Author: Doug Cummings

Doing our best to perpetuate the world of Internet polling, the moderators over at Masters of Cinema will be seeking votes for DVD of the Year. We won’t be tallying actual votes for a couple of months, but you may wish to start thinking about which disc you’ll pick. The DVD can be from anywhere in the world but must have been released sometime in 2003, and note: this award is not for the DVD with the most extras, but for the most important DVD release of the year.

While you’re there be sure and take a look at Nick …

Jurgen Fauth and Marcy Dermansky over at About.com‘s Guide to Independent and World Film have just informed us that filmjourney.org has been selected as one of their top 15 Best Movie Blogs. (Additionally, a site that I co-admin, Masters of Cinema, also made the list.) We’d like to think of this as a challenge as much as a confirmation, and hope to continue offering informative and useful content in the days ahead.

Speaking of which, be sure to check out J. Robert’s latest Toronto update, which he termed “Good but Flawed” films.…

J. Robert continues to send in his informative Toronto fest reviews, and here’s his latest batch. Be sure to visit his entire thread for the complete series. -Doug

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Tuesday, September 9, 2003
Day 5 — Hump Day

by J. Robert Parks

By day five, I feel like an old hand. I know exactly where to go, how much time to allow myself, and how to navigate the various lines. People ask me for directions, and I know where to point. Not that I need it much, but I can even navigate the subway system. Mike Hertenstein …

ïThe Film Forum in New York has announced its premiere of Rialto Picture’s new print of Robert Bresson‘s masterpiece, Au hasard Balthazar (1966), for October 17-30, 2003. The film will then travel to other cities in the ensuing months. (And eventually appear on DVD.)

Their description:

A little donkey is suckled by its mother, then baptized
ìBalthazar;î a girl and boy say goodbye at the end of summer:
a vision of paradise. Years pass and the now-teenaged Marie
(Anne Wiazemsky, later Godardís wife and star, and today a
celebrated author) finds herself drifting into more and more
destructive situations,

J. Robert continues to send in his informative Toronto fest reviews, and here’s his latest batch. Be sure to visit his entire thread for the complete series. -Doug

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Monday, September 8, 2003
Day Four — A Day of Rest…and Masterpieces

by J. Robert Parks

Before Toronto I was talking with fellow Chicago critic Patrick McGavin. Now Patrick goes to Cannes every year and either Venice or Toronto most years. Sundance sometimes, Berlin other times. In other words, he’s a festival hound. So I asked him how he dealt with the inevitable fatigue that comes from …

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”

–Paul Theroux

One of my sporadic interests is reading travel books–not the sort of glossy tourism guides that litter the discount racks of large bookstores, but the adventurous, personal nonfiction of established novelists (like Theroux) exploring the world in their own terms. And in the cinema, there is one filmmaker who has made this a genre all his own: Chris Marker. Though he, too, often doesn’t seem to know where he’s going, his powers of visual and aural juxtaposition and literate, poetic commentary are such that I don’t …