Author: Doug Cummings

Reports keep coming into filmjourney regarding the Calgary International Film Festival. Be sure to check out the entire thread here.

First up is John Torvi. –Doug

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Day 3 – Sunday, September 28, 2003

by John Torvi

The first part of the day didn’t go so well today. I woke up finding out over the phone that I had missed some of the animation workshop with Chris Hinton, an Oscar-nominated animator who does films for the National Film Board of Canada. But I quickly got ready and headed down to the Quickdraw Animation Society…

I don’t know where the folks at Variety.com, the online version of Hollywood’s major trade paper, get their information, but I do know they could use some editors. The glorious news that Rialto Pictures will be releasing new theatrical prints of Gillo Pontecorvo‘s searing The Battle of Algiers (1965) in January is somewhat tainted by the fact that their article refers to The Criterion Collection as both the “Classic Collection” and the “Classic Connection.”

Variety.com
Mon., Sep. 29, 2003, 6:16pm PT

Rialto to re-release ’65’s ‘Algiers’

By GABRIELLE MITCHELL-MARELL

Rialto Pictures will re-release “The Battle of Algiers,” Gillo

Most film criticism is historically divided into two eras: before the French New Wave and after the French New Wave. Until the ’60s, serious writing on film was hard to come by, but the passion, encyclopedic movie knowledge, and bountiful imagination of the Cahiers du cinÈma critics and others ushered in the world of film theory, academia, and a worldwide culture of cinephilic scribblers.

When Pauline Kael, an icon of the more popular latter era, died a couple years ago, there was a lot of press devoted to her career. Icons previous to the ’60s, however, tend to receive much …

Day
1 – Friday, September 26, 2003

By John
Torvi

It
is really quite advantageous if the city that you live in has an
international film festival. No airplane ticket. No hotel fees. It’s
really great to be able to easily watch 2-3 movies per day (with a few
more on the weekends), most of which would probably never even make to
art houses. So I took advantage of this opportunity and have been going
to the Calgary International Film Festival for
the past few days.

Many
of the film venues are situated pretty close together
within walking distance. And …

By J. Robert Parks

British director Michael Winterbottom is one of the most eclectic filmmakers I know. He’s done literary adaptations (Jude), political docudramas (Welcome to Sarajevo), wintery Westerns (The Claim), trippy pomo biopics (24-Hour Party People), and futuristic, sci-fi love stories (Code 46, to be released next year). But his bravest and most successful film to date, In This World (2003), is inspired by a country most Americans associate with the “axis of evil.”

As I’ve written many times in this space, the Iranian New Wave is one of …

So I saw Lost in Translation this weekend and, like the critics are saying, I enjoyed its witty charms and mature sensibilities regarding its unusual relationship between a middle-aged actor (Bill Murray) and a photographer’s disillusioned young wife (Scarlett Johansson) after they meet while dejectedly passing through Tokyo. I found Murray’s stoic sarcasm endearing and Johansson’s adorable frumpiness fetching, and Sofia Coppola‘s observant writing and direction was intensified by her exceptional aesthetic bond with Johansson’s every move.

However, throughout the film I had an uneasy feeling that arose every time the characters looked wistfully out of their highrise hotel …