Alternative Film Guide

Actress Wendie Jo Sperber, best known for her role in the Tom Hanks sitcom Bosom Buddies, died at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks on Nov. 30, following an eight-year battle with breast cancer.
Besides her TV work, which also included appearances in Murphy Brown and Will & Grace, Sperber (born in [...]

The Constant Gardener, the film adaptation of John le Carré’s novel about love, loss, greed, corruption, and pharmaceutical companies, was the big winner at the British Independent Film Awards held at the Hammersmith Palais in London, in a ceremony hosted by James Nesbitt. Besides winning the Best Film Award, The Constant Gardener also brought Best [...]

The Bronze Horse for Best film at the 16th Stockholm International Film Festival was awarded to Juan Diego Solanas’s Nordeste (Argentina / Spain / France / Belgium). Tackling child trafficking, poverty, and social injustice, Nordeste revolves around the meeting of two women from disparate backgrounds: a single mother from Argentina’s impoverished northeast, and an affluent [...]

Attention, a Saudi Arabian animated short about the effects of terrorism on children, will be screened for the first time in the Middle East at this year’s edition of the Dubai International Film Festival. The three-minute film was written, produced, and directed by first-time Syrian director Akram Agha.
“Attention is simply a gloomy vision of what [...]

21st Spirit Awards - 2005
Film Independent’s 21st Spirit Award winners were announced in Santa Monica on March 4, 2006
Spirit Award 2005 Winners - Brief Article
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

 
BEST FEATURE (Award given to the producer)
* Brokeback Mountain Producers: Diana Ossana and James Schamus
Capote Producers: Caroline Baron, William Vince, Michael Ohoven
Good Night, and Good [...]

The film lineup for the 2006 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has been announced. Among the 16 films up for the Best (American) Documentary Award are Ian Inaba’s American Blackout, which follows the career of Representative Cynthia McKinney (a Democrat from Georgia) and the suppression of the black vote throughout U.S. history; Joseph Mathew’s [...]

"Mr. Miyagi remains everybody’s idea of a positive character. Who can forget "wax on, wax off," his wise counsel linking car care to karate? But still, it bother me Miyagi-san so wise, but find so hard use articles, pronouns when talk." Lawrence Downes writes about The Karate Kid’s Pat Morita in the New York Times.

Brief obit: Actress Jocelyn Brando, 86, sister of Marlon Brando, died of natural causes on Sunday, Nov. 27, at her Santa Monica, Calif., home.
Following a good Broadway role as the head nurse in Mister Roberts in the late 1940s, the San Francisco native appeared in several motion pictures in the 1950s and 1960s, usually [...]

Would you eat this book?
David Hudson at GreenCine Daily perceptively writes: "So, meanwhile… wait a minute. Last weekend, Richard Schickel praised three collections of criticism by John Simon in the Los Angeles Times, and this weekend, Simon’s reviewing Schickel’s biography of Elia Kazan in the New York Times. ‘No mere page turner, this is a [...]

The Academy Award-winning documentaries of 1959 and 1960 will be screened on Monday, December 5, at 7:30 p.m., in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. That is the final installment of the series "Oscar’s Docs: The First Twenty Years of Academy Award-Winning Documentaries.”

Bert Haanstra’s 1959 Oscar winner [...]

I’ve finally watched the (relatively) new The Stepford Wives on DVD. Since I’ve never seen the 1975 original directed by Bryan Forbes, and starring Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss, I can’t make any comparisons. Judged on its own merits (or lack thereof), the 2004 film version has a few interesting performances - especially a frighteningly [...]

Constance Cummings, a star in film, on television, and onstage in both the U.S. and Britain, died of natural causes at a nursing home in Oxfordshire on November 23. She was 95.
Among the actress’ best-known work are the 1932 comedy Movie Crazy, in which she plays Harold Lloyd’s romantic interest; David Lean’s delightful 1945 film [...]

Academy Award-nominated actor Pat Morita, best known as the zen-ish Kesuke Miyagi who tutors Ralph Macchio in the 1984 hit The Karate Kid, died on November 24 at a Las Vegas hospital. The cause of death is unclear — one source stated Morita died of heart failure; another said he died of kidney failure while [...]

16th Stockholm Film Festival - 2005 Awards
The 16th Stockholm Film Festival Award was held between November 17-27, 2005.
Stockholm Film Festival 2005 Winners - Article
 

 
Best Film: Nordeste by Juan Diego Solanas
Best First Film: Me and You and Everyone We Know by Miranda July
Best Actor: Vincent D’Onofrio — Thumbsucker
Best Actress: Carole Bouquet and Aymará [...]

According to numerous reports, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who has become a Dutch Member of Parliament for the conservative Liberal Party*, has announced plans to produce a film about gays and Islam. According to Hirsi Ali, she and director Theo van Gogh co-wrote the screenplay of the upcoming film, to be called Submission [...]

Australian Film Institute Awards - 2005
The nominees of the L’Oréal Paris 2005 AFI Awards were announced by Claudia Karvan and Alex Dimitriades at the Wharf Restaurant in Sydney on October 21, 2005.
The winners of the 2005 AFI Awards were announced at two ceremonies: Russell Crowe hosted both the L’Oréal Paris 2005 AFI Craft Awards [...]

The Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards will be presented this coming weekend. The AFI nominations cover a wide range of categories, encompassing feature narrative films, shorts and documentaries, and television programming. (Curiously, many categories carry the names of their sponsors, e.g., "Film Finance Corporation AFI Award for Best Lead Actor" or "Empire Magazine AFI Award [...]

I’ve finally added the list of winners at the 2005 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Those include Best Picture and Best First Film winner Las Mantenidas sin sueños (Argentina), a story of mother-daughter love with a twist, directed by Vera Fogwill and Martín De Salvo; Best Director Miguel Littin (La Tierra prometida / The [...]

At Cinema Minima, Colombian correspondent Camandula conducts an audio interview with Colombian director Sergio Cabrera. Note: The interview is in Spanish, and so are the accompanying notes.

The Morocco Times has reported Syrian director Mohammed Malas’s complaints that filmmaking in Syria "is a sector which is still governed by the State. This means that we produce no more than two films a year. The private sector doesn’t invest in the Cinema, which leads many directors, including me, to seek foreign production and [...]

Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Christian Carion. Cast: Guillaume Canet, Gary Lewis, Daniel Brühl, Benno Fürmann, Diane Kruger, Dany Boon
 

 
SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY FOUGHT
Christian Carion’s Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas, based on a true World War I ceasefire that took place around Christmastime 1914, is a tad more [...]

Naboer / Next Door (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Pål Sletaune. Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Cecilie A. Mosli, Julia Schacht, Anna Bache-Wiig, Michael Nyqvist
 

 
Naboer / Next Door (Norway) is the story of a man who finds himself in some very strange places — both literally and figuratively — following a nasty confrontation with his former girlfriend. [...]

An American Haunting (2006)
Director: Courtney Solomon. Screenplay: Courtney Solomon, from Brent Monahan’s book. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D’Arcy, Rachel Hurd-Wood
 

 
SCREAM, PRETTY BETSY
Filmed in Canada and Romania (the latter location passing for the mid-19th-century rural American South), Courtney Solomon’s disappointing An American Haunting revolves around a series of ghostly apparitions, collectively known as [...]

Caché / Hidden (2005)
Direction and screenplay: Michael Haneke. Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot
 

Daniel Auteuil kindly directs a recently arrived African immigrant to the nearest boulangerie, while Juliette Binoche makes sure there are no racist cops around
 
EUROPEAN MAN’S BURDEN
Michael Haneke’s thoughtful, gripping Caché / Hidden stars Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil [...]

 
The worst thing I can say about the 2005 edition of the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival (AFI FEST 2005), is that it ended — with a mix of bangs and whimpers — on November 13.
The "whimpers" were a result of both a nightmarish traffic jam inside the parking structure of the Arclight [...]