Author: Doug Cummings

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I’m going to be out-of-town for a few days for the Palm Springs International Film Festival. I hope to find an Internet cafÈ and make some screening updates to the blog, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, a site reader who goes by the name Samurai Jack has contributed the excellent, historically sensitive piece below on Alexander Sokurov’s wonderful 2002/2003 film, Russian Ark. (But if the writer would prefer to go by any other name, I’d love to change the credit. 😉 ) It has been released as a fine DVD by …

Happy New Year, everyone!

Back from the holidays, I thought I’d list my requisite end of the year top ten lists, although I hasten to add that there are plenty of films I’ve yet to see. (For example, I’m still looking forward to seeing Tsai Ling-miang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant, both of which I’ll get to see at the impressive Palm Springs International Film Festival in about a week.) In addition, release and exhibition dates for one’s hometown vary wildly and virtually any argument for restricting a list to one or the other category will …

Robin Wood, one of the most respected English writers on film for many years (his book-length studies of Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were required reading at my university) publishes one of the best film magazines widely available in the US (it’s sold at Borders, at least), CineAction, a thrice-annual publication by Wood’s nonprofit collective “for the advancement of film studies.”

This is simply a plug for the latest issue of CineAction (number 62), which is chock full of the sort of lengthy and thoughtful articles Film Comment, in its ongoing quest to be hip with a broad …

Following my previous blog on the unavailability of many classic films on DVD, my cohorts at Masters of Cinema and I have added a new article written by Nick Wrigley that discusses the industry’s distribution practices and problems. As a bonus, we’ve contacted some of our favorite critics and historians and asked them for their list of “most wanted films on DVD.” The results make a fascinating read.

Check it out……

Online cinephiles have known for years that one of best writers on international cinema is Acquarello, whose Strictly Film School site continues to be a goldmine of information and inspiration. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC has been lucky enough to enlist him to write the programming notes for their new Yasujiro Ozu retrospective, and it’s a good read even for those who won’t be attending.

In other news, it has been many years since I bothered to watch the Oscar broadcast, partly because as a reflection of the year in film, it couldn’t be more restricted, inflated, …

LA Weekly film critic Chuck Wilson in today’s issue:

Return of the Kid, or Mr. Critic Takes a Holiday

by Chuck Wilson

I think it was somewhere in the second hour of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King that I sank down in my seat, pulled my jacket up under my chin and let myself be 12 years old again. Blessedly, I wasnít there as a movie critic. One of the few benefits of being the second- or third-string guy in the film section is that you donít always have to take notes; you can go