Thursday, Feb. 12
Matt Zoller Seitz
If you can’t get enough of Wes Anderson or The Grand Budapest Hotel, Seitz is your man. They previously collaborated on The Wes Anderson Collecti
on, and now comes The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams, $35) a coffee table-cum-scrapbook devoted to that movie and all its fabulous intricacy. Besides three long interviews with Anderson, countless set photos, scholarly essays, storyboards, costume illustrations, and arcana (because there will be arcana), Seitz collects the thoughts of Ralph Fiennes. (The latter claims Anderson is not a fussy perfectionist . . . hmmm.) But the book is all about Wes, who says, “The movie is all about seeing things from another time.” His trifold timeframe is 1985, 1968, and 1932 (each with its own aspect ratio), and the constant (re)framing reflects the as-told-to literary style of Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), whose writings inspired Anderson’s plot and characters. (Though intriguingly, Anderson says Fiennes’ Gustave is based on an unnamed friend of his.) Still, this is a real movie-lover’s book, designed to within an inch of its life, like Anderson’s own films. It’s a lovely, indispensible companion to the DVD (released last June), no matter how Budapest scores at the Oscars this month. Anderson is generous in his nods to other movies and influences (including On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, I was gratified to note, prompting the Willem Dafoe “snow-globe version” sled-ski chase). Like any good book, this one has footnotes and an index, lending meticulous support to Anderson’s stated goal of creating “a sad comedy.” Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. 7 p.m.
BRIAN MILLER
Issa Rae
If you haven’t heard her name yet, take note. Since starting her “Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl” series on YouTube on 2011, Rae has attracted more than 20 million views and 150,000 subscribers. She’s even gotten attention from Pharrell Williams, Lena Dunham, and Mindy Kaling. Her webisodes chronicle life, love, and everything in between with humor and sass. In the same fashion, Rae’s now written an autobiography, Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl (Atria, $26). And while Rae is proud of her heritage and claims to hate talking about race all the time, race is as central to her memoir as her unique voice. She’s contributing to a larger conversation on ethnicity, gender, and self-acceptance. UW Ethnic Cultural Center, 3931 Brooklyn Ave. N.E., 634-3400,
Free. 6:30 p.m.
BIANCA SEWAKE
Urban Bush Women
Thirty years ago, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded Urban Bush Women to “explore the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change,” which is pretty heady stuff. Fortunately, she’s managed to do this by creating and collecting a repertory that’s known for its kinetic excitement as well as its powerful commitments. Drawing from a broad mix of dance traditions, from the African diaspora to current postmodern developments, the work combines enlightenment and entertainment. The company will perform Zollar’s Hep Hep Sweet Sweet, set in a club during the Great Migration, and Walking With ’Trane, Chapter 2, inspired by John Coltrane’s astonishing “A Love Supreme” (performed live by pianist George Caldwell). Nora Chipaumire’s haunting Dark Swan, a meditation on Mikhail Fokine’s seminal Dying Swan, finishes the program. (Through Sat.) Meany Hall, UW campus, 543-4880, uwworldseries.org. $41–$46. 8 p.m.
SANDRA KURTZ
Friday, Feb. 13
Eight Days of Oscar
The Academy Awards, as you doubtlessly know, will be bestowed on Sunday, February 22. So far as Best Picture is concerned, some of the hallowed eight nominees have been out of theaters for a while. So Paul Allen is doing us a favor—beyond that recent Super Bowl fervor—by reprising all the contenders at the city’s finest single-screen cinema (to which he recently added even more upgrades, plus that nifty new mural by Don Clark). True, you could see Selma, The Imitation Game, American Sniper, and The Theory of Everything someplace else. But the seats are nicer at the Cinerama, the screen and sound are better, and you can now enjoy the show with beer and wine. More critically, I would argue, this mini-fest offers you the opportunity to watch (or rewatch) the nominees in short succession, so as to better assess their odds and win your office Oscar pool. Whiplash, which I loved, has been out of theaters for a while; and its star turn for J.K. Simmons—as the bullying band leader of a jazz conservatory group—is sure to win him a statuette. But what of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, released in the spring and the top pick of our Robert Horton on his 10-best list for last year? It got nine nominations, so has to win for something, right? (I’m guessing script and production design.) Then there are Birdman (my top film of 2014) and Boyhood (#2), which are neck-and-neck for Best Picture among the prognosticators. All these films are worth a second—or first—viewing, and all deserve a setting like this. Don’t wait for Netflix, your threadbare couch, and microwave popcorn. (Through Feb. 21.) Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave., 448-6880. $15. See cinerama.com for showtimes.
BRIAN MILLER
Lynsey Addario
Oh, poor Brian Williams. So he lied about being shot down in a military helicopter during the early Iraq War? Boo-fucking-hoo. New York Times photojournalist Addario has been there—the real there—and done that a dozen times over, with no need for embellishment or self-pity. She was even held hostage by pro-Qaddafi forces during Libya’s violent revolution; and she’s also shot memorable frames in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, and Congo. Her memoir It’s What I Do (Penguin, $29.95) is frank about the dangers of her job (colleague Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya), but sanguine about the appeal. She chose the profession and makes no apologies, even when trying to balance romance, pregnancy, and motherhood. Not long out of college, Addario ventured abroad—first to Argentina—and never really went home again to her splintered Connecticut family. Despite the specter of IEDs and AK-47s here, It’s What I Do is fundamentally a career memoir: how a single young woman breaks into a male-dominated trade, lives independently in a variety of foreign cultures, and survives as a globetrotting freelancer. And, as you’d expect, the book is well supported by Addario’s photos. There are corpses, battle scenes, and starving refugees, but the image that that really sticks with you is the red-lit interior of an Army cargo plane, ferrying wounded soldiers home. Since she embedded with U.S. troops several times, Addario’s respect for them is total: It’s what they do, too. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 7 p.m.
BRIAN MILLER
Citizenfour
Fugitive leaker Edward Snowden has invited documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (The Oath) and The Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald into his Hong Kong hotel room. In this absorbing character study, likely to win the Oscar on Sunday, February 22, they debate how and when to spill the information he took from his job at the National Security Agency. Clicking the SEND button carries as much weight as Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat in All the President’s Men. This straightforward documentary may be smaller-scaled than a political thriller, but it has similar suspense: Everybody in the room realizes the stakes—and the dangers—of exposing a whistleblower to public scrutiny. One man’s whistleblower is another man’s traitor, a debate that Poitras doesn’t pause to consider, so confident is she of Snowden’s cause. Having this access to Snowden in the exact hours he went from being a nonentity with top-secret clearance to a hero/pariah is a rare chance to see a now-historical character in the moment of truth. By the end of the film, we get a scene that suggests that Snowden is not alone in his whistleblowing status—a tantalizing hint (scribbled by Greenwald on pieces of paper) of another story to come. (The film moves to SIFF Film Center on Thursday.) SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., 324-9996, siff.net. $7–$12. 1:45 & 9:15 p.m
.
ROBERT HORTON
Saturday, Feb. 14
Inner City Romance
Although he hails from Berkeley and made a name for himself in San Francisco, underground comix artist Guy Colwell actually has some history here in the Pacific Northwest—he spent a formative 17 months at the McNeil Island Penitentiary in the late ’60s. His crime? Draft-dodging, of course. Yet prison was where he developed his signature style, “figurative social surrealism,” an approach he would perfect in his comic series Inner City Romance (now collected by Fantagraphics, $24.99). Although Colwell was inspired by R. Crumb and the Zap comix crew who at the time were mixing cartoons with social commentary in the hippie-laden Bay Area, Colwell’s work was rarely what you might call “funny.” He purposefully shied away from bushy-eyed peacenik idealism and instead boldly confronted racial inequality and the harsh realities of low-income urban life (drugs, prostitution, addiction, etc.). His depiction of black urban life was so accurate that African-American cartoonist Grass Green apparently bet money with a colleague that Colwell was black—a bet he lost. (Though Colwell won’t attend tonight’s opening, part of the Georgetown Art Attack, images from this new collection will remain on view through March 11.) Fanta
graphics Bookstore & Gallery, 1201 S. Vale St., 658-0110, fantagraphics.com. Free. Opening reception 6–9 p.m.
Addario in self-portrait.
Fantagraphics
