By Gary M. Kramer. The 51st New York Film Festival opens September 27 with the World Premiere screening of Paul Greengrass’ dramatic thriller, Captain Phillips and closes three weeks later with the World Premiere of Spike Jonze’s Her. In between, there are Gala Tributes (Cate Blanchett, Ralph Fiennes), Views from […]
San Francisco Film Society Fall Season: Hong Kong Cinema | October 4-6, 2013
October 2, 2013
By Janine Gericke. From Johnnie To’s new crime flick to some kickass kung fu, the third annual San Francisco Film Society’s Hong Kong Cinema festival is set to delight audiences with this year’s lineup. Flora Lau’s Bends (2013, Cantonese with subtitles), which debuted at Cannes, opens the festival. The film […]
You and the Night (2013)
October 1, 2013
By Mark James. You can tell that Yann Gonzalez’s film, You and the Night (Rencontres d’après minuit, better translated as Encounters after Midnight) is a fantasy because of its central set-up: an orgy in which the participants reveal their emotional pasts. The cinematic possibilities of strangers meeting up for sex […]
The Making of Five Dances: An Interview with Alan Brown
October 1, 2013
By Tom Ue. Alan Brown’s first film, O Beautiful, won the Future Filmmaker Award at the 2002 Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and was an official selection of the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. His debut feature, Book of Love, which stars Simon Baker, Frances O’Connor, Greg Smith, and Bryce […]
Richard C. Sarafian (1930-2013)
September 29, 2013
By Michael T. Toole. Richard C. Sarafian, the versatile Armenian-American director/actor whose most celebrated film, the exhilaratingly existential chase drama, Vanishing Point, is still one of the most actively discussed road films today, died on September 18, 2013 of pneumonia in Los Angeles. He was 83. Richard Caspar Sarafian was […]
Prisoners: At the End of a Slippery Slope
September 28, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. Moral relativism can make for a lousy film. Characters bark and growl about their actions being justified, the narrative halts to brood, the nature of God and sin are clumsily introduced, all for an elusive truth that might as well be out of the filmmakers’ reach. To […]
Charles Burnett’s Inner City Portrait: Revisiting Killer of Sheep and the post-Watts crisis on film
September 27, 2013
By Jamie Isbell. Charles Burnett’s UCLA thesis feature Killer of Sheep (1977) has become something of a retrospective masterpiece. A cult artifact speaking to one generation from another, and holding ground as one of the most clarified examples of mid-century European film flavours drifting into the cinematic record of black […]
Selected Film Essays and Interviews (Bruce F. Kawin, 2013)
September 26, 2013
Book Review by Jez Owen. This collection from academic imprint Anthem Press collates material written by the eminent University of Boulder resident lecturer, critic and theorist Bruce F. Kawin. Written between 1977 and 2001, the work included covers a cross-section of film specific topics; from those defining a film’s particular […]
Stoker (2013)
September 24, 2013
By William Repass. “Just as a flower does not choose its color, we are not responsible for who we come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free. And to become adult…is to become free.” A girl with hair like spilled ink sits alone at her desk, […]
The Grays of the IMAX Oz
September 20, 2013
By Matthew Sorrento. While viewing the new 3D IMAX version of The Wizard of Oz, I didn’t notice anything different in the film’s central color portion. The hues are warm, just like the experience of viewing among first timers who are lucky enough to see it on the big screen. […]