Things are a little crazy for me, right now. My daughter’s Bat Mitzvah is a just over a week away. How badly is that eating into my life? Let me put it this way: As I write this on Wednesday, Lawrence of Arabia is playing in 70mm at the Castro. I’m not there. But I … Continue reading The Edukators

A big, bright, high-definition image projected onto a giant screen--”that’s what makes movies better than television! And no film format filled that screen better--”at least for narrative fiction films--”than 70mm, which dominated the biggest film presentations for nearly 40 years. Next week, the big picture returns in all of its glory as the Castro starts … Continue reading 70mm

Sequel. The very word conjures up images of Hollywood at its most crass and commercial. Indeed, the term art house sequel sounds like an oxymoron. Yet in less than two years, we've had The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand's follow-up to his 1989 Decline of the American Empire) and Richard Linklater's Before Sunset. And now we're … Continue reading The Good, the Bad, and the Sequels

Box office sales are down. Studios are making less from theaters that from DVD sales. There's panic in the streets of LA. There are plenty of theories as to why people have lost the theater habit. Mick LaSalle wrote an excellent article about them in Wednesday's Chronicle. But does this trend extend to the art/repertoire/calendar … Continue reading Poor Box Office

Of all the ethnic/religious/sexual identity film festivals in the Bay Area, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is my favorite. What do you expect, I’m Jewish? For a few weeks every summer, I’m not the only person in the congregation who wants to talk about movies. It’s an anniversary, this time, the 25th San Francisco … Continue reading San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

First of all, I’d like to thank all of you who sent their condolences on the death in my family. I appreciated your kindness. I had just started writing last week’s newsletter—about the Balboa’s Human/Nature Festival and the just-announced San Francisco Jewish Film Festival—when my brother called with the news that our mother’s husband was … Continue reading A Death in the Family

It's summer, time for Shakespeare in the park, blockbusters at the multiplex, and best of all, silent movies with live musical accompaniment. In case you never noticed, your opportunities to enjoy this sublime hybrid of canned and live entertainment increase when the kids are out of school. We have two weekend-long silent film festivals every … Continue reading The Silent Summer Season

Every so often, someone complains about remakes. Not only are they sacrilege--"How dare they fiddle with that masterpiece?"--but they're proof of Hollywood's decline: "No one is capable of an original idea." A lack of original ideas has nothing to do with it. It's far cheaper to rip off an old plot than to buy it … Continue reading Remakes

They're low-brow popular entertainment, but in many ways the original Star Wars movies are about as good as motion pictures get. We can talk all we want to about cinema as fine art, but in a very primal way, we go to the movies to thrill at the beautiful and the exciting, cheer the hero, … Continue reading Revenge of the Sith