Doug Cummings – Page 45

TIFF update

September 16, 2004 Doug Cummings Film festival

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow

One of the pleasures of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival for me personally has been the opportunity to spend time with friends I rarely get the chance to see (J. Robert and Robert Davis as well as folks from Alberta), finally meeting friends I’ve known online for some time (Darren Hughes and Girish Shambu), and generally enjoying the city’s unique ambience, sights and sounds. This morning, I even ran into Jonathan Rosenbaum in a crosswalk, an encouraging Masters of Cinema supporter and a favorite critic, and I expressed my admiration in the …

TIFF preview

September 9, 2004 Doug Cummings Uncategorized

I’m hoping to try something new for Filmjourney‘s coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival this year. Last year, my friend J. Robert Parks, film critic for Paste magazine and Chicago’s Hyde Park Herald, sent in ongoing updates. This year, not only am I attending myself, but several more friends will be there as well. Thus, I hope to blog summaries linked to various write-ups.

I won’t be arriving in Toronto until tomorrow, so J. Robert sets the stage with his festival preview. –Doug

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by J. Robert Parks

My friend Mike Hertenstein describes it …

The Wrong Man

September 9, 2004 Doug Cummings DVD review

When I was a kid, I remember on occasion being told–as I protested some punishment or another–that even if I wasn’t guilty of the exact grievance for which I was being disciplined, that my punishment no doubt made up for all those times that I was guilty and wasn’t punished. I remember school teachers and perhaps my parents using this line of reasoning, one that is particularly good at provoking existential worries in ten-year-olds.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956), released this week on DVD, adopts this argument as its rasion d’Ítre and unnervingly suggests that its protagonist, Manny Balestrero …

Netflix and TiVo

September 7, 2004 Doug Cummings Uncategorized

Is popular access to a wider selection of videos on the brink of its latest success? Would this include all of Netflix’s DVDs or just the ones they think are important? And what would the quality be?

TiVo, Netflix Close to Internet Movie Deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Online DVD renter Netflix Inc. and television recorder maker TiVo Inc. are close to a deal to allow Netflix subscribers to download movies over the Internet to their TiVo devices, according to the latest issue of Newsweek magazine.

Newsweek, citing an anonymous source close to the talks, said the deal could be

A Very Long Engagement

September 2, 2004 Doug Cummings Uncategorized

Despite living in Los Angeles, I rarely attend its many test screenings or previews; I generally have enough film openings, retrospectives, and single-day screenings at the handful of art theatres around town to keep me occupied.

But last night I was invited to a showing of the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, A Very Long Engagement, which doesn’t even open in Paris until late-October. I went with modest expectations. I discovered Delicatessen (1991) on video in college and at the time was charmed by its vibrant eccentricity and dark humor, and while I subsequently appreciated The City of Lost Children…

Akerman on Bresson

September 1, 2004 Doug Cummings Uncategorized

I’m really excited about the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, which I will attend for the first time this year and do my best to offer daily reports here at Filmjourney. Along with several hundred new films, the festival will offer its Dialogues: Talking With Pictures series of filmmakers presenting and discussing their favorite movies. One in particular, Chantal Akerman on Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, I’m most enthusiastic about:

ìI discovered Bresson after I had discovered Godard. I discovered Godard with Pierrot le fou. I was fifteen and Godard was exactly the person I