Alternative Film Guide

John Horn talks about Michael Moore’s upcoming documentary, tentatively titled "While America Slept," in the Los Angeles Times:
"Even though he says the new film ‘isn’t about Bush,’ the president is clearly a central target.
"’He and his cronies and his supporters literally got away with murder,’ Moore says. But it is also obvious that the country’s [...]

Laura Bialis‘ well-received documentary Refusenik chronicles the thirty-year grassroots movement to free Soviet Jews. (Read Ella Taylor’s positive — if sobering — review in The Village Voice.)
Refusenik is told through the eyes of the activists, among them those then living in the Soviet Union — some of whom were punished for their efforts. Much [...]

Geoffrey Macnab’s "The Day Cannes Burned," a highly entertaining look back at Cannes ‘68, in The Independent:
"Film-makers ‘occupied’ the festival’s Grande Salle, partly to prevent screenings and partly to hold a prolonged, open-ended debate. ‘Imagine a cinema about the size of a medium Odeon,’ the British journalist Peter Forster wrote of the scenes inside the [...]

Not too long ago, the Alternative Film Guide published a q&a with filmmaker Lynn Hershman-Leeson, whose Strange Culture (above) deals with the bizarre case of Steve Kurtz, a professor of Visual Studies at the University of Buffalo and a founding member of the award-winning collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), who was accused by the FBI [...]

Next round of Brigitte Bardot vs. Muslims.
No, Bardot’s animosity has nothing to do with, say, a planned Algerian-made sex melodrama called And Allah Created Woman. Bardot, like millions of others in France and elsewhere, just doesn’t like Muslims, period.
She’s now on trial for the fifth time since the mid-1990s for "inciting racial hatred" due [...]

In Strange Culture, which was released on DVD this past March 25, filmmaker Lynn Hershman-Leeson tackles the bizarre case of Steve Kurtz, an associate professor of art at SUNY/Buffalo and founding member of the award-winning art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble, whose interactive projects include the examination of biotechnology and the issues surrounding it. [...]

Fitna, the work of hate created by Dutch far-right-wing member of Parliament Geert Wilders, is now available online. (Don’t expect a link to it here.)
I managed to watch bits and pieces of it before fast-forwarding through repetitive hate-filled discourses by fanatical Muslim clerics interspersed with scenes depicting terrorist attacks committed by Muslim fanatics. By using [...]

Nick Turse’s "The Golden Age of the Military-Entertainment Complex: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Pentagon-Style" at TomDispatch.com:
"So let’s play a new version of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, with the military standing in for Bacon. The object is to follow a few of the thousands of linkages and connections between Hollywood and the [...]

Here’s an open letter from Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) president-CEO Jean M. Prewitt, in which she expresses the Alliance’s "astonishment" at the MPAA’s chairman-CEO Dan Glickman’s remarks at Showest in Las Vegas.
In his outlandish speech, Glickman — – representing the interests of the big studios and their megaconglomerate owners (Time Warner, for [...]

Dan Glickman is the current president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the business interests of the big Hollywood studios which, for their part, are out there to defend the business interests of the megaconglomerates that own them.
At the film business Showest convention in Las Vegas, Glickman declared that "no one here [...]

A couple of good ones from Mick LaSalle, one of the best film critics around, in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Answering a question about what will be considered the early 21st century’s "best political allegories" on film:
"It depends on who wins the future. That’s the hardest thing to predict because we tend to imagine the future’s [...]

Recommended reading: On the The Independent’s Indyblogs, Jerome Taylor discusses Geert Wilders‘ as-yet-unreleased anti-Islam short Fitna.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
"An unapologetic critic of Islam, Mr [Geert] Wilders‘ rabidly populist rhetoric has won him both fans and enemies in a country already strained with religious tension following the murder of the controversial Dutch [...]

The Genie Awards 2008 ceremony, held last night in Toronto, was dominated by Sarah Polley’s remarkably accomplished directorial debut, Away from Her, which won a total of 7 awards.
The story of a man coming to terms with the fact that his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife has fallen in love with another patient at her mental hospital [...]

Agence France-Presse reports that organizers of the Cairo International Film Festival for Children has agreed to reinstate Mischa Kamp’s Dutch film Where is Sinterklaas’ Horse? (above) after banning it because Dutch far-right member of parliament Geert Wilders is planning to show a 15-minute anti-Muslim short, Fitna, online this month.
As per the AFP report, Fitna in [...]

Directed by John Ealer and Laura Bialis (above, lower photo), View from the Bridge: Stories from Kosovo, described on the film’s official website as "the first documentary feature about post-war Kosovo" was recently screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
The bridge in question is located in the town of Mitrovica, which [...]

According to its press release, John Ealer and Laura Bialis‘ View from the Bridge: Stories from Kosovo is the first feature documentary about post-war Kosovo, a semi-autonomous Serbian province inhabited by Albanians and currently under the aegis of the United Nations.
Last fall, the European Union Planning Team for Kosovo began using View from the [...]

Marc Graser analyzes the Golden Globes debacle’s effects in the local economy — in Variety:
"With the Golden Globes losing its luster this year, the big question now is just how much green Hollywood will lose as a result.
"The answer: a lot.
"Cancellation of the kudocast due to the strike could cost the local economy upwards of [...]

Nikki Finke has provided thorough coverage of the Writers Guild strike both on her website, Deadline Hollywood, and in the LA Weekly. This is her latest, on the Golden Globes, at Deadline Hollywood:
"So the Hollywood writers strike can now claim its first awards show casualty. I’m hearing from my sources that NBC will not be [...]

The Golden Globes are in deep trouble. Via Dave McNary’s "SAG says actors won’t do Globes - It’s official: No actors will show up" in Variety:
SAG president Alan Rosenberg:
"After considerable outreach to Golden Globe actor nominees and their representatives over the past several weeks, there appears to be unanimous agreement that these actors will not [...]

Michael Cieply via the International Herald Tribune:
"Whether the Globes will be broadcast [on January 13] has come into doubt.
"Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association [HFPA], reassured guests at its Christmas gala in Beverly Hills a week ago that the star power of the Globes, the organization’s annual awards ceremony, would not be [...]

Erica Abeel interviews Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud at indieWIRE, where they discuss family, politics, non-politics, and cartoon voices.
Satrapi and Paronnaud’s Persepolis will be screened in the US in a dubbed version — though I do hope that a print with the original French-dialogue track will be available somewhere here in Los Angeles. Catherine Deneuve, [...]

John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in Anthony Mann’s 1948 film noir Raw Deal.
 
This past October 17th, my dear friend, actress and social activist Marsha Hunt turned 90 years old. Her past few months have been a constant state of activity as the tributes to her seemed never-ending.
Turner Classic Movies honored her with a [...]

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 [...]

I never thought I’d post something linking to a Rupert Murdoch rag such as the New York Post, but this is worth a look.
Billy Heller interviews Lynda Carter:
"Lynda Carter says she’s never used the Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth on her two children, now teens. ‘I don’t think it would work on them. But,’ [...]

David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times:
"Barbet Schroeder loves monsters. Especially when examined from the vantage point of their lair.
"Not the monsters of horror films such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Schroeder’s monsters are very real: Socialite Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune, or the drug-dealing teenage hit men of Our Lady of the Assassins, [...]