by Risa Nye
When I saw Jon Favreau‘s latest film Chef (2014) recently, two things occurred to me: I really wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, and I needed to talk to the two people I know who have spent most of their adult lives cooking in, or managing, restaurants and teaching others how to cook.
by Tim Sika
Frameline proudly celebrates its 38th annual International LGBT Film Festival showcasing the very best of Queer Cinema beginning this Thursday, June 19th and running through Sunday, June 29th, in what remains not only a Bay Area institution and premiere international treasure trove of LBGT films and film events, but the world’s largest LGBT film exhibition on the planet.
by Michael Guillén
In my first political science class at San Francisco State University in the mid-’70s, my professor argued that without practicing solidarity with the struggles of disempowered people, political change could never be effected. Solidarity became the introductory lynchpin to an engaged activism that resisted pluralistic efforts to divide and conquer. “Unless you can feel solidarity with the cultural critiques proposed in Malcolm X’s autobiography and the prison letters of George Jackson,” my professor insisted, “you will never understand the plight of Black people in the United States.” Continue reading
Over the years director and cineaste Martin Scorsese has visited Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive to do research for his projects as well as to learn about and screen hard-to-find movies. The Bay Area is lucky to have such a treasure trove for movie lovers. The PFA offers so much more than its ambitious screening program.
EatDrinkFilms asked Marty for a comment about the current series that he programmed: Continue reading
by Frako Loden
[Be warned: Plot spoilers abound]
Mizoguchi Kenji (1898-1956) is always in the holy trinity of directors—Kurosawa Akira and Ozu Yasujirô are the other two—invoked by Western cineastes as Japan’s greatest. But perhaps aside from his 1953 Ugetsu , which won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, few non-scholarly filmgoers have actually seen his films. Starting this week, Bay Area filmgoers will get a chance to view 16 of Mizoguchi’s most frequently screened works during the series “A Cinema of Totality” at UC Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (July 19–Aug. 29, 2014), all on 35mm film. Continue reading
Kenneth Turan’s favorite films span a century of the world’s most satisfying romances and funniest comedies, the most heart-stopping dramas and chilling thrillers from All About Eve to Seven Samurai to Sherlock Jr. He will be reading from his recently-published volume Not To Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From A Lifetime Of Film on Monday, June 23, 2014 at 12:00PM. See details about Turan’s appearance and read an excerpt from the book here.
by Vince Keenan
Five is a charmed number for Mark Harris. In 2008’s Pictures at a Revolution, he charted New Hollywood’s tectonic shifts by profiling the quintet of films nominated for Best Picture of 1967, from the nouvelle vague-influenced Bonnie & Clyde to the studio bloat of Doctor Dolittle . He deploys a similar conceit in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War . Chronicling the military careers of several established filmmakers allows him to tell the sprawling, underreported tale of the Allied propaganda effort.
Read two critical perspectives on A Coffee In Berlin (2012, Jan Ole Gerster) , from Kelly Vance and Jackson Scarlett. A Coffee In Berlin opens in San Francisco at Landmark Cinema’s Opera Plaza and in Berkeley at Landmark’s Shattuck Theater on Friday, June 20, 2014. Continue reading
Read two critical perspectives on Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013, Nicholas Wrathall) , from Peter Canavese and Ryan Lattanzio. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia opens in San Francisco at Landmark Cinema’s Opera Plaza and in Berkeley at Landmark’s Shattuck Theater on Friday, June 13, 2014.
by Michael Guillén
There’s no doubt about it, Martin Scorsese has clout. If he decides the national cinema of Poland deserves international attention, so be it, as he has proven with his touring retrospective “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema,” which premiered earlier this year at New York’s Lincoln Center and now arrives at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (June 14-Aug. 21, 2014). Continue reading
by Kelly Vance
Look at poor little Muley. Skulking in the dry fields at night, ducking headlights, peering through windows, moaning and whimpering like a hungry ghost. We recognize actor John Qualen by his voice but the rest of him is shadowy and more frightened than usual, even more anxious than Qualen’s Earl Williams, the timid killer from His Girl Friday. Muley’s share-cropping family was tractored out by the cats and now he’s left to haunt the empty homestead in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath. But he’s not the only one.
