Alternative Film Guide

For the first time in the history of the Venice Film Festival, all films competing for the 2006 Golden Lion will have their world premiere at the festival, which opens on August 30, with a screening of Brian DePalma’s crime drama The Black Dahlia, starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, and Hilary Swank.
A [...]

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica
Leo Tolstoy once opined that all happy families are happy in a few ways, while those that are not suffer in many unique ways. This apothegm was never more well evinced than in filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s five-hour 1973 Swedish telefilm Scener ur ett äktenskap / Scenes from a Marriage, a miniseries [...]

For the first time in the history of the Venice Film Festival, all films competing for the Golden Lion will have their world premiere at the festival.
Venezia 63 - In Competition
Barbara ALBERT Fallen Austria - 88′
Nina Proll, Birgit Minichmayr, Ursula Strauss
Gianni AMELIO La stella che non c’è Italy, [...]

Prolific author James Robert Parish answers seven questions about his latest tome, The Hollywood Book of Breakups. Unlike his previous book, Fiasco: A History of Hollywood’s Iconic Flops, an analysis of Hollywood moviemaking, the Book of Breakups focuses on the private lives of those who have worked in the motion picture and television industries. Couples [...]

Canadian director Marc-André Forcier (La Comtesse de Bâton Rouge), American actress Kathy Bates (Misery), Danish producer Vibeke Windeløv (Dogville), Argentinian actor Federico Luppi (Un Lugar en el mundo / A Place in the World), and French screenwriter Guillaume Laurant (Un long dimanche de fiançailles / A Very Long Engagement) have been confirmed as jury members [...]

From
David Segal’s article "Cloud In the Silver Lining" in the Washington Post: "You thought a sit-down with Woody Allen would cheer you up? He is not the anxious, gesticulating quipster he’s played in so many of his movies, a man who bundles his despair with a batch [...]

The OSIAN-CINEFAN Film Festival’s Best Asian Film Award went to Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador / The Bet Collector, the story of a woman who makes a living collecting bets for an illegal game until her life takes a dramatic turn following the death of a neighbor. Kubrador also won the International Federation of Film Critics’ Best [...]

Proof that people can hate each other for reasons that have nothing to do with ethnicity or nationality:
From Sharon Waxman’s "Crash Principals Still Await Payments for Their Work" in the New York Times: "When a movie costs $7.5 million to make and takes in $180 million around the world, it seems logical to think that [...]

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica
Maverick American filmmaker Samuel Fuller was both a progressive and a prude, and no film of his better illustrates this schismic personal dichotomy, echoed in his use of high and low techniques in his art, than his 1964 black-and-white film noir melodrama The Naked Kiss
.
The Naked Kiss is a cult classic [...]

Cabaret will be screened next Monday, July 31, at 7:30 p.m. in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
In my Best of the Best page for 1972, this is what I have to say about the film:
Musicals tend to be either vacuous and light as air (e.g., An American in Paris) or vacuous and [...]

Via the Associated Press / Metromix.com: Leo McCarey’s Best Director Academy Award for the 1944 Best Film winner Going My Way is going to be auctioned by an anonymous collector. The opening bid is US$25,000. [The McCarey Oscar statuette was later revealed as counterfeit. Read more here.]
McCarey, who died in 1969 at age 70, directed [...]

On Tuesday, August 8, at 7:30pm, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles will honor director Vincent Sherman, who died this past June 18, with a screening of the 1943 Warner Bros. melodrama The Hard Way.
The Hard Way follows two sisters, played by Warner contractees Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie, in their (oh-so-hard) path to professional [...]

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Director: David Frankel. Screenplay: Aline Brosh McKenna, from a novel by Lauren Weisberger. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Adrian Grenier
 
THE EMPRESS HAS NO CLOTHES
There are two good reasons to watch the otherwise dismal film version of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel The Devil Wears Prada, the [...]

Via Ohmy News / Associated Press: ”For me, I am against any war, in any place. Because for me, war is the language of the animals."
That’s Iraq-born director Mohamed Al-Daradji, whose Ahlaam / The Dreams is part of the film line-up of the OSIAN’s-CINEFAN 8th Festival of Asian Cinema in Delhi. Animals everywhere [...]

All evidence points to Phyllis Haver, but she seems to think otherwise
Photo: © A.M.P.A.S.
A restored print of the little-seen 1928 silent film Chicago will be screened on August 16 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Samuel Goldwyn Theater [...]

"Notwithstanding the [Sydney Film] festival’s slogan [Go Deeper], the artistic and intellectual depth of the 33 features and documentaries seen by this writer was limited. Although the festival provided some sense of the world, with a large number of features about the Middle East and a few valuable movies, many of the problems highlighted in [...]

24th Outfest - Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival 2006 Awards
Outfest 2006 was held between July 6-17, 2007.
The winners of the 2007 Outfest Awards were announced on July 17, 2007.
Outfest 2006 Winners - Article
 

Grand Jury Awards:
Outstanding American Narrative Feature: THE GYMNAST directed by Ned Farr
Outstanding International Narrative Feature: WHOLE NEW THING directed by [...]

Among the winners of the 2006 Outfest - the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival - were:
Ned Farr’s The Gymnast, the story of a former gymnast who falls in love with a younger woman, was chosen as the Outstanding American Narrative Feature. (It also won the Audience Award for Best First Narrative Film.) [...]

While bombs were being dropped and rockets were being fired in Lebanon and Israel, the Jerusalem Film Festival came to a close, with most of the festival’s top awards going to films that celebrate tolerance and compassion.
The Wolgin Award for Best Israeli Narrative Feature went to Dror Sabo’s Dead End (above, [...]

© A.M.P.A.S.
Press Release
Beverly Hills, CA — The 1971 Best Picture nominee Fiddler on the Roof will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series. Adapted from the stage musical which was based on the stories of Sholom [...]

Reuters (via /The Scotsman) reports that Saudi Arabia’s first film festival, the Jeddah Visual Show Festival, is currently taking place. According to Andrew Hammond’s article, no features are being screened, but the Saudi shorts shown at the festival "deal with bold themes such as domestic violence, drugs and religious extremism. Saudi television carries some dramas [...]

I’ve added an awards page with the winners at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival, which was held last month.
The jury prize for Best Narrative Film went to Patrick Hogan’s Pope Dreams, the tale of a young man who yearns to take his sick Catholic mother to meet the pope while discovering that not every [...]

"It is easy, perhaps necessary, for a film critic to forget that every film is a human endeavor, one that represents a substantial investment of time and money for all involved (and there are invariably many involved). Critics traffic in opinions, and they are not beholden to anyone in this regard. But we do owe [...]

The 11th San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theater begins this Friday, July 14.
The three-day festival will include screenings of Frank Borzage’s 7th Heaven (1927 - Friday, July 14, 8:00pm), a huge box-office and critical success at the time, and the winner of the first Best Direction (Drama) Academy Award. (That [...]

"In purpose and effect, this work is plainly a serious consideration of sex and pornography as aspects of the human experience. We think that there are no grounds for depriving adults of the ability to decide themselves whether they want to see it."
That’s Sir Quentin Thomas, head of the British Board of Film Classification, explaining [...]