Seeing “The Favourite” a few days ago, I was so stunned by Olivia Colman’s turn as Queen Anne that I had to go back the next day and see it all over again, checking whether I was right the first time in thinking that this was an extraordinary performance by an extraordinary actress. It was and more. She plays the overweight monarch (fattened by some thirty pounds for the part) stuffing herself ... more >
Archives for February 2019
ARCHIVES
Ishtar Yasin Gutierrez’s “DOS FRIDAS” to premiere at next Chicago Latino Film Festival
Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez is a filmmaker who’s already got several documentaries and feature films under her belt. In 1998 she launched Astarte Films from San Jose, Costa Rica, a city where she's been working as screenwriter and filmmaker. She was born in Moscow, Russia to an Iraqi father and a Chilean-Costa Rican mother. Her first film, “El Camino,” premiered at the 2008 Berlinale. It would later ... more >
REWIND | SBIFF2019 : “A thousand miles behind,” “Peel,” “Zulu Summer,” and “Hugh Hefner’s After Dark: Speaking Out in America”
Some parting words about the recently-featured Santa Barbara Film Festival
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. | The 34th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) ended over a week ago but organizers of this fete of movies, celebrities and all things cinema have already announced the 2020 iteration will be bumped up a bit next year to Jan. 15-25, which may put it in direct competition with other festivals like Sundance. No matter, as the 2019 version closed out with ... more >
Farewell, Bruno Ganz
Talk about coincidence. Or premonition. A few days ago, getting ready for a trip to Lisbon, I remembered the great Alain Tanner film “In the White City” (“Dans la ville blanche” in the French original; 1983) and watched it on You Tube. Bruno Ganz was fabulous as always, as the AWOL ship mechanic, not easy as he spends the entire time going up and down steps in the Alfama or mailing letters and ... more >
SBIFF 2019, some parting words on our favorite films
The 2018 Maltin Modern Master Award recipient was Gary Oldman
Next year's SBIFF will be held January 15-25 2020
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., “I think there’s only one way, forward, for women, and we are 51 percent of the world, so 51 percent of women should do movies,” Austrian director Eva Spreitzhofer (“What Have We Done to Deserve This” a.k.a. “Wo mit haben wir das verdient?”) said at a red carpet event at the last Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) (a still from the film is this article's ... more >
BAFTAS 2019 : “Roma” and “The Favorite” celebrated, the rest fight for the crumbs
“Roma,” a Netflix production, triumphed on Sunday at the British film awards (BAFTA) by earning the Best Film and, for Alfonso Cuaron, in the director’s chair, the Best Director awards, further cementing Netflix’s unmistakably-strong place in the filmed entertainment industry. Although several Netflix series have won awards, in recent years, Netflix has never known so resounding a victory as ... more >
Albert Finney, British actor and five-time Oscar nominee, dies at 82
Finney, one of the greatest, is gone but images from his tremendous cinema resume come flooding our memory. The role in Arthur in “Saturday night and Sunday morning” (1960) of course, his heavy working-class features immediately making cinema history, and from then on and on, in an extraordinary variety of parts. My favorite, of course, remains Sir in “The Dresser” (1983) alongside long-suffering ... more >