Before delving into some highlights for my upcoming calendar film program, which has everything from singing cannibals and Robby the Robot to sex addicts and Pam Grier (in-person!)… I’d like to back-track a little. In my last post I wrote that the venues where I screen films were akin to a leaky rowboat. While this [...]

After the movie, the lights come on.  I’m sitting in a very comfortable chair stuffed with memory foam.  On the walls are murals by Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975). During the film you can’t see the murals on either side because curtains automatically cover them during the show, so as to not distract viewers [...]

In case you haven’t heard; 2012 will be known as the official date when most celluloid projection will be tossed into a fiery and remote pit.  Film, “reel” film, the stuff made of organic emulsion that unspools through a projector at 24-frames-a-second, is going the way of the dodo bird. Roger Ebert wrote a eulogy [...]

Today marks the last day of my Fall calendar film program. Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get working on the next one. My goal is to find 50 titles that provide repertory programming, community and academic outreach, festival favorites, cult oddities, challenging cinema, quality docs, along with enough arthouse money-makers and [...]

On November 9th at 7pm, in select theaters nation-wide, both TCM and NCM Fathom will screen a digital restoration of West Side Story to celebrate the film’s 50th Anniversary. This incredibly successful and highly acclaimed musical marked the first time Puerto Ricans were the focus of a mainstream cinematic production. This fact is not lost [...]

Last week the manager, cashier, and projectionist at the film venue I program confronted me about the music I’d selected to play before the shows. I like to mix it up with classical, jazz, soul, but also contemporary indie rock – this last category being the one to get me in hot water. My staff [...]

The Vancouver International Film Festival kicked into gear seven days ago and continues on for yet another week. They bill themselves as being “among the five largest film festivals in North America” (this is their 30th anniversary). The other four are not named, probably out of a desire to not offend anyone. Obvious front-runner destinations [...]

Both are English, but the title is a trick question. To be more accurate, it would read: “What should H.G. Wells and Wallace and Gromit have had in common?” Around the mid-1990′s a very interesting project almost saw the light of day: a faithful film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds that [...]

In case you missed it, the Telluride Film Festival had its 38th bash last Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5. It included the latest films by Aki Kaurismäki, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Béla Tarr, David Cronenberg, and many more. But the reason I still love Telluride is not because it delivers the newest works [...]