Alternative Film Guide

War-Gods of the Deep / The City Under the Sea (1965)
Director: Jacques Tourneur Screenplay: Louis M. Heyward and Charles Bennett; additional dialogue by David Whitaker. Cast: Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Susan Hart, David Tomlinson
 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
War-Gods of the Deep is one of those films whose title makes no sense, but is [...]

29th Moscow Film Festival Awards - 2007 Golden St. George
The 29th Moscow Film Festival Award was held between June 21-30, 2007.
 

Vera Storozheva’s Traveling with Pets tells the story of a woman who, after the end of a disastrous marriage, discovers freedom and love.
 
Best Film: Traveling with Pets (director Vera Storozheva, Russia)

Special Jury prize: The [...]

This evening, Friday, June 29, Turner Classic Movies will screen three creepies: The Unholy Three (1925), West of Zanzibar (1928), and Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey / The Adventures of David Grey / Castle of Doom. The first two are silent Lon Chaney vehicles directed by Tod Browning at MGM; the third one [...]

During the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival, the Shanghai Film Critics Association announced their best of 2006 list. Here it is:
 
Top 10 Chinese films: Tokyo Trial, The Knot, Courthouse on the Horseback, Jia Zhang-ke’s Sanxia haoren / Still Life, The Old Summer Palace, Loach Is Fish Too, Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, [...]

Unsurprisingly, Giuseppe Tornatore’s dark drama La Sconosciuta / The Unknown Woman was the top winner at this year’s Nastri d’Argento (Silver Ribbons) presented by the National Union of Italian Film Journalists at the Teatro Antico di Taormina, Sicily, this past June 23. Even so, as was the case at the Italian Academy’s David di Donatello [...]

The winners of the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival’s Jin Jue Awards were announced at the Shanghai Grand Theatre this past Sunday, June 24.
Franziska Meletzky’s Frei nach Plan / According to the Plan, was given the best film award. Written by Elke Rössler, this German comedy-drama revolves around the complex relationship among three sisters [...]

10th Shanghai International Film Festival Awards - 2007 Jin Jue Awards
The 10th Shanghai International Film Festival was held between June 16-24, 2007.
The 10th Shanghai International Film Festival Awards were announced at the Shanghai Grand Theatre on June 24, 2007.
The New Asian Talent Awards were announced on June 23, 2007.
Shanghai International Film Festival 2007 Winners
 
Best Feature [...]

Some have called her the greatest movie star ever, but even if that’s a sort of exaggeration — how does one measure stardom-ness? — Joan Crawford most likely is the film performer who worked most assiduously and for the longest time on creating and maintaining the image of the movie star par excellence.
In fact, it’s [...]

The winners at the 33rd Seattle International Film Festival were announced this past June 17.
The Norwegian production Sønner / Sons (right), which sounds like a darker version of Todd Field’s Little Children, was given the New Director Award. The film follows a short-tempered man’s attempts to prevent an alleged sexual predator from targeting his [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has mailed Foreign Language Film award entry forms to a record 95 countries, thus, as per the Academy’s press release, "facilitating their submissions" for the 80th Academy Awards.
To qualify for the 2007 Oscars, a foreign-language film must obey the following criteria:

Be released in the submitting country between [...]

33rd Seattle International Film Festival Awards
The 33rd Seattle International Film Festival was held between May 24-June 17, 2007.
The 33rd Seattle International Film Festival Awards were announced on June 17, 2007.
33rd Seattle Film Festival Winners — Article
 
Jury Award Winners
New Director Award

Grand Jury Prize: Sønner / Sons, Directed by Eric Richter Strand (Norway)
Special Jury [...]

Last month, Kino International released the Josephine Baker Collection, a DVD set consisting of three must-see feature films starring Josephine Baker, the frenetic American entertainer (from St. Louis) who found fame at the Folies Bergères in the Paris of the 1920s. The three films are La Sirène des tropiques / Siren of the Tropics (1927), [...]

In the last few months Kino International — one of the essential DVD distributors — has released numerous quality DVDs of movies that until fairly recently were just about impossible to find.
Among the rarities I’ve had the pleasure of getting my hands on is "Lubitsch in Berlin," which includes two Ernst Lubitsch comedies of [...]

This evening, Turner Classic Movies is showing several films with gay/bi/etc. characters as part of their Screened Out series. Two days ago, I was sent a link to the youtube video below. I’m posting it here as I found it both clever and perfectly appropriate to the occasion.
The video, created eight months ago by Robert [...]

 
The 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) will be held at the Castro Theatre on July 13-15.
Among the festival’s highlights are:
Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (above): Officially an adaptation of Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s novel Karl Heinrich but clearly inspired by Sigmund Romberg’s operetta, The Student Prince works beautifully despite the [...]

Steven Spielberg’s 1985 Best Picture nominee, the sappy melodrama The Color Purple, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple tells the story of a young, homely black woman’s inner [...]

As part of the Skirball Cultural Center and the American Film Institute series of conversations with renowned filmmakers, Patrice Leconte (right) will be on hand for a q&a following a screening of Jerry Schatzberg’s 1973 road movie Scarecrow, starring Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, apparently one of the motion pictures that has influenced Leconte’s choices [...]

The biggest surprise in the list of 2007 membership invitations sent out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the presence of Christopher Plummer (above). I’d have thought that Plummer had been an Academy member since — at least — 1966. Perhaps the veteran Canadian actor — the (male) star of The [...]

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer stormed to the top of the North American box office this weekend with an estimated US$57.4 million.
The sequel to the successful Fantastic Four opened at 3,959 sites last Friday, and managed to top the $56 million opening weekend set by its predecessor in 2005.
Last week’s winner, Ocean’s Thirteen, [...]

Last week, the governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed a few rules for the 80th Academy Awards.
The most notable adjustment pertains to the best film category. Although one of the rules still states that only "three or fewer producers who have performed the major portion of the producing functions," [...]

While accepting his title as Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic this past June 14, Pedro Almodóvar remarked that "Quentin Tarantino is simpatico and talented, but he sometimes suffers from a sort of verbal incontinence." Almodóvar was referring to the American director’s recent put-down of the new Italian cinema.
At the Cannes [...]

This past Thursday, June 14, one of the world’s top directors of the last 25 years, Pedro Almodóvar, was presented with the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, one of Italy’s highest civilian honors. The Spanish director received the Commendation for his "contributions to European cinema and culture" from [...]

Ta’m e guilass / Taste of Cherry (1997)
Direction and Screenplay: Abbas Kiarostami. Cast: Homayon Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Mir Hossein Noori
 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
There is the old, and often neglected, nostrum about ‘gilding the lily.’ I was reminded of this while watching Abbas Kiarostami’s acclaimed Ta’m e guilass / Taste of [...]

No particular film dominated the Italian Film Academy’s 51st David di Donatello Awards, presented this evening at the Gran Teatro di Tor di Quinto in Rome, though Giuseppe Tornatore’s La Sconosciuta / The Unknown Woman (above) came out as the top winner of the evening.
Tornatore’s dark drama about a mysterious Ukrainian woman (Ksenia Rappoport, [...]

A Passage to India, David Lean’s final film as a director and a 1984 Best Picture nominee, is the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series. The sweeping drama will screen on Monday, June 18, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
I’m not a [...]