If The Social Network wins the big prize this month, as many think it will, it will be the first picture to do so not shot on film. The Mark Zuckerberg biopic was shot digitally. A year ago, a lot of people thought that Avatar was going to win, and it would have achieved that … Continue reading Technical Formats and the Best Picture Oscar
Silent Film Festival Winter Event
I devoted yesterday at the Silent Film Festival Winter Event. Great way to spend a Saturday. Here are the details: It’s Mutual: Charlie Chaplin Shorts Before the movie started, I visited the retail section on the Castro's mezzanine. At the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum table, I bought a bumper sticker - "Films have a … Continue reading Silent Film Festival Winter Event
What’s Screening: February 11 – 17
IndieFest continues through the week. And the Silent Film Festival Winter Event plays Sunday. Silent Film Festival Winter Event, Castro, Saturday, all day. Regular readers shouldn't be surprised that I consider this the big event of the week. The day begins at 1:00 with a trio of Chaplin Shorts from his Mutual period, accompanied by … Continue reading What’s Screening: February 11 – 17
Academy Award-Nominated Live-Action Shorts
B+ As I promised in my last post, here are my thoughts on the five films nominated for the Best Live-Action Short Subject Oscar. They're playing, as a single feature, next week at various theaters around the Bay Area. These are, overall, a bit better than this year's animated shorts. They're also longer on average. … Continue reading Academy Award-Nominated Live-Action Shorts
Academy Award-Nominated Animated Shorts
B Collection of animated shorts Various theaters around the Bay will screen the Oscar-nominated short subjects next week. I got to screen them early. I'll tell you about the animated shorts here, and the live-action ones in a later post. The animated shorts vary from conventional to creative, hilarious to poetic, and masterful to mediocre. … Continue reading Academy Award-Nominated Animated Shorts
Forbidden Planet & Bad Day at Black Rock @ the Castro
Friday night I attended the Ann Francis memorial double bill at the Castro. Always fun to see a couple of old favorites on the big screen. Not that it was a perfect presentation. Both films were originally released in the mid-50s with 4-track magnetic stereo soundtracks, but the Castro presented them with mono sound. I'm … Continue reading Forbidden Planet & Bad Day at Black Rock @ the Castro
What’s Screening: February 4 – 10
The Mostly British Film Festival runs through this week, as does IndieFest, which continues beyond it. As usual, I've put festival films at the end of this newsletter. A The Housemaid, Lumiere, Shattuck, opens Friday. This picture’s US distributor, IFC Films, is calling it an "erotic thriller." Erotic? Definitely. But it's not like any thriller … Continue reading What’s Screening: February 4 – 10
Green Film Festival
Last month I explained the three types of film festivals: identity festivals, which focus on ethnic, religious, racial, and gender identities, genre festivals, which look at particular kinds of movies and generic film festivals. There's a fourth kind: Advocacy film festivals. The latest addition to the Bay Area pantheon, the Green Film Festival, falls into … Continue reading Green Film Festival
The Housemaid
A Erotic thriller (or something of that nature) More that 12 hours after watching The Housemaid, I still don't know what to make of it. The picture's US distributor, IFC Films, is calling it an "erotic thriller." Erotic? Definitely. I wouldn't be surprised if it received an NC-17 rating (IFC is releasing it unrated). Thriller? … Continue reading The Housemaid
The Gospel According to St. Matthew
Until yesterday, I'd never seen a film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Feeling a need to rectify that, and suspecting that I couldn't stomach Salo, I watched The Gospel According to St. Matthew last night. If you have any sense of film history, you can't watch this stark, low-budget, black-and-white, telling of the life of Christ … Continue reading The Gospel According to St. Matthew
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