Cannes 2009 Aftermath at the LA WEEKLY

Philippe Garnier on Cannes 2009, in the LA Weekly:
"By this time, news should be out everywhere that Cannes this year was a special vintage. Not only did most of the selected ‘usual suspects’ outdo themselves in big and unexpected ways — or, like Alain Resnais, find new resources and verve which, frankly, we didn’t know they had in them — but it is also a measure of how shockingly strong this year was that the fest still had room for very good fare in the 20-film Un Certain Regard sidebar, from Israeli first-timer Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open [above] to the wonderful Colombian entry The Wind Journeys by Ciro Guerra, in which an [...]

Best Films of 2008: LA WEEKLY/VILLAGE VOICE Poll

J. Hoberman in The Village Voice:
"All hail Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E — even us! Sometimes, the movies really are universal. And so a major studio’s mainstream, multiplex, mega-million-dollar-grossing, Oscar-friendly “summer movie” resoundingly won the ninth annual Village Voice–L. A. Weekly poll of (mainly) alt-press critics, named on 35 of 80 ballots.
"Unlike last year, when Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood materialized in late December to snatch the prize from the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men and David Fincher’s Zodiac, there was no groupthink stampede. Critics had months in which to cogitate over the eventual poll winner. Pass the popcorn, [...]

Julie Christie in the LA WEEKLY

Omar Sharif as Dr. Zhivago, Julie Christie as Lara in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (top); Julie Christie as a woman suffering from Alzheimer’s and Gordon Pinsent as her husband in Sarah Polley’s Away from Her (bottom).
 
Ella Taylor on Julie Christie in the LA Weekly:
"Spend half an hour with Christie, and you’ll experience her ambivalence about Hollywood and almost everything else. Plainly shy and gun-shy, the actress hates being interviewed as much as she hates speaking in public. But as luck would have it, we had met two weeks earlier at a panel discussion about Away From Her, with Christie, her genial co-star Gordon Pinsent and a preternaturally confident [Sarah] Polley. Only Christie looked as though she was expecting to be [...]