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Penélope Cruz, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gael García Bernal Sign Polanski Petition

Actor Gael García Bernal, Academy Award-winning actress Penélope Cruz, veteran director Mario Monicelli, veteran screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr, and Academy Award-winning filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Ethan Coen are a few of the latest additions to the list of signatories demanding freedom for filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently being held by Swiss authorities.
Among the other new signatories of the petition organized by France’s Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) are:
Author Ariel Dorfman; actor-screenwriter Buck Henry; composer Vangelis; actors Sylvia Kristel and Anne Consigny; filmmakers Fatih Akin, Juan Antonio Bayona, Djamel Bennecib, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Alain Berliner, Guillermo del Toro, Michel Deville, Sam Gabarski, Diane Kurys, Tonie Marshall, Brett Ratner, and Jerry Schatzberg; World Cinema Foundation director Kent [...]

Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani, Mike Nichols Sign Another “Free Polanski” Petition

Actors Louis Garrel, Isabelle Adjani, Elsa Zylberstein, and Isabelle Huppert; filmmakers Danièle Thompson, Steven Soderbergh, Neil Jordan, Sam Mendes, Taylor Hackford, and Mike Nichols; formerly persecuted writer Salman Rushdie; author Milan Kundera; and stylist Diane von Furstenberg are among those who have signed another petition demanding freedom for 76-year-old filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently being held at a Swiss prison while awaiting word from local authorities whether he’ll be extradited to the United States on a charge of having sex with a minor in the late 1970s.
In his journal, La Règle du jeu, writer Bernard-Henri Lévy has asked for signatures supporting Polanski’s release. Lévy’s petition reads:

Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive [...]

Petition for Roman Polanski Signatories

List of individuals who have signed (as of Oct. 7) the “Free Roman Polanski” petition organized by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD):
Michael A. Russ Erika Abrams, Fatih Akin, Yves Alberty, Stephane Allagnon, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Gianni Amelio, Greta Amend, Wess Anderson, Michel Andrieu, Roger Andrieux, Pascale Angelini, Yannick Angelloznicoud Jean-Jacques Annaud, Tomas Arana, Frédéric Aranzueque-Arrieta, Alexandre Arcady, Fanny Ardant, Asia Argento, Marie-Hélène Arnau, Stéphane Arnoux, Darren Aronofsky, Olivier Assayas, Alexander Astruc, Simone Audissou, Gabriel Auer, Zdzicho Augustyniak, Alexandre Babel, Vladimir Bagrianski, Lubomila Bakardi, Fausto Nicolás Balbi, Eleonor Baldwin, Jean-François Balmer, Alberto Barbera (Museo nazionale de Torino), Sylvie Bardet-Borel, Luc Barnier, Christophe Barratier, Ernest Barteldes, Carmen Bartl, Pascal Batigne, Anne Baudry, Henning Bauer, Tone Bay Juan [...]

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 [...]

DAYS OF ‘36 d: Theo Angelopoulos

Meres tou ‘36 / Days of ‘36 (1972)
Direction: Theo Angelopoulos
Screenplay: Theo Angelopoulos, Petros Markaris, Thanassis Valtinos and Stratis Karras
Cast: Giorgos Kiritsis, Christoforos Chimaras, Takis Doukakos, Kostas Pavlou, Petros Zarkadis, Christophoros Nezer
 

 
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos‘ 1972 effort Meres Tou ‘36 / Days of ‘36, winner of the International Film Critics Association award at the Berlin Film Festival, is the least of the several films of his that I’ve seen. It is also, by over a decade and a half, the earliest one I’ve seen so far, and at one hour and 45 minutes it is by a good margin the shortest as well. [...]

International Outreach Initiative: Annette Bening, Alfre Woodard, James Longley in Iran

Eight members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are currently in Tehran for several days of educational and cultural exchanges with Iranian filmmakers, students and others from Iran’s artistic community.
The Academy delegation includes actresses Annette Bening and Alfre Woodard (right, with fellow actress Fatemah Motamed-Aria); writer Frank Pierson; writer-director Phil Robinson; producer William Horberg, executive Tom Pollock; Academy President Sid Ganis; and Ellen Harrington, the Academy’s Director of Exhibitions and Special Events. Documentarian James Longley, who was already in Iran working on a project, is also taking part in the proceedings.
The visit was organized as part of the Academy’s International Outreach initiative, which has previously [...]

THE SINGING REVOLUTION: Q&A with Filmmakers James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty

"Imagine the scene in Casablanca in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of The Singing Revolution," wrote Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times in his review of James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty’s documentary about Estonia’s struggle to end Soviet occupation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The curiously titled The Singing Revolution chronicles the history behind the little-known, nonviolent protests that began in the late 1980s in the small Baltic republic of Estonia, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union nearly half a century earlier.
With glasnost and [...]

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE and India’s Social Inequalities at Don’t Panic

Heydon Prowse’s "Slumdog and Billionaires" at Don’t Panic:
"Danny Boyle’s latest film, Slumdog Millionaire, about an orphan from the Mumbai slums who reaches the final of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is winning awards all over the place (including Best Film and Best Director at BIFA). We should all go to see it, but perhaps not because of the superlatives that it is consistently squeezing from the pens of critics, but because of what it tells us about Mumbai’s social inequality in the wake of the recent attacks.
"Who exactly does want to be a millionaire in Mumbai? The answer is, pretty much everyone. And how many will actually [...]

Sundance 2009 Boycott: Park City to Suffer?

 
Jay Hamburger reports in The Park Record:
"Mayor Dana Williams acknowledges he is ‘certainly concerned’ with the prospects of a boycott of Utah by gays and their allies, saying Park City could suffer even though the city had little to do with the gay-marriage ballot measure in California.
"Park City has a tradition of acceptance of gays, he says, but the city could be swept up in a movement by gays against Utah based on Proposition 8. Williams says gays are welcome in Park City."
…
"’It’s too bad that we could potentially take the brunt of an issue we didn’t participate in,’ Williams says, adding he is worried about the effects on the ski [...]

Cairo Film Festival 2008: What’s the Use?

The effectiveness of the first Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, a sidebar of the 32nd Cairo International Film Festival, which comes to a close on Nov. 28, is questioned in the Middle East Times:
"’We are looking to reach people who are not used to receiving information through art and this will hopefully educate about human rights,’ [American Islamic Congress' Dalia] Zaida said. ‘First and foremost, the festival aims at education and getting people aware of human rights.’
"’The goal is to highlight international human rights issues and build understanding between cultures,’ Zaida added. ‘Most of the films focus on issues outside Egypt and the Arab world that will expose the Egyptian audience to issues not [...]

Sundance, Prop. 8, and Boycotts

Via The Advocate:
"Film Independent released a statement on Friday in response to Los Angeles Film Festival director Richard Raddon’s donation to the campaign for Proposition 8, which succeeded in banning gay marriage in California. ‘As a champion of diversity,’ the statement said, ‘Film Independent is dedicated to supporting the civil rights of all individuals. At the same time, our organization does not police the personal, religious, or political choices of any employee, member, or filmmaker.’"
***
Via Robert Hofler and Michael Jones‘ article "Same-Sex Activists Target Sundance" in Variety:
"With activists against Proposition 8 — California’s ban on same-sex marriage — turning to threats of boycotts, attention is focusing on [...]

UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US: Q&A with Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell

Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell’s Until the Light Takes Us was one of the most unusual entries at the 2008 AFI FEST held in Los Angeles in early November. In the words of co-director Ewell, the film is "a feature length documentary chronicling the history, ideology and aesthetic of Norwegian black metal — a musical subculture infamous as much for a series of murders and church arsons as it is for its unique musical and visual aesthetics. This is the first (and only) film to truly shed light on a movement that has heretofore been shrouded in darkness and rumor and obscured by inaccurate and shallow depictions."
I’d never heard of Norwegian black metal, [...]

LATTER DAYS Clip: Mormons Vs. Gays

 
Californians will be voting on Proposition 8 this coming Tuesday. Considering how religious beliefs are the engine behind the anti-gay marriage proposition, and that according to numerous reports the Mormon Church has been fighting the fight to make sure that gays and lesbians never have their unions recognized by the state, I thought it only appropriate to post a clip from the 2003 romantic dramatic comedy Latter Days, which stars Steve Sandvoss as a Mormon missionary who — sit tight — is seduced and corrupted by the vile gay lifestyle.
Well, at least that’s how his Mormon family sees the young man’s coming out of the closet. Writer-director C. Jay Cox, a gay man who was himself a former Mormon [...]

Patti Smith Indicts George W. Bush

 
The above clip, in which Patti Smith indicts current US president George W. Bush is from Steven Sebring’s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which will be out on DVD in January 2009.
Official Site.
Clip posted by BlingRhames.
 
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TRICK ‘R TREAT Trailer
Daniel Craig in QUANTUM SOLACE Trailer
SAVING MARRIAGE Trailer
Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott in ROLE MODELS Trailer
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Anne Hathaway in PASSENGERS Trailer

THE PANAMA DECEPTION, EDUCATING PETER: Oscar’s Docs

The two 1992 Oscar-winning documentaries, Barbara Trent’s feature The Panama Deception and Gerardine Wurzburg’s short Educating Peter, will be screened as part of “Oscar’s Docs, Part Four: Academy Award-Winning Documentaries 1988–1997″ on Monday, October 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. (Photo, right: El Chorrillo neighborhood. Image by Julio Cesar Guerra D.)
Producer-director Barbara Trent and producer-writer-editor David Kasper (both can be seen holding their Oscars at the bottom of this article) of The Panama Deception will take part in a post-screening discussion.
Long before Michael Moore’s splashy Fahrenheit 9/11, there was the considerably more subdued — and much superior — The [...]

SENATOR OBAMA GOES TO AFRICA Screening in the Bay Area

The Tiburon Film Society will present Bob Hercules and Keith Walker’s 52-minute documentary Senator Obama Goes to Africa on Wednesday, November 5, at 6 p.m. at the Bay Model located at 2100 Bridgeway in the Bay Area town of Sausalito.
In Senator Obama Goes to Africa, Barack Obama returns to the land of his ancestors (on his father’s side) in Kisumu, Kenya. As per the Tiburon Film Society’s press release, the documentary is "part personal odyssey and part chronicle of diplomacy in action," as the senator covers a lot of ground in Sub-Saharan Africa, traveling also to South Africa — where he visits Nelson Mandela’s prison at Robben Island — and to a Darfur refugee camp in Chad. Obama [...]

Oliver Stone’s W. Trailer

 
Biopic. Political thriller. Soap opera. Farce. Horror movie. Circus act.
If screenwriter Stanley Weiser and director Oliver Stone have decided to stick to the ugly facts, all of the above — and more — may be used to describe W., which opens in the United States on October 17. The story — how truthful a story remains to be seen — of US president George W. Bush, W. stars Josh Brolin as Bush, Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, James Cromwell as George Bush, Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair, Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush, Jason Ritter as Jeb Bush, Noah Wyle as Don Evans, and Jeffrey [...]

Timely IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE Clip

 
It’s been a rough week worldwide. So, here’s a little escapism: The clip above is from the 1946 whimsical drama It’s a Wonderful Life, one the most beloved films of all time (in the United States, at least) and also one of the very worst movies ever made (according to me, at least).
Okay, so the clip above shows a run on a bank, which may lead you to think of our current chaotic global markets, the much publicized meltdown of the American economy, human greed and stupidity, big business & government corruption and cronyism, and the George W. Bush administration’s legacy of war and socioeconomic-environmental disaster — but, hey, there’s no need to worry. Really.
Just ask Frank Capra. Angels [...]

David Sirota’s Five Political Comedies

Via Truthdig, David Sirota discusses politics and political comedies:
"When President Bush responded to 9/11 and the subsequent economic downturn by ordering us to go shopping, many ignored him and instead went to the movies. That’s the reaction Hollywood depends on to make its pile — and the escapist impulse is nothing if not reliable. In five of the last seven recessions, box office sales have jumped. When the going gets tough, the tough watch films.
"Today is no exception. Theaters are packed, as there is more craziness to flee from than ever. Not only do we face societal emergencies, but our culture is now consumed by a painfully grating and absurdly vapid election addressing none of them — a campaign [...]

BAGHDAD HIGH d: Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter

The Boys from Baghdad High / Baghdad High (TV, 2008)
Direction: Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter. Featuring: Hayder Khalid, Mohammad Raed, Anmar Refat, Ali Shadman
 

 
When I sat down to watch Ivan O’Mahoney and Laura Winter’s Baghdad High — The Boys of Baghdad High in the United Kingdom, where it was initially shown — I didn’t know what to expect.
Baghdad High is a documentary about four Baghdad male youths entering their final year of high school. They have each been given cameras and asked to document their experiences. The year is 2006, which was a grueling time for Iraq. In October ‘06, the month they began school, 2,722 Iraqis were killed — most of them because of their ethnicity and/or [...]

Youssef Chahine

Youssef Chahine, possibly the world’s most renowned Arab filmmaker and the winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, died today at Al-Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo. About four weeks ago, Chahine fell into a coma after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He was 82.
Throughout his nearly six-decade career, Chahine tackled various genres and styles, ranging from socially conscious melodramas such as the Grand Hotel-like Cairo Station (1958), which remains his best-known film, to politically charged dramas addressing government repression and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Additionally, his (socially conscious) romantic drama The Blazing Sun (1954) launched the career of Omar Sharif.
Born in Alexandria on January 25, 1926, to a Christian family of Greek and Lebanese origin, [...]

THE BETRAYAL: NERAKHOON — Q&A with Ellen Kuras

Directed by Ellen Kuras, with the assistance of the film’s main subject, Thavisouk Phrasavath (who shares co-director credit), The Betrayal: Nerakhoon follows a family of Lao immigrants in New York struggling to rebuild their lives after sociopolitical upheavals forced them to leave their native country. (Phrasavath’s father had worked for the CIA, choosing targets for U.S. bombings.)
Approximately 20 years in the making, The Betrayal: Nerakhoon, which was screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, marked the directorial debut of New Jersey-born cinematographer Ellen Kuras. A two-time Emmy and Independent Spirit Award nominee, winner of three Sundance best cinematography awards, and a recipient of the Cinereach Award (given to "the filmmaker who exemplifies masterful use of craft in conveying a vital [...]

Jean-Luc Godard Heeds Palestinian Boycott Calls

Via Agence France-Presse:
Jean-Luc Godard has decided not to attend the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival after being urged to boycott Israel. In an open letter last week, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel asked Godard to "take a courageous stand and cancel your trip to Israel."
"Palestinians expect someone with your history, moral commitment and consistent support for the causes of justice — from Algeria, to Vietnam, to Palestine — to stand in solidarity with us against occupation and apartheid, not to help whitewash both, whether knowingly or not. Did you ever go to an Afrikaner film festival in apartheid South Africa? Why Israel, then?" said the letter, entitled "Le petit soldat dancing on Palestinian [...]

BUNKER HILL ACLU Screening in Washington, D.C.

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 discussion on civil liberties under (attack by) the Bush administration. Admission is free.
As per the press release, Bunker Hill, co-written by Willmott and Greg Hurd, "is the story of a former Wall Street executive who leaves prison and heads for the small town of Bunker Hill, Kansas, where his ex-wife and their children have started a new life. Soon after he arrives, an apparent massive [...]

Media That Matters Film Festival 2008

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 the most important topics of the day. Local and global, online and in communities around the world, Media That Matters engages diverse audiences and inspires them to take action.
"From gay rights to global warming, the jury-selected collection represents the work of a diverse group of independent filmmakers, many of whom are under 21. The films are equally diverse in style and content, with documentaries, music [...]

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