Category: Site news

After being significantly ill for a while, then traveling out of town, I’ve spent the last couple weeks immersed in writing projects, including the liner notes for the upcoming Masters of Cinema Series DVD release of Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence (1971). Now that everything is wrapped up, I hope to have more time for blogging again.

I’ve also written the brief liner notes for a double-CD being released today, Yasujiro Ozu: Hitokomakura, which is now on sale at Seattle-based producer Dale Lloyd’s and/OAR independent label. Though the release was delayed at the printer for a couple of weeks, it’s fitting …

I’m pretty excited about our new sales site for Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series of DVD releases, which can be found here.

Among the many essays, trailers, and stills are my essays for the liner notes of two releases, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). (And don’t forget Acquarello’s essay for Shindo’s The Naked Island.)…

Chalk it up to post-TIFF blues, cinephiliac exhaustion, or falling behind just as the new semester began at my workplace, but apologies to Filmjourney readers for my recent blogging hiatus. Things will be firing back up here shortly with my comments on the couple dozen films I saw at TIFF, the rarer films in the Jacques Rivette series currently gracing the screen at UCLA, as well as some new DVD releases. In November, I’ll follow the Mikio Naruse season at UCLA and the AFI FEST, which will include a few films I missed at TIFF.

My trip to the …

So I have to Fed Ex my 30 picks for the Toronto International Film Festival by 5:00 p.m. today, and I’ve agonized over the possibilities long enough now. In a shocking last minute switcheroo, I decided to regretfully skip Haneke’s CachÈ in order to see four films that won’t get distribution. Part of this burst of conviction was provoked by David Ehrenstein’s sobering overview of independent distributors in today’s LA Weekly, who speak matter-of-factly about the risky art film circuit in the United States and the increasing tendency to release films on DVD alone, if at all.

As Dave …

For several years now, I’ve been good friends with Karen Neudorf, the visionary editor of Beyond magazine, which she laboriously and skillfully publishes out of her home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The magazine is an eclectic collection of art, stories, interviews, and humor that revolve around a different theme each issue, and it’s ads free, so it offers at least twice the content of most magazines.

Today marks the official launch of her new issue, number 14, and I’ve only seen parts so I myself am very much looking forward to receiving it. Included with it will be an article …