Film Fest wrapup

The San Francisco International Film Festival wraps up tonight. The end of the event is like an early autumn - after two weeks of running around catching movie after movie, the big stack to tickets is down to the last one or two, and the calendar looks empty. For some cinephiles, no doubt, this prompts a reflection on our very mortality.

And yet it's hard to be too glum with so much to look back on. Despite the abundance of rep and arthouse offerings available in San Francisco, SFIFF allowed the first look at the first truly great movies of the year (Après mai, which is so great I refuse to call it by its misleading and indistinct English title, and Bertolucci's intimate and stunning Me And You). But not only were the works of today's masters on display - Oskar Alegria's The Search For Emak Bakia was one of the festival's true gems, a documentary possessed of real magic (movie magic and otherwise). And Mai Morire, director Enrique Rivero's second film, offered the kind of real transcendence only hinted at in more famous films.

Your local film festival can, indeed, be the most magical time of the year. How else to explain the bounty offered by seeing new work by Raúl Ruiz and Peaches on the same day? But one does get tired and overstimulated, and wants to ease out of the festival upon its end. But there is that short film program I kinda wanted to check out tonight...

Roger Ebert

The news of Roger Ebert's passing, after a long battle with cancer, is just devastating. As is being pointed out, in addition to being one of few film critics to win a Pulitzer Prize, he's also one of few film critics to enjoy his particular kind of name recognition. Cinema has lost one of its great voices today.

Even the loss of his jaw didn't stop him from being a passionate voice for cinema in many of its forms. Even if you didn't agree with his reviews they were smart enough that they made you define (or redefine) your own thoughts of the movie in question.

Personal note: Childhood viewings of Sneak Previews helped shape and hone my own cinephilia, and I honestly doubt I'd be the man I am today without Ebert's formative influence.

Thanks, Roger. G'night.

The VFX Protest

So last night, just outside the Oscar ceremony, about 400 workers gathered to protest the shabby state of the visual effects industry.

Naturally, we were never going to see direct coverage of the protest during the ceremony itself.

And of course the use of the JAWS theme to play off people going too long was probably only intended as a cute joke, which no one expected would first occur during a passionate entreaty on behalf of unemployed workers of an embattled, some would say shat-upon industry. Such a plea was being made from the podium by Bill Westenhofer of effects house Rhythm & Hues, who, despite winning an Oscar on the night, had declared bankruptcy and laid off, without pay, nearly a third of its staff.

Much of the problem can be traced to subsidies offered by foreign countries to studios who hire their workers. Leaving American effects houses (who already have to bid low even without the cheap foreign competition) particularly vulnerable - refusing work from US studios doesn't look like an option. Which is already a difficult situation even without last night's fiasco, which added numerous insults to injury.

What the industry will do now to save itself is open to question. The best that can happen now is that people become aware of the situation. Which you are now. On behalf of our friends working in this embattled industry, thanks for reading.

JLG at 82

Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard celebrates his 82nd birthday today. Love him or hate him, and his peers are split on this, he remains a huge figure in world cinema, and every movie lover owes it to him/herself to explore Godard's work.

Though this writer's less enamored of Godard's work than in previous years (CONTEMPT/LE MEPRIS remains my favorite of his films, maybe because it's the least hectoring), I'm fully aware that cinema would be less rich without his influence. Or his ongoing presence - having enjoyed grappling with FILM SOCIALISME, I'm cautiously optimistic about his forthcoming ADIEU AU LANGAGE (and, since it's apparently in 3-D, wondering if any 'plex nearby will be perverse enough to book it).

And outside the grindhouse, Godard's trailers are simply the greatest.

Behold...THE MASTER!

Behold we did, at a last-minute benefit screening at San Francisco's scenic Castro Theatre. More delightful still we got a gander at it in glorious 70mm. Paul Thomas Anderson's tale of a none-too-bright war veteran (Joaquin Phoenix, in a career best performance) who falls under the thrall of a budding cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an even more novelistically-focused story than There Will Be Blood. The imagery (with new DP Mihai Malaimare Jr. taking over for Anderson-regular Robert Elswit) is as luminous and revealing as ever, and Jonny Greenwood's scoring chops are even more assured than they were in There Will Be Blood.

The movie has since rolled out wide, and is playing near some lucky folks in one of the sixteen 70mm prints that were cut of this thing. A page listing those engagements can be found here - whatever the format, though, this movie simply isn't to be missed.

RIP Dick Clark

The man was an American institution, and even if his name was somewhat synonymous with establishment pop music, there was a gentle integrity there, and he played gamely along even when confronted with a moment like this:



We'll miss you, Dick.

Happy Alfred Hitchcock Day?

Yes, indeed, for reasons we can't, at a glance, find, March 12th is National Alfred Hitchcock Day. Though we don't necessarily need a reason to honor the Master of Suspense, we're happy offer a number of means of doing so.

You can check out projects that might have been, a fascinating series of projects that Hitchcock was, for one reason or another, unable to realize.

And, at no charge, you can watch Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps right here on Jaman!