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

The news that one of America’s greatest film critics, Manny Farber, has passed away is triggering deserved tributes (well-documented by David Hudson at GreenCine Daily), so I feel it’s a good a time as any to remember Christopher Petit’s 1999 essay film/meditation on Farber, itself titled Negative Space (the title of Farber’s reissued and expanded [...]

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Forty-seven years after its premiere, Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles (1961) has finally returned to its iconic setting of Los Angeles; a newly restored print begins a week-long run at the UCLA film archive tomorrow and is being used to promote at least one historical tour of Bunker Hill. Although the new print premiered in [...]

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Michael Giacchino and Normand Roger
I sometimes complain about events at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (mostly for its industry-heavy programming, security procedures, and scary metal detectors), but the Academy provides more interesting fare than you might imagine. Last Sunday, they completely outdid themselves: for $5, the public was treated to catered [...]

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Given the pervasiveness of prequels, it’s not so unusual that French director Philippe Ramos’ second feature imagines the early life of Moby Dick’s dark, enigmatic Captain Ahab. (Melville provides scant backstory himself, but alludes to Ahab’s orphaned childhood and late marriage.) But Captain Ahab (which won Best Director and a FIPRESCI award at Locarno [...]

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I’ve had Bazin on the brain lately, partly in conjunction with spending last week discussing the form and function of criticism as well as reading the Winter 2007 issue of Film International dedicated to Bazin. It’s a provocative magazine (expect a blog on it soon), such as when guest editor Jeffrey Crouse highlights Bazin’s [...]

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Now that serial killer musicals are back in fashion, LACMA’s screening last Fridayof Michael Powell’s rarely seen Bluebeard’s Castle (1964)–with Powell’s widow and longtime Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker in attendance–seems especially appropriate. Made for West German TV in the doldrums of Powell’s post-Peeping Tom (1960) blacklisting, it’s a startlingly expressionist, one-act, one-hour adaptation of Bela [...]

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In the City of Sylvia
THE FILMS OF 2007
By ROBERT KOEHLER
This is a long list because it was a great year. And it was a great year because weíre in the midst of a new golden age for world cinemaóof which this list is submitted as proof. And because this list is long, Iíll be [...]

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Honor of the Knights
It’s funny to think back on 2007–a year fraught with many personal changes for me (necessitating a sometimes sporadic approach to blogging here at Film Journey)–and still recognize that I managed to attend four major film festivals, publish liner notes to a CD and a DVD, write entries for MovieMail and film [...]

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When the Day Breaks
This week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its annual animation tribute. It was devoted to five Canadian animators, all of them women, and it screened some of their definitive works produced at the National Film Board: Janet Perlman (The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin, 1981), Caroline Leaf [...]

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Last weekend, I caught the West Coast premiere of George A. Romero’s latest zombie allegory, Diary of the Dead, and judging from memory, I think it’s my favorite installment since the 1968 original (which is the only one I’ve seen more than once). It’s got all the ingredients you might expect–slow moving and ravenous [...]

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