Alternative Film Guide

May 31, 2005:

According to a Reuters report, Indian police have arrested two men in connection with last week’s two cinema bombings during screenings of Rahul Rawail’s Hindi-language adventure film Jo Bole So Nihaal / He Who Believes Will Triumph in Delhi. One of the suspects has possible ties to the Sikh rebel group Babbar Khalsa, which wants an independent state for Sikhs.

The bombings left one dead and dozens injured.

May 22, 2005:

In Delhi, special police forces have been posted at more than a dozen film theaters showing Rahul Rawail’s Hindi-language film Jo Bole So Nihaal / He Who Believes Will Triumph, following two blasts at movie houses in the Indian capital that left 1 dead and 49 injured.

Starring Bollywood muscleman Sunny Deol, the hero of numerous flag-waving Indian films, Jo Bole So Nihaal is the unlikely tale of a kind-hearted Punjabi police officer who is sent to New York to aid the incompetent FBI track a terrorist intent on killing the U.S. president.

According to the Agence France-Presse, the Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), the highest authority in the Sikh religion, has demanded that Jo Bole So Nihaal be banned on the grounds that both the film’s negative portrayal of a Sikh character and its use of the Sikh religious chant as its title are offensive to Sikhs.

Following protests from the SGPC, Jo Bole So Nihaal was withdrawn from theaters in the heavily Sikh northern Indian state of Punjab last week.

Bollywood films have had their share of ethno-religious controversy in recent months. Earlier this year, the northeastern Indian state of Assam banned Mani Shankar’s Tango Charlie, following widespread protests by the state’s ethnic Bodo population.

Around the same time, Pakistani film star Meera outraged radical Muslims in Pakistan because of a kissing scene in the Indian-made, supernatural thriller Nazar, while radical Catholics in India called for a ban of Vinod Pande’s Sins, which depicts a Roman Catholic priest having an affair with a girl half his age.

May 9, 2005:

Reportedly produced for anywhere between US$125 and $180 million, Kingdom of Heaven has been mired in box-office purgatory.

Ridley Scott’s costume epic has managed to take only an estimated US$20 million at the U.S. / Canada box office on its opening weekend. That represents the lowest receipts for a film kicking off the summer season since Hollywood studios decided to move forward its official “blockbuster season” from Memorial Day to the beginning of May eight years ago.

Kingdom of Heaven stars Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson. Director Scott is the perpetrator of trash like G.I. Jane (1997), Gladiator (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001).

There was a time, a long, long time ago, when Scott actually made films. Anyone remember Blade Runner?

May 6, 2005:

Bryan Singer is to direct a feature film biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco. Milk, along with San Francisco’s mayor George Moscone, was murdered by fellow city supervisor Dan White in 1978.

White was eventually found guilty of voluntary manslaughter (and left prison after serving a few months) because the jury chose to accept the defense attorney’s claim that his client had committed the murders while under the influence of junk food. That became known as the “twinkie defense.” Following the twinkie nonsense verdict, San Francisco was shaken by a night of rioting.

Milk’s life has already been depicted on the big screen by Rob Epstein’s 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, winner of that year’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award.

May 5, 2005:

It’s 9:30pm PDT. If you live in the United States, you still have about forty-five minutes to set up your DVR, VCR, or whatever video-recording equipment you have in order to record one of Luis Buñuel’s best films, El Ángel exterminador / The Exterminating Angel (1962), at 10:15pm PDT on Turner Classic Movies.

Adapted by Buñuel and Luis Alcoriza from José BergamÁ­n’s play Los Naufragos, El Ángel exterminador is a corrosive attack on the type of herd mentality — whether induced by religious, social, or political dogma — that has kept humankind intellectually (and why not, also spiritually) imprisoned for millennia.

This socio-psychological satire is the type of provocative work of art that would have gotten Buñuel burned at the stake had he lived (and had movies existed) a few centuries ago. In fact, at the time of its release, the film angered both reactionary Christians and devout fascists, and was banned in a number of countries. El Ángel exterminador is that good.

Buñuel’s Simón del desierto / Simon of the Desert follows at 12:00am PDT.

 

Apr 30, 2005:

Chicago is currently hosting the 2005 edition of the Palestine Film Festival, which ends on May 3. Among the films being shown in the next few days are Hiam Abbass’s short La Danse éternelle / The Eternal Dance (France, 2004), which revolves around a man who has difficulties coping with life after his wife becomes seriously ill; Dahna Aburahme’s Until When. . . (U.S. / Palestine, 2004), a documentary about four Palestinian families living in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem; and Rashid Masharawi’s Hatta Ishaar Akhar / Curfew (Palestine, 1994), which depicts a day in the life of a Palestinian family living in a refugee camp on the Gaza Strip.

…

Apr 29, 2005:

Der Untergang / Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Academy Award-nominated drama about Adolf Hitler’s delusional last days in his Berlin bunker, has become the highest-grossing German film ever released in Britain. (Not taking inflation into account.)

Der Untergang has earned more than £1.3 million (approximately US$ 2.5 million) at the British box office, having surpassed the previous record holder, Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin!, which took £1.24 million (approximately US$ 2.35 million).

Der Untergang stars Swiss actor Bruno Ganz as Hitler, Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge, Hitler’s faithful secretary.

Bernd Eichinger’s screenplay was adapted from two books: Joachim Fest’s Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches / Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich, and Traudl Junge and Melissa Müller’s Bis zur letzten Stunde / Until the Final Hour : Hitler’s Last Secretary.

This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of Hitler’s death.

…

Brief obit: Actress Kay Walsh, leading lady and second lead in numerous British films of the 1940s and 1950s, has died.

Among Walsh’s most important films are In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), and Oliver Twist (1948), all directed by her then husband David Lean.

Other notable films include Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950), Lease of Life (1954), and Ronald Neame’s The Horse’s Mouth (1958), opposite Alec Guinness.

Kay Walsh was 90.

Apr 26, 2005:

Brief obit: Director George P. Cosmatos, 64, died on April 19 from lung cancer.

Born in Florence, Italy, and raised in Egypt and Cyprus, Cosmatos directed Sylvester Stallone in two of the actor’s most popular — and most critically panned — films: Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Cobra (1986).

Among Cosmatos’ other films are The Cassandra Crossing (1976), the tale of a doomed train ride with Burt Lancaster, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner and a host of other stellar names; Leviathan (1989) with Peter Weller; and the 1993 Western Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer.

Cosmatos’ last film was the thriller Shadow Conspiracy (1997) starring Charlie Sheen.

Apr 25, 2005:

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that what’s left of Pickfair, the legendary estate of silent film superstars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, has been sold to a neighbor for approximately US$20 million.

Very little of the old mansion — the Camelot of 1920s Hollywood — has been left standing following a major 1994 refurbishing job by the estate’s sellers, businessman Meshulam Riklis and entertainer Pia Zadora. The property itself, which once covered all of 15 acres, has been subdivided and now consists of only 2.23 acres.

…

According to China Daily, this past weekend Beijing University officials refused to allow the staging of a gay and lesbian film festival on campus. Fearing censorship, organizers had told the university that the films would be presented as part of an AIDS and sexual-health awareness event, but apparently word got out about the true nature of the festival. Following a quick change of venues, the films were shown at a dormant factory currently being used by artists.

Apr 24, 2005:

Xinhuanet reports that China is currently the third largest film producer in the world, after the United States and India. According to Zhang Pimin, vice director of the film department at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China produced a record 212 films in 2004, while Chinese film houses reported 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million) in box-office revenues. (As so often happens in such matters, the report doesn’t specify if those box-office figures are restricted to domestic productions, though that is what is implied.) Chinese films also earned 3.6 billion yuan (US$433 million) in theaters overseas and through sales to China Central Television’s movie channel.

Zhang added that a mere three out of all 2004 Chinese films gobbled up nearly 60 percent of the country’s domestic box-office take. The golden three were Zhang Yimou’s Shi mian mai fu / House of Flying Daggers, Hong Kong Film Awards winner Gong Fu / Kung Fu Hustle, and Feng Xiaogang Tian xia wu zei / A World Without Thieves, starring Andy Lau.

Apr 23, 2005:

Brief obit: Actor John Mills, 97, has died.

Mills won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as the village idiot in David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Among his other films are Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and Hobson’s Choice (1954), Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory (1960), and Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982).

His daughters, Juliet Mills and Hayley Mills, are also actresses.

Apr 19, 2005:

Actress Jane Fonda remained calm and composed after a man spat tobacco juice in her face at a book signing in Kansas, where Fonda was promoting her autobiography My Life So Far.

The man, Michael A. Smith, 54, of Kansas City, did not like the fact that Fonda had been an anti-Vietnam war protester, later referring to her as a “traitor.” (According to reports, Smith is a Vietnam War veteran.)

After spitting on the 67-year-old actress, Smith tried to flee but was caught by police and charged with disorderly conduct. Fonda, for her part, never left her seat. She wiped her face and went on signing books.

In a statement announced through her publisher, Fonda said, “In spite of the incident, my experience in Kansas City was wonderful and I thank all the warm and supportive people, including so many veterans, who came to welcome me last night.”

Apr 18, 2005:

According to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ontario government is defying a court ruling by attempting to uphold its film-censorship powers.

In 2002, Toronto’s gay bookstore Glad Day and its owner, John Scythes, were found guilty of distributing a film without the Ontario Film Review Board’s advance approval. (Glad Day has repeatedly challenged Ontario’s censorship laws over the years.)

Following an appeal, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the government to engage in “prior restraint,” adding that the province’s Theatres Act violated freedom of expression.

Despite the higher court’s ruling, the Ontario Film Board apparently wants to retain its powers as “daddy” to all Ontario residents. As per the CCLA, clauses have been inserted in the province’s newly revised film regulation charter that will maintain the Board’s powers to ban or censor adult content from films.

Apr 17, 2005:

According to a Los Angeles Times report by John Horn, the sale and rentals of DVDs — including old and new movies, and TV series — account for approximately 60% of a major studio’s profits. U.S. DVD sales in 2004 grossed $15.5 billion and DVD rentals $5.7 billion, as per the Digital Entertainment Group.

Studios have been accused of underreporting their DVD revenues so as to prevent talent from demanding more money.

Apr 14, 2005:

The 9th annual edition of the City of Lights City of Angels (COL COA) French film festival is currently being held at the Directors Guild of America Theater in West Hollywood.

Among the festival’s highlights are the U.S. premieres of Bertrand Tavernier’s Holy Lola, the story of a French couple who want to adopt a Cambodian baby, and Costa-Gavras’s Le Couperet / The Ax, a comedy in which the director of the hard-edged political dramas Z and Etat de siège / Stage of Siège attacks ruthless capitalism.

Other screenings include Les Sœurs fâchées / Me and My Sister, with Isabelle Huppert; Emmanuel Mouret’s Vénus et Fleur / Venus & Fleur; and Olivier Marchal’s crime drama 36, Quai des Orfèvres / 36, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu.

The festival runs through April 17.

Apr 10, 2005

The state of Assam, in northeastern India, has banned Mani Shankar’s Tango Charlie, a new Bollywood film that has generated widespread protests by the state’s ethnic Bodo population. The Bodos have objected to a scene that depicts a Bodo rebel cutting off a hostage’s ear and giving it to his girlfriend as a gift.

For 18 years, rebels of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland fought for a separate Bodo nation in Assam, but last year they settled for an autonomous region. Their guerrillas have often threatened to cut off hostages’ limbs, but there is no evidence that those threats have ever been carried out.

…

Veteran Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan announced yesterday that Amsterdam will host the Indian Film Academy Awards in early June. The awards ceremony will be held in tandem with a film festival and a business summit with dozens of India’s top executives.

Bachchan also suggested that, as a gesture of good will, the International Indian Film Academy should consider staging one of its award ceremonies in Pakistan.

“An imaginary line is dividing two countries and creating a lot of hostility,” Bachchan explained. “We need to stop that. Everywhere in the world now barriers are being removed and people are coming together.

“I hope that we can, as a result of film making and exchange of culture and films and events, be able to propagate peace.”

For more than half a century, Pakistan and India have been at odds with each other because of religious and territorial disputes. The latest sign that the two nuclear powers are attempting to co-exist in a peaceful manner is this week’s opening of the first bus service in decades between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.

Quote source: Reuters.

Apr 8, 2005:

From May 5-8, Berlin will host the 20th Black International Cinema, a festival composed mostly of short and feature-length documentaries.

Among the scheduled films are Otu Tetteh’s Papa Afrika - On the Road to the Roots (Ghana / Germany), a portrait of a Ghanaian family; Ali Kazimi’s Continuous Journey (Canada), about a boatful of immigrants from British India who were turned away by Canadian authorities in 1914; Benson McGrath’s Au Pair Chocolat (United States), a fictional narrative about a “hip-hop Mary Poppins” who lands a job at a wealthy Martha’s Vineyard household; and Jorge Fortes and Diego Ceballos’s Afroargentinos / Afroargentines, a documentary about ethnic prejudice in Argentina, the most ethno-European country in the Americas.

…

A consortium of companies (including Sony Corp.) are closing a deal today to purchase MGM assets for approximately US$4.8 billion. According to the Hollywood Reporter, that will signal the (well, maybe) final end of the legendary Hollywood studio.

 

Apr 7, 2005:

On Wednesday, eBay founding president Jeff Skoll screened an Arabic-language version of Richard Attenborough’s 1982 Academy Award-winning epic Gandhi to a Palestinian audience.

The reverential film about Mahatma Gandhi (played by Academy Award-winner Ben Kingsley) will be screened at different venues in the West Bank and Gaza strip over the next week. The screenings, which have been endorsed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, are supposed to encourage non-violent methods in the Palestinians’ continuous uprising against Israel.

Apr 6, 2005:

Brief obit: Monaco’s Prince Rainier III, Europe’s longest-reigning monarch, has died. Prince Rainier was the widower of American film star Grace Kelly, who died in 1982.

Their son, Prince Albert, is unmarried and has no children. In 2002, the principality changed its succession law to allow a reigning prince without descendants to pass reigning power to his siblings. Both of Albert’s two sisters, Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, have children.

Prince Rainier was being treated for heart, kidney and breathing problems. He was 81.

…

Brief obit: Canadian-born writer Saul Bellow, 89, has died of natural causes at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Among Bellow’s better known works are The Adventures of Augie March, the Pulitzer Prize winner Humboldt’s Gift, and Herzog. His 1956 novel, Seize the Day, was turned into a 1986 movie directed by Fielder Cook, and starring Robin Williams.

Saul Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Apr 4, 2005:

The staff of London’s Huntley Film Archives has found a 1910 French live-action film version of Snow White, Little Snow White, along with dozens of other films that were being stored in more than 600 cans in aircraft hangars in the south of England.

Little Snow White is color tinted and has been described as a lavish example of early filmmaking.

Apr 3, 2005:

Italian legend Sophia Loren has replaced French actress Emanuelle Béart as a guest of honor at this year’s edition of the Istanbul International Film Festival. Béart decided not to take part in the event in protest against the use of brute force by Turkish police at a Women’s Day rally held in March.

The festival, organized by the Istanbul Arts and Culture Foundation, will screen 166 films, 13 of which will be vying for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Tulip.

In addition to Loren, American actor Harvey Keitel, and French novelist-filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet are being honored for the body of their work.

The jury will be presided by New Zealand director Jane Campion.

The Istanbul festival runs until April 17.

…

The 4th Boston Turkish Film Festival kicked off yesterday with a screening of director ;Metin Erksan;’s 1964 Golden Bear-winner Susuz yaz / Dry Summer. The festival will screen nine other Turkish films.

The festival’s film selection has been picked by the Ankara Cinema Association as the ten best Turkish films of all time. Among them are Yilmaz Güney’s and Serif Gören’s Yol / The Way / The Road (1983), Güney’sUmut / Hope (1970), Yavuz Turgul’s Muhsin Bey / Mr. Muhsin (1987), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak / Distant (2002).

The Boston Turkish Film Festival runs until April 10.

…

On Monday, the TV series American Experience will present Sue Williams’s CINE Golden Eagle Award-winning documentary Mary Pickford. The documentary discusses the career of the small, childlike, curly-haired performer known as “America’s Sweetheart” (though Pickford was born in Canada), and the sweet and spunky star of Daddy-Long-Legs (1919), Pollyanna (1920), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921).

Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was also a shrewd businesswoman and the most powerful woman in Hollywood in the 1910s and 1920s. She was one of the founders of United Artists, and Pickfair, her home with then-husband Douglas Fairbanks, was the place to visit on the U.S. West Coast for foreign royalty and assorted dignitaries.

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Mary Pickford was quite possibly the biggest and most beloved star of them all — ever.

Mary Pickford, airs on PBS on Monday, April 4, 2005, 9:00-10:30 p.m. ET. Actress Laura Linney narrates.

The Mary Pickford official site

Apr 1, 2005:

A recent New York Times article has revealed that the FBI helped arrange chartered flights for dozens of well-connected Saudi nationals in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Among those the FBI helped leave the United States — without being interviewed before their departure and at a time when airplanes were grounded for almost everyone else — were several relatives of Most Wanted Man Osama bin Laden.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore asserts that those flights had taken place, even though the mainstream American media had basically ignored that important bit of information. Moore also alleges in his multiple award-winning documentary that the prominent Saudis were able to leave the country because of the close ties uniting the George W. Bush White House and the Saudi Royal Family.

The New York Times cited newly-released U.S. government records that were obtained by Judicial Watch following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department.

Mar 30, 2005:

Although 34-year-old Bosnian director Ahmed Imamovic’s Go West has yet to be released to the public, it is already causing a sizable amount of controversy in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

According to a BBC report, Imamovic has received death threats and has been attacked by some in the Bosnian press. Religious organizations have also condemned his film. The reason for all the hostility? Go West deals with the Bosnian war as a backdrop for the story of two lovers: one Serbian, one Muslim. Both male.

“Homosexuality is something that has always been hidden in this society. So people don’t know how to react when it comes to the surface. They feel threatened,” says Svetlana Djurkovic, leader of Sarajevo’s gay and lesbian group Q Association.

“We like to joke that it’s a film about Romeo and Romeo — without the Juliet. But we hope the film will encourage people to be more tolerant,” explains Go West’s producer Samir Smajic.

A higher degree of tolerance surely wouldn’t hurt the deeply divided Bosnian society — or most of the planet, for that matter.

Ahmed Imamovic hopes Go West will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Quotes:

“So now I’ve come out of it all, and that’s when I really started having fun. I had fun before, but if you can have fun the way I have when I’m nearly 60, that’s quite interesting. If you don’t worry about getting wrinkled and all that, and you just allow yourself to feel good, then maybe it’s because your time has come.”

Actress Charlotte Rampling, discussing her life and career in The [London] Independent.

…

“There was something exciting about pornography. It lived in some mid-world between crime and art. And it was adventurous.”

Norman Mailer, in the documentary Inside Deep Throat. Mailer’s quote can also be found in a recent Richard Corliss Time magazine article, “That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic,” in which Corliss discusses the role of pornography in art and in culture. “Porn doesn’t affront contemporary community standards,” Corliss writes. “It is a contemporary community standard.” [italics his]

WARNING: Corliss column “is rated NC17 for explicit nostalgia.”

…

“The people that vote on our films are our peers, and these people have seen reenactments for 20 years plus.”

Bobby Houston, director of this year’s Academy Award-winning short-film documentary Mighty Times: The Children’s March.

Fellow documentarian and short-film documentary Oscar nominee (for Sister Rose’s Passion) Steven Kalafer has complained to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that Houston and The Children’s March producer Robert Hudson misled the Academy’s documentary board by not divulging the fact that reenactments had been used in their documentary short.

The Children’s March depicts the 1963 civil rights protests enacted by thousands of children in Birmingham, Alabama. The filmmakers recreated some scenes with the use of old cameras and film stock that would give the reenacted scenes an authentic 1960s look.

Quote source: The New York Times.

…

“At present, the scripts I have received are all from Hollywood and I probably don’t have time for any others. But if time permits, then I will be happy to cooperate with domestic directors.”

Gong Li, 39, one of the best film actresses of the 1990s. Gong Li (or Li Gong, in the correct name/surname order) will be featured in Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha along with Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh, and in Michael Mann’s upcoming big-screen version of Miami Vice.

Quote source: China Daily.

Mar 29, 2005:

Organizers have announced the film line-up for the 2005 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Among the films being screened are Michael Winterbottom’s controversial, sexually explicit 9 Songs; Wong Kar Wai’s moody 2046, starring Hong Kong Film Award winners Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang; Joseph Lovett’s documentary Gay Sex in the ’70s, a view of post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS gay New York; and Jaume Serra’s House of Wax, a remake of the 1953 horror classic.

Also, Mackendrick on Film, Paul Cronin’s documentary on British director Alexander Mackendrick (The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers); Sally Potter’s Yes, starring Joan Allen; Costa-Gavras’s black comedy Le Couperet / The Ax; and Nahid Persson’s documentary Prostitution Behind the Veil, which depicts three Iranian women who prostitute themselves to pay for their drug habits.

The festival kicks off on April 19.

Mar 27, 2005:

Ahmed Zaki, one of Egypt’s leading actors, has died at the age of 55 in Cairo. Zaki, renowned for his screen portrayals of Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar Sadat, had been suffering from lung cancer. He had been in a coma for several weeks.

A star for more than two decades, Zaki was born into a poor family in a rural area in the Nile Delta. At the beginning of his career, he played men who represented the yearnings of young and poor rural Egyptians, though it would be in political films that he really made his mark.

Besides his much-discussed incarnations of Nasser and Sadat in, respectively, Nasser 56 (1996) and Ayam El-Sadat / Days of Sadat (2001), Zaki also appeared in several other political films, most recently in Ma’ali al wazir / His Excellency the Minister (2003), in which he played a guilt-ridden, corrupt government official.

Before being taken ill, Zaki was planning to play current Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on film. His son, Haitham Ahmed Zaki, is set to finish Haleem, in which the older Zaki plays the late Egyptian singer Abdul Haleem Hafez. The younger Zaki will play Haleem Hafez in his early years.

…

Commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Strasbourg is currently holding an 8-film retrospective of Russian and Soviet cinema.

Pyotr Todorovsky‘ s Academy Award-nominated 1983 film Voenno-polevoy roman / Wartime Romance kicked off the mini-festival last Tuesday. Among the other classic films in the program are Mikhail Kalatozov’s Golden Palm winner Letyat zhuravli / The Cranes Are Flying (1957; winner at the 1958 Cannes festival) and Grigori Chukhraj’s masterful 1959 drama Ballada o soldate / Ballad of a Soldier.

Newer Russian films include Lidiya Bobrova’s Babusya / Granny (2003) and Stanislav Govorukhin’s Blagoslovite zhenshchinu / Bless the Woman (2003).

The festival, which is being held at the 92-year-old Cinéma Odyssée, runs until April 4.

 

Mar 25, 2005:

According to a Los Angeles Times report, Meet the Fockers, starring Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand, has become the most successful live-action comedy in history. The craphouse family movie of the year has grossed US$498 million worldwide, $221 million of which outside of the U.S. (and possibly Canadian*) market. (As far as international box-office figures are concerned, it surely doesn’t hurt that the U.S. dollar has lost so much ground against most
major foreign currencies in the last couple of years.)

Now, the Los Angeles Times apparently doesn’t consider that Oscar-winning paean to idiocy and conformism, Forrest Gump, a comedy — US$679 million (in 1994-95 US dollars) in worldwide ticket sales. But then again, perhaps they have a point.

But what about Home Alone? True, the Macauley Culkin flick isn’t funny, but neither is Meet the Fockers. In any case, according to several sources Home Alone earned US$533 million worldwide in 1990-91. (Actually, the Times does mention Home Alone, but its report, probably using Box Office Mojo as a source, gives $477 million as the box-office take for that film.)

Note: I tried to find out the actual worldwide box-office gross of Home Alone, but I was out of luck. A librarian at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences told me that Variety only began consistently tracking worldwide box-office revenues in 1996.

* Canada is usually included in the U.S. domestic tally as if it were the 51st state.

Mar 24, 2005:

Bride and Prejudice, the revamped version of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, will kick off the third Eilat International Film Festival in the southern Israeli coastal town.

The Eilat festival will screen 45 films from about 20 countries, including Fabio Carpi’s Le Intermittenze del cuore / Memory Lane (Italy), Ruud van Hemert’s Feestje / Love Trap (The Netherlands), Jaime Aparicio’s El Mago / The Magician (Mexico), and Igarashi Sho’s Hazan (Japan). A Best Israeli Film and a Best Foreign Film will be chosen from among the competing entries.

The Eilat International Film Festival runs between April 6-9.

Mar 23, 2005:

IMAX theaters in several cities in Texas, Georgia, and North and South Carolina have decided not to screen Stephen Low’s Volcanoes of the Deep Sea because its references to evolution may offend Fundamentalist Christians who believe in creationism.

Narrated by actor Ed Harris, the documentary follows two scientists searching for an elusive 50-million-year old creature along the 12,000-foot (3,650 meters) deep mid-ocean ridge. The narration (written by Stephen and Alex Low;) commits the cardinal sin of making a connection between human DNA and microbes inside undersea volcanoes.

It remains unclear whether those same theaters would refrain from showing a “documentary” preaching creationism for fear of offending those who take scientific studies seriously.

…

The Irish Film Board has announced that all 500 film theaters in the Republic of Ireland and in British-ruled Northern Ireland will have their 35mm film projectors replaced by digital ones. The board noted that theaters will be able to download the latest releases via satellite, a practice that should reduce distribution costs in those two territories.

Los Angeles Film Festival 2005

Last Call for Nazi-Occupied France

Paramount Before the Code at New York City’s Film Forum

SORRELL AND SON (1927) Screening in Los Angeles

PEINDRE OU FAIRE L’AMOUR at Cannes

 

 

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