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

Report

The greatest finds of my generation

The harsh glare of the spotlight that brought Howl mixed reviews from critics on opening night of the Sundance Film Festival had melted into a warm glow by Saturday, when the Bay Area-made nonfiction feature played to an adoring audience at Park City’s Library venue. Programmer David Courier’s slip of the tongue as he celebrated "two of the most venerated documentary filmmakers of our time, Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman" (Oscar winners for Common Threads and The Times of Harvey Milk), by praising how the two were "making their first fourway—I mean FORAY—into dramatic films" offered an appropriately irreverent frame for a film about Allen Ginsberg’s development as a poet and the fate of his epic "Howl" in a 1957 San Francisco courtroom.

[Editor’s note: Continue reading entries on the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, including interviews with Bay Area makers Sam Green and the Butcher Brothers Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, critical takes on films and events of the festival, behind-the-scenes photos, as well as exclusive interviews with Bay Area Sundance staffers in SF360 Blogs.]

topics: activism, actors, authors, awards, bay area, diy, documentary, drama, dramatic films, sundance film festival, sundance kabuki

First-person

Indie Toolkit writers rewind/fast-forward on the year/decade in film

The decade in screenwriting: Looking back over the past several years—to 2006, for example, when four of the American Film Institute’s top 10 films of the year were comedies, as opposed to just one each in 2008 and 2009—a number of prominent 2009 films took on serious topical subjects, from war to racism to financial insolvency. An ever-expanding number of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror vehicles offered near fatal adrenaline rushes and perhaps a needed relief from everyday troubles. But an especially notable trend in the stories told on film in the past year was toward the dark, lonely, inside story.

topics: activism, audiences, authors, bay area, critics, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, drama, dramatic films, dvd, hollywood, how-to, independent film, internet, screenwriting

Experience

After Sept. 11, 2001, a decade found its way

On September 13, 2001, I stood in a small park in downtown Toronto, shocked but confident, and spoke to Canadian television: From now on, movies would not be the same, Hollywood and indie films would change completely. Everything would be different. It had to be, didn’t it?

Well, no, as it turned out.

I was wrong.

[Editor’s note: SF360.org is devoting this and the following week to coverage of the year and decade in film.]

topics: activism, argentine cinema, audiences, authors, bay area, critics, critics year end polls, curators, digital distribution, digital filmmaking, directors, distributors, diy, documentary, drama, dramatic films, dvd, exhibitio, tv, web, women, women filmmakers, world cinema, youth

Experience

Feast your eyes: a holiday film preview

I don’t know about you, but I know what I want for Christmas (and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for that matter): Some decent movies. Hope springs eternal, especially at this time of year. It’s Hollywood custom now to reserve the majority of its prestige titles for an annual late onslaught, the idea being that award-bestowing organizations’ voters naturally gravitate toward whatever is freshest in their memories. In the indie sector, too, there are some goodies timed for holiday gifting.

So, here’s a glancing, far-from-exhaustive preview of what we’ve got to look forward to between now and New Year’s Day.

topics: activism, actors, animation, art film, awards, bay area, castro theatre, children's issues, comedy, critics, critics year end polls, cult cinema, directors, distributors, documentary film, dramatic films, music, musicals, roxie, world cinema

Experience

Welcoming French Cinema Now—and then

The year 2009 marks the golden anniversary of a watershed event in international cinema: The launching of the Nouvelle Vague, that agitating generation of young filmmakers (many former critics) who laid siege to the perceived creative atrophy of the French film industry, in the process having a huge influence on movies everywhere.

You can argue exactly what the first “New Wave” feature was, but in terms of popular impact, the one that first resonated around the world was undeniably François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. That 1959 classic is being revived as part of San Francisco Film Society’s second annual French Cinema Now festival, which runs the week of October 29 through November 4 at the city’s Clay Theatre.

topics: comedy, critics, dramatic films, film festivals, french cinema, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, reviews, world cinema

Experience

SFFS's first annual Cinema by the Bay festival spotlights local talent

A film festival that’s long overdue arrives tonight with San Francisco Film Society’s first annual Cinema by the Bay. A wide-ranging showcase of local filmmaking, as well as a forum for the region’s influence as subject and setting in the work of filmmakers beyond the Bay, it runs through Sunday, October 25, and encompasses the straight-ahead to the avant-garde to the tantalizingly difficult to categorize (I’m thinking Etienne!) in a four-day program of features, shorts, docs and multimedia live performance from established and emerging artists.

topics: actors, audiences, avant-garde, bay area, curators, digital filmmaking, diy, documentary, dramatic films, exhibitions, experimental film, film arts foundation, film festivals, film history, filmmakers, independent film, san francisco film society