The 2016 election cycle has proven to be one of the more contentious in recent memory. The execrable possibility of President Donald Fucking Trump, Goddammit has cast a shadow on all the goings-on, but even the relatively mild-mannered Dems have been getting, well, a bit testy.
Jeff Nichols is a faith-based filmmaker, and Midnight Special is his religious E.T.
Before you throw up your hands in thinkpiece-allergic disgust, let me say: I have no idea what Nichols’ faith might be. I haven’t researched it, and don’t particularly plan to.
Anyone who has thought seriously about climate change has, at some point, reached the conclusion that we’re pretty well fucked at this point.
If you count yourself in this group, Gasland director Josh Fox’s new documentary – the half-charmingly, half-clunkily titled How To Let Go of the World: And Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change – is aimed straight at you.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch a set of films from non-White, non-U.S., non-male, and/or non-straight filmmakers and depart a little from the Western canon. The intro and full list can be found here.
Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angel (1937), not to be confused with Frank Borzage’s silent of the same name from 9 years prior, is an odd assemblage of filmic impulses.
Chet Baker is not an unlikely candidate for a biopic.
The very image of the dope-addled West Coast jazz cat undone by his vices, his biography is full of, shall we say, “incident.” Still, there’s a lingering sense of either lost promise or also-ran status that separates him from the usual towering figures we find in such films.
In Part 2 of our discussion with Susan Oxtoby, Senior Film Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, we talk a bit about film preservation and restoration, about archives and collective memory, and the future of film in the digital age.
Susan Oxtoby knows film.
Over the course of her career, the current Senior Film Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Bam/PFA) has programmed countless series and retrospectives, introducing audiences to under-seen, rarely-screened masterpieces from throughout the world and across cinema history.
As all good sports fans know, yesterday was Selection Sunday, in which brackets for the NCAA tournament and March Madness were revealed. I did not know this, as I am not a good sports fan, until my sport-savvier girlfriend Carrie informed me a few weeks back.
Every March, some folks over at Letterboxd hold a 30 Films In 30 Days From 30 Countries challenge, in which, unsurprisingly, you are challenged to watch 30 films in 30 days from 30 countries.
I’m giving it a go this year, though as you can see, I’ve already fallen behind schedule.
Part of an ongoing effort to watch a set of films from non-White, non-U.S., non-male, and/or non-straight filmmakers and depart a little from the Western canon. The intro and full list can be found here.
The camera tracks from left to right through a lower middle-class suburb in Japan, establishing the textures, geography, and architecture of the neighborhood before arriving at two older boys tossing a baseball around in a yard.