Alternative Film Guide

Via the Los Angeles Times:
"The historic former Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard, now occupied by television station KTLA-TV Channel 5, has been put up for sale by Tribune Co. [the Chicago-based conglomerate that also owns the Los Angeles Times] amid a wave of high-stakes real estate investment in Hollywood.
"No price has been set for [...]

Based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Eileen Chang, the two-and-half-hour Se, jie / Lust, Caution, Ang Lee’s first Chinese-language film since the 2000 martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, stars Tony Leung as a powerful politician who is seduced by a young woman (newcomer Tang Wei) involved with a group of revolutionary students. The [...]

"The lineup actually does look pretty mouthwatering this year," says Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. "Festival director Marco Muller has unveiled a sparkling set of films, with contributions from Takeshi Kitano, Ang Lee, Brian De Palma, Damien Odoul and many, many more. And after being snubbed at Cannes, the Brits have a very good showing [...]

61st Edinburgh Film Festival Awards - 2007
The 61st Edinburgh Film Festival was held between Aug. 15-26, 2007.
The winners at the 61st Edinburgh Film Festival were announced on Aug. 25, 2007.
 

Sam Riley stars as rocker Ian Curtis in Anton Corbijn’s Control. "It’s fabulous. It’s my first movie so I had no expectations for the film," [...]

13th Sarajevo Film Festival Awards - 2007 Hearts of Sarajevo
The 13th Sarajevo Film Festival was held between Aug. 17-25, 2007.
The winners at the 13th Sarajevo Film Festival were announced on Aug. 25, 2007.
 

In Ozer Kizitan’s A Man’s Fear of God, a devout Turkish Muslim discovers that religious dogma can be bad for your (mental) [...]

From the Cinecon website:
Titles in all upper case are features and those with upper & lower case are short subjects. For more information about these films go to Cinecon’s film line-up page.
All screenings will be held at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard. Admission is by day pass or full festival pass. Passes can be [...]

The AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival — in press releases referred to as "AFI FEST 2007 presented by Audi" — has announced that Lions for Lambs (see trailer below) will be its Opening Night Gala screening on Thursday, November 1, 2007, at the ArcLight Hollywood’s Cinerama Dome Theatre.
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and [...]

Via Zinema:
According to a poll organized by SigmaDos, Pedro Almodóvar is the best known Spanish film director among Spanish citizens. Almodóvar was identified by 69 per cent of Spaniards.
He is followed by:

Academy Award winner and multiple Goya winner (for The Sea Inside) Alejandro Amenábar (34.3%);
Academy Award nominee (for The Grandfather) José Luis [...]

James Ivory’s 1992 best picture nominee Howards End concluded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series on Monday, August 20, at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Oscar-nominated director James Ivory took part in an onstage discussion with Academy Director of Special Projects Randy Haberkamp (foreground) following [...]

31st Montreal World Film Festival Awards - 2007 Grand Prix of the Americas
The 31st Montreal World Film Festival (Montreal Festival des Films du Monde) was held between Aug. 23-Sept. 3, 2007.
The winners at the 31st Montreal World Film Festival (Montreal Festival des Films du Monde) will be announced on Sept. 3, 2007.
 

 
FEATURE FILMS
Grand prix [...]

Tuesday, September 4, is the deadline for documentary filmmakers to submit their short subject and feature documentaries to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration for the 80th Academy Awards.
As per the Academy’s press release, "each completed entry form must be accompanied by supporting materials, including an English-language synopsis of the film, [...]

Roger Daltrey struts his stuff at Woodstock in Woodstock. Whenever I see Daltrey, all I can think of is the Absolutely Fabulous "Fish Farm" episode. From Tommy to Tuna.
 
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Monday Nights with Oscar" series will present a special screening of Woodstock on Saturday, September 8, at 1 p.m. [...]

Sonny Tufts?? Olivia de Havilland totally loses it upon learning that Warner Bros. will loan her out to RKO for the dismal World War II comedy Government Girl, co-starring second-rate Paramount leading man Sonny Tufts. Or perhaps this is a scene from Robert Siodmak’s dark thriller The Dark Mirror.
 
Matthew Belloni in The Hollywood Reporter:
"If newly [...]

Superbad gloriously defended its No. 1 spot at the North American box office this weekend with an estimated US$18 million.
The teen comedy directed by Greg Mottola, and starring Jonah Hill and Michael Cera defeated all new major releases, keeping the crown at the top of the chart and lifting its cumulative gross to $68.6 million [...]

Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, a minimalist micro-budget psychological drama about two friends who go hiking and hot-spring-bathing together (along with a canine named Lucy) in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, was one of the pleasures of the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival.
The Kino DVD release of this touching study about the things that bring human beings together [...]

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
Direction and screenplay: Werner Herzog. Cast: Dieter Dengler
 

 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Little Dieter Needs to Fly is another in the remarkable body of Werner Herzog’s film work, one that is without peer. Having recently rewatched it on DVD, nearly a decade after its initial US release in 1997, it has [...]

Rudolph Valentino Memorial Service in the early 1950s
 
Scores Turn Out to Remember Silent Film Idol
It was standing room only yesterday at Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Cathedral Mausoleum where around 200 mourners gathered to memorialize silent film heartthrob Rudolph Valentino on the 81st anniversary of his death.
On August 23, 1926, at 12:10 pm, Rudolph Valentino breathed [...]

Libby Motika in The Palisadian-Post:
"Once there was a city spread out idyllically on the slopes of Santa Ynez Canyon [between Santa Monica and Malibu] with sweeping views of the sea. The streets were lined with houses of many types, from humble cottages to mansions, and the buildings were fashioned after the architecture of many lands.
"But [...]

Pokolenie / A Generation (1955)
Direction: Andrzej Wajda. Screenplay: Bohdan Czeszko, from his novel. Cast: Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Tadeusz Janczar, Janusz Paluszkiewicz, Ryszard Kotys, Roman Polanski, Zbigniew Cybulski
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Sometimes films get reputations way out of proportion with their artistic merit simply because they expound a point of view with which the public [...]

This morphing montage by eggman913 includes mostly Hollywood actresses, from the 1910s to the present. Of course, there are many missing faces, but the montage is surprisingly thorough.
The actresses are: Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Ruth Chatterton, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien [...]

"Mamoulian," a complete retrospective of Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987), one of cinema’s greatest stylists and innovators, will run at the Film Forum from Friday, September 7 through Tuesday, September 18.
As per the Film Forum’s press release, Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to an Armenian family. He worked at the Moscow Art Theater while [...]

 
Back in the late 1920s, Anita Page could never have dreamed that eight decades later she would be a celebrity of sorts: The Official Last Surviving Silent Film Star.
In truth, Anita Page was never a star in silent movies. She appeared on screen later in the decade, right at the time when the part-talkie [...]

Anita Page: Q&A with Author Allan Ellenberger - Part I
 

Anita Page and Bessie Love play two sisters who try their luck on Broadway — and who, while at it, fall in love with the same man.
 
Anita Page and Bessie Love played singing-and-dancing sisters in the blockbuster "The Broadway Melody," the first sound film and first [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ three-evening series "The Music Soundtrack: A Composers’ Forum of Contemporary Scoring Technique," will focus on the creation of music scores for motion pictures." Sessions will be held on September 20, September 27, and October 4 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in [...]

Karen Lynn Gorney, John Travolta’s romantic interest and fellow disco dancer in Saturday Night Fever, and Donna Pescow
 
Actresses Karen Lynn Gorney, Donna Pescow, costume designer Patrizia Von Brandenstein, and casting director Shirley Rich showed up for an onstage discussion following the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Monday Nights with Oscar" screening of the [...]