-
Posted SFIAF 2009: Lineup Preview to News
[Our thanks to Peter Galvin for his preview of San Francisco's animation festival in progress.] By and large, animation gets a bum rap. The average filmgoer long ago decided that the medium catered either to kids or art house...
November 12, 2009 1:07 AM
-
Posted The Fourth Kind to Movies
November 7, 2009 1:13 PM
-
Posted THE FOURTH KIND: Review to Reviews
[Keeping Twitch team mate Peter Martin company, Peter Galvin offers the Twitch readership his own take on The Fourth Kind. Thanks, Peter!] Another week, another "found footage" horror film. The Fourth Kind claims only half of its run-time is...
November 7, 2009 1:04 PM
-
Posted 3RD I 2009: Michael Hawley Previews the Line-up to News
How fortunate can Twitch be to have two of the Bay Area's best film writers offer previews of what I consider to be this weekend's winner of--as Michael Hawley aptly terms it--November's "smackdown." Film festivalism has never been more...
November 5, 2009 5:12 PM
-
Posted 3RD I 2009: Frako Loden Previews the Line-up to News
[Our sincere thanks to Frako Loden for contributing her preview of this year's 3rd i line-up to the Twitch readership.] All the leaves are brown, and the skies are gray. November is here, and so is the most excellent...
November 5, 2009 1:44 PM
-
Posted Defamation to Movies
November 3, 2009 2:51 PM
-
Posted HASHMATSA / DEFAMATION (2009): Interview With Yoav Shamir to Interviews
Simone Bitton's Rachel took the bullet for Yoav Shamir's Hashmatsa / Defamation (2009), which I would have predicted to be the target of outrage at the 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF). By the time Defamation finally screened,...
November 3, 2009 2:46 PM
-
Posted STREET ART SAN FRANCISCO: MISSION MURALISMO: Interview with Annice Jacoby to Interviews
"Like the Loisada of New York or the Left Bank of Paris," Annice Jacoby writes in the introduction to her visually stunning publication Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (Abrams, 2009:29), "the Mission is a café society that scoffs...
November 2, 2009 5:54 PM
-
Posted The Dirty Saints to Movies
October 30, 2009 3:09 PM
-
Posted ARGENTINE CINEMA: LOS SANTOS SUCIOS / THE DIRTY SAINTS (2009)--Q&A With Luis Ortega to Interviews
Speaking with Diana Sanchez at the start of this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she advised that one of her criteria for choosing Latino films for TIFF is to determine the films that most characterize the cinematic landscape...
October 30, 2009 3:04 PM
-
Posted Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant to Movies
October 25, 2009 10:49 AM
-
Posted CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT: Review to Reviews
[Our thanks to Peter Galvin for offering his review to the Twitch readership.] Releasing in what has become the year of the vampire, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) is another film aimed squarely at the teen crowd,...
October 25, 2009 10:46 AM
-
Posted Where the Wild Things Are to Movies
October 16, 2009 1:37 PM
-
Posted WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: Review to Reviews
[Our thanks to Peter Galvin for contributing his review to the Twitch readership.] I was afraid that I had forgotten what it was like to be a child, my own memories having faded and mixed with the archetypes of...
October 16, 2009 1:31 PM
-
Posted AFF09: Michael Hawley Previews the Line-up to News
The 13th Arab Film Festival (AFF) kicks off tonight, October 15 and continues through Sunday, October 25 in San Francisco (Castro, Opera Plaza), San Jose (Camera 12 Cinemas) and Berkeley (Shattuck Cinemas). This year's line-up of films from the...
October 15, 2009 2:19 PM
-
Posted WINGED DISTANCE / SIGHTLESS MEASURE: PROGRAM ONE: A Conversation Between Robert Beavers and P. Adams Sitney to Interviews
In his review of AMOR for the PFA monograph The Films of Robert Beavers, Richard Suchenski writes (2009:12): "More than most works of their kind, the films of Robert Beavers are hard to describe in words without eliminating everything...
October 14, 2009 9:25 PM
-
Posted DOCFEST 2009: Peter Galvin's Review of The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia to Reviews
The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia chronicles a year in the life of a family of self-proclaimed hillbillies. One member of the White family, Jesco, has already achieved cult status, after being featured in a 1991 PBS...
October 13, 2009 12:30 AM
-
Posted To the Sea to Movies
October 12, 2009 12:59 AM
-
Posted MEXICAN CINEMA: Review of ALAMAR (TO THE SEA, 2009) to Reviews
Straight off, Adam Nayman deserves some kind of commission for convincing a small squadron of film journalists to catch Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009) at its last public screening at the Isabel Bader. Boasting its...
October 12, 2009 12:53 AM
-
Posted MVFF32: Michael Hawley's Capsule Reviews to Reviews
Hipsters (Russia, dir. Valery Todorovsky)--I never expected that my favorite film of the fest would be a splashy, wide-screen Russian musical set in 1955 Moscow, but there you go. Hipsters recounts the phenomenon of stilyagi, the name given to...
October 9, 2009 6:36 PM
-
Posted Paranormal Activity to Movies
October 9, 2009 2:53 PM
-
Posted PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: Peter Galvin's Review to Reviews
When DreamWorks picked up Israeli émigré Oren Peli's effectively creepy lo-fi supernatural thriller Paranormal Activity at Slamdance 2008, it withdrew the film from its scheduled festival appearances in the Bay Area. As reported at the time on Twitch, SF...
October 9, 2009 2:45 PM
-
Posted EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA: A Robert Beavers Online Reader to News
Who is Robert Beavers? The question is fair. Even the most committed Bay Area cinephiles have probably never had opportunity to watch the films of Robert Beavers. By remedy, the long-awaited multi-institutional celebration of Beavers' film cycle My Hand...
October 9, 2009 12:21 PM
-
Posted FCN 2009: Michael Hawley Previews the Line-up to News
One year after the smash success of its inaugural French Cinema Now (FCN), the SF Film Society has announced the line-up for its anticipated 2009 follow-up fest. This year's expanded program includes 11 new films and one revival, mostly...
October 6, 2009 4:09 PM
-
Posted DIASPORA BY THE BAY: SFIAAF--Interview With Festival Director Chi-hui Yang to Interviews
Continuing with my survey of the diasporic dimension of San Franciscan film festival culture, Chi-hui Yang--Festival Director for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAF)--invited me to the offices of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)...
October 2, 2009 7:49 PM
-
Posted Cropsey to Movies
October 2, 2009 5:01 PM
-
Posted DOCFEST 2009: CROPSEY--Peter Galvin's Review to Reviews
"What if your urban legends are real?" One of the biggest mysteries in the annals of New York criminal history is now the subject of Cropsey (2009), a gripping documentary by Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio that debuted at...
October 2, 2009 4:55 PM
-
Posted TIFF09: HADEWIJCH--The Auteurs Notebook Interview With Bruno Dumont to News
In Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Céline (Julie Sokolowski, in a compelling first turn) has taken on the name of Hadewijch, the patron saint of the convent where she has been received as novice. At the convent her self-mortification in the...
September 30, 2009 4:08 PM
-
Posted NEUROCINEMA: POP SKULL gets an MRI! to News
Since interviewing the Katz Brothers in a seedy noodle shop in San Francisco's Tenderloin when their film Pop Skull screened at IndieFEST 2008, producer Peter Katz has kept me abreast of the film's trajectory through the festival circuit; the...
September 29, 2009 3:34 PM
-
Posted The Secret of Their Eyes to Movies
September 27, 2009 2:01 AM
-
Posted TIFF09: THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES--Interview With Juan José Campanella to Interviews
Yesterday's announcement that Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes / El Secreto de sus ojos (2009) has been chosen as Argentina's Oscar® submission for the 82nd Academy Awards® toggled me to transcribe my conversation with director Campanella...
September 27, 2009 1:55 AM
-
Posted FILM FESTIVAL YEARBOOK 1--A Response to Section Two to News
With the 47th edition of the New York Film Festival currently in progress, I thought now would be a good time to follow-up on my response to Section One of Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, edited by...
September 26, 2009 3:43 PM
-
Posted GLOBAL LENS 2009: Latinbeat to News
The 2009 Global Lens Film Festival launches today at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center with 10 award-winning, narrative feature films from Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Morocco and Mozambique. "By presenting Global Lens 2009,...
September 25, 2009 3:14 AM
-
Posted The Burning Plain to Movies
September 24, 2009 1:22 PM
-
Posted THE BURNING PLAIN: Peter Galvin's Review to Reviews
Guillermo Arriaga's writing style is familiar by this point, and you know what you're getting into even before you get it. Over the past 10 years, he's made a name for himself writing sprawling ensemble pieces such as Babel and...
September 24, 2009 1:17 PM
-
Posted La Soga to Movies
September 24, 2009 2:52 AM
-
Posted La Soga to Movies
September 24, 2009 2:47 AM
-
Posted TIFF09: LA SOGA Review to Reviews
Early on at this year's Toronto International, I had the chance to sit down with programmer Diana Sanchez to discuss the Latin American fare she'd programmed for the festival. Interested in whether or not she targeted Latin American audiences...
September 24, 2009 2:42 AM
-
Posted MVFF32--Michael Hawley Previews the Line-Up to News
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) announced its 2009 line-up last week, adhering to what has become a proven formula for the 32-year-old festival: Start with a dozen or so indie-ish, autumn-release prestige pics, often with stars and directors in...
September 22, 2009 9:05 PM
-
Posted To Die Like A Man to Movies
September 22, 2009 3:10 PM
-
Posted TIFF09: TO DIE LIKE A MAN--Interview With João Pedro Rodrigues & Alexander David to Interviews
"There are no secrets; only shame."--Tonia. [This entry is dedicated to Johnny Ray Huston, whose Cinema Scope article "Double 'O' Heaven: The Vertigo Pop and Phantom Desires of João Pedro Rodrigues" provided some of the first working language to appreciate...
September 22, 2009 3:05 PM
-
Posted TIFF09: IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT to Reviews
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?--William Blake, "The Tyger" Imagine for a moment, if you will, that the filmmaker's lens is William Blake's visionary eye, aiming...
September 21, 2009 1:35 PM
-
Posted REVIEW of COCO BEFORE CHANEL to Reviews
In perhaps her most pinched performance to date, Audrey Tautou concedes the characterization of fashion designer Coco Chanel to Shirley MacLaine's televised performance in Coco Chanel (2008), the made-for-Lifetime-movie that earned MacLaine nominations for Best Actress at the Emmy, Golden...
September 21, 2009 12:00 PM
-
Posted TIFF09: JENNIFER'S BODY--Peter Galvin's Review to Reviews
While most of the Twitch team caught Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body at Toronto's Midnight Madness, Evening Class contributing writer Peter Galvin caught the film's press screening in San Francisco. Though Twitch editor Todd Brown cautioned viewers to "adjust expectations accordingly",...
September 21, 2009 3:10 AM
-
Posted TIFF09: HUACHO Review to Reviews
As Diana Sanchez details in her program capsule: "An apt title for the film, huacho means 'bastard' or 'having no father' but can also mean 'abandoned.' " Chilean director Alejandro Fernández Almendras' feature debut observes how four members of...
September 12, 2009 1:58 AM
-
Posted TIFF09: A PROPHET Review to Reviews
"Who you gonna get to do the dirty work when all the slaves are free?"--Joni Mitchell. In an environment of imprisonment and enslavement, such a question is fraught with peril. Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (A Prophet) arrives in Toronto...
September 11, 2009 12:00 PM
-
Posted TIFF09: VOMIT AT RYERSON ANTICHRIST SCREENING!! to News
Lars Von Trier's Antichrist is a hot ticket at this year's TIFF. It's been pretty well covered by the Twitch team so I don't have much more to say except that at tonight's Ryerson screening a dude a few seats...
September 11, 2009 12:31 AM
-
Posted TIFF09: BROKEN EMBRACES Review to Reviews
Pedro Almodóvar's Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces, 2009) is a moebius strip of film, a cinephilic helix twisting, doubling and reflecting upon itself with recursive bravado. Yet, as imaginative as the film is in concept--and it does make its audience...
September 10, 2009 12:00 PM
-
Posted Broken Embraces to Movies
September 10, 2009 1:30 AM
Subscribe to feed
Recent Comments