August in Los Angeles is hotter than ... well, it's hot there, and who wants to be hanging outdoors getting all sweaty and sticky? Not me, and probably not you, either, my fellow cinema fans. But no worries, American Cinematheque has you covered: August 2-26, they'll be running the 7th Annual Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction! That's right, kids -- the whole steamy month of August you can be inside a nice, cool movie theater, chilling out with all the werewolves, vampires and freaky mad scientists your geeky little hearts desire. Here's all the scoop:

From August 2-26 at The Egyptian, and August 9-12 at The Aero, you'll be able to check out all kinds of scary stuff, including rarely seen films not even available on DVD. The fest will feature tributes to the work of late author Kurt Vonnegut and director Curtis Harrington (who both passed away earlier this year), with Memorial Tribute screenings. Vonnegut fans will get a real treat -- a double feature of adaptations of his works Slaughterhouse-Five, directed by George Roy Hill, and Happy Birthday, Wanda Jane, directed by Mark Robson. Harrington's 1967 film Games, which stars James Caan, will screen as well.

The official Cinematical presence at the 2006 Fantastic Fest was the wonderful Jette Kernion, and I think she managed to bang out about eight reviews ... while the fest was still running! I saw JK everywhere, from the queues to the parties to the local barbecue pits. Frankly I think her coverage rocked the house, and I'm not just saying that because she let me butt in line with her for The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell.

But since the FF guys were cool enough to welcome Cinematical with such eerily open arms, I figure it's only right to share my favorite movies, moments and memories of mayhem from the 2006 FantFest. And so I shall.

The Best Flicks

Simon Rumley's seriously disturbing The Living and the Dead, the Swedish vampire flick Frostbite, Adam Green's fun-time slasher throwback Hatchet, William Friedkin's compellingly intense Bug and the quietly cool haunted Brit flick Lie Still. I also had an unexpectedly good time with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto -- and although I'd already seen Abominable, The Host, The Fountain, Pan's Labyrinth and Severance, they're all films I have no problem recommending. Oh, and William H. Macy's performance in Edmond ... wow.

I also trekked away from the festival to enjoy a good portion of Feast -- which was negated by my plane ride home. Lindsay Lohan's Just My Luck was the in-flight movie, and that flick packs perhaps the worst screenplay I've dealt with in three years. Stunningly bad.

Oh, and right before I nodded off every night, I watched just a little bit more of The Office: Season 2. If you don't watch this show, you're plain old robbing yourself of multiple peals of bulky laughter. And why would you want to do that?

I suppose it's indicative of just how much of a total dork I am that I've been waiting patiently anxiously for well over a month for today's announcement of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) lineup. Even more pathetic: I must confess that, every day this week, I've visited the SIFF website, on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, they'd be ahead of the curve and sneak it up early. Now that the blessed day has come, I've spent the better part of an hour perusing every inch of the festival lineup with the kind of love and attention I usually reserve for eyeing the menu at my fave Indian restaurant. I've been making lists of  "must sees" and "wanna sees" -- films I missed during the craziness of Sundance, films I've heard about and not caught yet, even a few I hadn't heard of yet. It's always dicey culling down a list of films the size of the SIFF lineup into an amount that can be reasonably digested over a three-week period, but hey, that's all part of the fun! Here are seven films (from my initial list of 60+ gotta-see-'em films) I'm all hopped up about catching during SIFF.