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

The new issue of Cineaste is out and it’s expanded with a “Film and History Supplement.”
I haven’t had time to read the articles in depth, but a brief skimming looks promising:
ïA 2-page spread on Salt of the Earth (we’re somewhere around its 50th anniversary), which actually mentions the recent Los Angeles screening I blogged about [...]

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As sometimes occurs, I had just purchased the relatively new Region 2 Japanese DVD set of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausica‰ of the Valley of the Wind (1984) a few days before Disney announced it will release the film for Region 1 along with My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Porco Rosso (1992) on August 31st.
But after [...]

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I enjoy the discussions at filmjourney as much as I do writing my blog entries, and we’re fortunate to enjoy the participation of Strictly Film School’s Acquarello, who pops in from time to time. In one thread regarding current French cinema, for example, Acquarello writes about Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (2003):

“It’s [...]

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This blog entry isn’t directly film related, so allow me a rare indulgence.
For several years now, I’ve been fortunate to count Karen Neudorf and her Canadian cohorts who publish Beyond magazine among my dearest friends. Although their first issue was printed in 1995, like all of us, Beyond’s creative efforts led them [...]

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After a few mis-starts last week, I finally managed to attend one of the key screening dates of the Chantal Akerman retrospective currently playing in Los Angeles. Luckily, it was a documentary marathon, so not only was I able to check out the lovely new REDCAT theatre in downtown L.A., I also managed to [...]

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ïYesterday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times offers a belated but pleasant article on the “year of the documentary,” and although it seems to have just discovered films like Bowling for Columbine, Spellbound, My Architect, and The Fog of War, this is one dead horse that deserves a beating:

Once relegated to public broadcasting, cable channels [...]

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Just a fun note here. One of my favorite movies of all time is Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955), based on a 1925 play written by Kaj Munk (1898-1944), a Danish playwright/pastor who was executed by the Nazis. Although the Criterion Collection’s release of Dreyer’s film on VHS and DVD has given it greater [...]

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Incredibly sad news today…Spalding Gray’s death has been confirmed.
I had the plaeasure of seeing Gray when he visited my university a few years ago. He delivered one of his monologues in the school’s rundown theatre and was every bit as lively and eccentric and human as films like Swimming to Cambodia (1987) or Monster [...]

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One of the biggest names in the history of documentary filmmaking was John Grierson (1898-1972), a Scotsman who championed film as mass communication with a high potential for social education. Grierson founded two major national organizations for film production: the Empire Marketing Board film unit in Britain in 1930 (later called the General Post [...]

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“Ron Coleman tries to calm his shaken son, Trey, after a screening of
‘The Passion of the Christ’ in Killeen, Texas, on Wednesday.”
(AP/Steve Traynor)
Although one of my ongoing interests in film is how spirituality is communicated through such a literal art form, I’ve been doing my best to avoid The Passion of the Christ, due in [...]

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