Seattle Screens for the week of March 4

The View from Parallax is taking a break this week but we’ve got your screening highlights right here.

Seattle Screens

The documentary series “Art of the Underdog,” playing at NWFF through the month of March, puts unchampioned arts and little-known and forgotten artists in the spotlight. The series opens on Sunday, March 6 with Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story (2015), a portrait of storyboard artist Harold Michelson and film researcher Lillian Michelson, and Love Between the Covers (2015), which investigates the hugely-popular but much maligned literary genre of romance fiction. The complete schedule is at the NWFF website and series tickets are available.

The Wim Wenders retrospective “Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road” this week presents Alice in the Cities (1974) at SIFF Film Center (Wednesday, March 9) and The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971) at NWFF (Thursday, March 10).

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Arabian Nights (1974) screens on Thursday, March 10 at Seattle Art Museum in a 35mm print as part of the “Magnifico! Cinema Italian Style” series. Tickets can be purchased online or at the door on a first come, first served basis. More here.

The Issiquah International Film Festival, produced by SIFF and presented at Cinebarre Issaquah, presents six programs over two days on March 5 and March 6. Screenings are free but you have to RSVP for tickets (limited two per person). Schedule, showtimes and tickets here.

Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday (1991), an animated feature from Japan’s Studio Ghibli, makes its belated American theatrical debut in a newly-English dubbed edition. At SIFF Uptown. More here.

It’s not too early to put “Framing Pictures” on your calendar. The monthly film discussion convenes in the screening room at Scarecrow Video on Friday, March 11, with your hosts Robert Horton, Richard T. Jameson, and Kathleen Murphy. Check in at the Facebook page for updates.

Visit the film review pages at The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger for more releases.

View complete screening schedules through IMDb, MSN, Yahoo, or Fandango, pick the interface of your choice.

Obituary

George Kennedy, who won an Academy Award for his supporting performance as a chain-gang boos in Cool Hand Luke (1967), was an iconic tough guy in the movies. Beginning his career as a technical advisor on the TV series The Phil Silvers Show, he was later cast in a recurring role on the show and went on appear in numerous TV shows (especially westerns) while he broke into the movies with roles in Lonely Are the Brave (1962) and Charade (1963) raising his profile. He went on to memorable roles in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Airport (1970), and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), took a lead in Airport 75 (1974) and the short-lived TV series The Blue Knight (1975-1976), played President Warren G. Harding in the mini-series Backstage at the White House (1979), and played against his image in the comedy The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) and its two sequels. His career spanned nearly 60 years and he made his last big screen appearance in the 2014 remake of The Gambler (2014). He passed away at age 91. Robert G. McFadden at The New York Times.

Screenwriter Alice Arlen earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing Silkwood (1983), her first screenplay, with Nora Ephron. A former journalist and author, she went back to school to study film at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Louis Malle’s Alamo Bay (1985), Cookie (1989), again with Nora Ephron, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water (2000), and Helen Hunt’s Then She Found Me (2007), and was an associate producer on A Shock to the System (1990). She died at age 75. Robert G. McFadden at The New York Times.

The weekly links page is compiled and curated by Bruce Reid, with obituaries and Seattle Screens curated by Sean Axmaker, and other contributions from friends of Parallax View.