PBS painting shows like the ones starring Bob "Happy Little Clouds" Ross and William "Fire in the Crimson!" Alexander are often discounted by serious artists. But what if, say, someone like Picasso hosted one of these shows? That's almost exactly what you get in Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1956 film The Mystery of Picasso, playing on Friday, August 13, at the Seattle Art Museum. The pattern is the same: The artist begins a painting, it looks like he screws it up so badly that it can't be fixed, and then he fixes it. Fascinating.
Michael Crichton has long had a fascination with high-tech amusement parks. Way before he wrote Jurassic Park, he wrote and directed Westworld (which is playing late nights at the Grand Illusion on Friday and Saturday). In it, people pay to live out their fantasies by interacting with robots in Medieval World, Roman World, and Westworld. Yul Brynner plays the robot gunslinger that tires of getting killed day in and day out, so he leads a robot rebellion. Take that, I, Robot!
Speaking of science fiction, Cinema Seattle's Screenwriters Salon returns to the Hugo House on Wednesday, August 18, with a script reading of Aldo Velasco's Full Fathom Five. Velasco is better known around these parts as the cowriter of the stage plays The True History of Coca-Cola in Mexico and The Good News About Sweatshop Shoes. Full Fathom Five is described as an absurdist sci-fi comedy set 10 billion years from now in a spaceship that is an exact replica of Los Angeles during the turn of the 21st century, where the main conflict is between a lone hero and the corporate overlords. After the reading (or instead of it), you can head over to Linda's to catch some of the Classroom Classics, which promise a collection of wacky old educational films. The innocent and low-budget camp of these films will no doubt go well with a pitcher or two of beer.
And finally, there are more silent films playing in town this week, including Rudolph Valentino playing a Russian Cossack in The Eagle (Mon Aug 16) at the Paramount, and some early Felix the Cat cartoons (Wed Aug 18) at the Rendezvous.
