Dan Webster

As luck would have it, Seattle was full of sunshine and warm weather last weekend. But those movie fans attending the opening few days of the 21st International Film Festival didn't seem to care.

Imax review When you attend an IMAX feature, you expect at least a couple of things. The first is an awesome collection of images that comes off the giant screen with, at times, a dizzying intensity. The second, often enough, is a lecture. Now, astounding visuals are why we go to the IMAX. And many of the images included in the film "The Living Sea" (which opens today) are truly amazing.

Mel Gibson directs and stars in "Braveheart."

Iron John is coming to Spokane. Well, not the fabled character exactly. But the man who made him and his meaning famous, poet and men's activist Robert Bly, will be the featured facilitator of a three-day conference titled "Northwest Conference on Men and Their Relationships" to be held here Oct. 6-8.

Here's an opening line that should be required reading for anyone considering novel-writing as a trade: "To Owen Garrett's keen sheepherder's eyes, it appeared entirely likely that the woman in the blue shirt and red panties running back and forth between the water faucet and the two copulating dogs was the Californian." That just about says it all, doesn't it? Besides arousing images of a spectacularly ridiculous scene, it virtually begs you to read on. Which, of course, is the point.

This is a big weekend of video offerings. Look for an Oscarwinning performance by Diane Wiest, a riveting portrayal of humorist Dorothy Parker by Jennifer Jason Leigh, the mostly smooth comic pairing of Michael Keaton and Geena Davis along with the athletic posturings of Christopher Lambert and Jason Scott Lee and the thespian posturings of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.

Say what you want about the success of screenwriters who make millions, about poets who earn fame as performance artists or playwrights whose work gets interpreted both by Shakespearean actors and elementary-school drama clubs, the mark of modern literary success still remains the novel. And that's the club that Wellpinit native and current Seattle resident Sherman Alexie has finally entered. His novel "Reservation Blues" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 306 pages, $21) has finally reached bookstore shelves.

1. Mel Gibson and Sophie Marceau star in "Braveheart." 2. Below: Youki Kudoh and Tamlyn Tomito star in "Picture Bride." 3. (Page background is a photo of the Seattle cityline.)

The 21st Seattle International Film Festival Dates: Thursday, May 18, through Sunday, June 11.

There may be more to life than things that go bump in the night, but few of them are as entertaining as a story that just simply scares the chic out of you. The list of films that truly are scary is short and all too often revisited.

Jasen Emmons was desperate. As a student in a creative writing class taught by David Waggoner, the University of Washington graduate student was supposed to turn in a short story. But he couldn't think of an idea. "So I somehow came up with this piece about this kid who drops out of law school and has just returned home and he's got this antagonistic older brother who's a deputy sheriff," he said during a phone interview Tuesday from his Seattle office. "And then it sort of stopped. It was about 23 pages, and I turned it in because I had nothing else to turn in."

It's hard to think of another filmmaker whose career has varied as much as Alan Parker's. His latest effort, "The Road to Wellville", has as much in common with "Midnight Express" as Anthony Hopkins' bridgework does with that of the late Brad Davis. Commenting on Hopkins' bridgework isn't as strange as you might suspect, considering he wears an oral prosthesis throughout "Wellville" that makes him look a lot like Bugs Bunny.

1. James Thayer's newest book, "White Star." 2. Author James Thayer.

1. Kevin Costner stars in "Waterworld," one of the season's most talked about sci-fi films. Dennis Hopper and Jean Tripplehorn also star in the movie. 2. Kevin Bacon, Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton star in "Apollo 13." 3. Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis star in "Die Hard With a Vengeance."

Jack Nisbet, who tracked early explorer David Thompson across the Northwest, has been honored as a writer by the state of Idaho. Nisbet's non-fiction book, "Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America" (Sasquatch Press), was selected as the 1995 Idaho Book of the Year. Two other books won honorable mention. They were "Come, Blackrobe: De Smet and the Indian Tragedy" by John Killoren and "Snake: The Plain and Its People" by Todd Shallat.

Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock star

In 1759, the French writer Voltaire published a slim novel that lampooned a popular philosophy of his day. The philosophy was metaphysical optimism and the novel was "Candide."

Suspense makes you think.

A scene from "Grand Illusion"

Gong Li and Ge You star in "To Live."

In this era of self-sought segregation, in which racial, socioeconomic or gender groups seek to alienate themselves from mainstream culture, the notion of reconciliation seems more of a fantasy than a workable proposition. What do you expect when you have wives of former vice presidents touring the country to preach about the evils of multicultural education? We should recognize as fact that we are not the same, have never been the same and never will be the same. Still, that doesn't mean we can't get along as various subcultures under one roof. And gender reconciliation is a good start.

Most moviegoers attending the recent film "Don Juan De Marco" must have posed the question at least once: Who, in fact, was Don Juan? It's one of those kinds of questions that pops up nearly every day, if you listen for it. It comes up in conversation, in a movie, on a television show or, especially, in a book or magazine. In Don Juan's case, it concerns a literary figure and whether that figure has a basis in fact or fiction. But the question also can be broader. It can encompass a literary style, a specific novel, an author or favorite character, an era or school of thought.

'Blue Sky" is one of those films that begs to be taken seriously. Its director, the late Tony Richardson, was a major force in British film during the 1960s, winning an Oscar in 1963 for "Tom Jones." Its two major stars, Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones, have garnered three Oscars among them (one of those, Lange's Best Actress award, for this very film).

Northwest sports fans tend to love their Sonics. Whether you wear Husky blue or Cougar crimson during football season, or even if you root for John Stockton and his Utah Jazz, when it comes to pro basketball, the team of choice is usually Seattle. Of course, that very nearly changed last year when the Sonics swooned in the playoffs, losing to a Denver team led by a 7-foot-2 center from Zaire named Dikembe Motumbo.