Bayflicks.net

Documentary
Written by Bill Haney and Peter Rhodes
Directed by Bill Haney

Catch this film if you need another reason to feel guilty about eating sweets.
In fact, catch this film if you care about basic human decency. It’s one of the best documentaries of the year.
Billy Haney’s [...]

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Somehow I entirely missed the Global Lens series. It opens Thursday at St. John’s with the Indonesian family comedy Of Love and Egg, and runs at various locations–including the Balboa and the Roxie–through November 15. The Global Film Initiative attempts to build understanding between cultures by presenting films from developing countries to American audiences. I’m [...]

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This weekend the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum runs its three-day Niles International Film Festival. Actually, it would be more accurately titled the Niles European Film Festival, since the six features and seven shorts are all from that particular semi-continent. All films are silent, of course, with piano accompaniment. The George Melies short, “The Impossible [...]

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Documentary
Written and directed by Doris Dörrie
Cooking and Buddhism make a tasty combination in Doris Dörrie’s documentary. And in the world view of its subject, Edward Espe Brown–Zen master, gourmet chef, and author of The Tassajara Bread Book. The camera does little more than follow Brown as he gives cooking classes, discusses the [...]

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Period thriller
Written by James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang, from a story by Eileen Chang
Directed by Ang Lee

For an independent filmmaker, Ang Lee sure knows his basic commercial genres–knows them well enough to shake them up, spin them around, and turn them on their head. He’s turned the kung fu flick into romantic tragedy (Crouching Tiger, [...]

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Presenting my first weekly Recommendations & Warnings Report created without benefit of weekly schedules.
New rule: I will no longer list films in wide release–even art-house wide release. This list will only include calendar screenings (a day to a week in one theater) very limited releases playing in only a couple of [...]

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I just found this out:
Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater will screen An Inconvenient Truth all day today as a benefit for Draftgore.com. I’m not sure how I feel about the draft Gore campaign, but when a guy wins an Oscar, Emmy, and Noble Prize in the same year, he probably should win the Presidency, as [...]

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Valley of the Heart’s Delight

Historical Drama
Writer: John Miles Murphy
Director: Tim Boxell

There’s nothing worse than panning a locally-made independent film about a fascinating but little remembered piece of Bay Area history–especially when that film is struggling to get national distribution. And it doesn’t make it any easier when the film looks beautiful, which is [...]

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It’s official. I’ve altered a few settings and Bayflicks.net is just a blog. I’ve removed links to the weekly schedules, and added links and categories. Most of my entries are uncategorized, but not the new ones.
In the meantime, there’s a lot of festivals on the way. Here are five of them:
The [...]

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I’m making changes to the site today. So if things look and act weird, please be patient.

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