Thursday, Feb. 5
Alexandra Fuller
Anyone familiar with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller’s 2001 account of childhood during Rhodesia’s bloody civil war, will immediately recognize in this new memoir her masterful ability to write about a person’s ties to home and her obsessive deconstruction of her larger-than-life parents. Those parents, and her African upbringing, are at the core of Leaving Before the Rains Come (Penguin, $26.95), here used as a lens through which to assess the collapse of her marriage. Unlike other stories of divorce, this one cleaves profoundly to place—with Africa standing in for her and America for her husband. “Domestically,” she writes, “our two cultures had come into opposition like participants in a nominally friendly sports competition and clashed more aggressively than was necessary.” Fuller’s preoccupation with her own story, her own background, her own dogged romanticizing of her Rhodesian identity at times threatens to overshadow the topic at hand. Rains sometimes feels like an extended arm of her earlier work. Yet because that prior material is so intensely rich, and so obviously the true love of her life, it’s always a pleasure to read, or reread as the case may be. And while that diverting pull never releases, she gradually eases us into the narrative of her marriage and of motherhood—and we realize it could never have been told without those powerful ties to her heritage. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 7 p.m.
NICOLE SPRINKLE
In Case of No Emergency: The Films of Ruben Ostlund
With his Force Majeure up for an Oscar (and included in this weekend retrospective), the Swedish director Ostlund is something of an outlier at the Academy, which usually tends to favor the graybeards of European cinema. Yet Ostlund is relatively young (at 41), and his previous output has been entirely unseen here. Three prior features are being screened from the past decade (The Guitar Mongoloid, Involuntary, and Play), preceded by a pair of shorts that bear interesting similarities to Force Majeure. In the 2005 Autobiographical Scene Number 6882, some young holiday-makers gather on a bridge, too many beers in the tank. The guys dare one young partier to leap from the span—maybe 15 or 20 meters above the water, they guess. Male ego is in play here; the guys have to put on a brave face—or confront their cowardice—in front of the women, rather like the husband who flees the avalanche in Force Majeure. Incident by a Bank (2009) is more technically ambitious: an unbroken 12-minute shot, inspired by a bungled, real-life bank robbery, in which our attention is directed by digital pans and zooms within the frame. It’s almost like an Advent calendar as comic little vignettes and characters come to the fore, then recede, while onlookers try to make sense of events. There’s a slight Jacques Tati vibe to the deadpan choreography, though no obvious gags. The watchful sense of anxiety is familiar: Think of the husband in Force Majeure scrutinizing the avalanche, the wife evaluating the husband, and the silent hotel concierge eyeballing them both. No one’s quite certain of the other’s motives or what they’re seeing. (Through Sun.) Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380. $6–$11. See nwfilmforum.org for schedule.
BRIAN MILLER
Lucinda Parker & Michael T. Hensley
Two Portland painters doing their damnedest to Keep It Weird™ visit Seattle. Parker, who’s “recently focused on mountains,” presents a series of craggy canvases rendered like highly stylized cartoons—rocky peaks reduced to oblique color panels, strange patterns, and odd angles. They’re a welcome break from the hyper-realistic, overly reverent Northwest landscapes that flood local galleries every month. This region is beautiful, but it is also freaky, a duality Parker manages to capture. Hensley’s paintings eschew the bucolic for the waste bin. Imagine all the drippy paint-marker graffiti you see on Dumpsters across the city, cobbled together into incredibly busy, bustling schizophrenic psychoscapes. His paintings reflect how the city feels at its most chaotic—overwhelming, colorful, fun, and a little disorienting. He sometimes garnishes his canvases with garden dirt. In Portland, dirt is a legitimate medium. I hope this catches on in Seattle. (Through Feb. 28.) Linda Hodges Gallery, 316 First Ave. S., 624-3034, lindahodgesgallery.com. Free. Opening reception 6–8 p.m.
KELTON SEARS
Carousel
Threats of violence in Oklahoma!, racism in South Pacific, slavery in The King and I, Nazis in The Sound of Music: Looked at this way, you wonder how Rodgers and Hammerstein ever got a reputation as Broadway’s premier dispensers of corn syrup. Perhaps the darkest of their shows, though also the most elegiacally romantic, is 1945’s Carousel, the pair’s second collaboration. In addition to some of Rodgers’ loveliest music (that Ravellian opening waltz and the duet “If I Loved You”), it also includes a suicide and—most problematically, because the book seems to rationalize it—spouse abuse. “But is it possible, Mother, for someone to hit you hard like that—real loud and hard—and not hurt you at all?” “It is possible, dear—for someone to hit you—hit you hard—and not hurt at all.” Eeew. But in another homegrown production in 2012, the 5th tackled the issues of Oklahoma! head-on, and even added a few, so it’s hard to imagine them shying away from this one. (Previews begin tonight; opens Feb. 12; runs through March 1.) 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave. 625-1900, 5thavenue.org. $29 and up. 8 p.m.
GAVIN BORCHERT
Friday, Feb. 6
Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival
In its 10th edition, this year featuring 29 titles, the fest is opening with two separate screenings. First is a live-scored musical presentation (by the Texas synth-wave group Roladex) of John Carpenter’s 1981 dystopian satire Escape From New York (7 p.m. Uptown, $15-$20). Everyone knows the plot, as Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) breaks into prison (i.e., Manhattan) to rescue the same president who’s run our country into the ditch and oppressed the underclass, whose numbers certainly include Plissken and his criminal cohort. Payback is sweet, so long as you’re paid for it. Then there are the short films (midnight, Egyptian, $7–$12). Among them, I like Bo Mirosseni’s sci-fi comedy Time Travel Lover, in which a young couple’s potential hook-up is interrupted by an emissary from the future. That Future Matt (writer Elisha Yaffe) tries to convince Present Matt (Yaffe again) to keep it in his pants. Also, he warns of frustrated Hannah (Stephanie Hunt), “Listen, man, she is crazy!” Predictably, the Matts keep multiplying, with different messages from the future, as if every possible complication from a one-night stand should be played out in the time (11 minutes) needed for one quick shag. The Butterfly Effect does riffle its wings here, though Hannah turns out to be the decision-maker. The Matts are all talk, but it’s up to her to resolve things. (The shorts program will repeat, with different packages screening through Sunday.) Cinerama, SIFF Cinema Uptown & SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 324-9996. Passes: $65–$75. See siff.net for schedule.
BRIAN MILLER
The Babadook
How did this children’s book get into the house? Nobody seems to know. This one—it shares its title with the movie we are watching—is called The Babadook, almost an anagram for “bad book,” and that’s the effect it has on Amelia (Essie Davis) and her 6-year-old son Sam (Noah Wiseman). They’re especially vulnerable to its dark magic. Among other issues, the death of Sam’s father some years earlier is very much in the background of the scary little tale that unfolds. The Babadook himself is dark-suited and creepy-fingered, and he wears a cape and a Victorian hat, like a creature from an earlier era of horror—suggesting that what’s scary never really goes out of style. After a great deal of slow-burning buildup, the Babadook becomes real, and mother and son must wage battle (but then they have been all along). This is the debut feature of writer/director Jennifer Kent, who skillfully keeps us locked into the moment-by-moment thrills of a monster movie, but also insists that this Babadook is clearly a stand-in for the other problems that inflict the lonely household: grief, guilt, depression, an unwillingness to live life. The Babadook may be a monster, but he’s the monster Amelia and Sam needed. (Through Thurs.) Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935. $5–$9. See grandillusi
oncinema.org for showtimes.
ROBERT HORTON
Sunday, Feb. 8
Nick Hornby
If you’ve seen Wild, you’ll know that the English novelist Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity) has become an expert adapter of what once used to be called women’s stories. Perhaps appropriately then, his new Funny Girl (Riverhead, $29.75) follows a provincial beauty queen through her meteoric early success as a sitcom star of the mid-’60s. Swiftly renamed Sophie Straw, our plucky heroine is a bit like Georgy Girl: a single girl arrived in London at a time when single girls were suddenly presented with a whole new menu of freedoms. And more, Sophie becomes on TV an emblem for newly outspoken, emancipated single girls who are colliding with the old notions of class and gender roles. Yet she’s a careerist, happiest when working, and determined to succeed on the Beeb. I didn’t realize until reading the endnotes to Hornby’s happy, humorous novel how many real-life TV industry references and shows he’d interpolated into the plot. In a sense, Funny Girl is his imagining of the backstage intrigues and affairs of an imaginary sitcom during the era when he grew up, glued to the box. It is, like his prior novels, a warmly affirmative affair, with no villains or serious setbacks. And, Hollywood take note, it’ll offer a plum role to an actress who’d look great in vintage Carnaby Street fashions and knows how to sell a joke. Carey Mulligan had her turn in An Education (adapted by Hornby), so I’ll cast my vote for Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything). But who will play Terence Stamp for the Terence Stamp cameo? Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $35–$40. 7:30 p.m.
Davis in The Babadook.
Hornby has become a much-sought screenwriter.
