Report

Bay Area's Pixar rises again at Oscars

Cementing its status as the preeminent animation company of the ‘00s, Pixar won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the third time in seven years. Up director Pete Docter collected his first trophy in six trips, a stunning run that includes original screenplay nominations for Toy Story (1995), Wall-E (2008) and Up. The helium-fueled adventure was further buoyed by Michael Giacchino’s Oscar for original score, the category in which he was nominated two years ago for Ratatouille.

Pixar received five nominations altogether, including Best Picture (snagged by The Hurt Locker, directed by San Carlos native and San Francisco Art Institute alum Kathryn Bigelow), Original Screenplay (awarded to Mark Boal’s for The Hurt Locker over Docter and co-writer Bob Peterson) and Mixing.

topics: activism, animation, awards, bay area, hollywood, independent film, oscars

Take Two

Hurt and Belief in 'The Yellow Handkerchief'

If the usual line about William Hurt is that he looked to become a major star in the 1980s, but didn’t fulfill that promise, in more recent years it’s become clearer, that Hurt probably didn’t want to become that kind of star. He certainly hasn’t run his career like someone desperate to get to the top and stay there—at least not for a couple decades. So, while he’s stayed busy in the interim, it comes as a bit of a surprise to see him take charge of a whole movie, as is the case with new indie The Yellow Handkerchief. Though after two Twilight movies his co-star Kristen Stewart might be much the bigger marquee star, it’s Hurt who dominates here, albeit quietly. Rather like Jeff Bridges in the concurrent sleeper Crazy Heart, this is an opportunity to appreciate a very good actor too often taken for granted, at the top of his form.

topics: actors, hollywood

Q&A

Sid Ganis on Hollywood South and North

From his modest start as a staff writer at 20th Century Fox, Sid Ganis has built an uncommonly long and successful career in Hollywood. The well-liked Brooklyn native gravitated to marketing and publicity, eventually working his way up to the Warner Bros. executive suite in 1977. At George Lucas’s behest, he moved to the Bay Area to spearhead Lucasfilm’s marketing of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983) and the first two Indiana Jones movies. Ganis returned to L.A. to assume the presidency of the Paramount Motion Picture Group, and subsequently joined Columbia’s senior management team before striking out on his own as a producer. His credits include the Adam Sandler flicks Big Daddy and Mr. Deeds, and Akeelah and the Bee with his wife Nancy Hult Ganis, a former journalist and documentary filmmaker. As a sign of his respect in the industry, Ganis served four terms as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science from 2005 through 2009. Ganis divides his time between Southern California and the Bay Area, where he sits on the boards of the San Francisco Film Society and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. We spoke on the phone in mid-December.

topics: bay area, hollywood, san francisco film society, 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

Experience

Darkness lights up the Castro screen with Noir City's return

Every year at the end of January, many in the Bay Area film community tune their radar to the snowy, showy glare of the Sundance Film Festival. For anyone not actually attending, however, there’s a big, contrastingly “dark” consolation prize: The virtually simultaneous Noir City festival. Who’s to say those stay-at-homes aren’t the luckier ones?

Now in its eighth year, Noir City takes over the Castro Theatre for ten days January 22-31. The theme is “Lust and Larceny," and there are a number of nights paying tribute to particular stars and directors.

topics: actors, castro theatre, film festivals, genre films, hollywood, noir

Platform

Michael House's translation of Tati debuts at YBCA

Riding the crest of the Tati tsunami hitting our shores—two retrospectives, one at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the other at Pacific Film Archive this month, along with arthouse screenings of M. Hulot’s Holiday — is an outstanding documentary, The Magnificent Tati. It’s by Michael House, who lived in San Francisco for 12 years before moving to Paris, where he and his wife, Julie, have lived for the past decade. House still considers himself a San Franciscan, however, and returned to San Francisco to complete the final stages of The Magnificent Tati in collaboration with Kim Aubry’s ZAP Zoetrope. (Aubry used to be the Head of Post Production at Zoetrope Studios and is a long-time collaborator with Francis Ford Coppola.) House phoned me from Paris to converse on the upcoming premiere. The Magnificent Tati has its U.S. premiere in San Francisco at YBCA on Sunday, January 24, 2010, 2 p.m., with the director in attendance.

topics: actors, composers, critics, directors, documentary, french cinema, genre films, hollywood, photography, q&a, world cinema

Avoiding Disaster

What's in a name?

Usually, in the afternoons, I go to the Walgreens near my office to pick up a Red Bull, and I’m often amused by the jumble bin of $5 DVDs near the checkout counter. Most of them are ridiculous action movies with washed up B-listers. I remember a couple of years ago, when Snakes on a Plane was out in theaters, I looked into the DVD jumble bin and saw a title called Snakes on a Train. It looked like a ridiculous, opportunistic ripoff. Such an opportunistic rip off, I bought it!

topics: diy, film history, hollywood, legal issues