Bayflicks.net

Action Comedy

Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
Directed by Peter Segal

I approach films based on old TV shows with suspicion, but the comic potential of Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart lowered my guard. But while Get Smart has its charms, it doesn’t fulfill that potential by a long shot.
Carell wisely doesn’t attempt to imitate [...]

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The July/August Pacific Film Archive schedule arrived in yesterday’s mail. It makes me want to move permanently into that theater.
They’re running five series this summer, honoring a director, a cinematographer, a novelist, a studio, and an aspect ratio.
The studio is United Artists, receiving its yet another 90th anniversary retrospective. But unlike the UA series at [...]

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It’s been quite a week. I come home from vacation to discover that my site has been hacked and is infecting PCs. I cleaned out the infection immediately (or more precisely, someone at Bayflicks’ host, IX Web Hosting, did it), but making sure it doesn’t happen again feels like a full-time job. You can read [...]

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Two of my biggest passions–Judaism and cinema–come together this summer like they do every summer for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. (Come to think of it, some of my other big passions–music, history, and sex–turn up here, as well.) The organizers are calling the 28th SFIFF the largest one ever, with “70 films from [...]

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Just before I left on vacation I received a press release for two upcoming series at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I’m finally now getting to it.
As the name implies, Jean Cocteau: The Orphic Trilogy screens only three films, Le Sang d’un poète (Blood of a Poet), Orphée (Orpheus), and Le Testament d’Orphée [...]

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I have a lot of apologizing to do.
As a PC World columnist, I often admonish readers for not backing up and keeping their security software up-to-date. And while I do everything possible to keep my PC and data safe, I haven’t been so diligent about my blog. And thus, when I got back from vacation, [...]

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I came back from vacation to discover the bayflicks.net web site hijacked I believe the hijacking happened on Saturday, June 14. I removed it today.
If you’ve visited the site in the last week, and have a Windows-based PC, it’s possible that your computer is infected with Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent downloader. You can read [...]

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I only published one post this week: A review of Love and Honor. But I have an excuse: I’ve been gone all week on vacation. In fact, I’m gone now. I wrote this newsletter more than a week ago and set it to go live at the appropriate time.
Festival-wise, Another Hole in [...]

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Samurai drama

Written by Yoji Yamada, Emiko Hiramatsu, and Ichiro Yamamoto
Directed by Yoji Yamada

Yoji Yamada makes Samurai films like nobody else’s. Past works like Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade looked at the legendary warriors as lower-middleclass drones, worrying about money as they perform their dull peacetime jobs for an indifferent lord for whom they may [...]

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First, let me remind you that this is the last Bayflicks newsletter to be sent to the old mailing list. If you haven’t yet joined the new mailing list, go to http://bayflicks.net/subscribe-to-newsletter/, enter your email address in the appropriate field, and click the Subscribe button. Within a few minutes you’ll [...]

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