Take a trip around the world

It’s just past 8 on Saturday night, the rain is falling and I’m getting wet.

Funny what you have to go through to see foreign-language movies.

If I were in Spokane, I’d have my choice between an oiled-up Vin Diesel, a bespectacled young sorcerer named Harry and a fat orange cat named Garfield.

But I’m not in Spokane. I’m in Seattle, standing on the street in front of the Cinerama Theatre. And it’s raining.

It’s falling only in random drops here and there, though, and the people in line with me don’t seem all that concerned.

Most of them don’t have umbrellas. And a couple of 20-something guys standing near me aren’t even wearing jackets. They’re standing there in jeans and T-shirts, their hands jammed deep in their front pockets, as if it were sunny and 87 instead of overcast and 57.

Who said kids these days aren’t tough?

This is the final weekend of the 2004 Seattle International Film Festival, and I’ve managed to travel halfway around the world without going any farther than the quarter-mile from my downtown motel.

(Let’s ignore the 280-odd miles I drove to get here.)

My small efforts have allowed me to visit Cuba and Korea, Argentina and Thailand, Spain and Mexico, and I’m about to tour an animated Japan.

I’ve watched poor women fight political and sexual repression in today’s Havana, homicide detectives drive themselves crazy trying to solve serial killings outside of Seoul and a seemingly timid Japanese librarian fall for a Bangkok streetwalker.

I’ve watched a 15-year-old girl in Buenos Aires discover that her life has been a lie, high-country Spanish sheep herders fight both the government and each other, and a trio of thieves bumble their way through the streets of Mexico City as their get-rich-quick scheme slowly and completely implodes.

And just as soon as the doors open, I’ll watch a couple of Japanese detectives investigate why individual models from a new series of high-tech robots have begun murdering their owners.

I’m tired just thinking about it. Plus I’ve been standing here for nearly an hour. And did I say that it was raining?

Seattle is a city filled with beautiful sights, museums to visit, a baseball team of sorts to watch, bookstores in which to buy pretty much every kind of book known to publishing, waterfronts to walk along and more decent restaurants than California has types of nouveau cuisine.

Yet every mid-May or so, it’s not uncommon to see residents of, not to mention visitors to, the self-styled Emerald City spend pretty much every free minute of nearly a month watching movies.

I talked to one woman who, heading into today’s next-to-last (and 24th) day, was chagrined because she’d been able to see only about 50 movies.

“Have to make some time to go to work,” she said.

When I replied that 50 movies was a lot, she looked around, as if someone were listening and, in a stage whisper said, “A lot of these people see more than 100 movies.”

I nodded. The most I’ve ever been able to see is about 60 movies, and that’s after having stayed in Seattle for most of the Memorial Day weekend (Thursday through Monday evening) and then coming back for the next three weekends.

On one of those weekends I saw six movies two days in a row. Afterward, I had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Looking around at people on the street, I thought someone should have hired a new casting director.

And I don’t care what people tell me, I still say that the young woman making espresso at the Capitol Hill Starbucks really was Kate Winslet.

This time, though, I didn’t have as much free time. Getting in only seven movies on the festival’s final weekend has been the best I could do. Yet it’s been enough to give me at least a feel of what SIFF 2004 had to offer.

And as I say, it’s given me a trip around the world.

Tomorrow I drive home. I’ll put an audiobook book in my CD player and let Josh Hamilton read “The Rule of Four” to me as I speed east along I-90.

I may even top the weekend off by – what else? – seeing a movie. Given the choices, I’ll probably go watch Vin pose and mumble his lines.

This much I can say: At least I won’t have to stand in the rain to see him.