​Most movies and TV shows end with a disclaimer informing viewers that the story is fictitious and "any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." But Gig Harbor's Michael Bertsch is convinced that the similarities between his life, Donnie Darko, The X-Files, and Burn Notice are more than just coincidences, and he has filed a lawsuit demanding a whopping $100 billion from Fox and Rupert Murdoch.

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​In October, a mysterious Asian-American actress filed a $1 million lawsuit against Amazon for disclosing details about her real name and age on the Internet Movie Database. Court documents once identified her only as Jane Doe, but she outed herself Friday, and it turns out she might been better off suing her agent for the roles she has been getting in movies like Gingerbread Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.

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​Forget to turn your cell phone off during a movie and you're likely to get popcorn thrown at you. Forget to turn off your cell phone during a Ben Stiller movie and I WILL CHOKE YOU.

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​Standing outside the ticket booth, flanked by balloons, Mayor Mike McGinn was one of the demi-celebrities attending SIFF's gala reopening of the Uptown last night. SIFF even rented klieg lights to celebrate the occasion, though renovations aren't yet complete on the renamed SIFF Cinema at the Uptown. In fact, a construction crane loomed above our mayor, as workers were still fussing with the conspicuously blank marquee. McGinn looked a little nervous, as if a wrench might be dropped on his noggin. Inside, before the inaugural screening, technical issues continued to dog him . . .

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​Here's a mystery for you film buffs out there: There's an Asian-American actress who lives in Texas, is around 40 years old but perhaps doesn't look it, and doesn't use her real name or age. In fact, this actress' ability to get work might be adversely affected if someone were to know her real name and age.

So: Who is she?

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​With much humility and promises that "I won't make a dime off it," Camano Island's own Colton Harris-Moore, aka the Barefoot Bandit, accepted a movie deal for $1.3 million.

Didn't he hear that Casey Anthony got offered that much for just an interview and half that for taking her clothes off?

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​Visiting town during the first week of SIFF with Beginners, which opens today at the Harvard Exit, writer/director Mike Mills and his star, Ewan McGregor, tried to assess how the institution of marriage has changed from the World War II generation to today. Once upon a time, as it was for Mills' parents, you got married young and you stayed married! Until, as incorporated into the plot of Beginners, his newly widowed father shrugged off the old marital template after 50 years and declared himself gay.

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​Not to be confused with the Jesse Eisenberg-as-Hasidic-Jewish-drug-dealer Holy Rollers from SIFF last year (though both involve conflicts of faith), this world-premiere documentary has strong Seattle connections. Two local churchgoing dudes, Ben Crawford and Colin Jones, now the film's co-producers, decide to start a blackjack card-counting crew. Since one of the biggest risks to the all-cash racket--apart from getting booted from casinos, a regular occurrence--is theft, they build their squad entirely out of fellow young evangelicals. Who better to trust, right, than fellow bros in Christ?

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​When will the Spanish Civil War end? World War II, we'll grant you a few more years and movies. But Franco and fascism? Basta! A memory piece, this romantic triangle alternates between the aged perspective of Jacobo, a piano tuner long married to Helena, during 1939 and what appears to be the '80s. Their happy household, it seems, is built on a foundation of lies. As in modern Spain itself, there are dark secrets in the basement: illicit bargains and secret arrangements. Something has been repressed; and something keeps Jacobo's pianos out of tune.

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​With more faces than story to recommend about it, this Queens-set indie ends--and this is no spoiler at all--with Jackson Browne's famous '70s FM ballad "The Load-Out." Because if you're going to make a drama about a 40-something roadie who's squandered his youth lugging amps for Blue Oyster Cult, there's really only one way to end it. The roadie (TV mug Ron Eldard) returns home under false pretenses, unwilling to admit to his aged widow of a mother (the great Lois Smith) that he's a complete and utter failure.

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