Alternative Film Guide

Fusion 2007: The 5th Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival is a three-day event, Nov. 30 — Dec. 2 at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd., showcasing motion pictures centered on non-heterosexual "people of color." The absurdity of that very concept notwithstanding — last time I looked, white was a color — [...]

Anne Thompson on "Hollywood’s new scapegoat" in Daily Variety:
"During the best of times, movies heading toward production are fragile chemical equations. Add a writers’ strike to that mix and things were bound to explode. ‘It’s tough enough to get things right,’ says one senior agent. ‘This difficult situation makes it even more difficult. If [...]

Held for the first time in Brooklyn, at Steiner Studios’ Stage 3, the New York-based Independent Film Project’s 2007 Gotham Awards for American independent films (despite last year’s inclusion of The Departed, Marie Antoinette, etc.) wasn’t dominated by any particular production — perhaps because there aren’t that many Gotham Awards to go around: six in [...]

Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn’s Control, a black-and-white drama about troubled Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, won five trophies — including best film, best director, and best debut director — at the British Independent Film Awards held tonight at the Roundhouse in London.
Corbijn had photographed Joy Division numerous times back in the late 1970s, and in [...]

There were several surprise nominees for the 2007 Spirit Awards, announced earlier today.
Most notable among those were Rajnesh Domalpalli’s Telugu-language drama Vanaja (above), which garnered nominations for best first feature film and best cinematography (Milton Kam); Marisa Tomei’s best supporting actress nod for Sidney Lumet’s thriller Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead; and Marcus Carl [...]

On December 1, Jan-Christopher Horak will become the new Director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Horak’s career as a film archivist and curator has included the role of Senior Curator of the Film Department of the George Eastman House and Director of the Munich Filmmuseum. In 1998, he became Founding Director of Archives [...]

48th Thessaloniki Film Festival Awards - 2007 Golden Alexander
The 48th Thessaloniki Film Festival was held between November 16-25, 2007.
 

In Shangjun Cai’s The Red Awn, after a five-year absence a middle-aged man (Yao Anlian) returns to his hometown to reclaim his house but is told that he is, as per the local registry, officially dead. The [...]

Cristian Mungiu’s drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days received the Bronze Horse for best film at the 2007 edition of the Stockholm Film Festival.
Mungiu’s drama about a young woman helping a friend to undergo an illegal abortion during the Nicolae Ceausescu era was chosen for its depiction of a "strictly controlled society" [...]

28th Blue Dragon Awards - 2007
The 28th Blue Dragon Film Awards cover Korean films released between November 2006 and October 2007.
The 28th Blue Dragon Film Award winners were announced at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul, on November 23, 2007.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Han Jae-rim’s violent gangster comedy-drama-action flick The Show [...]

18th Stockholm Film Festival - 2007 Awards
The 18th Stockholm Film Festival Award was held between November 15-25, 2007.
The 18th Stockholm Film Festival Award winners were announced on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007.
Stockholm Film Festival 2007 Winners - Article
 

Bronze Horse for Best Feature 2007: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu

Best [...]

Deep Sea 3D (above), Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D, and Roving Mars will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ 26th annual "Contemporary Documentaries" series on Wednesday, November 28, at 7 p.m. at the California Science Center’s IMAX Theatre in Los Angeles. Admission is free.
Directed by [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ will present "A Century Ago: The Films of 1907," on Monday, December 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. The program, consisting of more than a dozen shorts, will repeat on Thursday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today the list of 15 films in the Documentary Feature category that will move forward to the next voting phase for the 80th Academy Awards. Seventy feature documentaries had originally qualified in that category. Those were watched by the Academy’s Documentary Branch screening committee for [...]

The Pagan, Ramon Novarro’s first sound vehicle — with a pre-recorded soundtrack but no dialogue — became one of the biggest hits at the U.S. box office in 1929, and a huge success overseas as well. In this fresh-as-an-ocean-breeze comedy-drama-romance, Novarro, at his most natural, is a half-native young man idling his life away in [...]

Beowulf (above) stormed to the top of the North American box office this weekend with an estimated US$28.1 million.
Robert Zemeckis‘ computer-animated epic-adventure tale opened at 3,153 theatres on Friday, slamming its competition after scoring with critics and winning over audiences with stunning 3D projections. Based on the ancient epic poem, the film follows Beowulf, [...]

Joan Blondell, 1938. Photo by A. L. Schafer.
Joan Blondell. Those who have heard the name will most likely picture either a blowsy, older woman playing the worldwise but warm-hearted saloon owner in the late 1960s TV series Here Come the Brides, or a lively, fast-talking, no-nonsense, and (unconventionally) sexy gold digger in numerous Pre-Code Warner [...]

Major Dundee (1965)
Direction: Sam Peckinpah. Screenplay: Harry Julian Fink, Oscar Saul, Sam Peckinpah; from a story by Fink. Cast: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, Senta Berger, James Coburn, Michael Anderson, Jr., Mario Adorf, Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, L. Q. Jones
 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Sam Peckinpah’s 1965 Western Major [...]

Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards - 2007
The 2007 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award winners were announced on Dec. 9, 2007.
 

FILM: There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson
Runner-up: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days directed by Cristian Mungiu
Runner-up: The Diving Bell [...]

National Board of Review Awards - 2007
The 2007 National Board of Review Award winners were announced on Dec. 5, 2007.
The 2007 National Board of Review Awards ceremony will be held at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City on January 15, 2008. Jesse L. Martin will host the event.
2007 National Board of Review Award [...]

Actress Jane Fonda, producers Jerome Hellman and Bruce Gilbert, and costume designer Ann Roth attended the "Monday Nights with Oscar" screening of Hal Ashby’s 1978 drama Coming Home on Nov. 12 in New York City.
 

Producer Jerome Hellman, actress Jane Fonda, costume designer Ann Roth, and associate producer Bruce Gilbert
 

Jane Fonda
 
Photos: Alex Oliveira/©AMPAS
 
Brian De Palma, Amy [...]

Last week, while I was busy at the AFI FEST 2007 I missed out on another film event here in Los Angeles: the 4th Annual Artivist Film Festival, which was held between Nov. 8-11 at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
According to its press release, Artivist — short for Activist Artist — "is the first [...]

The Oscar-winning documentaries Young at Heart, The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table, and You Don’t Have to Die will screen on Monday, November 19, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Linwood Dunn Theater as the final installment of "Oscar’s Docs, Part Three: Academy [...]

A record 63 countries, including newcomers Azerbaijan and Ireland, have submitted films for consideration in the Foreign Language Film category for the 80th Academy Awards.
(See Oscar 2008: Best Foreign-Language Film Shortlist)
 

The 2007 submissions are:

Argentina, "XXY," Lucia Puenzo, director;

Australia, "The Home Song Stories," Tony Ayres, director;

Austria, "The Counterfeiters," Stefan Ruzowitzky, director;

Azerbaijan, "Caucasia," Farid Gumbatov, director;

Bangladesh, "On [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that seven new screenwriters have won the 22nd Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Each writer or writing team will receive a $30,000 prize, the first installment of which will be distributed at a gala dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills [...]

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will be designed by the French architecture firm Atelier Christian de Portzamparc.
De Portzamparc, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1994, designed the Cité de la Musique and the Café Beaubourg in Paris, and the French Embassy building [...]