Sidewalk Cinema

We have a busy season this year of outdoor movies. Here is the list of confirmed sites and dates, plus there are more in the works. If you have any interest in an outdoor (or indoor) movie event, please contact us right away.

West Seattle
Movies on the Wall - 4400 California Ave. in the parking lot behind Hotwire Coffee

The 5th year of the very popular outdoor movies will return to West Seattle starting Saturday, July 12th. This year we’re ‘taking it to the streets’ by asking you to give suggestions on the films you would like to see this year. You’ll find ballot boxes around West Seattle or you can go to the West Seattle Blog here and vote online!

Saturday, July 12 (same weekend as Summer Fest in the WS Junction)
Saturday, July 19
Saturday, July 26
Saturday, August 2
Saturday, August 9
Saturday, August 16

Duvall
Movies in the Park - McCormik Park in Duvall

This is the second year for Sidewalk Cinema in beautiful McCormik Park. Expect three nights of fun movies and pre-show activities. Attendance last year was huge, so we will probably be in the larger field this year. For more information, check out the City of Duvall site.

Friday, August 15
Friday, August 22
Friday, August 29

Edmonds
Edmonds Outdoor Movie Nites - Frances Anderson Park

The line-up for the third-year of outdoor family movies have been set. With a large flat field and very active community support, this is our largest outdoor event with nearly 500 folks. Did I mention this is a FREE event - as are all Sidewalk Cinema presentations. For more information, visit the Edmonds website.

Friday, July 25 - Charlotte’s Web
Friday, August 1 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

Lynnwood
Sandlot Cinema - Lyndale Park

New this year to the Sidewalk Cinema series of events are the outdoor movies in Lynwood at Lyndale Park, ballfield #1. For more information, check out the details at the Lynwood Recreation site.

Friday, July 18
Friday, August 8

Tentative Events

Still putting together details on these events, so check back here for more information:

Maple Leaf Community Cinema
No date set, but  look for it sometime mid-week  probably in  August, or  sometime in September.

Wooden Boat Sea Film Festival
Seattle’s Center for Wooden Boats has their annual  Wooden Boat Festival over 4th of July Weekend. This is the only “float-in” movie around. Check back for details.

…so if you are interested in having an outdoor movie series, now is the time to get signed up. Dates are filling quickly, expecially for the prime Friday, Saturday nights. However, if you want to host a mid-week event on a Sunday-Thrusday night, we now have special rates. Call or email to find out more. 206-276-8001

Our Rainy Night Film Series continues this Wednesday Feb. 13th with a classic double-bill. All films presented in hi-defintion analog film, aka 16mm.

MURDER IS NEWS

1937, 55 min, BW
John Gallaudet, Iris Meredith, George McKay, Doris Lloyd, John Hamilton.
A great little whodunit. Radio columnist Jerry Tracy (Gallaudet) heads out to meet with a big industrialist who plans to break in on a clandestine meeting between his attorney and his wife. However, when he arrives, Tracy finds the body of the industrialist—murdered! He is then knocked cold. When he awakens, the body of the murdered man has vanished! What happened to the body and who is the killer? Tracy tries to find the answers. This is our own pick for the best poverty row mystery-crime film.

Filmed on-location in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

The Most Dangerous Game

1932, 63 min, BW
Drama

Irving Pichel - Director, Ernest B. Schoedsack - Director, Richard Connell - Writer (story), James Ashmore Creelman - Writer, Henry Gerrard¹ - Cinematographer, Max Steiner - Composer

The first of many official and unofficial screen versions of Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game was put together by producer Willis O’Brien and directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel in 1932. Leslie Banks stars as loony Russian count Zaroff, a renowned big-game hunter who tires of stalking animals and begins hunting down the “most dangerous game”-human beings. Luring unwary victims to his remote island, Zaroff wines and dines them, gives them a few hours’ head start to run into the jungle, then hunts them down with rifle and bow and arrow. As his grisly trophy room demonstrates, Zaroff hasn’t missed yet. Shipwreck survivors Joel McCrea and Fay Wray are Zaroff’s latest quarry. “First the hunt, then the revels!” declares Zaroff, casting a lecherous eye towards the wide-eyed Ms. Wray. The original Connell story had no heroine, but who wants to watch Joel McCrea lose most of his clothing while scurrying through the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on RKO’s standing King Kong sets during a lull in the production of that classic film, utilizing most of the Kong personnel (actors Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Noble Johnson, Steve Clemente and Dutch Hendrian; producer O’Brien; director Schoedsack; composer Max Steiner). While the plot has been reshaped and recycled many times since 1932, RKO’s only official remake of Most Dangerous Game was 1945’s A Game of Death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For more films in the series, please go to the Kenyon Hall Website.

We are on for the movie tonight of Edward Scissorhands. Bring an umbrella just in case, but it looks like the sprinkles will leave us alone. Movie will start about 8:30, with pre-show music by the band Pagysas around 7:30. See you there!

Tonight’s showing (Sat. Aug. 18, 2007) of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the West Seattle Movies on the Wall has been canceled due to rain. Check back for when it will be showing.

Next week we will be showing Edward Scissorhands. Plus pre-show music by Pegasus http://www.myspace.com/pagasys at 8pm, movie starts around 8:45

It is amazing for a town so far north and the sun setting so late, that outdoor movies have really started to take off out here. I like to believe that this site and the work we are doing with Sidewalk Cinema is contributing to the growth of outdoor movies especially in this area. So here is a list of all the outdoor movies I know about in the area. Over time I want to broaden this list out to the rest of the USA and world. But for now I’ll stick close to home.

Kirkland - Carrillon Point - http://www.carillon-point.com/home/movie.html

Sidewalk Cinema was featured in an article from the West Seattle Herald. All good news!

Sidewalk cinema, in fourth year, is ‘very West Seattle’
By Rebekah Schilperoort

Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Bring the family, order pizza - even set up a couch - at West Seattle’s outdoor cinema, now in its fourth year.

“It’s a neat little event,” said Lora Vickrey, who chairs the cinema committee for the West Seattle Junction Association. “It’s very West Seattle - eclectic and small town.”

Vickrey, owner of Hotwire Online Coffeehouse, has kept the free summer event going after one of its originators moved out of state a couple years ago. Jim Pierce started the outdoor movies here along with former West Seattle resident Philip Borgnes.

Pierce operated a dentistry next to where the movies are shown in the parking lot behind Hotwire. He and Borgnes, a video production editor and producer, saw what was, to them, an obvious cinematic opportunity on the big blank wall behind Hotwire.

“It was just an excuse to get the equipment and have fun with it,” said Borgnes.

But more importantly, he said, it’s a way to develop community and raise awareness for local nonprofits. Movie concessions sold by the West Seattle Christian Church benefit local charities like Helpline and WestSide Baby.

The event is made possible through Junction merchant sponsorship. Vickrey last year struggled to raise enough for five movies, which can cost up to $350 for studio licensing fees per public showing.

Some studios allow their movies to be shown outdoors, but some like Disney only allow it during certain times of the year, said Borgnes.

“We’re not trying to compete with the Admiral Theater or legitimate theaters,” he said. “It’s just a way to help build community and have some fun for a few weekends in the summer.”

This year, thanks to a revamped sponsorship process, there are six family-friendly films on the schedule, including “Chicken Run” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

A steadily growing following, especially among families, has made it one of the most popular summer events in the Junction, said Vickrey. Planned to coincide with Summer Fest, the Junction’s annual festival, it’s summer’s kickoff in the Junction, she said.

Last year, 120 to 280 people attended each film. It’s been so popular, an additional movie night was added this year.

People set up lounge chairs, spread out blankets for picnics and chat with neighbors. One group last year even brought a couch.

“It’s a completely low-key, community builder,” Vickrey said. “I know we’ll continue this next year. I hope to continue it for years and years.”

Some other Seattle neighborhoods like Fremont host outdoor movies, but finding events that are consistently family-friendly can be difficult, Borgnes said.

No R-rated movies are shown and each West Seattle film is prescreened, a lesson Borgnes learned the first night four years ago when he showed parts of a 1932 W.C. Fields short “The Dentist,” a slapstick comedy. He had to shut it off midway through because of inappropriate language.

“I learned my lesson quick that first night,” he said.

Borgnes has since taken his Sidewalk Cinema, dubbed “Seattle’s only portable movie theater,” to Edmonds with great success and now to Duvall for the first time this year. There, movies are projected onto inflatable screens.

The traveling theater also comes to the Central Cinema in Capitol Hill and West Seattle’s Kenyon Hall. Over at Kenyon Hall, Borgnes will show a collection of home movies he’s acquired from the 1930s to the 1950s to celebrate national Home Movie Day on Aug. 11.

“You get to see a glimpse of what people’s lives were like at that time,” he said.

Saturday evenings at dusk in the parking lot behind Hotwire:

July 21

“Chicken Run” (2000), 85 minutes rated G,

July 28

“Best in Show” (2000), rated PG-13, 90 minutes

August 4

“The Wizard of Oz” (1939), rated G, 101 minutes

August 11

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), rated PG, 115 minutes

August 18

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), rated PG, 91 minutes

August 25

‘Edward Scissorhands” (1990), rated PG-13 105 minutes

For more information about Sidewalk Cinema visit http://www.sidewalkcinema.com or call Hotwire Online Coffeehouse at 935-1510.

Time to break out your old family films and share them at Seattle’s Home Movie Day on Saturday August 11. Home Movie Day is a national - international - movement to preserve and promote home movies. You know the ones - the tiny reels of 8mm film that are wilting in your grandfathers attic. Do your self and your childrens by rescuing those forgotten pieces of your past and take another look at them. Film unlike many more modern formats can’t be erased like a VHS tape, or start to pit like DVDs. Even if the film becomes broken, or scratched it can still be repaired and projected - well not the scratches. Try to play a DVD with some scratches and you may be totally out of luck. Film is still the best archival medium there is with over 100 years of proof. In fact projecting a 16mm Kodachrome home movie from the 1950s can be an absolutely wonderful experience - the original High Definition format.

We are in the process of organizing the event, but save the date and bring a reel to share. I’ll post more information here, or jump over to the Seatte HMD site. Also check out the main organization site at http://www.homemovieday.com/.

Well you missed it…. unless you were there. As part of our monthly 16mm series at Central Cinema, we showed these rarely seen “B” movies from Sidewalk Cinema’s film vault, Sky Liner and Port of Hell. Both of which are evidence of how poor acting and cheesy music were not invented in the 1980s.

PS: A shoutout to our friends at Seattlest for this nice post. Hope you enjoyed the movies.

Next month we will be saddling up the horses for the first movie produced by that western icon John Wayne, Angel and the Bad Man (1947).

Do you think there might be a love interest in here someplace? Add in some sagebrush, dust and denim and you have the makings of another fine B movie. In addition to the movie we will be showing some fine western shorts only available on 16mm. So make a date now for August 6, 2007 and we’ll see you at the Central for some glorious Analog Hi-Def movies!

What is better than a Drive-in? A Float-in of course! As part of our Sea Film Fest, Sidewalk Cinema will for the 3rd year show a classic nautical feature and selected shorts outside at the 2007 Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival at the Center for Woodenboats at the south end of Lake Union (http://www.cwb.org/BoatFest2007.htm) on Saturday June 30, 2007.
This Oscar-nominated feature is presented in glorious Analog High Definition (aka 16mm).

Captian Kidd - 1945
Charles Laughton, Randalph Scott, Barbara Britton, John Carradine

Roaring Seas ! Flaming Hearts ! Riotous Adventure !

In this unhistorical account, Capt. William Kidd is already a clever, ruthless pirate when, in 1699, he tricks the king into commissioning him as escort for a treasure ship from India. He enlists a crew of pardoned cutthroats…and Orange Povey, whom Kidd once abandoned on a reef and hoped never to see again. Of course, Kidd’s intentions are treacherous. But there’s more to gunner Adam Mercy than meets the eye.
Summary written by Rod Crawford {puffinus@u.washington.edu}

Additional shorts not available on DVD will be shown too. There will even be some clips from previous Wooden Boat Festivals. Movies start at dusk - around 9pm, Nautical sing-along at 8pm.