3. It gets dark at, like, 3:30 p.m. every afternoon these days. It's cold, wet and growingly miserable outside. The time is right for a movie. May we recommend heading to the Grand Cinema for a warm bag of popcorn and a great flick. Offerings like The Way, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Margin Call, Lost Airmen of Buchenwald and Being Elmo all seem worthy.
4. Get your bingo on and win fabulous prizes tonight at Pints & Quarts on Olympia's Westside. The fun starts at 8:30 p.m. and it's free to play.
5. 2. Holy crap! Hump Day already? That must mean it's time again for Masa College Night. Expect flesh.
Street name: 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders (tonight at the Olympia Film Fest)
Common Uses: 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders is a presentation from the family of films known as objective serotonin reuptake accelerators, or OSRAs. It is used in treatment for those suffering from concrete reality. It may also be used to treat other conditions as determined by your doctor.
Possible Side Effects: Side effects that may occur while experiencing 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders include dry mouth, weight gain, paranoia, itching, change in taste or dizziness. You should contact your doctor immediately if any of these symptoms persist.
Do you ever have that dream where you're back in school and suddenly realize you have to take a final for a class you've forgotten to attend for months? 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders doesn't really feel like that, but the Weekly Volcano wondered if you had that dream too. We have it all the time and it weirds us out.
No, 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders feels much more like that dream where you're being stalked by some nameless horror and you want desperately to run, but your legs are frozen.
16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders may cause slight anxiety, or in extreme cases, uncertainty about the strength of your relationships or the wisdom of your college degree. 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders may provoke feelings of helplessness, especially when talking to mechanics.
Warning
The Olympia Film Festival presents 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders tonight. Anchoring 16 mm Madness and Digital Disorders will be five short films from Pacific Northwest born video artist Erica Schreiner. According to the OFF film synopsis, "the videos create a hazy, magical, and sometimes startlingly violent dreamland, filled with food and animals on precarious edges of destruction. Cakes are baked, live butterflies are eaten, and the viewer is taken on an abstract, stunningly visceral journey into an unsettled reality."
Schreiner's work will be accompanied by new compositions for dual 16mm projectors from Florida-based filmmaker Christopher Harris, a premiere 16mm documentation of Bulgarian folk singers by Joe Denardo and a curated selection of long-unseen 16mm surprises from the archives.
The films screen tonight at 5:30 p.m. at The Mark in downtown Olympia. For more information on the Olympia Film Festival, and today's film schedule, go here.
For a sneak peek of Erica Schreiner's talents, check the trailer below ...
CONTEMPLATING SILENCE IN WRITER-DIRECTOR RON LAGMAN'S COMMITTED >>>
Throughout a career that straddled both the silent and talkie eras, Hitchcock strove for what he called "pure cinema" - revealing a character's interior life by means of visuals only. Tales of suspense intrigued him precisely because that genre deals with secrets, hidden motives and deceit, and only his "pure" camera could show the light of truth. We as viewers play an active part in this unraveling, forced to put the puzzle pieces (i.e. edited images) together before time runs out.
Tacoma's Ron Lagman nears completion of his film Tapat Sa Pangako (Committed), and though it doesn't fit as a Hitchcockian mystery, I still feel like a detective as I watch. The writer-director provides no dialogue, none of that exposition to spell (spill) out the story. Composer Kevin Rolstad's subtly expressive piano score is the only thing doing any talking in this silent movie.
I have to fill in the blanks based only on what I see. I collect shots like pieces of evidence, never knowing what information matters and what I can discard: Catholic icons clutters a tabletop, a woman (Melinda Morreaux) slices fruit with a knife (Why does this moment make me a little uneasy?), a man (Rick Walters) exercises, while a black cat rests easy on a couch. For the first half of Committed I hover in limbo, filled with too many questions.
Answers slowly trickle in. Man and woman are husband and wife, and wife has made them a romantic dinner. Then the plot twist arrives, like a slap in my face. I've watched closely, looking for the clues, but still I didn't see THAT coming. Then a second jolt to my senses, a punch in the gut, and at that point I realize a talented storyteller has me in his powerful grip. Lagman handles the visuals of Committed with an intelligence that would probably do ol' Hitch proud.
As a roommate, I have done some horrible things in my day. But the worst thing, without a doubt, was when I was in a hurry to tape a movie on TV - surely you remember videotape - and I taped over2001: A Space Odyssey. This was indefensible, even more so when you consider what I taped: On Golden Pond.
Really.
I have no idea why I did this, because HAL9000 is one of my favorite computers in all of filmland (yeah, I'm old-school), and I just loved the big chill that Stanley Kubrick enveloped me in.
I never watched On Golden Pond. It just sat there gathering dust as testament to my inexplicable idiocy.
Tonight, The Olympia Film Festival screens another film that would be a crime if taped over: the dystopic sci-fi epic World on a Wire.
This flick is German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder's superbly cracked, boundlessly inventive take on future paranoia. With dashes of my beloved Kubrick, but a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant action hero, Fred Stiller, a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate and governmental conspiracy.
What's at risk?
Our total (virtual) reality as we know it. This long hidden three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses.
The film screen tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Capitol Theater. For more information on the Olympia Film Festival, and today's film schedule, go here.
For a sneak peek at World on a Wire, check the trailer below ...
The synthesizer is a powerful tool that has suffered much abuse since its entrance into the pop world. Cheese-doodling, lipstick-wearing hairspray bands of the '80s are to blame for the synth's lowly place among "real" instruments like guitars and snare drums.
Tonight, bands Iceborg, Operation ID and Porch Grapes will reclaimed the keyboard's unique ability to create otherworldly audio ... for motion pictures by video artist Mitchell Zollinger. It will be an electronic, synthesized film night you can dance to.
Iceborg is actually Brian Kinsella playing film music with a bunch of synths.
Operation ID is a bionic synth-pop band, and will be performing a free improv set.
Porch Grapes says it's a dance explosion.
Bluebeard Coffee will drop by with treats such as espresso floats.
Entertain your brain when the band performs tonight at 7 p.m.
[Nate Dybevik's piano restoration Spaceworks Tacoma space, Saturday, Nov. 12, 7 p.m., 1310 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Tacoma]
In a career spanning five decades and including more than 40 films, documentary filmmaker Les Blank shines a yielding but revealing light on people and cultures far outside the American mainstream, contrasting sharply with the heavily staged, agenda-driven documentaries popular today.
Blank will attend tonight's screenings of his work as part of the Olympia Film Festival. The programs offer a chance to see some of Blank's art - focusing on music in the South. The program includes Blank's 1969 classic The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins about the great Texas bluesman, Always For Pleasure, Les Blank's vivid 1978 portrait of New Orleans and Sprout Wings and Fly, about Appalachian fiddler Tommy Jarrell.
The films screen tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Capitol Theater. For more information on the Olympia Film Festival, and today's film schedule, go here.
For a sneak peek at Always For Pleasure, check the trailer below ...
1. With an ambitious 10-day lineup spanning the ages of cinema, the Olympia Film Festival literally is something for everyone - of any age. OFF kicks off tonight at 6 p.m. with hors d'oeuvres served by ladies of TUSH! Burlesque, the stage fantastic of Saul Tannenbaum and Mona Van Horne, sparkly dancers and the 1933 film, Gold Diggers of 1933. The Weekly Volcano previews OFF here.
2. We all know Elmo. Even if you don't have kids, will never have kids, in fact hate kids and everything about them, and have never even been a kid yourself, you know who Elmo is ... or at least you think you do. Elmo, of course, is the hug-giving, furry little red dude from Sesame Street - a staple of the last 25 years. In real life, however, Elmo is puppeteer Kevin Clash, who created the character we've come to know and love and has portrayed Elmo on TV since 1985. The award-winning documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteers Journey opens today at The Grand Cinema at 11:45 a.m., 1:40 and 6:20 p.m., allowing the old and young alike a chance to meet the man behind the puppet.
3. Investigative journalist David Barsamian will discuss "Uprisings: From Kashmir to Egypt to Wall Street" at 7:30 p.m. inside the Washington State Labor Council office in downtown Olympia.
4. The fifth Jacobsen Series classical concert hits Schneebeck Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m. with Masterworks for String Quartet. Under the masterful hands of violinist Maria Sampen, violinist Tim Christie, violist Joyce A. Ramée and cellist David Requiro, the audience will hear Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 5, Opus 18, Aaron Copland's Two Pieces for String Quartet and Johannes Brahms' String Quartet No. 1 in c minor, Opus 51.
5. The Angels of Mayhem present the Murder Masquerade Ball featuring with Sad Face, The Hardcount, Cityfaire, Angels Of Mayhem Burlesque, DJ Traxx, DJ Berry and Magician Cary Durgin hits Stonegate Pizza at 9 p.m. The party benefits the independent short horror film, The Resolution.
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