Dogs and Inmates Finding their Way Home

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UNDERDOGS is a special film that follows minimum-security prisoners as they care for and train homeless dogs with behavioral issues that have made the dogs —- until now —- unadoptable.   Positive Reinforcement helped both dogs and inmates find their way back home. 

A Director’s Event with live music from the soundtrack and a film screening followed by a Director’s Q&A will take place on Thursday March 20, 2025 at the Sunrise Center, 645 Tamalpias Drive, Corte Madera from 6:30-8:30 pm.  Tickets and more information here. Continue reading →

Wrestling the Angel: Two Bay Area filmmakers compose an intimate portrait of a California artist at crossroads

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By Farwa Ali          (January 30, 2025)

Graceful veined hands turn the seashell over a few times in reverent contemplation. A few moments later artist Ann Arnold tosses the seashell back into the rippling cerulean waves lapping against the shore of San Francisco’s Baker Beach. It has completed its journey, traveling from the ocean into Arnold’s life; where she has acknowledged its value, captured its luminous existence in her painting, and respectfully returned it to the ocean from whence it emerged. Wrestling The Angel – an Artist’s Passage, does more than capture Arnold’s artistic journey.

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Comfort for the Anglophiles – Well, Everybody, Actually: The Mostly British Festival 2025

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by Meredith Brody                                                    (February 4, 2025)

We cinephiles contain multitudes. Luckily, the SF Bay Area continues to cater to its diverse audiences with a number of well-curated film festivals. One of my favorites has always been the annual Mostly British Film Festival, which colonizes (haha) the Vogue Theater for 8 days in February. Mostly British includes films from the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa, and New Zealand. Catnip for not only the Acorn and Britbox addicts, but for Anglophiles and others. Continue reading →

Music Hath Charms

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San Francisco’s A Day of Silents Features a Stellar Lineup of Musicians and Films on Sunday, February 2, 2025.

by Meredith Brody.                                                         (January 28,2025)

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Photo by Pamela Gentile.

You’ve all heard that silent movies really weren’t SILENT: they all had live musical accompaniment, ranging from a solitary guy at an upright piano or a mighty Wurlitzer to up-to-110-member symphonic orchestras. When Carmine Coppola was about to go on tour in 1981 to conduct his new score for his son Francis Ford Coppola’s restoration of Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoleon, he reminisced about the silent movie palaces of his youth: “”When I was really young,” Mr. Coppola recalled, ”I would go to Broadway to see a movie. I remember  The Thief of Bagdad, with Douglas Fairbanks; he always insisted on an original score. Those theaters – the Strand, the Rialto, the Rivoli, the Capitol – had 40-or 50-piece orchestras. It was so beautiful. I saw the Big Parade that way and What Price Glory and The Three Musketeers. ”

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Noir City 22’s Wicked Women Thrills

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(January 15, 2025)

“Where Winsome Women Turn Wicked!” is the theme of this year’s Noir City featuring 24 gritty thrillers in the best possible prints, in 35mm when available. All double bills—two movies for the price of one,  “I think it’s important to make note of the problematic content and say things like, ‘Well, yes, the women had to be punished at the end of these movies,’ ” TCM host Alicia Malone told G. Allen Johnson for his excellent SF Chronicle article on the Festival. “But that also doesn’t negate the fact that for most of the film, you get to watch a powerful woman wielding her sexuality, using it as a weapon and drawing in these hapless men and getting to play, for these actresses, unlikable, complex characters. Women were front and center and very important in noir. And even though there was a lot of misogyny, a lot of face slapping and forced kissing, it also really gave them a chance to play these complex characters at a time when women didn’t have power.”

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You Stopped My World: From Menus-Plaisirs to La Cocina, A Reflection

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“You have to edit the material.

That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. 

Not all minds are the same. 

Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. 

The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.” 

~ Frederick Wiseman

 

By Cari Borja

Quotes center me. I always begin with them. Whether at the start of a salon dinner, a birthday card, a performance installation, or a piece of writing. They lend focus. The above Wiseman quote does the same ~ his words, his films, his quote ~ a focus. Continue reading →

Eddie Muller’s NOIR BAR Cocktail Recipes for The Reckless Moment and Phantom Lady

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“Eddie Muller—host of TCM’s Noir Alley, one of the world’s leading authorities on film noir, and cocktail connoisseur—takes film buffs and drinks enthusiasts alike on a spirited tour through the “dark city” of film noir in this stylish book packed with equal parts great cocktail recipes and noir lore.”

Photo courtesy of Tim Millard and “A Sip of Noir” podcast interviewing Eddie Muller.

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The Secrets of Tamara de Łempicka

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An Interview with Director Julie Rubio

by Geneva Anderson

Tamara de Łempicka, the Russian-born 20th century painter known for her cosmopolitan Art Deco portraits and arresting nudes, is front and center in the Bay Area with two major Bay Area venues showcasing her: the Mill Valley Film Festival and the de Young Museum.

Orinda filmmaker Julie Rubio’s years-in-the-making documentary, “The True Story of Tamara de Łempicka & The Art of Survival,” had its world premiere at the 47th MVFF with two sold out screenings and more to come. Simultaneously the de Young Museum opened “Tamara de Łempicka,” the first major museum retrospective of the artist in the U.S. It runs through February 9, 2025.  (Details at the end of the article.)

Director Julie Rubio and Tamara de Łempicka

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