f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

Robin Wood, one of the most respected English writers on film for many years (his book-length studies of Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were required reading at my university) publishes one of the best film magazines widely available in the US (it’s sold at Borders, at least), CineAction, a thrice-annual publication by Wood’s nonprofit collective [...]

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Following my previous blog on the unavailability of many classic films on DVD, my cohorts at Masters of Cinema and I have added a new article written by Nick Wrigley that discusses the industry’s distribution practices and problems. As a bonus, we’ve contacted some of our favorite critics and historians and asked them for [...]

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Online cinephiles have known for years that one of best writers on international cinema is Acquarello, whose Strictly Film School site continues to be a goldmine of information and inspiration. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC has been lucky enough to enlist him to write the programming notes for their new Yasujiro Ozu [...]

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LA Weekly film critic Chuck Wilson in today’s issue:

Return of the Kid, or Mr. Critic Takes a Holiday
by Chuck Wilson
I think it was somewhere in the second hour of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that I sank down in my seat, pulled my jacket up under my chin [...]

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One of my offshooting interests in film is its thematic interplay with religious traditions and “spirituality”–which not only happens more often than is generally recognized, but also typifies a great many of the most highly esteemed films and filmmakers of the medium.
However, it’s the sort of thematic context that is difficult to discuss [...]

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The New York Times ran an article today entitled Greatest DVD’s Never Made: A Most Wanted List that’s worth a peek to remind us how many films we’re still missing in prime video quality. But between the article’s type-o’s (the films of “Uzo”) and no mention of non-region 1 options (like the region 2 [...]

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As long as we’re singing the praises of Rialto Pictures this week, I should note they’ve not only announced a strong New York/Los Angeles/Chicago/Washington, DC opening for The Battle of Algiers (1965) on January 9, but have also released a very good trailer for the film, which can be seen via the Film Forum’s [...]

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“That Robert Bresson’s 13 features remain largely unknown and unavailable in this country (only one is available here on DVD) is a measure of our impoverished film culture and a reason why one of the heroes of the movie year is Rialto Pictures, the New York distributor reissuing Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar. The film opens [...]

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I’ve been meaning to write about my experience last Thursday of seeing Mikhail Vardanov’s new documentary Parajanov: The Last Spring at–of all places–the Hollywood Entertainment Museum just down the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was a slightly surreal experience watching the passionate, contemplative film about the life [...]

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Given my eclectic approach to film appreciation, it’s funny how various events surprisingly coincide. On Friday, I travelled to the University of California in San Diego to attend a colloquium given by filmmaker and academic Babette Mangolte, who discussed her latest research project connecting the ideological dots between French avant-garde filmmakers of the ’20s [...]

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