American Film Institute Festival
Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie: AFI 2012
The AFI Fest opened Friday with the world premiere of Hitchcock, a likable yarn focusing on the iconic filmmaker and his wife at the time of his filming Psycho. In retrospect it seemed an almost anachronistic choice in light of the recent broadcast of “The Girl,” a more Machiavellian portrait of the man and his mentor/Svengali relationship with his The Birds discovery Tippi Hedren.
Read the full article »David Lynch Guest Artistic Director Of Upcoming AFI Fest
David Lynch Guest Artistic Director Of Upcoming AFI Fest
Read the full article »Indie Filmmaker Still Recovering From LAFF’s “Seize The Power” Symposium
Indie Filmmaker Still Recovering From LAFF’s “Seize The Power” Symposium
Read the full article »Not Quite Hollywood The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! Directed by Mark Hartley
Not Quite Hollywood may be my favorite talking-heads-and-clips movie ever. (That’s Entertainment is not really a doc, but just a series of great clips from great musicals… different animal.) It is complete, and informative. But mostly, it’s very, very entertaining. From the very beginnings of the Aussie film business to the sexual exploitation and self-mockery…
Read the full article »Che Directed by Steven Soderbergh
My first reaction to Steven Soderbergh’s Che was absolute shock at the idiocy and arrogance of it all… that is to say, the idiocy and the arrogance of the response from Cannes. This is one reason why I hate seeing a movie “after the fact.” It is a real challenge to all critics – and any one…
Read the full article »What to Catch the Second Half of AFI Fest
AFI Fest, which kicked off last Thursday, is a different sort of fest than Sundance or Cannes or Toronto. Many of the films on the schedule are what I would consider more mainstream-friendly fare (which is not at all to say they aren’t good films). Much of the schedule here is kind of a “best…
Read the full article »TEN BURNING QUESTIONS With Sabine El Gemayal (Niloofar)
A young Lebanese girl begins to discover her potential through education when her father delivers his own lesson in how their society judges a girl’s worth by “trading” her to a local sheik for a parcel of land. However, the title character in Niloofar does not go quietly as the genie has already been let out…
Read the full article »Hunger
Hunger focuses on the Irish prison hunger strike led by Bobby Sands in 1981. The depiction of the squalor these predominantly political prisoners live in and the endless beatings they undergo from jailers is vividly and unflinchingly portrayed. Written and directed by the acclaimed installation artist Steve McQueen, it’s an accomplished first film and, at the same…
Read the full article »Hurt Locker
The best Iraq movie so far (closely nipping Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha) and the best new American film at TIFF that I have seen this year is Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker, which really isn’t so much an Iraq War film as it is a war film that happens to be in Iraq. Mark Boal’s screenplay does what so…
Read the full article »Filmmaker’s Corner With Jared and Brandon Drake (Visioneers)
..AFI Fest Coverage ..MCN Critics Roundup ..MCN Review Vault The majority of us have had a moment (or possibly several of them) where we confront the possibility that our lives are essentially meaningless. That moment is seized upon by the filmmaking brothers Drake – Jared directs and Brandon writes – in their debut film, Visioneers. Office…
Read the full article »TEN BURNING QUESTIONS With Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood)
At one point in Not Quite Hollywood,Mark Hartley’s primer on the history of Australian exploitation films or Oz-ploitation, Quentin Tarantino states that if you grew up watching some of those films that you would believe that there was a desert everywhere and that those deserts were filled with marauding packs of bullies in cars they could never…
Read the full article »AFI Movie Reviews
Paul Newman brought a new, casual intelligence to male stardom in the 1950s and ’60s, a sensitive tricksterism versus Brando’s and Dean’s wounded inarticulation; David Thomson wrote that Newman “seems to me an uneasy, self-regarding personality, as if handsomeness had left him guilty.” As Fast Eddie, the talented pool player who lacks the self-esteem, focus…
Read the full article »Shorts … and to the Point: Marie-Josee Saint-Pierre (Passages)
Marie-Josee’s short animated film,Passages begins like an etch-a-sketch primer on the beauty and awe of bringing a new life into the world. Unfortunately, just as everyone who has gone through the experience will tell you – over and over and over again – that’s just the beginning. And for Marie-Josee, thanks to what may be…
Read the full article »Shorts… and to the Point: Joey Garfield (Ex-Bully)
Joey Garfield’s comedy short Ex-Bully is as quick on its feet as anyone who had to navigate and negotiate their way through school around the bigger kids and bullies just to survive to the next grade. It’s funny, but better yet – it’s shared experience funny. Ex-Bully works because the majority of us did have to walk…
Read the full article »Actor’s Corner Vinessa Shaw (Two Lovers)
You have seen her opposite Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut and Will Ferrell in Melinda and Melinda. She has done admirable time in both Westerns (3:10 to Yuma) and Horror (The Hills Have Eyes). And while she may not have immediate name recognition to the average filmgoer, Vinessa Shaw does have name recognition to people with names like Woody…
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