Film Journey – Page 66 – world cinema in Los Angeles and beyond

Control Room

June 28, 2004 Doug Cummings Film review

This weekend, I stopped by my local theatre in the hopes of seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 and both to my dismay and pleasure, every single screening was sold out even though it was showing on dual screens. The “return of the documentary,” indeed.

So I ambled down the road and checked out another film, Jehame Noujaim’s Control Room (2004), a look behind the scenes at the famed Arabic television station, Al-Jazeera. I’ve pretty much avoided all mainstream coverage of the war in Iraq from the get-go and sought alternative news sources from international reports and human rights groups rather than embedded …

LAFF, part 2

June 25, 2004 Doug Cummings Film festival

The last two features I’ve screened at the LAFF are exemplary thrillers, both immersed in existentialist dread, both diverging in tone: CÈdric Kahn’s brooding and suggestive mood piece, Red Lights (Feux rouges, 2004), and Raoul Ruiz’s comedic and flamboyant neo-noir, A Taste of Murder (known at other festivals as A Place Among the Living from the French title, Une place parmi les vivants, 2004.) Both are filmmakers I know little about, although Ruiz’s film is the fourt of his works that I’ve seen, and the more I see, the more I want to see. (Fortunately, the filmmaker …

Los Angeles Film Fest Diary

June 22, 2004 Doug Cummings Film festival

It’s always great to see a film festival establish its groove, and the Los Angeles Film Festival is doing just that in its fourth incarnation since its merger of two film organizations. Evolving from a festival that specialized in independent American fare, it is now more international in scope and offers several high-profile screenings this year, even if much of the program seems directly lifted from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. (But who’s complaining?)

Last weekend, I managed to catch four rewarding films, with more screenings planned later in the week.

South of the Clouds (Zhu Wen, China, 2004)

Novelist …

Haibane Renmei

June 15, 2004 Doug Cummings DVD review

My pal John Torvi up in Calgary keeps me up-to-date with the latest developments in the animation scene, and he has sent in this report concerning Pioneer’s new DVD release of Haibane Renmei, a Japanese anime series that’s getting rave reviews across the board. Here’s John. –Doug

* * * *

By John Torvi

I am fortunate in my volunteer work at the Quickdraw Animation Society to be able to peruse some of the stuff that is coming through our video library before it goes on the shelves for the membership. Found another gem–the Japanese TV series entitled Haibane Renmei…

Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal

June 13, 2004 Doug Cummings Texts

Browsing through a used bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard yesterday, I came across critic/filmmaker/curator Jonas Mekas‘ out-of-print Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-1971, a partial compilation of his writing for the Village Voice during that period. Mekas was born in Lithuania in 1922, but after graduating from college, he was arrested by the Nazis during WWII and forced to work in a labor camp. After the war, he lived as a Displaced Person for four years before the United Nations dumped him in the US–he never officially immigrated.

In New York, Mekas began a love …

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

June 11, 2004 Doug Cummings DVD review

I haven’t seen The Day After Tomorrow, and given its scathing reviews, I don’t intend to any time soon, but seeing Rialto’s new print of the original Godzilla (1954) last night (certainly a much smoother, dramatically cohere film than its American makeover), I found myself pondering end-of-the-earth films in general, and one my own favorite entries in the genre, Val Guest’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), in particular.

Available as a superb DVD from Anchor Bay (with a beautiful widescreen transfer and Guest commentary), the movie is an unusually literate and thematically nuanced genre film. Peter Stenning …