The Mill Valley Film Festival

~ Lincoln Spector

This year’s Mill Valley Film Festival started out the gate Tuesday morning with a press conference. By coming at the end of summer, the Bay Area’s other big film festival has one big advantage over that spring shindig in San Francisco: It gives this part of the world our first chance to catch some of the big prestige pictures that will be vying for Oscars in a few months. This year’s festival will run from October 7 through 17.

Of course, those big prestige pictures will be playing in first run theaters before long, so you may want to concentrate on movies you won’t see elsewhere.

A few random comments on what I know:

  • The festival opens with The King’s Speech, one of those Oscar-baiting prestige pictures. They screened this at the press conference, and I can tell you right away it’s worth seeing. I’ll tell you more, soon.
  • One of most beloved films ever made by a Marin County company celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. So it’s appropriate that the festival host a special screening of The Empire Strikes Back on the huge, curved screen of Corte Madera’s Century Cinema theater. The festival doesn’t mention what version they’ll show, but I suspect it will be the 1997 Special Edition. To bad. I’d love to see the original again, preferably in 70mm.
  • As in previous years, several political films will get the Active Cinema treatment, intended to help audiences become involved with the issues presented. Among the “active” titles are Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today—a restoration of the famous trial’s official documentary–and a British labor (or labour) drama, Made in Dagenham.
  • Among this year’s tributes will be evenings honoring Edward Norton and Annette Bening.
  • You can count on Julie Taymor to make interesting films, and her latest, The Tempest, stars  Helen Mirren as a female Prospero.
  • Gérard Depardieu stars as the famous novelist in Dumas. While the folks announcing the festival thought this was perfect casting, he strikes me as a little too white for the part.
  • In the documentary Submission, director Stefan Jarl gets a sample of his own blood analyzed and discovers hundreds of industrial chemicals.
  • The festival describes Red Hill as a “relentlessly thrilling kangaroo Western.” We shall see.

I’m hoping to see a few more of the films before the festival starts. I’ll let you know.

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Published by Lincoln Spector

Lincoln Spector writes about cinema, technology, and cinema technology. From 1986 through 2008, he wrote Gigglebytes, the first technology-oriented humor column. From 1977 through 2016, he wrote PC World's Answer Line column and blog.