“In their first appearance together at the Smith Rafael Film Center since their initial “dialogue” series in 2009, David Thomson, celebrated film critic and historian, will join award-winning novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje for an entertaining weekend of screenings and discussions around trains as cinematic subject and stimulus.
Discerning, funny, and utterly unique, How to Watch a Movie is a welcome twist on a classic proverb: Give a movie fan a film, she’ll be entertained for an hour or two; teach a movie fan to watch, his experience will be enriched forever.
From one of our most admired critics, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience we present Chapter Two for your pleasure.
Some of the most exciting cinema today is created by Asian and Asian American filmmakers. They represent an incredible array of cultures and each year CAAMFest is a perfect opportunity for the San Francisco Bay Area to explore new worlds through the moving image.
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) presents its annual celebration along with plenty of parties and special events to accompany the films at CAAMFest 2016 playing through March 20 in San Francisco and Oakland.
“I think it has a lot to do with that concept of killing the cool – that philosophy where once something becomes popular it has to be killed, and then you jump onto something else. At the end of the day, it’s really about trend.” – Linh Do
Linh Do tends bar. She has that up-close-and-personal relationship with trends, especially in the spirits world, as only one serving up sought-after intoxications can. I reached out to this wildly intelligent whisky enthusiast because I wanted to learn more about when, how and why Japanese whisky claimed blog, bar, liquor store and conversation spotlight.
by Mike Kaplan
(This is the introduction to Mike Kaplan’s book on movie posters with stunning examples. For more details, and to sample the book’s elegant design, visit the website.)
Maybe I was born with a poster gene. As a child in Providence, R.I., I’d remove the full-page theater ads announcing a new play or musical from the Sunday New York Times, color them with paints or pastels and then compare the results with the printed versions when I visited New York with my parents. Though they were not then available for public purchase, movie posters were easily viewed as they were prominently displayed in lobby frames and exterior display cases at every cinema.
This uplifting mashup of iconic dance scenes from Golden Classic movies with a soundtrack of Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk was created by Nerd Fest UK.
The brilliantly edited clips match the song perfectly which goes amazingly well with the Hollywood choreography of Fred and Ginger, Gene Kelly and the Nicholas Brothers among others.
by Denise Zmekhol
Although Colombia’s Embrace of the Serpent didn’t win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film – that went to Hungary’s Son of Saul – Serpent and its director, Ciro Guerra, won a host of critical plaudits and audience acclaim. Recently, Denise Zmekhol interviewed the filmmaker for EatDrinkFilms.
Denise Zmekhol for EDF: What inspired you to make this film?
by Dianne Boate
There are remarkable people who come into our lives and become authors of certain types of adventures. I am speaking of my former “gentleman friend,” a Mr. Watkins, an Englishman who took me three times to England, and was responsible for a career turning point in my life when I became a staff member of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Even after we parted (after nine years together), English ways and recipes carved out new horizons for me.
Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, 1940.
The newspaperman – the cliché is that anyone working for a paper is a rogue and a joker, a cross between hero and raconteur, and possibly drunk at that. It’s the kind of character made famous by The Front Page (1931) and His Girl Friday (1940), and usually played by someone as charming and suave, as Adolph Menjou or Cary Grant.
Indeed, it’s these kinds of films that shaped the idea we still have of what reporters and journalists do and act like, a type that seemed to spring to existence right after the Depression (although they were around much earlier than that), always acted slightly uncomfortable in a white collar and determined to put his or her bosses in their place. It’s no accident The Front Page (the source material for His Girl Friday) was written by two former newspapermen, Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur, who went to Hollywood and gilded their own reputations, finding the money easy and the competition “idiots.”
The Bay Area is a great place for fans of silent movies, with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival bringing rare riches to the Castro twice a year; weekly screenings at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum; numerous presentations at the Pacific Film Archive, Smith Rafael Film Center and Stanford Theatre; and other surprise events all with live musical accompaniment just as they were presented back in the day.
by Gary Meyer
Are you having an Oscar Party? Maybe you should go through your house and assemble some goodie bags. But we doubt you can top the bags that will be delivered to the acting- and director-category nominees the morning after the Academy Awards.
Lash Fary with some of the 2014 Unofficial Oscar Goodie Bag goodies his team assembled. –Photo courtesy of Business Week
“Even Hollywood’s most acclaimed stars are disappointed if they do not win an Oscar. When our consolation gift shows up the next day, we like to think it is welcome distraction to lift their spirits,” says Lash Fary, whose company Distinctive Assets assembles the bags.
Wonder if they were fighting over a goodie bag?
eatdrinkfilms.com 