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Robert A. Daly Is New AFI Board of Directors Chair

PRESS RELEASE
The American Film Institute (AFI) announced former Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Robert A. Daly has been elected Chair of the AFI Board of Directors.  The Board of Directors acts as an executive committee, setting the institute’s priorities and overseeing its programs.  Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman and CEO of the Sony Corporation, remains Chair of the AFI Board of Trustees.
Daly succeeds Jon Avnet and John Cooke, who served with distinction as Co-Chairs for the Board of Directors for 8 years.  Both men remain on as Directors, and Avnet continues on as Vice-Chair of the Trustees.
Also voted to return to the AFI Board of Trustees were leaders from [...]

When Worlds Collide: The Science of Movies

Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (top); Tobey Maguire in Spider Man 3 (bottom)

"When Worlds Collide: The Science of Movies" is the title of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council’s program about the physics behind some of Hollywood’s best-known action and science-fiction scenes. "When Worlds Collide" will be presented on Thursday, August 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will be hosted by author Adam Weiner (Don’t Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies) and will feature film clips and a panel discussion with Oscar-winning visual effects artists Robert Legato (Titanic) and Scott Stokdyk (Spider-Man 2), Oscar-nominated visual effects artists [...]

LOREN CASS No Longer Undistributed

Kino International has acquired the theatrical release of Loren Cass (2007), directed, written and edited by first-time filmmaker Chris Fuller.
Nominated for a Gotham Award as one of the best undistributed films of 2007, Loren Cass is finally scheduled to premiere in New York City on July 24 at the Cinema Village. The film will expand to other major markets during the summer and fall of 2009, before being released on DVD at the end of the year.
Filmed in St. Petersburg, Florida, Loren Cass is set in 1997, when a group of teenagers struggle to rebuild their lives following violent ethnic riots provoked by the (real-life) killing of an 18-year-old black adolescent, who was gunned down [...]

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson, one of the two or three biggest pop-music icons of the second half of the 20th century, died of a heart attack at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles earlier today. Jackson was 50. Beginning July 12, he was scheduled to give a series of already sold-out London-area shows — 1 million tickets were gone within a matter of hours.
Despite his enormous success — 750 million albums sold worldwide; 13 Grammy awards — Jackson’s life a difficult one.
The little black kid with the great melodious voice grew into an androgynous adult whose skin became increasingly lighter with the passing of time. (The skin disease vitiligo was reportedly the culprit.) Jackson’s [...]

THE ABYSS Screening

The Abyss, the costly, special-effect-laden, deep-sea adventure drama about underwater aliens and a bickering married couple, will be screened at a special 20th anniversary event by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday, June 23, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.
This Academy screening will premiere a newly struck 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive. Considering that The Abyss boasts awesome underwater cinematography and first-rate visual and sound effects, this is a great chance to catch it on the big screen.

Presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, the evening will be hosted by film historian and author Eric Lichtenfeld and will feature [...]

A Tribute to Dick Smith: The Godfather of Special Makeup Effects

The Godfather: Dick Smith and Al Pacino (top); Smith, Marlon Brando, and Phil Rhodes (bottom)

"A Tribute to Dick Smith: The Godfather of Special Makeup Effects" will be presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, June 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Six-time Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker will host the evening, which will be attended by Dick Smith himself and will feature a panel discussion including writer-director Guillermo del Toro, actor Hal Holbrook, and makeup artists Greg Cannom, Kazuhiro Tsuji and Andrew Clement, among others.
The evening will highlight Smith’s long career, which began in 1945 when he became NBC’s first [...]

Zoe Beloff’s SHADOWLAND, CHARMING AUGUSTINE at the REDCAT

PRESS RELEASE
FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS

Zoe Beloff: Conjuring Specters
Mon Apr 27 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$9 [students $7, CalArts $5]
New York artist Zoe Beloff’s unique and mesmerizing films are philosophical toys: objects with which to think. Her work has especially borne on “phantoms,” on images that are “not there,” and on a precinematic version of the virtual, created by means of a stereoscopic Bolex camera that produces spectral 3-D images. Shadowland Or Light From The Other Side [above], starring Kate Valk of The Wooster Group, locates a link between Victorian spiritualism and the birth of cinema in late-19th century “Ghost Shows,” where actors interacted with magic lantern slides and stereoscopic views. Charming Augustine is an experimental narrative inspired by [...]

Joan Harrison and Alfred Hitchcock at Movie Morlocks

At the Turner Classic Movies blog Movie Morlocks, Moira Finnie discusses screenwriter-producer Joan Harrison:
"’Women,’ writer-producer Joan Harrison (1907-1994) told the New York Times in 1943, ‘must have something to pull for, you know, whether it’s a dog, a horse, an old beggar – or even another woman!’
"If pioneering writer and producer Harrison is remembered today at all, it is often likely for her contributions, along with those of the key figure of Alfred Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, to helping to shape and present to the world the talent and the image of the great director of suspense and anxiety. An educated Englishwoman, becoming his secretary while in her 20s, Harrison, who claimed that she was [...]

Betsy Blair

Betsy Blair, best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance as Ernest Borgnine’s love interest in the 1955 Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning drama Marty, and for her marriage to Gene Kelly, died of cancer on March 13 in London. Blair, who was 85, had been a London resident for many years.
Born Elizabeth Winifred Boger on Dec. 11, 1923, in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, the former child model switched to professional acting in the early 1940s. Throughout the next five decades, she was to appear on Broadway (in, among others, the Cole Porter musical Panama Hattie), in more than two dozen films, and several television shows.
In addition to Marty (she lost the best supporting actress Oscar to Jo Van Fleet [...]

Natasha Richardson

Tony-winning actress Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson’s wife and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and the late Tony Richardson, was taken off life support earlier today after being declared brain dead following a head injury while skiing at the luxury resort of Mont Tremblant in Canada two days ago. She was 45.
Natasha Richardson was born in London on May 11, 1963, into a prestigious show business family.
Mother Vanessa Redgrave was a stage performer who would find film stardom three years later with two back-to-back hits, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup and Karel Reisz’s Morgan, for which she received her first of six Academy Award nominations (including one win in the supporting category for Julia in 1977). Father Tony Richardson [...]

OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE, THE LARAMIE PROJECT Offend

Tina O’Grady, a member of the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s "cultural competency initiative" was scolded by her boss after co-workers complained about an e-mail she had forwarded promoting the gay-themed Out@Wex Film Festival in Columbus.
As per the Columbus Dispatch, O’Grady’s co-workers seemed to be particularly offended by the festival’s description of Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or, Up With Dead People in its release. Otto is summed up as an "art-porn provocation [that] depicts an explosion of cannibalistic, sodomy-seeking zombies in Berlin."
What exactly in that sentence — art, porn, provocation, explosion, cannibalism, sodomy, zombies, Berlin — offended some of the Ohio Department of Public Safety workers remains unclear.
The judges at the Milan International Lesbian and [...]

Robert Redford to Be Honored at San Francisco Film Festival

Robert Redford — actor, filmmaker, political and environmental activist, and independent film festival creator — will be the recipient of this year’s Peter J. Owens Award at the 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival on Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 7:00 pm. at the Castro Theatre.
The Robert Redford tribute will feature career retrospective film clips, audience Q&A, and an onstage interview with Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. That will be followed by a screening of the film that turned Redford into a superstar, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), directed by George Roy Hill, and co-starring Paul Newman and Katharine Ross.
Among Redford’s most notable films as a director are [...]

TOKYO SONATA, I LOVE YOU, MAN Buzz

At GreenCine Daily, Vadim Risov on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, which opened this weekend in New York (it’ll open in Los Angeles on March 27):
"Two-thirds of the way in, Tokyo Sonata is a nicely observed low-key drama just unnerving enough to keep you on edge: Kurosawa’s framing is always a bit cluttered and claustrophobic, and his willingness to sit and watch for a little too long makes it seem like violent disaster is always just on the verge of breaking out. And then suddenly it does and all hell breaks out."
***

At Cinematical, Eugene Novikov is enthusiastic about Paul Rudd’s star turn in the comedy I Love You, Man, directed by John Hamburg, written [...]

2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation V: RUTHLESS, Vitaphone Varieties

Schedule and synopses from the UCLA Film & Television Archives press release.
Saturday, April 18
7:30 p.m.
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation
RUTHLESS (top photo)
(1948, Edgar G. Ulmer)
Director Edward G. Ulmer’s complex psycho-melodrama Ruthless (1948) is undoubtedly worthy of rediscovery. A flashback-structured tale of a sociopath’s remorseless drive for station and wealth, Ruthless (often referred to as Ulmer’s Citizen Kane) employs a relentless undercurrent of emotional violence. As relayed in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Ulmer envisioned his feature as “a Jesuitic morality play… a very bad indictment against 100 percent Americanism—as Upton Sinclair saw it.” [...]

2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation I: A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Schedule and synopses from the UCLA Film & Television Archives press release:
Photos: Courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archives
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
Friday, March 13
7:30 p.m
Preservation funded by The Film Foundation and GUCCI
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
(1974, John Cassavetes)
Over 30 years after its self-distributed release, screenwriter-director John Cassavetes’ masterpiece retains the power to shock and unnerve for its raw, often harrowing depiction of a blue-collar Los Angeles family on the rocks. At its trembling heart, Gena Rowlands’ performance as Mabel Longhetti, wife of everyman Nick (Peter Falk) and mother of three, stands as a virtually unmatched tour [...]

UCLA Festival of Preservation 2009

The UCLA Film & Television Archives‘ 2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation, which kicks off this evening and continues until April 26, leaves me at a loss. The problem is: I don’t know what not to recommend. (See full schedule below.)
Now, it’s not that I think every single one of the listed films are waiting-to-be-rediscovered masterpieces — or even that they’re mostly enjoyable fare. What makes me so excited about the Festival of Preservation is that it features films that for the most part are incredibly rare, thus offering audiences a unique chance to either get to know (or to get reacquainted with) our cinematic past.
Here’s some of what’s in store for you if you live in the [...]

SXSW Film Festival 2009: Spotlight Premieres

SXSW Film Festival 2009: Spotlight Premieres
 
Adventureland
Director/Writer: Greg Mottola
In 1987, a recent college graduate takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park and discovers the job is perfect preparation for the real world. Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Martin Starr
Alexander the Last
Director/Writer: Joe Swanberg
A sensual and intimate portrait of a young marriage. Focusing on an artistic young couple, the film illuminates the challenges of monogamy amidst myriad sexual and creative temptations. Cast: Jess Weixler, Justin Rice, Barlow Jacobs, Josh Hamilton, Jane Adams (World Premiere)
Beeswax
Director/Writer: Andrew Bujalski
Something like a legal thriller for anyone who considers “legal thriller” an oxymoron, the film revolves [...]

SXSW Film Festival 2009: Documentary Feature Competition

SXSW Film Festival 2009: Documentary Feature Competition
 
45356
Director: Bill Ross
An inquiring look at everyday life in middle America, the film explores the congruities of daily life in an American town Sidney, Ohio. (World Premiere)
Garbage Dreams
Director: Mai Iskander
Filmed over four years, the film follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village. Each boy chooses a different path when their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of their trade. (World Premiere)
MINE: Taken By Katrina
Director: Geralyn Pezanoski
After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of pets were rescued and adopted by families around the country, leading to many custody battles. Through these stories, the film examines issues [...]

SXSW Film Festival 2009: Narrative Feature Competition

Hal Holbrook in That Evening Sun.
The 2009 SXSW Film Festival runs March 13-21, 2009, in Austin, Texas.
SXSW Film Festival 2009: Narrative Feature Competition
 
Artois the Goat
Director: Kyle Bogart. Writer: Cliff and Kyle Bogart
Lab technician Virgil Gurdies embarks on an epic quest to craft the greatest goat cheese the world has ever known and reclaim the heart of his beloved Angie.  Cast: Mark Scheibmeir, Sydney Andrews, Stephen Taylor Fry, Dan Braverman (World Premiere)
Bomber
Director/Writer: Paul Cotter
A bittersweet comedy about love, family and dropping bombs on Germany. Cast: Shane Taylor, Benjamin Whitrow, Eileen Nicholas (World Premiere)
Breaking Upwards
Director: Daryl Wein. Writer: Peter Duchan, Daryl Wein, Zoe Lister-Jones
A young New York couple who, desperate to escape [...]

Howard Hawks at LACMA

"Late Hawks" is the title of a film series featuring the, what else?, later works of Hollywood auteur Howard Hawks, which runs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from March 13-27.
Personally, I tend not to buy into the auteur theory in general, and certainly not when it comes to the widely varied work of Howard Hawks. That said, who cares?
The good thing about LACMA’s Hawks series is the chance to catch on the big screen some of the director’s lesser-known efforts such as the battle-of-the-sexes comedy Man’s Favorite Sport? (1965), with Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss; the car-racing soap opera Red Line 7000 (1965), with James Caan; and the Western Rio Lobo (1970), with John Wayne. [...]

Douglas Fairbanks’ THE THIEF OF BAGDAD and THE IRON MASK Screening

Rare screenings of the Douglas Fairbanks adventure classics The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Iron Mask (1929) will be presented on Friday, March 20, and Monday, March 23, respectively, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Both screenings will start at 7:30 pm. Silent film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow will be a guest presenter at both events.
In the enjoyable The Thief of Bagdad (1924), directed by Raoul Walsh, Fairbanks plays a (mostly bare-chested) thief who falls in love with the Caliph of Bagdad’s daughter (Julanne Johnston, in her most important film role). There’s just one glitch: in order to win [...]

Carmen Miranda Does “Cai, Cai” in THAT NIGHT IN RIO

The more I see Carmen Miranda, the more I find her one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. In this clip from Fox’s 1941 musical comedy That Night in Rio, Miranda sings and shakes to the rhythms of Roberto Martins‘ "Cai, Cai."
Now, what the heck is she singing?
Cai, cai, cai, cai
Eu não vou te levantar
Cai, cai, cai, cai
Quem mandou escorregar?
Fall, fall, fall, fall
I’m not going to help you get up
Fall, fall, fall, fall
Whoever told you to slip?
That’s why songs should usually be left untranslated…
Also in the That Night in Rio cast: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, S.Z. Sakall, J. Carrol Naish, Curt Bois, and the Bando da Lua.
Clip posted by esmiscrino.
 
Vivien Leigh on Turner Classic Movies
Carole Lombard on [...]

SARI’S MOTHER, SICKO: Contemporary Documentaries Screening

Part II of the 27th annual "Contemporary Documentaries" screening series, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, kicks off with two Academy Award-nominated documentaries, James Longley’s short Sari’s Mother and Michael Moore’s controversial feature Sicko, on Wednesday, March 25, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission to all screenings in the series is free.
Sari’s Mother chronicles an Iraqi woman’s struggle to help her 10-year-old son, Sari, who is dying of AIDS.
Directed by Michael Moore and produced by Moore and Meghan O’Hara, Sicko is an indictment against the ailing U.S. health care system, through which huge corporations get richer at the expense of [...]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS: Q&A with Filmmaker James C. Ferguson

I’m always happy when a filmmaker is inspired by Woody Allen — as opposed to, say, Quentin Tarantino or Zack Snyder.
Case in point: First-timer James C. Ferguson (right, in blue), whose Happy Holidays (written by Ferguson and Tom Misuraca) is a three-way character study about old school friends who are reunited at their Connecticut hometown for a brief period right before Christmas. During that time, deeply buried emotions burst to the surface, old secrets are revealed, and one character ends up suffering a nervous breakdown. Old buddies can do that to you.
Shot in black in white during the course of two weeks, Happy Holidays features Paul Hungerford as Patrick Donovan, an openly gay man and avowed [...]

MIDNIGHT COWBOY at the DGA in New York City

John Schlesinger’s 1969 socio-psychological drama Midnight Cowboy, one of the better best picture Oscar winners, will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar” series on Monday, March 16, at 7:30 p.m. at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in New York City.
David V. Picker, the executive-in-charge at United Artists during the making of Midnight Cowboy, will moderate an onstage discussion with Academy Award-winning producer Jerome Hellman, Academy Award-nominated (supporting) actress Sylvia Miles, actor Bob Balaban, cinematographer Adam Holender, composer John Barry, and costume designer Ann Roth.
Adapted by Waldo Salt from James Leo Herlihy’s novel, Midnight Cowboy stars [...]

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