Documentary Archives
| 07/21/2007 |
FISH KILL FLEA—Interview With Jennifer Loeber, Aaron Hillis and Brian Cassidy Aaron Hillis graciously forwarded a screener DVD of Fish Kill Flea ("Fish")—co-created with Brian Cassidy and Jennifer Loeber—when I wanted to participate in its SXSW premiere by chiming in from San Francisco, which I thought would be good, wholesome Internet... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/18/2007 |
Beautiful Noise: A Shoegazer Documentary I don't post much around these parts unless I happen to be up in Toronto for the odd film festival. However, I found this news too exciting to ignore. If you want to get me to listen to a... (10 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/13/2007 |
Line-Up Announced for New York Korean Film Festival 2007 (August 19 – September 2) The Korea Society will be presenting its 7th edition of the New York Korean Film Festival from August 19 through September 2. Events planned include a screening of 15 contemporary Korean films, a 5-film retrospective of director Im Kwon-taek, 7... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/09/2007 |
Review: Tan Pin Pin's Invisible City For Trailer and Link to the Official Website, see the bottom of this article Tan Pin Pin is perhaps Singapore's best known documentarian, having had her previous documentary Singapore GaGa play to sold out screenings, and being voted the Best... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/03/2007 |
DVD Review: La fille du juge (My Dad is into Terrorism) (2006) Some of the most engaging films coming out of France these days are not dramas or thrillers, but documentaries, often made on tight budgets and restricted to broadcast on national television, then promptly forgotten. William Karel, whose documentaries have for... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/29/2007 |
TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES: SPIELBERG ON SPIELBERG—Interview With Richard Schickel It has become a common practice among movie directors today to provide audio commentary for DVD releases of their films. One notable exception, however, is Steven Spielberg, who has never created such a commentary and according to reports has no... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/22/2007 |
Website and Trailer for Anthony Gilmore's Behind Forgotten Eyes Here's a chapter of world history that I'm sure a great many people would like to forget but Anthony Gilmore doesn't plan to let them. During Japan's period of military expansion hundreds of thousands of women - an estimated two... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/18/2007 |
For All Those Who've Spent Sleepless Nights Finishing A Level ... A middle-school science teacher and a hot sauce mogul vie for the Guinness World Record on the arcade classic, Donkey Kong. It's arguably the best movie tag line ever. It's a documentary. It's totally real. If Dee Snider were involved... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/18/2007 |
How To Start A Rebellion With a Very Tall Bike. So. I had this friend back in my college days, a guy from a family of eleven children, all of them but one - the second youngest - boys, and all of them home schooled. He was a little odd,... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/18/2007 |
Danny Wallace's How To Start YOur Own Country FINALLY Makes It To DVD Put this one in the "It's About Bloody Time" file. Danny Wallace's How To Start Your Own Country ran on UK television all the way back in 2005 and was originally slated to hit DVD in October of that year.... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/05/2007 |
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES—Interview With Director Jennifer Baichwal and Photographer Edward Burtynsky "Which way to go? Some line gets drawn. What line is this? Which way to go? Could be a threshold or a precipice."—Joni Mitchell, "Fiction" from Dog Eat Dog. Edward Burtynsky is known as one of Canada's most respected photographers.... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/01/2007 |
WTH....APRIL DVD IN REVIEW The intro to my DVD column is a way to let you know what you’ll find inside it. But this time it also serves as a declaration of war. April almost killed me. There were DVDs I had to review,... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 06/01/2007 |
IIFF 2007 - CRAZY LOVE review Burt Pugach and Linda Riss were an upwardly mobile New York couple who garnered Lindbergh Baby-level headlines in the late ‘50s when Pugach, spurned by Riss, hired two men to disfigure her face with lye. He succeeded and found himself... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/21/2007 |
DVD Review: 'A Great Disturbance' In April 2005, a film crew followed five delusional fans during their preparation, trip, and return from the third Star Wars Celebration in Indianapolis. Phil, a computer repairman who thinks he is the greatest and funniest fan of all time.... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/16/2007 |
THE RAPE OF EUROPA—INTERVIEW With Bonni Cohen and Richard Berge Quick on the heels of its two sold-out screenings at SFIFF50, The Rape of Europa is opening Friday, May 18 in Bay Area theatres (Embarcadero Center Cinemas in San Francisco, Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and Smith Rafael Film Center in... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/16/2007 |
2007 SFIFF50—Michael Hawley's Wrap-Up The Golden Anniversary edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival came to a close last week. I wish I could say it was the festival to end all festivals, but I can't. That's because, for me at least, the... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/13/2007 |
2007 SFIFF50—Off the Hip Capsule Reviews Though Cinematical's James Rocchi enjoyed the pairing of Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage with Jonathan Richman's "score", I found the experiment an irksome failure. I would have much preferred silence to this squawky, screechy, lurching composition that Richman imposed upon... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/11/2007 |
[Korean DVD News] Park Jin-pyo's Faction-Drama Voice of a Murderer [그놈 목소리] Up For Pre-Order We reported a few months back conflicting predictions concerning the eventual box office success of Park Jin-pyo's (You Are My Sunshine, 2005) docudrama Voice of a Murderer, which opened on February 1, 2007. One critic foretold a huge flop, while... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/09/2007 |
Werner Herzog Retrospectives Lined Up for May-June Is German cinema undergoing a renaissance? It would certainly seem so, given the success of films like Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (Der Untergang), featuring Bruno Ganz as Hitler, Fatih Aiken's Head-On (Gegen die Wand), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's outstanding debut The... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/03/2007 |
Website and Trailer For Audience of One ... ... and Todd scrapes jaw off floor ... Michael Jacobs' Audience of One is a documentary about a Pentecostal minister convinced that he has been told by God Himself to direct a big budget sci-fi epic based on the life... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/02/2007 |
IIFF 2007 - GLASTONBURY review Veteran music video director Julien Temple’s Glastonbury could’ve been an amazing concert film, with almost 40 years’ worth of performances from Britain’s foremost music festival to cull from. It could’ve been the definitive exploration of the event’s tangled history, from... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/01/2007 |
REVIEW OF KOCH VISION TREASURES OF SACRED ART: TUSCAN JOURNEYS TREASURES OF SACRED ART: TUSCAN JOURNEYS Koch Vision The price tag on this set is considerably lower online or on the secondary market but even at $100 you’d be getting good value. It’s just astounding how well presented this... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 05/01/2007 |
REVIEW OF A&E ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE DVD ENGINEERING AN EMPIRE A & E Home Video Engineering An Empire has been out awhile but there was no way I'd let it go by without a review. My wife and I have said repeatedly that if we had cable... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/28/2007 |
A Trailer For Norwegian Documentary Pornostjerne? (Pornostar) Let's get this out of the way: upcoming Norwegian documentary Pornostjerne? deals with an explicit topic in an explicit manner and this trailer is very definitely not recommended for everybody and is a long, long way away from being work-safe.... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/28/2007 |
Finally! A Full Trailer For Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil We've been awaiting a proper trailer for Asger Leth's Ghosts of Cite Soleil ever since the film was announced as part of the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival but, although the official website was loaded with clips from the film,... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/28/2007 |
2007 SFIFF50—REVIEW of Forever Using my write-up on Olivier Dahan's La Vie En Rose as a segue into commentary on Heddy Honigmann's Forever, I pay another visit to Edith Piaf's grave in Père-Lachaise Cemetery while faint refrains of La Goualante de Pauvre Jean drift... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/26/2007 |
2007 SFIFF50—Michael Hawley's Preview What follows are some alphabetically-arranged thoughts on the films Michael Hawley had the chance to preview for this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. With the exception of Flanders and La Vie en Rose, all were seen on screener DVDs.... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/24/2007 |
CORNERSTONE FESTIVAL IMAGINARIUM SCHEDULE ANNOUNCED Hi Guys, Yours truly here to shamelessly plug an event that I co-founded more than a decade ago. The Cornerstone Festival Imaginarium is in a large part a retrospective of cinema oriented around the examination of specific themes or ideas.... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/22/2007 |
BLOOD, BOOBS & BEAST Review This week I was lucky enough to see John Paul Kinhart's documentary "BLOOD, BOOBS & BEAST". What lured me into seeing it was the subject: a few eccentric individuals who produce horror and science fiction movies, independently and on a... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/18/2007 |
Shunji Iwai's Ichikawa Kon Documentary Hits DVD June 29th I think I'd be a little more excited if it were a new fiction film from director Shunji Iwai but any new Iwai is a good thing and Ichikawa Kon Monogatari should prove to be just as personal a project... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/12/2007 |
SOUND OF THE SOUL—Interview With Stephen Olsson Stephen Olsson has produced and directed documentary films, television series and feature news reports throughout the world. He has been the recipient of television's three major awards: the National Emmy Award, the Du-Pont-Columbia Silver Baton for excellence in broadcast journalism... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/10/2007 |
Tahani Rached's THESE GIRLS This entry is embarrassingly overdue. Not only did this film come out in the beginning of 2006, but I saw it in 2006! That said, I'm still thinking about it, and still thinking that others should see it. THESE... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/06/2007 |
"Lynch" - The Documentary Teaser While waiting (impatiently) for David Lynch to bring his 3 hour digitally filmed opus Inland Empire up to Toronto, there has been no shortage of Lynch news items popping up on the radar. Perhaps the most interesting is that... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/05/2007 |
Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma Finally Available On English-Subtitled DVD We can finally announce that Godard's elusive Histoire(s) du cinéma is available for order (really!). We first reported back in December 2005 that the 4-disc set was available for pre-order, then came the endless delays. Special features include: A press... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/04/2007 |
AFI Dallas Extra: New Year Baby, Running on Empty, Horror Shorts Saturday night was a protypical night at a film festival: a heart-wrenching documentary about genocide, an existential German road movie, and a program of short horror films. Socheata Poeuv's New Year Baby looks at the devastation that was wrought upon... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/03/2007 |
Greg & Gentillon: Opens this weekend! Hilarity and no Celine! Well, I'll hand it to them, they're really stinkin' busy. Finishing the shooting schedule for Hank & Mike mere days ago (they've got a new teaser, by the way), their first full-length: Greg & Gentillon (review here) is being... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/03/2007 |
The 23rd Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival is about to start In a few weeks the 23rd Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival will be held from the 18th of April till the 25th of April. The AFFF website shows their complete program and lists of films. Festival director is the always certifiably... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 04/02/2007 |
ITALIAN CINEMA—Antonioni Shorts PFA Program REVIEW Returning home to Miami via San Francisco after five months in Thailand, Twitch team mate Peter Nellhaus and I met briefly for the Pacific Film Archive's first Antonioni shorts program yesterday afternoon, part of their Antonioni retrospective. We didn't have... (5 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/31/2007 |
AFI Dallas Report: Catching Up with Capsules Once you get a Press Pass in your hot little hands at a film festival that is screening more than 190 films (about half full-length features), the temptation is to try and see as much as humanly possible. I've done... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/31/2007 |
DVD-review: PERVERSION STORY aka ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER A rant of mine concerning Lucio Fulci: if there is one film in my collection which failed to live up to my anticipation, it's his "Zombi 2". Seeing as how that has many titles I'll elaborate: it's the one with... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/28/2007 |
AFI Dallas Report: A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar... Review Director Eric Chaikin examines another aspect of competition with his latest documentary. He previously co-directed Word Wars, "a look into the obsessive world of competitive Scrabble," according to IMDB. Here he outlines the frustrations -- often humorous, sometimes emotional --... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/27/2007 |
AFI Dallas Report: The King of Kong Review Freakin' awesome! The temptation is to use a certain nine-letter word when describing this movie. Using that word is accurate but might cause some to skip it and others to knock it without even seeing it. Why dance around the... (5 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/26/2007 |
[Korean DVD News] Documentary "Between" [사이에서] (2006) Available For Preorder Between, a documentary about Korean shamanism by Lee Chang-jae, is available for pre-order on DVD. The digitally-shot work received enthousiastic praise last spring at the Jeonju International Film Festival, an event which showcases digital, independent and art films, and attracted... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/24/2007 |
MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)—The Center For Latin American Studies Q&A With Director Jason Kohn I went to Berkeley yesterday evening fully intending to catch a PFA screening of SFIAAFF's The Great Happiness Space: Tale Of An Osaka Love Thief and became distracted by boisterous posters announcing a free screening of Jason Kohn's Manda Bala... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/23/2007 |
1st Annual Taiwanese Film Festival in Vancouver I'll be honest with you. The last person I ever thought I would get a story lead from would be my dad. But there it was in my inbox this morning; an e-mail from my old man introducing me to... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/23/2007 |
Starbucking Trailer "Hi my name is Winter and for the past 8 years I've been on a mission to visit every Starbucks in the world" Before you can say "Morgan Spurlock", here comes a documentary which combines commentary on the worlds largest... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/23/2007 |
Helvetica. A graphic designer friend of mine has been salivating for months at the prospect of this documentary on the typeface of Helvetica. The enthusiasm for this film has grown on me with the clips available on the films website. In... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/22/2007 |
'Provoked,' 'Vanaja' to Bookend Indian Film Fest in LA Aishwarya Rai, Naveen Andrews, Miranda Richardson and Nandita Das star in Jag Mundhra’s Provoked, which will open the 5th Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 17. The festival says the English-language film features Aishwarya Rai "as a... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/22/2007 |
Ban On Amir Muhammad's VILLAGE PEOPLE RADIO SHOW Is Final Looks like Amir Muhammad is on a roll now. The Appeals Commmittee of the Malaysian Censorship Board has made its final decision and upholds the ban on Amir's new documentary, Village People Radio Show (Apa Khabar Orang Kampung?). This is... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/21/2007 |
Hot Docs 2007 announces line up Hot Docs 2007 announced their lineup yesterday. North America's premiere doucmentary film festival will showcase 129 films from around the world from April 19-29, 2007. The complete lineup can be seen here. Follow the button for the full press release.... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/19/2007 |
Forum Reviews, Part Three. Never really intended to be seen on the main page of the site, yet I am still more likely to put shortish (less polished) reviews in the forum as a way of sharing the viewing experiences I've had the night... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/13/2007 |
2007 SFIAAFF—Michael Hawley's Preview Michael Hawley offers his tips for the upcoming San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival. Thank you, Michael! Several weeks have passed since the dispiriting experience of learning that none of the films on my SFIAAFF07 wish list would be part... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/11/2007 |
SXSW Report: Campaign and The Ten -- Reviews The intrepid Wells Dunbar recounts his experiences from Day Two of the South by Southwest Film Festival, notably a doc that sounds like a pleasant discovery The crazy season that is SXSW started churning weeks ago seemingly, despite the festival... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 03/10/2007 |
Website and Trailer For Blood, Boobs and Beast, A Documentary on Cult Film Maker and Cinemagic Founder Don Dohler While you may not recognize Don Dohler by name if you're reading this site it's almost inevitable that his influence has had some sort of effect on you. While his own films are legendarily bad - a fact he openly... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/28/2007 |
Ghosts of cite soleil, a fasinating film to look out for. I was browsing through the vast domain of “Internet” (as a reporter called this phenomena in a 1993 news report) and came across stills from a film that I thought at first were from a “City of God” rip... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/23/2007 |
GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB—The World Affairs Council Q&A With Rory Kennedy and Mark Danner As something of a companion piece to my Greencine interview with Rory Kennedy regarding her documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which premiered last night on HBO, I offer up this report of her onstage appearance at San Francisco's Cowell Theater,... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/22/2007 |
Amir Muhammad's THE LAST COMMUNIST DVD available on Amazon Amir Muhammad's "semi-musical documentary", The Last Communist (Lelaki Komunis Terakhir), is now available on Amazon. The film, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, is in Mandarin, Malay, Cantonese, Hokkien, Tamil and English with full subtitles. The... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/17/2007 |
2007 SFIAAFF—Line-up Back in 1982, The San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival offered 13 films to its fledgling audience. The festival's exponential growth in 25 years now caters to an expected audience of 30,000 with a line-up that includes 128 films from... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/12/2007 |
Fuck on DVD Because I believe that Twitch readers are intelligent people with perverse imaginations, I leave it to you to wonder why Steve Anderson's very funny and insightful documentary Fuck is being released on Region 1 DVD the day before Valentine's Day.... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/09/2007 |
JANUARY MAINSTREAM DVD IN REVIEW The beginning of the new year brought good, bad and downright ugly DVD my way and since a lot of Twitchers don’t keep up with what they can find stateside (let’s face it Regions 2-8 are just more fun!) here’s... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/07/2007 |
2007 PSIFF—The French Line-up Michael Hawley reports on the French fare he caught at Palm Springs, including La Tourneuse de pages (The Page Turner, 2006); OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions (OSS 117: Nest of Spies, 2006); Fair Play (2006), Au-delà de la haine... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/04/2007 |
Thai Documentary: Final Score In order to give King Naresuan maximum play, no new films received wide release until last Thursday. I finally got to see Curse of the Golden Flower, dubbed in Thai, with English and Chinese subtitles. Final Score is only... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/03/2007 |
ROMÁNTICO—Interview With Director Mark Becker Mark Becker's Romántico—which has carried over into its third week in Bay Area Landmark theaters (the Lumiere in San Franciso and the Shattuck in Berkeley)—had its premiere at Sundance and screened at several festivals, including Los Angeles, San Sebastian and... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 02/02/2007 |
A Trailer for Heidi Specogna's The Short Life Of José Antonio Gutierrez! Our own Michael Guillen has become a bit of a champion of this film and having finally had the chance to see the trailer, it's easy to understand why. Heidi Specogna's The Short Life Of José Antonio Gutierrez is the... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/29/2007 |
2007 PSIFF—Cine Latino/Mexico—En El Hoyo (In the Pit) PSIFF's Cine Latino program was especially inviting this year. I wish I could have taken much more advantage of their fare, but, am grateful for what I got to see. From Mexico, I was eagerly anticipating Juan Carlos Rulfo's In... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/29/2007 |
Did Spielberg Steal E.T.? Joaquín Blázquez Thought So ... Big thanks to Aaron for sending me to the website for Melvin vs. E.T. - The History of Joaquín Blázquez. The film is a documentary about the life of famed Spanish comic artist and illustrator Joaquín Blázquez, who worked on... (6 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/28/2007 |
CINE LATINO—Sundance Film Festival Winners Eugene Hernandez and Brian Brooks report at indieWIRE: "A pair of Latin American stories won the top prizes at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival …. Christopher Zalla's Padre Nuestro [Our Father], a Spanish-language immigrant drama set in New York City... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/28/2007 |
Rescue Dawn - Trailer While the film was more admired than loved around these parts, watching the trailer for Werner Herzog's latest really shows off the stellar cinematography on display. The film has a really strong cast including Christian Bale and Steve Zahn (against... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/27/2007 |
MEXICAN CINEMA—San Franciscan Dispatches A shout out to Rob Davis who recently interviewed (or should I say recently posted his interview with) Carlos Reygadas for Errata. Not only does this fascinating interview delve into the director's filmmaking subjectivity of sound and image, his use... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/26/2007 |
2007 BERLIN & BEYOND—Interview With Rainer Hoffmann, Cinematographer for The Short Life Of José Antonio Gutierrez *** UPDATED *** A little bit of news on this film ... Canada's Atopia Pictures have just secured all North American rights to The Short Life Of José Antonio Gutierrez and plan a limited theatrical run in April to be followed by a... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/26/2007 |
Mizushima Plans Revisionist Nanjing Massacre Documentary Satoru Mizushima, a veteran helmer of TV dramas and pics ("Snow Falls on the Southern Island," "Miracle Mountain"), has announced plans to make a doc correcting what he describes as the "myth" of the Nanjing Massacre. At Sundance, Fortissimo Film... (6 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/25/2007 |
2007 BERLIN & BEYOND—Festival Overview The 12th annual Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, presented by San Francisco's Goethe-Institut, was once again venued at The Castro Theatre commencing Thursday, January 11 and running through Wednesday, January 17, 2007. A two-film recap took place on Saturday, January... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/24/2007 |
CHILEAN FILM—SF360 Report by Miljenko Skoknic A shout-out to Chilean filmbud Miljenko Skoknic whose site Millions of Images has long been on my Evening Class blogroll. He also blogs at Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope and writes for La Fuga. Susan Gerhard at SF360 has astutely signed Miljenko... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/24/2007 |
Website and Trailer For Grace Lee's American Zombie Grace Lee's American Zombie has just rolled out at this year's edition of Slamdance and the word coming backis quite good. This film began life as a moc-doc about zombies living life as normal Americans but judging by the trailer... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/23/2007 |
2007 OSCARS—Quick Takes & Initial Responses The Oscar nominations are set and Kurt has done a great job of getting the Twitch buzz going on today's announcements! As questionably cruel as the Oscar elimination process might be—according to Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck—he must be exhaling a... (7 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/22/2007 |
Ryûichi Hiroki's BAKUSHI: World première at International Film Festival Rotterdam Ryûichi Hiroki's documentary Bakushi is scheduled to have its world première at the 36th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on January 27th at 7:30 p.m., and to subsequently be screened there on January 29th at 10:15 p.m. and February 2nd... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 01/15/2007 |
Sad Vacation and AA: Two New Titles From Shinji Aoyama When you hear the name Shinji Aoyama it's always best to pay attention. One of Japan's most consistently intriguing directors Aoyama, like his friend and mentor Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is a bit of a chameleon who loves to skip between genres... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 12/30/2006 |
Borat R2 UK DVD Available for Pre-Order, Released March 5th 2007. Why the interest in the DVD release then? Well, completely missed it at the cinema. Intentionally. Because it's not the sort of thing I fancied sharing with an audience, completely hidden away in darkness or not. I just didn't want... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 12/16/2006 |
DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2006 - V.H.S. KAHLOUCHA Greetings from the Dubai International Film Festival! As promised, I have seen almost exclusively Arabic language films while here, (often sadly having to pass up some good-looking Bollywood fare) and I am pleased to say there are a few... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 12/07/2006 |
Singapore Films Released on DVD As Todd mentioned in an earlier post, Singapore just had its first online DVD store launched. Which means an international audience will now have an opportunity to sample some of this year's theatrical releases from Singapore on DVD format. I... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 12/03/2006 |
[Korean News] A Book on Comfort Women Published in Germany A book on victims of sexual crimes by the Japanese military during World War II was published on November 29th in Germany. The book takes an in-depth look at the issue of Korean women forced to serve as sexual slaves... (13 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/27/2006 |
NOVEMBER 14-21 DVD IN REVIEW Here’s the next installment for November. Remember folks. It ain’t always what I like, or even what’s most important but mainly what crosses my desk and compels me to respond that you’ll hear about. Next Week Novemeber wrapup with a... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/14/2006 |
INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SINNO - PRODUCER OF IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS I got a bit of flak from y'all about saying there were too many docs about Iraq. Come on, guys. I KNOW it's important. Perhaps the MOST important political issue out there today. But that doesn't mean we have... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/10/2006 |
'F*ck' Opens Today in NY/LA: Interview with Director Steve Anderson The title of Steve Anderson's entertaining and provocative documentary is Fuck, but you might not see it advertised that way. Some theater marquees will show multiple asterisks -- or another desciption entirely -- instead of the four-letter title. Even for... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/09/2006 |
IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS Think there are already too many documentaries about the war in Iraq? Yeah, me too. Except finally there is one actually worth seeing. This weekend, IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS will be released in art houses across America. Not only is... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/08/2006 |
El Perro Negro Trailer Hungarian director Péter Forgács has taken home-film footage of two families from just before the Spanish Civil War right into the thick of it and compiled all of it to form a narrative of Spain at that dark time. El... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/04/2006 |
AFI Fest Report: Searching for Orson, Cashback, and The Host (Redux) Friday was another gently warm Los Angeles day, and the hazy sunshine invited quiet contemplation of one of cinema's greats. As it happens, I've been reading the fascinating This is Orson Welles, a lengthy series of conversations between Welles and... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 11/01/2006 |
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon – Review One of the chief pleasures of watching genre films is to encounter the entry into a particular genre which upholds the rules and yet still manages to find transcendence. The success of folks like Quentin Tarantino, John Frankenheimer, Joss Whedon... (5 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/28/2006 |
DELIVER US FROM EVIL—Interview With Director Amy Berg Deliver Us From Evil marks Amy Berg's directorial debut. For the past five years, she has produced documentary segments for CNN Investigations and the CBS News program 30 Minutes of Special Assignment. Her work at CBS News earned her Emmy... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/28/2006 |
DELIVER US FROM EVIL—Q&A With Director Amy Berg Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil opens this weekend at San Francisco's Landmark Lumiere Theater after a successful festival run that scored her the Target Documentary Award and its unrestricted $50,000 cash prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Most... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/26/2006 |
Toronto After Dark Diary: Day 5 - SL8N8 and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon Toronto After Dark drew to a close on Tuesday night on a very high note. The return to the real world wasn’t nearly as horrific as TIFF was and I can only attribute it to one thing. Not enough time... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/20/2006 |
AL FRANKEN: GOD SPOKE—Interview With Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob have been partnering with documentary legend D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back, Monterey Pop) since the 1970s, turning their handheld cameras on diverse subjects ranging from politics to rock and roll. The trio recently codirected HBO's... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/19/2006 |
SDAFF Report: The Last Atomic Bomb Review Apologies for the delay in posting Wells Dunbar's review of the film that won honors for Best Feature Documentary at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, which concludes tonight. Hibakusha are of a rare, terrible distinction: they are the survivors... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/13/2006 |
Pre-Order 'Death of a President' R2 UK DVD Released October 30th 2006. It's time to decide for yourself I suppose. Relatively expensive way of doing it, but considering a couple of cinema chains in America see themselves as guardians of public welfare you could say this is a key example of how... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 10/04/2006 |
Website and Trailer for Nacho Cabana's Luchador Documentary Tres Caidas Welcome to the world of Mexican wrestling, one of the strangest and most compelling subcultures in the world ... shot over a four month span in Mexico, Nacho Cabana's Tres Caidas is a behind the scenes look into this very... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/30/2006 |
Death of a President Trailer Gabriel Range's faux-doc was heavy on controversy at this years TIFF. First because it takes existing news and other media and recontextualizes it to tell the story of the assassination of current US president George W. Bush in 2007 and... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/28/2006 |
AMERICAN HARDCORE—Interview With Director Paul Rachman and Screenwriter Steven Blush Just as the music of hardcore punk rock was not to everyone's liking and went generally unheralded even during its heyday in the early '80s, so too the relentlessly-charged documentary American Hardcore is not going to be everyone's idea of... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/23/2006 |
The U.S. vs. John Lennon REVIEW More than just the latest political documentary, and not just another Beatle-relate retrospective, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” attempts to weave the two topics while slyly implying a relevance to today’s world. It is a documentary that swirls around a... (5 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/17/2006 |
TIFF Report: Death of a President Review [TIFF info page here.] I’ve just found out that Death of a President (previously titled D.O.A.P. before, I don’t know, they decided it wasn’t obviously controversial enough) has just won the Prize of the International Critics (the FIPRESCI Prize) at... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/15/2006 |
TIFF Report: S&MAN review Thwarted in an attempt to make a film about a local perversion scandal director JT Petty turns to another passion, underground horror films. As he interviews filmmakers, actors and field professionals for his film he comes across a very intriguing... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/15/2006 |
TIFF Report: A Conversation with JT Petty This week I got a chance to sit down with S&Man director JT Petty and chat with him for a while about his new documentary S&Man, shortly before his film made its Canadian premiere as part of the Midnight Madness... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/13/2006 |
DVD: Donald 'Dr. Don' Smith's THE COMPLETE WORKS OF DR. DON - VOL. 1: 1998-2000, w/ Todd Russell's documentary A CASE OF OBSCENITY - THE CASE OF HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN VS DON SMITH, CANADIAN FX ARTIST Those who are interested in watching a documentary regarding a creator of pseudo-snuff material and his works, and/or who are interested in seeing the works themselves, may wish to check out The Complete Works of Dr. Don - Vol. 1:... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/13/2006 |
TIFF Report: S&Man Review [Mathew finally makes his belated appearance as a member of the Twitch team at the Toronto International Film Festival with a review of the hotly anticipated and debated documentary, S&man, playing tonight as part of the Midnight Madness programme.] [TIFF... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/07/2006 |
'Man Bites Dog' Director Remy Belvaux Dead at 38 Years Old. No cause of death given, so the situation isn't entirely clear, but a family statement has been given... another great Director lost. Rest in Peace. [Source : BBC Entertainment / Hollywood Reporter].... (8 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/07/2006 |
Hotwax : 'Female Yakuza Tale' Soundtrack & Much More... Muldoon at AsianDVDGuide has put together a thread to help explain all the nice Soundtrack reissues appearing in Japan for films that have had some recent interest our way... 'Stray Cat Rock' with Meiko Kaji, the 'Sukkeban Guerilla' series (don't... (4 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/07/2006 |
Remember, 'Japanorama' Series Two Starts Tonight... ...On BBC Three here in the UK, and across Europe on Free-to-Air Digital Broadcasts (don't know how that works, but folk do get BBC Broadcasts in Europe, right?) at 11:00 pm GMT, and this first episode of six is also... (7 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/05/2006 |
San Diego Asian Film Festival Announces Line-Up The San Diego Asian Film Festival has quickly built a reputation for seamless organization, enthusiastic crowds, and sharp programming, and the upcoming 7th edition looks like it will be more of the same. Ham Tran's widely-acclaimed Journey From the Fall... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 09/01/2006 |
2006 FRAMELINE XXX—Interview With John Cameron Mitchell [TIFF information page.] San Francisco has just wrapped up its 30th Frameline Film Festival. One of the highlights for me was the morning I picked up my phone and heard John Cameron Mitchell introducing himself. I mustered all my resolve... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/19/2006 |
Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul Review If you want to understand a people, Fatih Akin’s Crossing the Bridge advises early on, listen to their music. It’s good advice that Akin follows to some remarkable places in this, his exploration of the wildly varied music of Turkey.... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/16/2006 |
A Trailer For Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated We've not commented on Kirby Dick's MPAA doc This Film Is Not Yet Rated since back in January when he caught them illegally making copies to distribute amongst its members and called them out for breaking the very rules they... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/15/2006 |
Davin Hutchins' Refugee Doc The Art Of Flight Available Free Online Hutchins tells this particular story far better than I ever could, so I'm going to largely leave it to him. But I will say that his documentary tracking Sudanese refugees in Egypt is obviously something he feels strongly about -... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/14/2006 |
Twitch-O-Meter: Take Off, You Hoser! Hoser (hōz ´әr): noun. 1. A clumsy, boorish person, especially an uncouth, beer-drinking man often clothed in a flannel lumberjack coat, Kodiak boots and a toque. 2. What you call your little brother when your mother isn't in the... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/12/2006 |
Once Again, It's the Best Rock-Doc Ever. This Time With Details. I posted the trailer to Gunhild Asting's It's Hard To Be A Rock'n Roller with no explanation a couple days back, simply because I was in awe ... here it is again, with all the relevant info. A documentary about... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/10/2006 |
Fuck Coming in November Sorry, it doesn't appear possible to write a headline for this piece that won't offend someone. Steve Anderson's very fine and funny documentary Fuck had its World Premiere at AFI FEST last November. ThinkFilm acquired worldwide rights in March 2006... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/08/2006 |
AFFD Report: First Five Nights From its humble origins in the spring of 2002 as a weekend festival filled mainly with retrospective titles, the Asian Film Festival of Dallas quickly grew in ambition and scope. Now celebrating its fifth edition, it was recently described by... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/03/2006 |
It's the Best Rock Doc Ever. Don't ask, just click.... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 08/02/2006 |
THE JOY OF LIFE—Interview With Jenni Olson Jenni Olson summarizes her film The Joy of Life as "an unconventional blending of documentary and experimental narrative strategies, combining stunning 16mm landscape cinematography with a bold, lyrical voiceover (performed by L.A.-based artist/actor Harriet 'Harry' Dodge) to share two San... (0 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/28/2006 |
Documentary Titles Announced For TIFF 2006 The Toronto Film Festival has announced the slate of documentary features for the 2006 film festival and there's plenty there of interest, from American Hardcore to films about Kurt Cobain and John Lennon, to a one man show by John... (2 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/27/2006 |
2006 SFJFF—Interview With Amos Gitaï I attended the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's afternoon tribute to Amos Gitaï at the Castro Theater. They screened House, News From House / News From Home, and Free Zone, with Gitaï introducing each film and returning to the stage... (3 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/23/2006 |
The Concrete Revolution Review A friend of mine recently returned from a week-long business trip to Beijing. He talked about the tremendous size of the city, the ten traffic loops that surround it, the incredible cleanliness (people mopping the roads), and the complete absence... (1 Comments) / Digg This / Add To del.icio.us |
| 07/19/2006 |
'Alive', 10-Episode TV Series from the Makers of 'Touching the Void'. Documentary fans would do well to move to the U.K., they're thick and fast on TV here, with all kinds of subjects and approaches. Some have gained legendary status (for example, 'John's Not Mad', the film about the lad with... (1 Comments) / |