Well, yes, I did promise to get back to regular blogging, and it hasn’t happened. I guess I have to get back to regular movie-going first. Such a busy life!
Three festivals open this week. The Latino Film Festival starts Friday with the traditional opening at the Castro. It runs through the 23rd with screenings in Redwood City, San Jose, San Rafael, Larkspur, Berkeley, San Mateo, and San Bruno. The Chinese American Film Festival opens Saturday at the Marina Theatre with screening of a new Tibetan film, Ganglamedo, then closes for nearly a week before reopening next Friday. And 3rd I: the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival, plays at the Brava Theater, Thursday and Friday then moves to the Castro for Saturday and Sunday. They’re cramming a lot of movies into those four days, including romantic comedy Kissing Cousins, the already widely seen documentary Flow: For Love of Water, Bollywood tribute Om Shanti Om, the 1929 silent A Throw of Dice (with recorded music, unfortunately), and even a Pakistani slasher film called Hell’s Ground.
The following films are not at festivals:
Stranded: I’ve come from a plane that crashed on the mountains, Shattuck, Lumiere, opens 
Friday for one-week engagement. In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and their friends and family crashed into a glacier high in the Andes. The survivors endured extreme cold, hunger, an avalanche, the deaths of loved ones, and the necessity of eating those loved ones’ corpses. Combining interviews with the survivors, re-enacted sequences, and some photography from the actual events, Gonzalo Arijon recreates the harrowing experience with dramatic intensity. I first saw Stranded at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and you’ll find my full report here.
Spartacus, Castro, Sunday. Forget about the film’s historical significance (it was Dalton Trumbo’s first screen credit after the blacklist, and Stanley Kubrick’s only work as a director-for-hire). Spartacus is simply the most powerful, intelligent, and coherent toga epic from the golden age of toga epics (and yes, I know that sounds like weak praise, but it isn’t). One scene tells you more about gladiators than that whole Russell Crowe silliness from a few years back. And I can’t think of a better local theater to see it in than the Castro. (Too bad they couldn’t get a 70mm print, however.) Part of the Castro’s Tony Curtis Tribute, which is weird because Curtis is the worst thing in the movie.
Up the Yangtze, Red Vic, Tuesday through Thursday. China’s Three Gorges Dam, still under 
construction, may be the largest hydroelectric project ever attempted, and Chang’s film takes an unusual but effective approach to examining the project’s repercussions. He focuses his camera on two teenagers working a cruise ship that takes western tourists along the river, as well as one of those teenagers’ parents–a peasant couple forced to relocate as the waters rise. This is not about a construction project, but about the millions of people whose lives have been or will be disrupted because of the dam.
Sweet Smell of Success, Castro, Saturday. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Burt Lancaster’s Broadway noir for me to trust my memory with a wholehearted recommendation. But not by much. Lancaster risked his career by producing this exploration of the seamy side of fame and by playing a truly despicable character. The result, if I recall correctly, is fantastic. Tony Curtis co-stars, from a script by Ernest (North by Northwest) Lehman. On a Tony Curtis double-bill with Trapeze.
Pulp Fiction, Piedmont, Friday and Saturday, midnight. Quentin Tarantino achieved cult status by
writing and directing this witty mesh of interrelated stories involving talkative killers, a crooked boxer, romantic armed robbers, and a former POW who hid a watch in a very uncomfortable place. Tarantino entertainingly plays with dialog, story-telling techniques, non-linear time, and any sense the audience may have of right and wrong.
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Clay, Friday and Saturday, midnight. Oh, how Terry Gilliam has fallen! Monty Python’s token Yank made three of the best movies of the 1980’s, then his career collapsed and took his talent with it. Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas reeks; a confused, ugly, and meaningless exercise–which would be forgivable, if it also wasn’t boring and witless.
Bayflicks 