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Sunday, September 18, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
International Film Festivals
Today: Spanish
filmmaker Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón honored at San Sebastián.
Yesterday, at the San Sebastián International Film Festival,
the Spanish Minister of Culture, Carmen Calvo, awarded the National Cinematography Prize for 2005 to director/writer
Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón. Prior to the award Aragón participated in the round table "Cinema
and Democracy" in conjunction with the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), and the San
Sebastián International Film Festival.
Gutiérrez Aragón, born in Torrelavega in 1942,
is a protégé of José Luis Borau, and was among those in the "New Spanish Cinema"
who fought against the censorship of the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco. Aragón's debut film was
Habla Mudita (Speak Little Deaf One) in 1973. It premièred at the Berlin Film Festival in 1974, and
was a candidate for the Oscar that year. Since then, he has made many award-winning films. [Filmography]
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Thursday, September 08, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
Fall Film Festivals May Douse Movie Drought
Today: The
2006 Movie Season is looking up, according to an article today in Yahoo! News about
why the Toronto Film Festival ". . . offers an early glimpse of potential competitors for Hollywood's top
awards, among them the Johnny Cash film biography Walk the
Line, the romances Elizabethtown and Shopgirl, the working-stiff
drama North Country, the sister tale In Her Shoes and the cowboy saga Brokeback
Mountain." There are many more.
The New York Film Festival will open with Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney's depiction of McCarthyism and TV news in the 1950s, mainly about journalist Edward
R. Murrow. That movie will be huge with the Academy, considering that many of the members are old enough to remember
the McCarthy Hearing, and the rest studied about them in school.
More good picks are on the horizon this fall, including Steven Spielberg's Munich."
Happy festival watching!
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Monday, August 29, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
My Post of July 5
Today: An
article
appeared on Yahoo! today that pretty much confirmed what
I wrote about the dearth of good movies out right now, and why the box office has slumped so much. Of course, there
are other reasons, and this article covers most of them. The researcher who conducted the survey concluded, "Going
to the movies used to be fun and exciting. It used to be an event. It's none of those anymore." Amen!
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Saturday, August 20, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
Upcoming Fall Film Festival Season
Today: Although
I'm on hiatus for regular posts, just want you to know that my Film Festival Page 2005 is being updated
almost daily. So go there to get the latest info and newest links to the official sites.
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Tuesday, July 5, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
NOTHING
Today: A
Hollywood Box Office Slump and Hiatus
First of all, there have been no further posts about Star Wars
Episode III because comments about it are not worth the space on this blog. Sorry, Trekkies, but such is the case
in my humble opinion.
Lucas has lost his edge, and in today's Hollywood "edge"
is everything. What is edge in today's Hollywood parlance? Well, it can loosely be defined as, "Expert integration
of conflict with elements of suspense and movement, i.e., action."
This was the 19th weekend that box office results for Hollywood
movies were in a deep slump, well behind last year. Should anyone be surprised?
I'm not. For the past year Hollywood has released cookie-cutter,
formula films, that I call "pabulum for the mind." Basically, Hollywood is making movies only for the
16 to 24 year-old crowd.
Sorry, but I can remember being in that age group, and the films
that I and my friends saw were not dumbed-down, zap-zap, mind-numbing crap. Yep, that's the word. It's not a proper
word to use in polite society, but that's the word for the majority of Hollywood films - - crap.
Meanwhile, there's nothing much happening on the foreign film
scene either, and there probably won't be much happening anywhere of any importance in movies until September.
So, I'm going on vacation.
I'm looking forward to renting DVDs from Netflix and Blockbuster.
My mailbox will be filled with foreign-language films, mostly Spanish, of course. Anything but a Hollywood studio
production. Perhaps, an occasional U.S. independent production.
Have a wonderful summer! I'll see you in September!
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Thursday, May 26, 2005
NOW SHOWING:
Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Today: A
Friend Living in Jordan Reviews
"Star Wars was neither very bad, nor very good. We went
to the movies last night with a bunch of friends. Amman Cinemas started showing the movie some hours before the
first show in the US!
As one of my friends has said in describing some Jordanians (who even insist on speaking in English even with their
fellow Jordanians): "They are more American than Americans themselves"!
But still, there are some points that were a bit off in the movie:
1- Many scientific mistakes, space ships burning with smoke in space where no air exists! Strong gravity that pulls
people "down" (as what happens in the elevator shaft) while they are still in outer space! Jet fighters
that set their wings to "attack mode" where no air exists either! And, a robot that coughs like he has
tuberculosis.
2- How come the "bad guys" continue using their broken English even with they talk among themselves?
3- Didn't that global war for spreading "democracy" ring any bells? Isn't it funny to discover after
all of these years that Bush jr. is a Sith?
It was cool to see how Vader was created after all."
Raed Jarrar / May 20, 2005 /
[More About the Movie]
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Sunday, May 22, 2005
Continuous Showing: Cannes International Film Festival
Today's Feature: THE
RESULTS ARE IN!
Sorry. I got a little behind. The awards were given last night.
You can see the full list at AWARDS (.pdf file). Tommy Lee Jones won for Best Actor, but you may not recognize, or care,
about most of the other winners. For much more, check the Official Site.
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Sunday, May 15, 2005
Continuous Showing: Cannes International Film Festival
Today's Feature: Festival
Underway!
Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali and Jean Renoir's
The River, both restored by the AMPAS® Film Archive, will show at Cannes. . . . .
According to a press release I received today, the two films restored
by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' Film Archive will be screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival,
marking the first time that a film restored by the Archive has been invited to the Festival. The films are Satyajit
Ray's Pather Panchali and Jean Renoir's The
River.
Pather Panchali premiered at Cannes fifty years ago, and that 1955 screening was instrumental in launching Ray
onto the international scene. There's a Ray connection to The
River, too. Ray hosted Renoir and his wife during
their first visit to India and subsequently visited the set of The
River many times while Renoir filmed there.
The Academy Film Archive's restoration of Pather Panchali in the mid-1990s
inaugurated the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project, an initiative to preserve and restore as many of Ray's films
as possible. The project is partly funded by the Merchant and Ivory Foundation, the Film Foundation, the Ray Society
in Calcutta, and the Satyajit Ray Study Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. So far, 15 of Ray's
29 feature films have been restored as have three of his eight shorts.
The River
was restored by the Academy Film Archive and the British Film Institute in conjunction with Janus Films, with support
from the Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
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Saturday, May 14, 2005
Continuous Showing: Cannes International Film Festival
Today's Feature: Festival
Underway!
Here are some recent highlights. . . . .
May 11th - - The opening curtain rose on the 58th edition of the
Festival de Cannes at the bidding of the mistress of ceremony Cécile de France and Jury President Emir Kusturica,
accompanied by Jury members, directors Agnès Varda, John Woo, Benoît Jacquot, and Fatih Aki, actors
Nandita Das, Javier Bardem, and Salma Hayek, as well as writer Toni Morrison. The Jury has the task of bestowing
the Palme d'Or on one of the 21 feature films in the Official Selection.
Following the Opening Ceremony was the opening film Lemming from
French director Dominik Moll, one of the three French films presented in competition this year, along with Peindre ou faire l'amour by Arnaud & Jean-Marie Larrieu and Caché from Michael Haneke. This was Moll's second visit to the Croisette. He
presented Harry, He's Here to Help in 2000. This time,
at his side on the red carpet were the stars from Lemming: Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte Rampling & André
Dussollier.
Woody Allen's Match Point, screened out of competition
May 12th. Allen, flanked by wife Soon, and cast members Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Emily Mortimer
attended the screening.
Day three of this 58th edition (May 13) ended with the red carpet
arrivals of the cast and crew from the film Last
Days, presented in competition. Director Gus Van
Sant formed a line-up with actors Asia Argento, Lukas Haas, Nicole Vicius & Michael Pitt on the red-carpeted
steps. After his triumph at the Cannes Festival in 2003 with Elephant - winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Director award, Gus Van Sant is back
in competition with Last Days. Two years ago he drew inspiration from the Columbine tragedy; this year's
offering draws its inspiration from the suicide in 1994 of Kurt Cobain, leader of the group Nirvana, considered
to have epitomized the grunge movement.
Today, Shane Black's Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, his first directorial
endeavor, and first visit to Cannes, has already screened as I post this. It is being presented in the Official
Selection, but out of competition, and is the much awaited crime-comedy by the screenwriter of such memorable action
films as Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout and The Long
Kiss Goodnight. Set in Los Angeles, it follows a
fugitive thief (Robert Downey, Jr.) who is pretending to be an actor, a cynical and hard-boiled private investigator
(Val Kilmer), and an actress who is trying to make it as a star (Michelle Monaghan), who accidentally find themselves
involved in a bizarre murder scheme.
TOMORROW - - Star
Wars - Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, directed by George
Lucas, screens out of competition.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
"Forever Young: James Dean" - - It was 50 years ago
that the fatal car accident catapulted James Dean to legendary status. In his memory, Cannes will remember him
with a photo exhibit, screening the documentary by Michael J. Sheridan, Forever Young (Warner), and two of
the films in which he starred: East of Eden (1955) and Rebel
Without a Cause (1955).
"Cannes Film Festival Actor Master Class by Catherine Deneuve"
- - In 2004, the Swedish actor Max Von Sydow gave the Cannes Film Festival Actor Master Class. This year, Catherine
Deneuve, world-renowned French actress followed him. Gilles Jacob, Director General of the festival, awarded the
actress with a Palme d'Honneur d'Interprétation, describing her as a "French Katherine Hepburn".
Deneuve, after mischievously confiding that she has "no lessons to teach anyone," offered up some valuable
inside information about how she sees her craft.
[MORE SPECIAL EVENTS]
[Official Site]
[List of
films in competition]
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Saturday, April 23, 2005
Continuous Showing: Cannes International Film Festival
Today's Feature: Heyek
and Bardem picked for Jury.
Mexican actress Salma Hayek and Spanish actor Javier Bardem
will sit on the nine-person panel organizers announced Friday.
The jury of the 2005 Cannes festival, which runs May 11-22, is headed by Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica.
Other members on the panel include Hong Kong director John Woo, maker of Hollywood action-thrillers, along with
Indian actress Nandita Das, French directors Agnes Varda and Benoit Jacquot, German filmmaker Fatih Akin, and Noble
laureate in literature Toni Morrison. [List of films in competition] [Official Site] [Mimi's 2005 Film Festival
Page]
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Sunday, April 03, 2005
Today's Feature: All
information about the Academy Awards® for 2005 has been archived. See Archive
Four.
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