Author: Doug Cummings

Why expanding kids’ cinematic knowledge isn’t always a good thing:

(My nephew, Sheldon, is seven years old now, and my brother just sent me these comments on their recent Lord of the Rings viewing.)

Sheldon has really enjoyed the background features. I think it is opening a new world to him, in that movies are made, not simply captured from real life. We had one bad experience though . . . they talked about the cave troll in the first movie and said they deliberately wanted it to be stupid and pitiful, not evil. [Director] Jackson said he told

This past week, AgnËs Varda made the rounds to various Los Angeles sites as part of this year’s On Set with French Cinema series, picking up USC’s first Eisenstein Award along the way for her “visionary and distinguished contributions to the cinema.”

I’ve blogged about Varda before, the “grande dame of the French New Wave,” but I managed to catch up with her in person at the American Cinematheque, where she screened her latest film, a 12-minute short entitled Le Lion volatil (2003), as well as her acclaimed Jacquot (Jacquot de Nantes) (1991), a dramatization of the early years in …

Just a note this morning to comment on the lack of graphics on filmjourney today. We’re experiencing some technical difficulty with our graphics server, but things should be up and running again in a day or two.

Incidentally, we’ve heard from a few people over the months that they’ve experienced difficulty logging-in to the discussion board. This would be a great thread to post such concerns…although, if you could post there wouldn’t be a problem, yes?

Feel free to e-mail Doug directly regarding any technical problems.…

I usually don’t do this sort of thing, but this deal is too good to pass by without mention. Rbcmp3.com, a US e-tailer of Russian media, is apparently offering a buy-one, get-one free deal for two of my favorite films, Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Stalker (1979) and Mirror (1975).

“The first 10 orders for the film Stalker (DVD-NTSC), a
2 DVD Set,
placed today after 12 noon (midday New York time) will receive a
free disc, Tarkovsky’s Mirror (DVD-NTSC).”

Both discs feature excellent transfers (although Stalker has some very subtle “shifting” problems) and, most importantly, the original mono soundtracks in …

Tuesday night, filmmaker Charles Burnett was invited to screen his new documentary, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, for a class here at Caltech and facilitate a Q&A afterward. A graduate of UCLA, Burnett is one of the most highly-esteemed filmmakers currently working in the US and he continues to be active in independent and black filmmaking circles. Although he has taken a less mainstream–and more ideologically nuanced–approach to his career than popular names like Spike Lee or Larry Clark, Burnett’s films (including 1977’s Killer of Sheep, 1990’s To Sleep With Anger, and 1996’s Nightjohn) are visually …

As a corollary to yesterday’s post, reader John Davies (a critic for MovieMail in the UK), has submitted lists of Great Films, which I’ve added to the Lists section of filmjourney.

In general, the best lists are those which cast the widest possible historical and geographical net. Movies are a global art form over a hundred years old, and definitive lists should reflect this. In addition, the most useful lists don’t merely affirm our tastes, but compel us to seek new horizons. My suggestion is to jot down some of the titles you haven’t seen, and take the list …