Alternative Film Guide

Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, which opens today in Los Angeles, has received widespread praise since its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The French daily Le Monde called it "the major revelation of the Cannes Film Festival’s Director’s Fortnight," while John Anderson remarked in The Washington Post that Bahrani "has created a not-to-miss gem [...]

The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
Direction and Screenplay: Leonard Kastle. Cast: Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Mary Jane Higby, Doris Roberts
 
From the moment we hear Gustave Mahler’s highly dramatic music in the opening scene of The Honeymoon Killers, Leonard Kastle’s imaginative thriller and its cast of little-known players take off.
Shirley Stoler plays a corpulent hospital nurse [...]

Director Joseph Pevney died this past May 18. He was 96.
Pevney was best known — among the few who’d heard of him — for his 1950s B-movies made at Universal, though beginning in the late 1950s he went on to direct countless episodes of TV series ranging from Bewitched and The Big Valley to [...]

A.O. Scott pays tribute to Sydney Pollack in the New York Times:
"Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
"… If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be [...]

Rain (1932)
Direction: Lewis Milestone. Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson; from John Colton and Clemence Randolph’s play, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “Miss Thompson.” Cast: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, William Gargan, Beulah Bondi, Guy Kibbee, Matt Moore, Walter Catlett
 

 
The first thing you notice in the credits of the 1932 United Artists version of Rain is that [...]

Kevin Willmott’s Bunker Hill will have an exclusive screening at the University of the District of Columbia’s Main Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 12, 2008, hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of the National Capital Area. Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will introduced the screening, which will be followed by a panel [...]

Artivist bills itself as "the 1st international film festival dedicated to addressing Human Rights, Children’s Advocacy, Environmental Preservation, and Animal Advocacy."
As per their press release, the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival is currently accepting international film and video submissions "that concern themselves with human rights, social or political issues, children’s issues/advocacy, animal issues/rights, or [...]

Gus Van Sant’s 1997 Best Picture nominee Good Will Hunting will be the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series. The film will be screened on Monday, June 2, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Following the screening, editor Pietro Scalia, [...]

Possessed (1947)
Direction: Curtis Bernhardt. Screenplay: Silvia Richards and Ranald MacDougall; from a story by Rita Weiman. Cast: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Stanley Ridges, John Ridgely, Moroni Olsen
 

 
From the moment we see her shuffling across town in a comatose stupor to the homicidal climax, Possessed is Joan Crawford’s picture all the way. [...]

Sydney Pollack, the director of several critical and box-office successes of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, died of cancer earlier today in the Los Angeles suburb of Pacific Palisades. He was 73.
Pollack began his show business career on the stage and later moved on to television, where he directed episodes of several series including The [...]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull dug up $126 million at the North American box office this Memorial Day weekend, according to studio estimates Monday. Adding the $25 million from its opening day last Thursday, the adventure film brought its five-day domestic total to $151 million.
Released by Paramount and directed by [...]

This Woman Is Dangerous (1952)
Direction: Felix E. Feist. Screenplay: Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes) and George Worthing Yates; from Bernard Girard’s story “Stab of Pain.” Cast: Joan Crawford, Dennis Morgan, David Brian, Mari Aldon, Richard Webb, Philip Carey, Ian MacDonald, George Chandler
 

 
Despite the fact that it has one of my favorite movie titles, the first [...]

Cannes Film Festival Awards 2008
Cannes Film Festival 2008: May 14–25
 

 
Palme d’Or: The Class by Laurent Cantet
Grand Prix: Gomorrah by Matteo Garrone
Best Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Three Monkeys
Jury Prize: Paolo Sorrentino for Il Divo
Best Actor: Benicio Del Toro in Che
Best Actress: Sandra Corveloni in Linha de Passe
Best Screenplay: Lorna’s Silence by Jean-Pierre et Luc [...]

Made of Honor (2008)
Direction: Paul Weiland. Screenplay: Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan, and Harry Elfont; from a story by Sztykiel. Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Kadeem Hardison, Chris Messina, Kathleen Quinlan, Sydney Pollack
 

 
Patrick Dempsey is riding the McDreamy wave as far as he can take it. Fresh out of his role as a modern-day [...]

World Cinema Clips: "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" is the high point of Busby Berkeley’s 1943 musical extravaganza The Gang’s All Here. Alice Faye was the nominal star of the film — and she plays her "straight woman" role quite well — but The Gang’s All Here really belongs to Carmen Miranda and her [...]

Formerly known as Padre Nuestro (not to be confused with Rodrigo Sepúlveda’s Chilean drama of the same name), screenwriter-director Christopher Zalla’s debut feature Sangre de Mi Sangre ("Blood of My Blood") received the Grand Jury prize for best narrative feature at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. More than a year after its win, the Spanish-language [...]

The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)
Direction: Vincent Sherman. Screenplay: Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman; from Gertrude Walker’s story "Case History". Cast: Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith, Richard Egan, Hugh Sanders, Selena Royle, Jacqueline deWit
 

 
Directed by Vincent Sherman, the torrid 1950 potboiler The Damned Don’t Cry is my favorite post-Mildred Pierce Joan Crawford vehicle [...]

I’ve just learned that Flags of Our Fathers actor Adam Beach will be on hand at a reception and awards ceremony celebrating the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival in New York City on Thursday, May 29th.
According to its website, the Media That Matters Film Festival "is the premier showcase for short films on [...]

Humoresque (1946)
Direction: Jean Negulesco. Screenplay: Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold; from Fannie Hurst’s short story. Cast: Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Oscar Levant, J. Carrol Naish, Joan Chandler, Ruth Nelson, Tom D’Andrea, Craig Stevens
 

 
Directed by Jean Negulesco from a screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold (based on a Fanny Hurst short story), Humoresque always frustrates [...]

The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes (1955)
Direction: David Kramarsky and Lou Place. Screenplay: Tom Filer. Cast: Paul Birch, Lorna Thayer, Dona Cole, Leonard Tarver, Dick Sargent, Chester Conklin
 
Despite the confusing voice-over introduction, David Kramarsky and Lou Place’s The Beast with a Million Eyes is one of my favorite 1950s alien-invasion films.
Set in an ugly, desolate [...]

Sergio Leone’s epic Western Once Upon a Time in the West will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Gold Standard screening series on Friday, June 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The screening will mark the West Coast premiere of a new [...]

Way Out West (1930)
Direction: Fred Niblo. Screenplay: Byron Morgan and Alfred Block; dialogue by Alfred Block, Joe Farnham, Ralph Spence, and Henry Sharp. Cast: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Cliff Edwards, Polly Moran, Francis X. Bushman Jr. (aka Ralph Bushman), Charles Middleton, Vera Marsh
 
When a crooked carnival barker cheats a gang of tough cowboys in a [...]

Today, the quarterly DVD Journal of Short Film released its Volume 11 (Spring 2008) issue, which features 24 filmmakers from Portland, Oregon. Portland filmmaker Karl Lind served as guest editor.
Following is a list of the films in Volume 11:
1.SPHERES Jeremy Bird (1:00)
2.TO WATCH IN PREPARATION OF THE DEEP FALL Mack McFarland (1:30)
3.THE FOREST John [...]

Patrick Goldstein’s "Wanted: More female directors" in the Los Angeles Times:
"When people are underrepresented in Hollywood, conspiracy theories abound. [...]
"It’s especially hard to cry discrimination about female directors when women flourish in so many other areas of the business — Hollywood is loaded with powerful female producers, studio executives, managers and publicists. By and large, [...]

Whenever I’m looking for information on film festivals from around the world, the first thing I notice is that English-language news, especially those from American-based sources, focus almost exclusively on Hollywood productions and talent. The rest of the film world is all but inexistent.
That’s hardly the case with festival news reports from sources in other [...]