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

Last night at the REDCAT, Thai filmmaker (and graduate of Chicago’s School of the Art Institute) Apichatpong Weerasethakul opened his first solo exhibition in the US, entitled Unknown Forces (2007). A filmmaker who often blends narrative and experimental techniques (particularly structural innovation) in his feature films, I learned he also produces and distributes avant [...]

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British filmmaker Peter Watkins’ nearly six-hour film, La Commune (Paris, 1871), made in the year 2000, is without a doubt one of the best and most important films of the decade, and it was just released this week on DVD by First Run Features. Count yourselves lucky–the film, which commemorates the short-lived working class [...]

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So the Toronto International Film Festival announced its line-up of films today, and those of us who will be attending can hardly contain our excitement. Of course, Girish and I have already started complaining that the new films by, say, Denis, Bujalski, Aoyama, Tian, Allen, and Hong weren’t included. (Time to order that [...]

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I’ve taken a longer blogging break than I anticipated, partly because I was out of town and partly because I was immersed in finishing my liner notes for two upcoming Masters of Cinema DVDs in the UK, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). (Strictly Film School’s Acquarello contributed the essay for our [...]

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I Walked with a Zombie
Great DVD news has arrived this week for fans of elegant horror: Universal have announced a Bela Lugosi collection for September that will finally offer Edgar G. Ulmer’s expressionist/art deco masterpiece, The Black Cat (1934), and Warner have solidified an October street date for their long-awaited Val Lewton collection. The [...]

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For the last few years, Apollo Cinema have theatrically distributed mini-festivals of the Oscar nominees for Best Live Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film, and this weekend the American Cinematheque screened the 2005 touring program. For some reason, this collection doesn’t include the nominated films by Bill Plympton (Guard Dog), Mike Gabriel [...]

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For the Bressonphiles among us (and who isn’t?), I published a capsule review of Au hasard Balthazar in the latest catalogue of the mail-order company MovieMail in the UK; I’ve posted it below.
The good news is that the region 0 PAL discs recently released by Nouveaux Pictures (Balthazar and Mouchette, both of which have been [...]

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Not only is this a great way to promote some kind of DVD community consensus, but we Masters of Cinema editors get to a) hear from our readers, and b) sometimes learn about discs we missed.

“The Masters of Cinema DVD Award of the Year 2004 will be announced here on Xmas Eve. As usual, it [...]

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A few notes…
ïI’ve come down with a cold this week, so permit me a moment of persnickety cinephile bitchiness. Most of the folks I know consider Jonathan Rosenbaum’s critique of the first Top 100 Movies list by the American Film Institute to be one of the most inspiring critical essays of the last few [...]

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I’ve known Russell for several years now and I’m always trying to get him to write more often; he’s full of great insights. Here are his first reviews from the Three Rivers Film Festival currently in progress in Pittsburgh. The festival is surprisingly low-profile given its exemplary line-up. -Doug
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