The shebang kicked off with regular film guru Robert Horton, who boldly put his considerable critical reputation on the line by guaranteeing Jeff Bridges would win the Oscar this year for Crazy Heart. Note to Robert: We’re holding you to it. (Additional Note: Robert’s end of the year Critics Wrap, also featuring critical luminaries Kathleen Murphy, Jim Emerson, and some wild-haired Avatar fan who apparently snuck into the proceedings, can still be seen here.

Things continued on the good foot with an in-studio, off-the-cuff appearance by Pat and Patty Cashman. Hmmm, you know, between Pat, Nancy, and aforementioned cough-ridden director Steve Wilson, we’re edging closer and closer to a full-fledged Almost Live reunion. No pressure, Nancy.

Finally, the show eased out on a mellow tone with singer Choklate, the mightily piped singer who, in addition to being featured in our spiffy new show open, also graced our stage way back in our first season. The positive feelings of Déjà vu were only intensified by bassist Evan Flory-Barnes, making his third AZ appearance. All told, it was a strong indicator of good things to come in 2010. Assuming, of course, that we can talk Steve into investing in some Ricola.

- Andy

Seattle City Council 2009: A Year in Review
Hosted by C. R. Douglas
Plays Thursday, December 31, 6:30 p.m.
Join SEATTLE CHANNEL’s C.R. Douglas as he sits down for one-on-one interviews with all nine Seattle City Council Members: Council President Richard Conlin and Councilmembers Tim Burgess, Sally Clark, Jan Drago, Jean Godden, Bruce Harrell, Nick Licata, Richard McIver and Tom Rasmussen. Find out what they think were the Council’s biggest accomplishments and what, if any, were the lost opportunities of 2009. Plus, hear their thoughts on what the political and policy climate will be like at City Hall with new Mayor Mike McGinn and two new Council Members, Mike O’Brien and Sally Bagshaw. They also share their concerns about the City and their hopes for 2010.

TownSquare: CityClub’s Annual Year in Review
Plays Thursday, December 31, 10:00 a.m.
CityClub’s 2009 Year in Review panel includes four of our region’s top leaders: Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, Senior Counselor Jack Schneiderman, Chair of the Association of Washington Business Jack McRae, and President of Washington State University Dr. Elson Floyd. The four panelists are experts in the areas of education, politics, healthcare and journalism. They will analyze the current state of our region and make predictions about the region’s future.

An Evening With: The Year in Film
Premieres Thursday, December 31, 11:00 p.m.
Waiting for the new year? What better way to pass the final hour of 2009 than figuring out the best and worst films of the year! The Everett Herald‘ s and Art Zone’s Robert Horton moderates a panel discussion with local film critics about the year in film. Joining Horton are MSN.com’s Kathleen Murphy, The Stranger’s Andrew Wright, and Chicago Sun-Times ‘ blogger Jim Emerson.

City Inside/Out with C.R. Douglas: The Year in Politics
Plays Saturday, January 2, 6:00 p.m.
Tune in for our one-hour special, where we take stock of 2009. We’ll sit down with the newsmaker of the year–Seattle Mayor-elect Mike McGinn–, hear from past three past Seattle mayors–Norm Rice, Charles Royer and Wes Uhlman–about lessons learned, and convene a journalist roundtable on the year’s headlines. In-studio guests are Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Joel Connelly, The Seattle Times‘ Lynne Varner and The Puget Sound Business Journal’s Deirdre Gregg and Publicola’s Josh Feit.

Need I mention that the annual engagement of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is just about upon us? But then you knew that already, because—c’mon—it’s annual. The Grand Illusion Cinema is bringing the 1946 classic back, starting Dec. 11 and going on through New Year’s Eve.

DVD Picks: The latest film noir package to come down the pike is Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. 1, a five-spot containing one bona fide classic (Fritz Lang’s violent The Big Heat, starring Glenn Ford with indelible noir performances by Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame) and four lesser-profile titles. But all are interesting and well worth seeing if you’re of a noirish bent. I just rented The Lineup, which I hadn’t seen in 25 years, and had a great time with it: the movie’s part police procedural (based on a TV series of the era—1958), part eccentric hit-man character study. Eli Wallach plays the hit man, attended by his weirdly literate sidekick/slave (Robert Keith), who collects dying people’s last words. The crisp direction is by Don Siegel.

And the Seattle Art Museum gears up for its winter film series, a ten-week primer on “King of Cool: The Films of Steve McQueen,” which kicks off with The Great Escape on Thursday, January 7 and continues explore coolness with titles such as Bullitt and Junior Bonner (the sleeper of McQueen’s career) thereafter.

Coming up in Seattle, we’ve got the umpteenth annual Seattle Art Museum fall Film Noir series, which is officially sold out again (but if you show up for individual evenings, you can almost always buy a ticket). It kicks off Thursday, Oct. 1 with an excellent entry, Max Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment, and continues with some truly offbeat examples of the noir form. It goes all the way to Dec. 10, finishing in kooky form with Curtis Harrington’s Games, a kind of mod-noir that tips its hat to the classic French shocker Diabolique (and that kept me riveted when it would show up on the KIRO-7 afternoon movie in my childhood). Check the schedule here.

Also in the classic vein, SIFF Cinema does a Hitchcock in October, with a bunch of essential Alfreds crammed into one vertiginous weekend, Oct. 10-12. The roster includes Rear Window, Vertigo, and Shadow of a Doubt–in other words, some of Hitch’s best.

And speaking of Hitchcock, the Northwest Film Forum brings a recent film from Argentina that evokes the Master of Suspense, but with a distinctly fresh and challenging approach: Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman, a story about a woman who has an accident (something awful might have happened) and, in a fugue state, tries to piece together what happened.

More Hortoniana

Isn’t Seattle the best place ever when it’s nice?! Ahhhh… love it. I’m keeping my eye out for fun and interesting art events, so, here are a few more possible outings to add to your summer art calendar:

Rawstock

Get ready for Rawstock 2009! This raw and irreverent film event, hosted by The Central Heating Lab at ACT, hits the screen for one night only on July 24th, with all sorts of great independent movies, including the Seattle premieres of David Lowery’s “St. Nick”, Calvin Reeder’s “Snake Mountain Colada”. The schmoozing starts in the Raw Lounge at 8:15. Get tickets from ACT.

Check out the Seattle Art Dealers Association upcoming event, “SADA Introductions 2009”, happening on Saturday, July 18th from 11-5. This self-guided tour features art works that are chosen by art gallery owners– who pick artists from other galleries, not their own—and is meant to represent the best of the new century. This unique mid-day art walk is your chance to check out, and meet, the hot up & comers! For a list of participating galleries, and tour map, go to www.seattleartdealers.com

Batteries Not Included

Here’s a fun art freebie you can enjoy from the comfort of your computer! Local filmmaker Jon Behrens, who normally makes experimental arty films, has made something a little different. “Batteries Not Included” features vintage toy commercials from Mattel, Ideal, Hasbro, Marx, Aurora, and many others. If you were born in the 1950’s, 1960’s or 1970’s, this will spark many pleasant memories. If you’re of the younger set, this might give you a new appreciation for your square, out-of-date parents. Watch the streaming video or download a copy

Artist Allie Jones, who represents herself as Allie Jones Art “The Art of Giving Back”, has a new show of original work opening at Café Flora, the fabulous vegetarian joint in Madison Valley, opening on August 3rd. Proceeds from the show will be donated to Cancer Care Alliance, where Allie’s father is currently in treatment. Stop by and see how philanthropy, art, and delicious food, can come together!

Enjoy these beautiful days, and make sure to add a daily dose of art to your outdoor activities.

xo, nancy g.

Revivals for the summer: The Seattle Art Museum kicks off a six-film tribute to Carole Lombard, that elegant yet silly princess of the screwball comedy era. The set begins July 9 with Howard Hawks’s classic Twentieth Century (1934) and closes on August 13 with William Wellman’s perverse Nothing Sacred (1937). Lombard was one of those forever-young stars (she died in a 1942 plane crash while on tour promoting War Bonds), and this is a chance to delight in some of her classics and rarities.

Silent Movie Mondays continue at the Paramount theater this month, with Henry King’s Romola (1924) starring Lillian Gish on June 15; Cecil B. DeMille’s The Godless Girl (1929) on June 22; and Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven (1927) on June 29. The latter helped snag Janet Gaynor the first Best Actress Oscar.

The Northwest Film Forum continues their year-long survey of 1969 films at various times during the summer. For a Sixties spy-picture marathon, look at the double bill for the week of July 31-August 6: Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz, which is a frosty and magisterial look at Cold War doings (it’s not fun the way most Hitchcock is, but it is impressive), and Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which might just be the best of all James Bond movies despite having the worst James Bond (one-hit wonder George Lazenby).

And still on the 1969 score, on July 31 the Varsity theater brings a new print of Costa-Gavras’s Z, an Oscar-winning political thriller that was a huge arthouse hit when it was released in the U.S. I went to see this movie as an adolescent (at the Varsity, if memory serves) and still remember how exciting it was to see a movie with subtitles, even if I didn’t entirely follow the plot. Schedule

Robert Horton’s blog

Revival of the Week: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, a 1941 vehicle for W.C. Fields, at the Grand Illusion (which is doing a few weeks under the umbrella theme of “flim-flam men”). When I was a lad in the 1970s, you could still see Fields movies on regular TV all the time, and early exposure to his comedy stylings is a taste acquired and never lost. This one’s an extremely bizarre outing from late in Fields’ career, an inside-Hollywood spoof and an excuse for a series of muttered one-liners. Visit Grand Illusion Cinema for more info.

DVD of the Week: A Married Woman, a 1964 film by Jean-Luc Godard. Not Godard’s best or most alive film, and you miss the presence of his frequent leading lady and then-wife Anna Karina, but still-it’s from the great period when this director was re-writing the rules of film language with every picture and the French New Wave was in full swing.

Find more movie info visit my website: roberthorton.wordpress.com

If you’re a Led Zeppelin fan, which I am, (just can’t get enough of John Bonham’s genius drumming), tune into 102.5 fm/KZOK, because they play Led Zeppelin about 90% of the time.

One of Seattle’s great bands, “The Squirrels“, wrap up a brilliant 25-year career with their “Death With Dignity Retirement Tour”. The big show happens Saturday, June 13th, at The Tractor Tavern in Ballard.

I saw “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” @ Balagan Theatre last weekend, and a couple of the performances-Ray Tagavilla, in particular — are not to be missed. The show closes this Saturday, May 30th, so don’t delay — call now!

Byron Au Yong unveils his newest composition, “Stuck Elevator” at this years On the Boards “Northwest New Works Festival”, happening June 5-7. It’s a beautiful original opera based on a harrowing and true story.

One of the coolest programs of the Seattle International Film Festival each year is their Fly Filmmaking Challenge. This challenge is where 3 Seattle filmmakers make a narrative short film with just 5 days of shooting and 5 days of editing. You can check out this years crop of “on the Fly” creations, all with a “film noir” theme, on Wednesday, June 10th at the lovely Egyptian Theatre on Capital Hill.

Revivals of the Week: Visit SIFF for four screenings presented by Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne this weekend. Saturday sees The Adventures of Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version, natch) and Sunset Boulevard; Sunday brings The Third Man and Dodsworth. The first three are familiar titles, but maybe you haven’t seen Dodsworth, a 1936 adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel about an American couple who go to Europe and have their lives substantially changed. Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton give vivid performances, under the focused direction of William Wyler. More info: www.siff.net

DVDs of the Week: Man Hunt, a 1941 suspense picture directed by Fritz Lang, with Walter Pidgeon as a hunter who, for his own amusement, finds out whether he can get Hitler in his gunsights. Also: Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes, a three-film Criterion set featuring 1960s work by Shohei Imamura, a fascinating filmmaker whose work definitely does not conform to traditional cherry-blossoms-falling school of Japanese movies.

Find more movie info, and links for the new crazed comic book I have co-authored, Rotten, on my website: roberthorton.wordpress.com

DVD of the Week: Forever, directed by Heddy Honigmann. A beautiful documentary film about Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, surveying the people who come to visit the graves of the famous and the not-famous. In a very gentle way, this movie manages to be about death and art and the reasons we have for memorializing people.and it’s a scandal that it never played for a proper run in Seattle. DVD should help it find an audience.

Festivals: The Seattle Jewish Film Festival, which always offers up an interesting, provocative slate of films, begins April 23 (through May 3) at a variety of venues, notably the Cinerama, SIFF Cinema, and Museum of History and Industry. Among the higher-profile films are Little Traitor (the opening-night selection) and Lemon Tree, featuring the excellent star of The Visitor, Hiam Abbass.

roberthorton.wordpress.com