Alternative Film Guide

In the Los Angeles Times, John Horn writes about "Telluride: A Film Fest That’s Actually About Films":
"In addition to Capote, the Colorado ski town festival has hosted world or domestic premieres of Lost in Translation, Bowling for Columbine, Brokeback Mountain, Caché and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So what next great film will Telluride launch [...]

At London’s Barbican Centre: Jean Epstein, best known for his Gothic silent classic The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), was also responsible for the naturalistic semi-documentary Finis Terrae (1929), which will be screened at the Barbican’s Cinema 1 at 3 p.m. on Sept. 17.
Shot on the coast of Brittany, Finis Terrae portrays the [...]

Brief Obit: Actor Glenn Ford, the star of dozens of major motion pictures from the 1940s to the 1960s, died today, Aug. 30, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.
Ford had been seriously debilitated by a series of strokes he suffered in the 1990s.
Among Ford’s film credits are classics such as Gilda [...]

Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall try to calculate the number of hunky young men they’ll be able to buy once their millionaire husbands kick the bucket. Photo: © A.M.P.A.S.
One of the earliest examples of CinemaScope, How to Marry a Millionaire is an enjoyable romp [...]

Toronto Film Festival - The Sequel:
Among the films to be screened at the "Special Presentations" sidebar are Zabou Breitman’s L’ Homme de sa vie / The Man of My Life (France), which revolves around the unlikely friendship that develops between a bourgeois, happily married man (Bernard Campan) and a free-spirited gay man (Charles Berling) [...]

The list of films to be screened at this year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival can be found here.

Among the entries in the "Contemporary World Cinema" sidebar are Jens Lien’s quirky drama Den brysomme mannen / The Bothersome Man (Norway), winner of the Best Director and Best Screenwriting awards at this year’s Norwegian [...]

The 12th Sarajevo Film Festival came to a close yesterday, Aug. 26. The Heart of Sarajevo Best Film prize went to Andrea Staka’s Das Fraulein (Germany / Switzerland / Bosnia-Herzegovina), the story of three female immigrants from the former Yugoslavia living in Zurich. (Das Fraulein also won the Best Film prize at this year’s [...]

Strange Interlude (1932)
Direction: Robert Z. Leonard. Screenplay: Bess Meredyth and C. Gardner Sullivan, from Eugene O’Neill’s play. Cast: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Alexander Kirkland, Ralph Morgan, May Robson, Robert Young, Maureen O’Sullivan, Henry B. Walthall, Mary Alden, Tad Alexander
 
LOVE IS A MUCH-FRUSTRATING THING
By Marcus Tucker of Shadow Waltz
With the advent of new technology comes [...]

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica
Werner Herzog’s 1999 documentary, Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski / Klaus Kinski: My Best Fiend, is yet another in the dazzling array of Herzog documentary — or documentary-like — films. This one follows the director’s turbulent friendship and creative partnership with the legendary German actor Klaus Kinski, with Herzog [...]

12th Sarajevo Film Festival Awards - 2006 Hearts of Sarajevo
The 12th Sarajevo Film Festival was held between Aug. 18-26, 2006.
The winners at the 12th Sarajevo Film Festival were announced on Aug. 26, 2006.
Sarajevo Film Festival winners - Brief Article
 
 

 
Feature Film
Heart of Sarajevo for Best Film:
DAS FRAULEIN / DAS FRÄULEIN (Switzerland, Gemany, Bosnia and [...]

The World’s Fastest Indian was the big winner in the film categories at this year’s Air New Zealand Screen Awards ceemony held in Auckland this past Thursday, Aug. 24.
Writer-director Roger Donaldson’s film about an ageing bike racer who set the land-speed world record at a bike competition in Utah won seven awards, including Best [...]

“This region is stuffed with hard-boiled savage climbers, the lowest grade of political grafters, quacks not calculable as to number or variety … loafers, prostitutes, murderers and perverts. In the bland sunshine here they multiply like germs in the canal zone.” That’s author Theodore Dreiser referring not to Washington, D.C., or any other world capital, [...]

Rock Hudson (Giant) and Beatrice Arthur (The Golden Girls TV series) do a pleasant little number about the popularity of mind-altering substances, "Everybody Today Is Turning On" in a 1979 CBS variety show, The Beatrice Arthur Special. The song — music by Cy Coleman; lyrics and book by Michael Stewart — is from the Broadway [...]

The Weinstein Co. will distribute Cecilia Peck and two-time Academy Award-winner Barbara Kopple’s politically charged documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing. According to Gregg Goldstein’s Reuters/Hollywood Reporter article, "The film revolves around the aftermath of singer Natalie Maines‘ statement at a 2003 London concert, where she said, ‘Just so you know, we’re ashamed the [...]

Press Release:
Beverly Hills, CA —  The rarely-seen silent version of Harold Lloyd’s Welcome Danger (1929) will screen in conjunction with the opening of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ new exhibition, "Out on a Ledge: Photographs of a Comic Genius, from the Harold Lloyd Collection," on Friday, September 15, at 8 [...]

The nominees for the Israel Academy of Film and Television Awards, also known as the Ophir Awards, were announced in Tel Aviv this past Tuesday, Aug. 22. As per Hannah Brown in the Jerusalem Post, the most notable aspect of the Israel Academy’s choices was the near complete lack of political content in the nominated [...]

Press Release:
Beverly Hills, CA —  Friday, September 1, is the deadline for documentary filmmakers to submit their short subject and feature-length documentaries to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration for the 79th Academy Awards®.
Each entry form must be accompanied by supporting materials including an English-language synopsis of the film, [...]

Hardly "alternative film" news, and hardly "news," period, at this point …
… But after 14 years of marriage, Paramount — following orders from 83-year-old Viacom top dog Sumner Redstone — has split up with Cruise/Wagner, the film company owned by Tom Cruise and his former agent, Paula Wagner. For those not in the know, the [...]

Beginning Friday, Aug. 25, the Sunset 5 theater complex in West Hollywood will present an eight-week, eight-film retrospective of one of the foremost film directors of the last 20 years, Pedro Almodóvar, whose latest film, Volver, opens in the U.S. on Nov. 3.
The retrospective, named "Viva Pedro," will screen brand-new prints of — in [...]

© A.M.P.A.S.
Press Release:
Beverly Hills, CA —  Photographs of master film comedian Harold Lloyd teetering off a ledge in "Feet First" (1930) and cavorting with a monkey in "The Kid Brother" (1927) will be among the 110 rarely seen images featured in the Academy of Motion [...]

William Holden (right) asks Peter Finch, "You’re mad as hell because you think 1970s TV news programming is created by greedy idiots for the delight of gullible idiots? Hah! This is nothing! Just you wait another 30 years…"
Photo: © [...]

Brief Obit: 6-foot-5 wrestler Ken Richmond, 80, the fourth and last bulky man striking the gong before the opening credits of the British Rank Studio films, died of a heart attack on Aug. 3 at his home in Christchurch, on England’s south coast.
In 1954, Richmond was paid £100 (approximately US$280 at the time) to [...]

The 28-film line-up for the 44th New York Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, can be found at IndieWIRE.
Among the entries are Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (France / Mali), about a tribunal to judge the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Bamako, by the way, is the name of the [...]

The biting drama Den Brysomme mannen / The Bothersome Man, the apparent favorite at Norway’s 2006 Amanda Film Awards, did win three of the six top awards this past Friday, Aug. 18: Best Director (Jens Lien), Best Actor (Trond Fausa Aurvåg, who also directed the winning short film, Alene menn sammen / Lonely Together), and [...]

Rediff News has a list of the ten longest Hindi-language films. I’m not sure how accurate the list is, but it’s worth taking into consideration that as per the Rediff article, "the average Hindi flick regularly clocks in at about 3 hours, songs and all."
Among the entries are the Academy Award-nominated Lagaan (2001), directed [...]