Art by Zee

Portland native Matt McCormick’s debut feature film, Some Days Are Better Than Others, makes its Seattle premiere on Friday, April 15 at NW Film Forum. Starring Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney) and James Mercer (The Shins, Broken Bells), Some Days Are Better Than Others is “a sad valentine to the forgotten discards of a throwaway society, and a story about knowing when to hold on, and when to let go.”

McCormick will be in attendance Friday night with his film and with actor Renee Roman Nose; the movie screens continues through April 21.

SIFF Cinema honors the enduring legacy of one of the best known and most loved icons in film history with a selection of the films of Charlie Chaplin screening April 15 – 21.

At one time considered the most famous man in the world, Chaplin continues to be a star even long after his death. His films were funny, fearless, and inventive, always well crafted and filled with life. Chaplin was a master storyteller and a hilarious comedian with a sophisticated taste in humor that still left room for some slapstick hijinks.

The series begins Friday night, April 15 at 7:30 pm with a presentation of City Lights, a nearly silent (it has music and sound effects) film in which Chaplin’s famed character, The Tramp, serves time as a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire, all for the sake of getting money to restore sight to the blind flower girl he adores.

Saturday afternoon catch a double feature of The Gold Rush at 2:00 pm and The Kid at 4:00 pm. Saturday evening see Chaplin skewer fascism in the sensitive comedy The Dictator at 7:30 pm.

Sunday’s double feature pairs a series of shorts with The Circus. Modern Times screen at 6:30.

The series continues on Monday with Limelight, on Tuesday with A King in New York, on Wednesday with Monsieur Verdoux (described by Chaplin himself as: “the cleverest, most brilliant film of my career”), and concludes Thursday with a drama directed by Chaplin and starring Edna Purviance and Adolphe Menjou, A Woman of Paris.

Ah, Coachella. Three days of music and other arts in the company of a hot, sweaty, jam-packed crowd with a blazing sun beating down on you all day long…who would want to miss out on that experience?

In all seriousness, despite the inconveniences that a desert festival presents, Coachella is popular because the organizers always manage to put together an amazing collection of performers. This year’s lineup includes more acts that you could a dozen fists at, with headliners like Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Kanye West, and the Strokes, and a whole heaping ton of other performers, from Duran Duran to the Black Keys, Cee Lo Green, Broken Social Scene, Gogol Bordello, The Aquabats…and the list just goes on and on.

There’s good reason to be sorry you’re not able to make it, but don’t worry. Just because you can’t be there doesn’t mean you have to miss out. Moe Bar, right next to Neumo’s, will be screening all three days (April 15, 16, and 17) of the festival on two flat screens and a large drop projection screen at the back of the bar. The stream should start around 5 pm on Friday and not only is Moe kicking it all off with their usual Happy Hour specials of $3 wells and microdrafts, $2 domestics, there is absolutely no cover charge for the streaming event. When you get hungry, be sure to slip over to the Pike St. Fish Fry.

King’s Books in Tacoma celebrates their seventh annual Wayzgoose on Sunday, April 17 from 11 am to 4 pm and if you’re at all interested in letterpress and books arts you won’t want to miss it.

At the festival you’ll get to meet local printers and view their wares, print your own keepsake, make paper and paper creations, create letter magnetic poetry, and experience the thrill of steamroller printing. Bring a t-shirt or other fabric to screenprint on and students from the University of Puget Sound will print one of three designs on it for you.

Artists on hand include: Springtide Press, Beautiful Angle, Notta Pixie Press, ilfant press, L’Arche Tahoma Hope Farm & Gardens, Seattle Center for Book Arts, Anagram Press, and many, many more.

King’s Books is located in Tacoma’s Stadium District at 218 St. Helens Ave.

The fourth annual Seattle Chocolate Luxury Salon celebrates the best chocolates of the Northwest on Saturday, May 14.

Always a popular event for fans of fine confections, the show is currently at least 80 percent sold out. Tickets will not be available at the door and must be ordered in advance. If you love chocolate you don’t want miss this show – get your tickets online now before they’re gone.

This year’s salon will feature chef and author talks, demonstrations, and a keynote speech by Karen Brown, the Seattle-based Frantic Foodie, who will be talking about her upcoming new book, Food Lovers’ Guide to Seattle.

And, of course, the highlight of the show is tasting of fine chocolates from participants like mano Artisan Chocolate, Theo Chocolate, Forte Chocolates, Intrigue Chocolates, Posh Chocolat, Chocolopolis, Carters Chocolates, Divine Chocolate, La Chatelaine Chocolat Co., Jade Chocolates, Alter Eco Fair Trade Chocolate, Sweet Decadence, The Madison Chocolatiers West, Redrim Chocolates, Taza Chocolate, Dove Chocolate Discoveries, George Paul Chocolates, Kathryn Taylor Chocolates, Eat Chocolates, Goat Milk Candy Company, See’s Candies, Suess Chocolates, Missionary Chocolates, Quady Winery, Van Gogh Dutch Chocolate Vodka and Van Gogh Amsterdam Chocolate Liqueur.

Matt Shimkus as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a photo by Erik Stuhaug

Where is the line between undesirable and unacceptable? What do you do when that line is crossed? For Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer these questions stop being intellectual abstractions in Germany in 1933 as the Nazi party takes power and he must face head on issues of morality, political allegiance, and religious conviction in , onstage at Taproot Theatre through April 23.

Douglas Anderson’s play tells the true story of Bonhoeffer, not only a church pastor, but also a member of the Abwehr, the German Military Intelligence in Nazi Germany. Officially a defense organization, members of the Abwehr secretly organized to oppose the Nazi party and attack Hitler from within, both by working to counter his political initiatives and by plotting his destruction. Bonhoeffer’s position allowed him to gather knowledge within Germany and travel abroad to share information about the resistance to foreign sympathizers.

The play begins with the intelligent, articulate pastor devoted to an intellectual study of spirituality returning from a trip to the United States where he has been awakened to the suffering in social injustice and has fallen in love with African-American spirituals. This experience has filled him with a passion to make the church serve the needs of its people, a passion that drives his resistance to Hitler’s rise to power.

Two days after Hitler is elected Chancellor, Bonhoeffer gives a radio address attacking the Führer, only to be cut off while still speaking. Bonhoeffer speaks against persecution of the Jewish population and lobbies for non-Nazi officials in the church elections forced by Hitler. Bonhoeffer then becomes forced to rebel against his own church leadership who have accepted Hitler’s rule, something he cannot tolerate. Recruited into the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer gathers and shares resistance intelligence and joins in several plots to assassinate Hitler.

Bonhoeffer feels Germany’s despair on a personal level – his friends and colleague are arrested, he himself is declared an enemy of the state, and his beloved sister, married to a Jewish man, must flee with her husband to an uncertain future beyond Germany’s borders. No matter his pain, he remains steadfast to his cause; when he is finally imprisoned he continues his resistance, assisted as much as they are able by his family and his fiancee. While imprisoned, Bonhoeffer provides services for the other prisoners and is so well-liked that even the guards argue over the privilege of cleaning his cell.

Actor Matt Shimkus plays Bonhoeffer as the vital man that he was. His passion for following the path of righteousness is palpable, but he never comes off as one-dimensional hero. Even in the midst of such darkness there are still moment of light and sweetness, even some humor, and Shimkus and the rest of the well-selected cast (Don Brady, Gerald Browning, Robert Gallaher, Nathan Jeffrey, Rob Martin, Kim Morris, Simon Pringle and Sarah Ware) play these moments with humanity and respect.

Taproot’s productions are consistently well-staged, but The Beams Are Creaking is extraordinary – a fascinating story performed without flaw from start to finish. Everything about the show is superb. The story is thrilling, the performances are brilliant, and the set, lighting, and sound design are expertly applied. Director Karen Lund and her cast and crew have created a play this is not to be missed. The Beams Are Creaking is simply one of the best plays to be staged in the Northwest in recent years.

The Beams Are Creaking continues at Taproot through April 23; in response to the enthusiastic reception this play is getting, the theatre has added an additional performance on Tuesday, April 19. Don’t hesitate – get tickets now by calling the box office at 206.781.9707 or by visiting the box office online.

Silent Movie Mondays return to Seattle’s Paramount Theatre tonight with a celebration of New York City during the Silent Era. Four classic films provide excitement, enterainment, and a flashback look at what it meant to be one of the largest cities in the world nearly a century ago. Once again Jim Riggs is behind the mighty Wurlitzer organ, lending a live soundtrack that transforms the film experience to magic.

April 4 – It

Clarence G. Badger, USA, 1927, 72 min.

The 1927 masterpiece, It, stars Clara Bow as Betty Lou Spence, a poor sales girl at a large department store. In this straight-forward Cinderella-esk story, Betty sets her sights on winning the love of the rich owner’s son, Cyrus Walthm Jr. (Antonio Moreno). Her smoldering glances grab the attention of Cyrus and she convinces him to take her on a date. Betty introduces him to the proletarian pleasures of life, taking him to early day Coney Island for rollercoasters, hot dogs and a grand old time. Then, drama strikes with lies, assumptions, wedding proposals and near-death-experiences. Will love conquer early New York social class barriers, or will both leave heartbroken?

This spring’s silent film series, I Love New York, is accompanied by live music from the historic Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, one of the last three remaining organs of its kind to reside in its original environment, played by critically acclaimed organist Jim Riggs.

Other films in the series include:

April 11 – Speedy

Harold Lloyd, USA, 1928, 86 min.

Speedy was both Harold Lloyd’s last silent film as well as his only film to get an Oscar nomination. A fine example of why Lloyd was even more popular than Chaplain or Keaton at the end of the silent era. This fast paced dramatic comedy explores the theme of modernization, pitting the last horse drawn trolley in the city against the evil forces of the transit monopoly. Filmed on location in New York, the film features the most extensive shots of Manhattan of its time. Many of the historically interesting sites include Coney Island’s Luna Park, Columbus Circle and Wall Street. Baseball legend Babe Ruth has a cameo role as a very harassed fare when Speedy is working as a cabbie. Their wild ride ends at the old Yankee Stadium, and the film captures one of the Bambino’s record-setting 60 home runs from the 1927 campaign.

April 18 – The Crowd

King Vidor, USA, 1928, 100 min.

This realistic, bittersweet drama of the day-to-day existence of an ordinary American is as relevant today as it was in 1928, just before the great stock market crash. In director King Vidor’s Academy Award nominated timeless silent masterpiece we see James Murray, an everyman white-collar worker, trying to make it with his wife in the big city of New York. Here Murray copes with cramped living conditions, a boring job, and a limited life of regret. Released on the eve of the Great Depression, Vidor’s sharp social commentary raises questions about both the dominance of industrialization and the rise of the modern metropolis. Although strongly influenced by the German Expressionist works of Murnau and Lang, The Crowd is notable for its extensive location shooting in New York City and its naturalistic visual style, both of which produce a vivid portrait of the city and its social stratification.

April 25 – The Cameraman

Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, USA, 1928, 67 Min.

The first film he made after moving to MGM, The Cameraman is arguably Buster Keaton’s last truly great work before the studio system stifled him. Here “The Great Stone Face” is cast as an aspiring, but lousy, newsreel cameraman in quest of the perfect shot, and, of course, the requisite pretty but oblivious Keaton ingénue. Buster keeps missing the great shot, but we never do – the Tong War, the Yankee Stadium solitary baseball routine, the Coney Island sequence – these are all vintage Keaton and vintage New York.

Billy Elliot playing here in Seattle through April 3 at Seattle’s historic Paramount Theatre won 10 Tony Awards in 2009 and was called “The best show you will ever see” by the New York Post and there’s definitely a lot about the show to admire.

Adapted for the stage from the film of the same name, Billy Elliot tells the story of its title character, Billy, a young boy beaten down by life. His mother’s dead, his grandma’s dotty, and his coal-mining father and brother barely notice he’s alive unless he’s done something wrong. When Billy gives up on the boxing classes he never liked anyway to take up dancing instead that’s most indeed something wrong in their eyes. Even Billy isn’t sure how he feels about his newly discovered talent for dance until his dance teacher both recognizes the spark in him and kindles it, in the process restoring her own passion for the art. As this transformation within takes place, the world around Billy and his friends and family transforms, too, as the miner’s strike lengthens and becomes more brutal.

It’s an interesting, unusual story with a great theme at its heart – believe in yourself and you can do anything – but it’s also a long and complicated story and there may be nuances not understood by audience members who don’t know the film or the history of the English miner’s strike. The length of the play is an issue as well – its running time feels unnecessarily long and particularly near the end, time seems to crawl to a drip when it should be flying by.

That being said, the show has a number of strengths. Billy (performed by a rotating cast of young actors: Giuseppe Bausilio, Kylend Hetherington, Lex Ishimoto and Daniel Russell) is completely credible, from the uninspired kid who knows only that he doesn’t like boxing class to the budding artist who knows only how dancing makes him feel whole. Careful choreography wisely avoids the “instant genius” schtick of so many similar stories – Billy’s got natural talent but like any real dancer, he was to work hard at it. Billy’s closest friend, Michael, is another charmer – a young crossdresser who finds it only natural to wear his sister’s clothes but initially finds Billy’s dancing rather suspect. Their friendship is sweet and leads to one of the show’s best dance routines.

The cast as a whole is very good. Faith Prince’s performance as Billy’s dance instructor, Mrs. Wilkinson, shows exactly how she earned her Tony, with a dazzling performance that feels real. Patti Perkins keeps the not-quite-there Grandma of Billy funny without turning her into a parody.

While the show could probably use some trimming to keep it from fraying at the ends, it does remain an inspiring, emotionally honest tale with breathtaking dancing, excellent songs by Elton John, and a hero you’ll be glad to be rooting for.

The National Film Festival for Talented Youth, NFFTY (pronounced “Nifty”, because it is) is the largest and most influential festival for young filmmakers out there today. Young filmmakers from all over the world submit feature-length and short films in narrative, documentary, animation, music video, experimental, and international categories in order to share their world view and learn from one another. NFFTY helps filmmakers aged 22 and younger come together with their global peers and gives them a special opportunity find their own voice.

NFFTY also gives audiences of all ages the opportunity to see great film from artists who are shaping the future today. The movies they are create are thoughtful, fun, silly, serious, scary, provocative, challenging, creative…just like the films made by more experienced filmmakers but with the special resonance that youth and discovery bring.

The festival runs in Seattle from April 28 – to May 1; schedule is available on the NFFTY website.

Speaking of the environment, the Seattle Parks Department has partnered with the Neighborhoods Department and the Healthy Parks, Healthy People, Healthy Planet project to present the very first HP3 challenge.

The HP3 Challenge bills itself as “the first and only environmental adventure race of its kind”. Competitors will climb, pull, sprint and pedal their way through 5 vigorous Challenge Sites across a 16-mile course through and around West Seattle’s Delridge neighborhood. In the Elite Division, two-people teams will participate in events like pushing a wheelbarrow full of gravel .5 miles up the Soundway trail, carrying two buckets of gravel .5 miles at Camp Long, and planting native trees in Westcrest Park. In the easier (but not that much) Open Division, four people will split similar duties.

This is not a race for the faint of heart or weak of body; you’ve got to already be pretty tough to compete. But if you’re looking for a serious challenge that will push you to limits while you help preserve, protect, and improve Seattle’s environment, register for the race online and start getting ready now.