Category: Critic's Notebook

Critic's Notebook

'Village' Offers New Look at New Orleans

S. Leo Chiang, born and raised in Taiwan, knew what it was like to be an outsider in the United States, so the seemingly inexplicable rebellion of previously docile Vietnamese residents in New Orleans was an ideal subject for this documentary director.

It took him more than a year to track down bits and pieces of film from unclassified archives at the University of New Orleans that could reconstruct the untold story of what happened to the 5,000 residents of the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam after the 2005 Katrina hurricane wreaked havoc on that Louisiana city.

topics: activism, asian american cinema, bay area, directors, diy, documentary

Critic's Notebook

Gazing West with 'Sweetgrass'

There will probably never be a theatrical release for a film by James Benning, the Southern California-based filmmaker who recently made one of his frequent Bay Area visits for a four-night series of works presented by San Francisco Cinematheque. Benning’s landscape-focused movies often consist of very long stationary shots (sometimes as long as ten minutes each) sans commentary, interviews, explanatory text, or any sound save live found ones. They’re extraordinary, if a little too “pure” for the average moviegoer—even most arthouse habitues.

Amazingly, however, the marital filmmaking team of Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor have managed not only to score theatrical distribution but also make something of a splash with Sweetgrass, a new documentary opening this weekend that is almost as hypnotically austere in style and content as the films in Benning’s oeuvre.

topics: bay area, directors, documentary, environmental films, women filmmakers, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest at 20

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Cinequest was the scrappy upstart amongst Bay Area film festivals? Apparently not: This year finds San Jose’s annual cinematic blowout entering its third decade.

February may be the shortest month, but Cinequest is going longer nonetheless, at least for this 20th anniversary annum: The 2010 fest runs nearly two weeks, Feb. 23 through March 7, once again at venues all within three blocks’ walking distance in downtown SJ. (For those with a car-free carbon imprint, they’re about 20 minutes’ walk from CalTrain.)

As ever, the primary Cinequest mix is equal-parts heavy on both world premieres (mostly U.S. indies) and recent festival faves from around the world.

topics: activism, actors, audiences, bay area, genre films, how-to, independent film, technology, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

As Oscars Approach, Winners are Still Up in the Air

Last month’s Oscar nominations announcement was anticipated with unusual interest—largely because of exiting AMPAS Sid Ganis’ surprise announcement some months ago that the Academy would henceforth revert to ten Best Picture nominees, a practice abandoned in 1943. Back then, mainstream Hollywood product was pretty much all there was, and coming up with ten admirable titles wasn’t too hard a stretch. Today, with so much major Hollywood product devoted to sequels, remakes and popcorn franchises, any viable Top Ten would have to draw on indie, animated, possibly foreign and documentary features.

topics: actors, african american cinema, bay area, critics year end, directors, dramatic films, hollywood, oscars

Critic's Notebook

3D reloaded: Where does 3D go from here?

The release of Avatar this month put a fitting capstone on a frenzied campaign by studios to reintroduce stereoscopic 3D to audiences in 2009. No less than 10 feature-length films were released in 3D versions this year, almost all of those animated films. In terms of animation, what began as a minor novelty has become the norm. There’s no doubt that some of the work is satisfying. (As Dennis Harvey noted recently here in SF360.org, animated features were some of the best releases of the past year.) And Monsters vs. Aliens, Up and even Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, were better in 3D than 2D. (Of course, I mean stereoscopic 3D, since these were all animated in the 3D CGI style, as opposed to 2D hand-drawn….) The technology itself is impressive. This is not, as Jeffrey Katzenberg was so fond of saying during the run-up to the Monsters vs. Aliens release, the red-and-blue-glasses 3D of the 1950s. The technicians have found a way to smoothly present depth and action, and are not intent on simply having hands reach out or explosions engulf viewers purely as spectacle.

topics: activism, animation, avant-garde, bay area, technology, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Graphic transformation: Animation rises, CGI sinks in 2009

Science fiction has often dwelt upon the fear that machines will overtake man—which of course they kind of have, from the Industrial Revolution through the Digital Age, in terms of lessening the need for manual labor or even organic brainpower. But while technology may have taken some jobs, polluted our environment, etc., it hasn’t yet completely stolen humanity’s place in the scheme of things.

Except, one could argue, in the realm of movies. With this year’s summings-up extended to considering our first post-millennial decade, it’s a good moment to consider where mainstream cinema has gone since CGI sank its bloodless talons into the already less-than-exquisite corpse.

topics: animation, anime, bay area, comedy, cult cinema, filmmakers, genre films, hollywood, independent film, internet, red vic movie house, sf international animation festival, world cinema, youth

Critic's Notebook

San Francisco Cinematheque fall program gets underway

A year after Jonathan Marlow took the helm as Executive Director, working in close collaboration with longtime veteran Steve Polta and program director Vanessa O’Neill, the organization is showing fresh signs of life. A smart new website design that corrals a grove of archival materials and useful pointers to kindred screenings is one indicator that the organization is recommitting itself as the public face of “visionary film” in the Bay Area.

P. Adams Sitney, author of the foundational Visionary Film study, himself takes part in the current Cinematheque calendar with a lecture-screening based on his new book, Eyes Upside Down. This time around, the Princeton professor convenes American avant-garde cinema under the sign of Emerson. His appearance confirms Cinematheque’s role in an ongoing conversation—one never far from San Francisco.

topics: bay area, cinematography, cinephiles, critics, cult cinema, curators, exhibition, experimental film

Critic's Notebook

Toronto International Film Festival, from bottom feeders to Topp Twins

There are two ways to approach a film festival: Follow the buzz or try to create the buzz for yourself. Journalists usually opt for the former, critics for the latter, while audiences splinter in a dozen directions. The "big tent" approach of the Toronto International Film Festival has always allowed a generosity of pursuits to co-exist, rewarding the adventurous and satiating the lazy, all without judgment. This year, though, the balance of power lurched out of whack as the scrum of journalists turned all junketish. The corps of handlers trying to call attention to quality small or foreign films complained that all the media wanted to do was watch and write about the big movies that were about to open anyway. What a shame—I saw some of the most powerful, unexpectedly glorious films this year, not a one slated to open wide this autumn at press time.

topics: authors, bay area, cinephiles, critics, directors, distribution, distributors, documentary film, drama, features, festivals, film festivals, women filmmakers, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Lee, Schamus, Woodstock and a back catalogue of genius

Traversing an extraordinary thematic and cultural range in less than two decades, Ang Lee and his writing-producing partner James Schamus have arguably never made a bad movie—possibly excepting Hulk, their sole attempt so far at the megabudget Hollywood blockbuster. (The answer to “Is there anything they can’t do?” may thus be, "Well, that.")

topics: activism, asian american cinema, features, gay lesbian cinema, music, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

"Thirst" proves the vampire genre has not been bled dry

It was neck-and-neck there with zombies for a while, but in the wake of Twilight mania and escalating True Blood, it is safe to say vampires are the It Ghoul of our cultural moment. The zombie thing made sense in terms of general apocalyptic thought trends (2012, global warming, look-who’s-nuking-now, etc.). Still, the commingling of sex, violence and morbidity inherent in vampirism can always wrestle just about any other supernatural myth to the mat, popular appeal-wise.

The question is, with this particular undead feeding frenzy looking like there’s no end in imminent sight, can our creators of film, TV and lit find ways to pump new blood into the genre?

topics: actors, asian cinema, audiences, genre films, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

PFA rescues "Desert of the Tartars" from undeserved obscurity

It’s usually easy enough to pinpoint why a particular movie is remembered, but often hard to explain just why another has been forgotten. Certainly Valerio Zurlini’s 1976 The Desert of the Tartars—making an exceedingly rare appearance this Wednesday as part of the Pacific Film Archive’s “Ecco l’uomo: Celebrating Italian Actors” series—would seem an unlikely candidate for such obscurity as it’s languished in for 30-odd years.

topics: italian cinema, pacific film archive, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Lucrecia Martel makes a case for decadence

Blood red wine is poured into sweating crystal. Ice is added, and the glass is held aloft and rung like a bell, incessantly. Metal folding chairs scrape across the deck of an algae-filled pool as corpulent bodies shuffle for their alcoholic meal, extending the coterie’s drunken haze. From the very first moments of her first feature-length film, La Ciénaga (2001), Lucrecia Martel established herself as one of the most observant, powerful and urgent filmmakers working today. That opening would be memorable coming from any filmmaker. But, in this case, given that it accompanies a debut effort, it is nothing short of astonishing.

topics: argentine cinema, authors, critics, world cinema, yerba buena center for the arts

Critic's Notebook

Frameline33: Icons and unsung heroes

"What do they want from an old dinosaur like me?" quips John Hurt, reprising his career-making role as Quentin Crisp, in response to an invitation to regale a much younger audience about his life. By this point in An Englishman in New York, Richard Laxton’s sequel to The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and this year’s opening night film at Frameline33, Crisp has been branded a black sheep for refusing to retract flip comments made on the then-emerging AIDS crisis and is still adjusting to the slights that come with being perceived as some living relic of the past. To a large degree, the image of Crisp as a stoic holdover from an earlier age of faeries and rough trade who survived on wit and sheer force of will was one of his own making, and it is certainly a reputation that Claxton’s film helps secure.

topics: audiences, avant-garde, bay area, british cinema, documentary, filmmakers, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, queer cinema, sf international lgbt film festival, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Frameline33: Youth in revolt

Traps set by lovers playing hunting games in the forest. Tween caterpillars getting ready to bolt the cocoon. Young communards turning their backs on outdated moral strictures. Ghosts of high school obsessions past. And multiple packs of teenagers on the road and on the run. In this year’s Frameline Fest, as so often in life, it’s all about the one(s) that got away.

topics: bay area, castro theatre, critics, cult cinema, diy, drama, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, sf international lgbt film festival, world cinema, youth

Critic's Notebook

Lee Isaac Chung on "Munyurangabo" and the language of film

Early Hungarian film theoretician Béla Bálazs, like many others witnessing the transition from silent films to "talkies," saw cinema as a wordless language, or a visual one. Bálazs was disturbed by the coming of sound and speech, viewing it as a second Tower of Babel that would destroy the universality of cinema. Yet, 85 years later, despite newspaper headlines that would make you believe we are all being ripped apart, cinema— through gestures, emotions, and empathy—remains a universal language.

One can’t help but think about the concept of cinematic language, as well as spoken language, when talking with filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung. Prior to making Munyurangabo —which is set in present-day rural Rwanda, and the first film in the Kinyarwandan language—Chung spent 3 months in China without a translator making a film. He also has created shorts in different languages, and now has his sights on Germany for a future project. The transparency of divisions through spoken language is resonant in his work.

[Editor’s note: Munyurangabo plays the SFFS Screen at the Sundance Kabuki through June 18.]

topics: african cinema, directors, sffs screen at the sundance kabuki, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Marco Ferreri's anarchic filmmaking

Marco Ferreri was the wild man of Italian cinema, a figure just sporadically appreciated during his career, and one who left many films in need of rediscovery (or simply discovery) since his death in 1997. A handful found their way to international release, some stirring considerable controversy. Yet others that sound just as arresting in description were little-seen then, and seem impossible to find now.

One of the latter, until recently, was his 1969 Dillinger Is Dead. Unreleased in the U.S. originally, it’s finally getting exposure here four decades later via DVD issue and some big-screen dates, including four showings this weekend at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

topics: bay area, critics, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Kubrick and Altman's fear, desire, delinquency--all on film

Legal-rights issues, lost or deteriorated negatives, and sheer disinterest can be reasons for movies becoming unavailable, despite all proliferation of DVD, Internet, and pirated-copy exposure inside and outside the realm of strict legality. (The studios might sue your butt off for downloading Wolverine, but odds are they won’t notice, or care, if somehow you got hold of a tenth-generation dupe of a forgotten B-grade feature from 1955 with no perceived remaining commercial value.) But it’s unusual these days for a film numerous people really do want to see to remain isolated from view.

Ergo the Film on Film Foundation’s program at the Roxie this Sunday is many a film buff’s dream come true, as it presents 35mm prints of extremely rare first features by two late, great American directors: No less than Stanley Kubrick and Robert Altman. Both were micro-budgeted 1950s independent productions, and for differing reasons both have been exceedingly hard to find in any but the poor-quality bootleg form for decades.

topics: actors, directors, film, roxie

Critic's Notebook

SFIFF52: Wry on life--spotlight on "The Lightness of Being"

The eight films in the San Francisco International Film Festival “Lightness of Being” spotlight aren’t necessarily “light” in the sense of being pure comedy, though humor is definitely a part of their appeal. Instead, this octet of features stretching from Broadway to rural Portugal, from back-room politics to everyday obstacles in Palestine, offers armchair travel of a soulful sort: glimpses—usually sympathetic, sometimes sardonic but always entertaining—at ways of life that at base aren’t so different from our own. Yet, of course, it’s the differences that make them fascinating.

topics: san francisco international film festival, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Box set "Treasures" unearths buried avant-garde

The latest wonderfully eclectic and stunningly vital DVD release from the San Francisco-based nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation, Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986, is not, strictly speaking, intended to be a greatest-hits collection or even a comprehensive introduction to experimental film for the novice. (Although one could imagine the more irreverent artists represented in the two-disc set cheerfully agreeing to inclusion in a black-and-yellow-sheathed "Dummies Guide to Experimental Film.") This splendid package of 26 films, drawn from the avant-garde capitals of New York and San Francisco, is primarily designed to support and tout the NFPF’s mission of helping preserve endangered works of our collective film history. Of course, curator Jeff Lambert didn’t pick films at random, but (with the assistance of experts in the field such as former S.F. Cinematheque executive director Steve Anker) compiled a cross-section of approaches, styles and tones. In reality, what’s immortalized in Treasures IV—what repeatedly smacks the viewer in the face—is the artists’ exuberance for life paired with the excitement of exposing celluloid to light.

topics: avant-garde, bay area, directors, distributors, documentary, dvd, exhibitions, experimental film, sf cinematheque, yerba buena center for the arts

Critic's Notebook

Connecting here and there at the 27th SFIAAFF

The 27th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival was atwitter with talk of interactivity. Center for Asian American Media Executive Director Stephen Gong was shooting the opening night crowd at the Castro with his Flip video camera, encouraging festival-goers to participate in the Best Fest digital photo and video competitions, before he even started in on his welcoming remarks. It was funny to routinely hear plugs throughout the festival for participating in up-to-the-minute virtual attendance in the same breath that audience members were reminded to not text during the screening. To some extent all the Web 2.0 hype seemed to point to the interesting crossroads SFIAFF finds itself at.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, bay area, center for asian american media, sf international asian american film festival, world cinema

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest, transforming

Think you felt relieved when Obama won? Imagine the feelings at Cinequest—San Jose’s annual film festival has championed “maverick” cinema and makers for years, only to have their signature term hijacked by a Republican candidate who couldn’t have been more representative of the status quo. (I doubt McCain has ever seen an independent film—though I’m sure Sarah Palin is a secret sucker for the works of Chantal Akerman and Bruce LaBruce.) That damage has been done, although at least now nobody else will be touching the word with a ten-foot-pole for some time.

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that Cinequest 2009 is in the mood to “Transform: Mind, Body, Soul,” as their slogan puts it. Aren’t we all?

Not much has really transformed at Cinequest this year, however, and that’s not a bad thing. What you’ll get through March 8 at three downtown SJ venues within three blocks of each other is the same mix of tributes, seminars, parties and, of course, a whole lot of movies—including no fewer than 18 world premiere features.

topics: actors, bay area, directors, independent film

Critic's Notebook

The Year in Film 2008: Oscar odds

The critic’s groups have weighed in now. The drumbeat of awards speculation has been gradually thumping for months already—yet the Oscars remain months away. Hey, what else have we got to think about? It’s not like there are worries re: the economy, environment, or international unrest. But seriously, handicapping the prize doings for this year might turn out to be as interesting as 2008s big-name movies themselves.

Hollywood put out precious few kudos-baiting items until the annum’s last inning. Several of those hopefuls— Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Benjamin Button, The Reader, Valkyrie—have gotten more muted-to-mixed reviews than the studios were likely expecting. (I’m actually a fan of the first four, but not everyone is.) The year’s bulk of excellence may lie amidst indie, foreign and documentary features. But don’t expect the Academy to suddenly grow too adventurous in those directions, a few acting nominations and Slumdog Millionaire aside.

topics: awards, bay area, critics, critics year end polls, genre films, hollywood, independent film

Critic's Notebook

The Year in Film: What did women want?

Two thousand eight was the year Hollywood wanted to woo women badly. Two of the year’s biggest blockbusters, Sex and the City: The Movie and Mamma Mia!, were both heavily marketed towards female demographics whom the studio execs hoped would identify with the strong female characters at each film’s center. That both films were also based on highly popular and lucrative pop cultural franchises probably didn’t hurt either. In a strange moment of synchronicity, there was also Diane English’s long-belabored remake of George Cukor’s 1939 classic ensemble comedy, The Women.

So what, if any, spurious conclusions can be drawn from these three faces of Eve? To some extent, all three films are examples of what I call "aspirational cinema."

topics: actors, critics, directors, genre films, hollywood, women filmmakers

Critic's Notebook

Season's gleanings, a holiday preview

‘Tis the season to be jolly—unless you’re looking for quality year-end movies, in which case you’d best prepare for some sobering dramas. That’s the general verdict on a slate that, more than ever this annum, has seen the major studios’ weightier, more risk-taking ventures crammed into the last weeks of the calendar.

Already out as of last week are a trio of heavyweights adapted from other media. Director-scenarist John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of his Pulitzer-winning play Doubt casts Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman as antagonists at odds over allegations of sexual abuse at a New York Catholic church and school in the early 1960s.

topics: actors, bay area, comedy, cult cinema, directors, dramatic films, genre films, hollywood

Critic's Notebook

The 12th Arab Film Festival

Attendance at the San Francisco–based Arab Film Festival has grown steadily over the years. Currently celebrating its 12th season, the country’s first and now largest independent exhibitor of Arab cinema has gotten to be one of the bigger small fests the Bay Area spawns year-round with such cheerful abandon. Certainly AFF’s impressive growth has something to do with the general and increasing quality of the films it manages to procure from across the Arab world and its global diaspora—whether from formidable fonts of production like Egypt, expanding ones like Morocco and Algeria, or newer and heretofore untapped springs like Jordan (from whence two very different but equally acclaimed full-length films hail this year: the polished, poignant family feature Captain Abu Raed and the insightful and quietly potent doc Recycle).

topics: arab cinema, awards, bay area, directors, documentary, film festivals, filmmakers, sundance

Critic's Notebook

Dead Channels comes alive

Fall is here in earnest, and all good moviegoers know it is time at last for the studios to unleash its least brain-numbing efforts of the year with Oscar in mind. Finally, we can enjoy serious cinematic art based on reputable literary sources, directed by Clint Eastwood, and/or featuring Catherine Deneuve.

But for a moment yet…screw that noise!

Those more inclined toward healthy doses of sleaze, gore and retro-shlock can rejoice that it’s also time for the second annual edition of Dead Channels. It’s dedicated to bringing "entertaining and intelligent science-fiction, fantasy, horror, action, exploitation and a few weird unclassifiable cinematic gems” to Bay Area audiences, this year encompassing one evening at Oakland’s Parkway in addition to a week at SF’s Roxie Cinema.

topics: directors, festivals, genre films, horror

Critic's Notebook

Frameline's new lesson plan

Marriage changes everything. At least, this is what the disgruntled often say in movies and sitcoms regarding the ball-and-chain effect. Whether this ominous notion entered the heads of the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival programmers back in the planning stages of early 2008, same-sex marriage’s recent change of status in California has certainly provoked far-ranging discussions about queer folks’ own change of status in the world at large, a transformation in which the right to wed has, for better and for worse, taken center stage. As was only fitting, there was ample opportunity for filmgoers flipping through the Frameline 32 catalog to seek out glimpses of where the LGBT community is at today as well as how it got there.

topics: documentary, film festivals, frameline, gay lesbian cinema

Critic's Notebook

Frameline32: Hot and handled

Opening weekend at the SF International LGBT Film Festival was hot—particularly in that, if you didn’t notice, we had a heatwave goin’ on. Frameline’s current three venues for the annual event are all old movie palaces (OK, I’m not sure how old the Roxie is, but it sure ain’t palacial), none air-conditioned.

Of course it was hot in a good way, too, from the audience members (memo to self: Stop playing hooky from gym immediately) to what was onscreen. Starting with opening night’s selection—what could be hotter than repressed Victorians perspiring lust through their corsets?

topics: directors, documentary, film festivals, frameline, gay lesbian cinema, independent film, queer cinema

Critic's Notebook

Hole Head, week one

It may not get the biggest audiences or hype amongst umpteen local film festivals, but Another Hole in the Head surely must have the most dedicated viewership of them all. To make a crass generalization: Either you’re a horror/fantasy fan, or you’re not. And if you are, you can watch a lot of the stuff—even the more low-budget, formulaic or simply not-so-good stuff—back-to-back. Many Hole Head patrons would probably just live at the Roxie for two weeks if there was room for sleeping bags. They know this will probably be their first/last chance to see most of the programming on anything but a TV or computer screen.

Going with that flow to an extent, SF360 sampled a healthy share of the festival’s first half in order to give you a sort of dear-diary, blow-by-blow overview. (Mostly omitted here are the movies already discussed in our Hole Head preview.

topics: horror

Critic's Notebook

Mike Leigh directs a topsy-turvy world

If any one thing unites the 22 winners so far of the SF Film Society’s Founder’s Directing Award, it’s that they’re all unique cinematic voices whose signature viewpoints and styles could never be mistaken for another’s. Akira Kurosawa (for whom the award was originally named), Michael Powell, Robert Bresson, Jiri Menzel, Francesco Rosi, Im Kwon-Taek, Arturo Ripstein, Abbas Kiarostami, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, Spike Lee—these are the kinds of talents that term "auteur" fits like a glove, as their directorial personalities are manifest in every frame, in every film. (The list’s only partial exceptions are, curiously, a few other Americans including Eastwood, Penn, Mankiewicz and Donen—superb craftsmen who’ve often subsumed a personal touch in service to the subject at hand.)

Over four decades as a writer-director whose film, TV and stage work have created a distinctive ongoing insider’s portrait of working-to-middle class English life, Mike Leigh now seems a natural 23rd addition to that lofty roll call. His each new movie or play is a cultural event—OK, not a pop-culture event, but one exported to arthouses and theatres around the world. His initial rise during the late 1980s must have galled Thatcherites who’d have preferred British cinema to be represented by Merchant-Ivory-style sumptuous nostalgia—not Leigh’s grotty, funny, barbed extensions of the "Angry Young Man" anti-nostalgic tradition.

topics: british cinema, critics, directors, san francisco international film festival

Critic's Notebook

I [heart] Jason Lee

Dear Higher Being Should You Exist:

When I prayed for the American public to wake up and smell "reality," I didn’t mean American Idol, Survivor, America’s Most Wanted, The Biggest Loser, Breaking Bonaduce and Temptation Island. To list just a few highlights in the TV genre to date.

Seriously, who could’ve imagined a decade ago we’d reach a point where the sitcom was a species endangered by even dumber-and-dumberer wastings of viewer braincells than Gilligan’s Island or The Beverly Hillbillies dreamt of?

Still, there remain isolated bright spots on the tube. Even amongst sitcoms. Even on the non-cable major networks.

topics: actors, san francisco international film festival

Critic's Notebook

San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival

Cherry blossoms overflow the sidewalks and strangers suddenly seem willing to make eye contact. Spring in San Francisco, which, for the local film fan, means the start of festival season, a parade of one-time-only screenings running from the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival all the way up to July’s Silent Film Festival weekend. Now in its 26th year, SFIAAFF has grown from being a niche event to a major contender on the international festival circuit—with more than enough voices and crossovers to justify its unwieldy moniker.

topics: asian american cinema, asian cinema, center for asian american media, directors, documentary, dvd, sundance kabuki

Critic's Notebook

Cinequest's surprises

A “discovery” festival from Day One—meaning they premiere a lot of films, including many other fests might ignore or pass over—San Jose’s Cinequest actually adopted “Discover” as motto for this, its 16th year.

A five-day wade into the current program’s early going revealed business as usual: Very appreciative, if not often packed, audiences. Excited young filmmakers easy to distinguish from civilian ticketbuyers (who are generally older, wider, and don’t wear nearly so much black). The greeter guy at the Cinema 12 door who wears a different spangly topcoat every day. The hirsute guy who introduces certain films in a manner suggesting thwarted aspirations as standup comic. The highly variable quality of what’s on screen.

As the Hitachi convention at my hotel gave way to the Junior Cheerleader convention, Cinequest also shape-shifted into something much more interesting.

topics: directors, documentary, dvd, film festivals, independent film

Critic's Notebook

SF Indiefest, from day one

Everything seems to be business as usual for a typical early evening in the bowels of the Mission District.

topics: bay area, film festivals