All Is Lost (2013)

WHO: Robert Redford stars in this. He's practically the only soul in sight during the entire movie, in fact.

WHAT: Mick LaSalle's generally dismissive review of this "old man and the sea" tale updated for the age of the adventure-seeking (and law-breaking) solo yachtsman has some genuine insight into why Redford is so effective in this role. But as is too often the case, LaSalle's disinterest in the inherent properties of cinema (the language of shots, cuts, and the relationship between sound an image) makes him oblivious to some of the film's merits. For me, it was as thrilling to see just how writer-director J.C. Chandor was going to tell this story of survival despite his self-imposed limitations: an almost complete lack of dialogue, no solid ground on the horizon, no attempts at backstory or getting into Redford's head by means other than his facial expressions and actions. It's among my favorite American films of 2013.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes today through Thursday at the Opera Plaza and the Century 9 in San Francisco, and the Aquarius in Palo Alto. It also screens at the Elmwood in Berkeley at least through Thursday, December 12th.

WHY: Today the New York Film Critics Circle announced its 2013 awards, the first awards of the year I pay more than a minute's attention to. Year-end awards have their limitations as diviners of true quality pictures, but they do serve as effective promotion for films worth seeing in theatres.  The New York Critics this year gave awards to three films not yet arrived in Frisco Bay cinemas (American Hustle, The Wind Rises and Inside Llewyn Davis) and two no longer on local screens (Fruitvale Station and Stories We Tell) but the majority of other awarded films are still viewable in nearby theatres. A 35mm print of Blue Jasmine with the NYFCC Best Actress pick Cate Blanchett is still hanging on at the Opera Plaza. Foreign Film awardee Blue Is The Warmest Color continues at the Clay and other local cinemas. Dallas Buyers Club (which contains Supporting Actor Jared Leto's awarded performance) and 12 Years a Slave (which earned Steve McQueen a Best Director NYFCC award) continue at multiple theatres. But All Is Lost is not only my favorite of the five films I've seen that won awards today, it's also the only one that I'm not sure will still be playing on a San Francisco screen by the end of the week.

HOW: Shot digitally, All is Lost is projected via DCP at all aforementioned venues except for the Opera Plaza, which has a 35mm print.

Le Joli Mai (1963)

WHO: Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme made this documentary.

WHAT: One of the earliest Chris Marker films I've seen, and one of the best, it's also at 165 minutes one of the longest he made, certainly the longest he'd directed up to this point in his career. A documentary record of Paris during May of 1962, it's a beautiful work that is finally getting more attention after a recent restoration and Cannes screening.  Richard Brody has written an excellent contextualizing piece.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily at the Opera Plaza and the Shattuck, through this Thursday.

WHY: The first of Marker's films to get a full theatrical release in this country since his death last summer, Le Joli Mai is now fifty years old and as relevant as ever. With the Pacific Film Archive in the middle of a retrospective of work by Marker's friend Agnès Varda and this Wednesday showing the latest feature by his one-time collaborator Lynne Sachs (in case you missed it Saturday at Other Cinema, screening along with her Marker-assisting project Three Cheers For the Whale), it's a good week to fan interest in the so-called "Left Bank" filmmakers on bay Area screens.

HOW: The latest restoration is available only digitally.

Wadjda (2012)

WHO: Haifaa al-Mansour wrote and directed this

WHAT: The trailer calls it "the first film ever shot in Saudi Arabia", which seemed hard for be to believe. Further research into that national cinema indicates it should be billed as the first feature-length, non-documentary film shot there with an all-Saudi cast.

WHERE/WHEN: Five showtimes daily through (at least) this Thursday at the Opera Plaza.

WHY: There are still some independently-distributed films being released on 35mm prints. currently three out of four films at the Opera Plaza are being shown that way (the odd one out is Jem Cohen's Museum Hours).

HOW: 35mm.

Thérèse (2012)

WHO: Starring Audrey Tautou, this was the last film directed by Claude Miller before his death last year, and it features cinematography by Gérard de Battista.

WHAT: Here's a case in which another critic has written such a thorough review of a film, contextualizing it within French cinema history and insightfully identifying its strengths and limitations, that to do much more than link would seem extraneous. Without further ado, please read Julian Allen, or at least this excerpt:

Miller, aware of the audience’s expectations, opts for a more robust, risky, and modern view of Thérèse’s personality. The implication is that even if you don’t agree with or even like Thérèse, her oppression is symbolically unconscionable. In this respect at least, the film wins its bet. The final sequence, like the novel, shows Bernard battling to understand her still, but she gives us no easy reasons because she does not have them herself—she is left alone, free from the social constraints of her past life, but still in hock to her own impulsive and rebellious nature.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple showtimes daily today through Thursday at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

WHY: Thérèse is the kind of film that once populated Frisco Bay cinema screens en masse but now has become rare enough almost to become a major event: a foreign film with a literary pedigree, a familiar (if not exactly box office gold) star, and a lack of "hip" or "high art" pretensions of any sort. It's the kind of film whose existence on American screens owes a debt of thanks to the film festival circuit, where publicity and word-of-mouth have a better chance to build than if the film simply opened cold for a week-long run. When I attended there weren't so many fellow theatregoers, but it at least posted solid enough numbers its first week at the Opera Plaza to be held over for a second. A third appears unlikely, as a brand new calendar (pdf) is coming onto Landmark's San Francisco screens (essentially the Opera Plaza, as the Clay usually books higher-profile titles and the Embarcadero is expected to remain closed for remodeling until November).

Of the nine titles on this week-by-week calendar, three (Populaire, Museum Hours and Let the Fire Burn) arrive, like Thérèse, after successful showing at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival. A fourth, The Trials of Muhammad Ali, was one of the most widely-appreciated titles at the SF Jewish Film Festival. And a fifth, Zaytoun, (quite possibly the most currently topical of the bunch, as it's a Middle-Eastern war-set drama directed by Eran Riklis, who made the terrific The Syrian Bride) arrives October 18th after two screenings on the final two days of the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival, which runs October 3-13 in cinemas all throughout Marin County.

You may have noted that my sidebar has exploded with links to upcoming film festivals beginning this weekend after a relatively slow late summer. The most established and most widely anticipated of them is the Mill Valley Film Festival, which announced its full program at a press conference this morning (that thankfully didn't include any poorly-presented preview clips- perhaps someone read my comment on that last year?). Now in its 36th year, MVFF has become best-known as the Northern California launch pad for Oscar-seeking Fall and Winter releases hot from their continental debuts in Colorado and Ontario. This year is no exception; if you haven't heard the "buzz" yet on titles like Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is The Warmest Color or Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave let this be your first warning: you'll be hearing about these films a lot unless you hide under a rock in the next few months. Both are slated to play MVFF this year along with other films whose distributors have a budget to try to push them into the various year-end "Best of 2013" conversations. The Marin festival doesn't shy away from playing up its possible role in these conversations; press materials note that four of the last five Best Picture Oscar winners (all but The Hurt Locker) had their Frisco Bay debuts in front MVFF audiences.

But with over a hundred features and shorts in the festival line-up, most of the titles in the program have little or no chance at joining Argo, The Artist, The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire in future almanacs the world over. There's plenty of moviegoing available for fest-goers interested in avoiding "Oscarbaition" (to re-use a term I applied last year), whether they're interested in fiercely independent voices like MVFF regular Rob Nilsson (here with his new Collapse, while his first feature Northern Lights screens at the PFA November 7th) or aesthetically innovative documentarians like Rithy Panh (whose Khmer Rouge miniature piece The Missing Picture should be a festival highlight), or rediscoveries and retrospective titles like Roger Christian's long-lost Star Wars-related short film Black Angel, or Raoul Peck's 2000 biopic Lumumba.

A list of world-renowned elder statesmen directors with new features in this year's MVFF might start with Hayao Miyazaki (who says The Wind Rises will be his final film) and continue with Andrzej Wajda (Walesa, Man of Hope completes a political trilogy begun with Man of Marble in 1975), Jan Troell (who will be on hand for screenings of The Last Sentence), Yoji Yamada (who began his career working under Yasujiro Ozu and now updates that master's most famous masterpiece into Tokyo Family, which I'm told will be one of the few 35mm screenings of the festival), and Costa-Gavras (here with his latest Capital). I could go on, but let me instead turn to a younger generation of well-established filmmakers like Connie Field (her new doc is Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine) and Hirokazu Kore-eda (represented with Like Father, Like Son). And then there are brand-new directors like Françoise Charpiat; her Cheba was shot by veteran French cinematographer Gérard de Battista, who also shot 1995 MVFF hit French Twist, 1997 Chris Marker documentary Level Five, and four Claude Miller features including Thérèse.

All of the above MVFF titles may sound like they have strong pedigrees, but it will take audiences to decide whether they're actually as good as they promise to be. I haven't had a chance to see any of them myself yet. But I did see Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton in a packed Castro Theatre at Frameline, and have been eagerly awaiting a chance to send Frisco Bay friends and readers who missed it this past June to an enthralling, accessible, and un-hagiographic documentary on one of Frisco Bay's most independent spirits among filmmakers. Broughton was born November 7, 2013, so the October 6 & 9 Mill Valley and San Rafael screenings are just in time to get ready for his centennial. Whether you're totally unfamiliar with the poetic, personal films he made in San Francisco, Mill Valley and all over the world, or have memorized every last one of them, you won't want to miss out on this complicated portrait of a fascinatingly complicated man.

HOW: Thérèse screens in 35mm at the Opera Plaza and via DCP at the Rafael.

The Act of Killing (2012)

WHO: Joshua Oppenheimer directed this film, along with Christine Cynn and another, anonymous, co-director.

WHAT: The Act of Killing is not just a movie. It's a starting point for discussion, understanding, and hopefully transformative political change- and not just in the country where it was filmed. It's a very 21st-century documentary, in that it cannot be fully comprehended by an audience unfamiliar with Indonesia's political history. If you don't know this history at all (and perhaps even if you do), you are likely to walk away from a viewing of the film with some serious misapprehensions about it.
But watching is a powerful experience no matter what your level of foreknowledge. Complaints that the film needs more context ignore two things: the fact that in 2013 it's increasingly easy for many if not most viewers to do enough basic research after being moved by a screening that they'll have sufficient ability to understand what they missed, and the fact that a less-informed viewer might be able to better apply the universal themes about the nature of humanity to contexts outside Indonesia, than an informed viewed might.

Part of the paradox is that the film's power to shock us out of complacency comes in part from its strangeness and surprises. Which means it's probably best for a fresh viewer not to do much if any reading about the film before viewing it, especially if they're not well-versed in Indonesian politics. Thus I'm avoiding saying much about the film at all. But if you absolutely must read about the film before watching it, I'll point to Arya Ponto's review as one I really appreciated reading after my own viewing.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes daily through Thursday at the Opera Plaza Cinema, the Shattuck in Berkeley, and the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. It will remain for another week at the Opera Plaza starting Friday, but disappear from the other two venues. It will return to the East Bay September 13-19 at the New Parkway in Oakland.

WHY: Mid-August is the time of year when film festivals are few and far between and mainstream Hollywood films aren't even expected to be very good by their most ardent fans. So it's a perfect time to catch up with new arthouse releases, of which this is probably the most "important" and unusual currently in local cinemas.

HOW: All three venues currently screening this digitally-produced documentary are doing so digitally and in the 122-minute version. I'm hoping the all-digital New Parkway or another local venue will consider showing the 159-minute extended cut (which I believe has not screened at any Bay Area venue).

Computer Chess (2013)

WHO: Andrew Bujalski wrote and directed this.

WHAT: One of the most unusual and pleasurable new movies I've seen in 2013, a puzzling film (if not a "puzzle film") shot with an analog video camera and set at a 8-bit-era chess tournament pitting rudimentary predecessors to Deep Blue against each other in awkward death matches. I love Amy Taubin's take on the film after seeing its premiere at Sundance this past January. An excerpt:

With nods to Stanley Kubrick and George Landow, Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess is bracingly idiosyncratic—and close to perfect. Set in 1980 in a nowheresville hotel hosting an annual artificial-intelligence chess competition (software programs operated by computer nerds compete at chess) the movie is part faux documentary and part hallucinatory coming-of age sexual fantasy.

WHERE/WHEN: Runs at least through Thursday at the Opera Plaza with showtimes at 2:20 and 7:00.

WHY: The Opera Plaza has been Landmark's default house for the most offbeat edge of the chain's programming, since the closure of the Lumiere last fall, and I'm glad that even with the temporary closure of the Embarcadero and its five screens until sometime this Autumn, the venue is keeping a screen dedicated to movies without famous celebrities in them. This week is likely the last for Computer Chess as another highly-anticipated title The Act of Killing is set to open Friday.

Unfortunately, although the Opera Plaza still has the capability to run 35mm prints, most of what they play there is shown on older-model digital projectors. One exception right now is Before Midnight, which despite having been shot on video, is available to screen in 35mm and is currently running that way at the Van Ness venue.

HOW: Digital video screening of an analog-video-shot title.

Frances Ha (2012)

WHO: Greta Gerwig co-wrote and stars in this film directed by Noah Baumbach.

WHAT: I'd heard this was a comedy, and perhaps it is in the grand scheme of things; there's is a lightness to the tone of the film and, at least externally, to the character of Frances, around whom the entire film revolves. But I'm not sure I laughed out loud once, although I appreciated the liberal-art-educated wit exhibited by most of the characters. No, what I felt instead of mirth while watching this was the pang of recognition -- though I'm not much like Frances in many ways, I've certainly been 27 years old and felt the kind of anxiety about becoming "truly" adult that she exhibits. Followed by the heartbreak of her self-sabotaging instincts, and finally the joyful relief of seeing her edge towards growth.

A few words on negative reviews, which are not hard to come by. I'll leave aside Armond White's axe-grinding and skip to Nathan Heller's eloquent expression of disappointment, which reads alternatingly like the voice of a twenty-something finding something fraudulent in this portrayal of his  age group, and like a "middle-aged man" wanting to hammer down all the film's most distinctive traits (unusual pacing, time and story compression) into something more "mature" and palatable. (It turns out Heller is older than Gerwig but younger than Baumbach and than me- but not by much.) And although I of course sensed that the film is evoking a French New Wave spirit, I didn't get as much of a sense that it was being glib or overly specific with references; I didn't think of any of the films Ben Sachs mentions; the only Nouvelle Vague film title that entered my mind while watching was Jacques Rivette's Paris Belongs To Us, and I'm not quite sure why that one felt invoked.

I should note I haven't seen the film that the greatest number of reviews I've found (including perhaps my favorite, Fernando F. Croce's) mention as a directly-quoted referent: Leos Carax's 1986 Mauvais Sang, which is apparently quoted in the pictured-above scene of Frances dashing across Manhattan to the piano-grand rhythm of of David Bowie's "Modern Love". Between this and Holy Motors I'm now desperate to see more of Carax's work, hopefully at a retrospective at a local cinema, some time soon.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes daily at various Frisco Bay theatres including the Embarcadero, the Kabuki, the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, the Shattuck in Berkeley, the UA Emery Bay in Emeryville, and the BlueLight Cinemas 5 in Cupertino, at least through Thursday. On Friday at least one of these engagements (the Embarcadero's, see below) ends, and Francis Ha will move to the Opera Plaza for a couple shows daily.

WHY: I saw Frances Ha at the Embarcadero knowing it would almost certainly be my last film watched there before it shuts down thus Friday. No, this is not another closure like that of the Bridge and Lumiere last fall, but rather a four month renovation to the downtown five-screener, rumored to include an upgrade to stadium-style seating and to be unveiled in early November.

I've never had a great attachment to the Embarcadero Cinema as a structure; it lacks the charm of the single-screen arthouses it helped put out of business after it was opened in 1995. But since then it's been the most convenient and consistent place for anyone living near a BART or MUNI Metro stop or working in the financial district to see a high-profile independent film on a decent-sized screen. I must've seen over a hundred films there myself, starting with John Sayles' Lone Star. Perhaps most memorably I once watched a noontime matinee of Run, Lola, Run on an only-slightly extended, adrenaline-packed lunch hour while temping in a nearby office tower.

The main impact this closure will have is in reducing by half (and compared to this time last year, nearly two-thirds) the number of the Landmark Theatre chain screens showing indie fare in San Francisco. Almost undoubtedly this will mean fewer real "niche" titles will get  even week-long releases in the city proper, as the Opera Plaza (which is expected to convert from 35mm film & Blu-Ray presentation to DCP any week now) will likely have its screens full handling the kinds of films that might have played the Embarcadero this summer and autumn if it were open. Nothing could make this clearer than the fact that the entire slate of films currently at the Opera Plaza, including Mud, Kon-Tiki and Kings of Summer in 35mm prints, will be pulled after this Thursday to make room for most of the titles currently screening the Embarcadero, including Before Midnight (which will be brought in as a 35mm print), The East, A Hijacking, and Frances Ha. 

HOW: Frances Ha was shot digitally and will screen in DCP, I believe, everywhere listed above, except for the BlueLight Cinema 5 and the Opera Plaza, which are not yet equipped for DCP. Staffers I talked to at both venues were incredulous when I told them that Camera 3 in San Jose reportedly (as per the Film on Film Foundation's Bay Area Film Calendar) screened this in a 35mm print last week.

Like Someone In Love (2012)

WHO: Abbas Kiarostami wrote and directed this.

WHAT: I saw this with my friend Ryland last Friday, a kind of make-up date for a screening we'd tried to attend at the Mill Valley Film Festival last fall that was cancelled 5 minutes into the movie when it was discovered the fest's DCP drive lacked an English subtitle file. If I'd seen more than 5 unsubtitled minutes of it in 2012  it'd have been one of my favorites of the year. Now it's in pole position to be my best of 2013. I'd write more about it but I'd rather see it again first, so let me direct you to an excellent (essentially spoiler-free) review by the perceptive Steven Boone.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens three times daily at the Opera Plaza and four times daily at the Shattuck in Berkeley. It will continue for another week starting this Friday at the Opera Plaza, but is being edged off the Shattuck screen after Thursday, to make room for A Fierce Green Fire, Beyond The Hills, etc.

WHY: CAAMFest, Frisco Bay's biggest annual showcase of contemporary independent cinema by filmmakers from Asia and from the Asian Diaspora, is just around the corner and I'll be posting recommendations for films in its program starting this Friday. Like Someone In Love could easily be placed among the selections; like CAAMFest selection Inheritance it's made by an Iranian-born filmmaker working outside Iran. In this case, in Japan with a Japanese cast and crew; CAAMfest has a relatively small number of Japanese films in its program this year, with just one feature (Sion Sono's Land of Hope) and one short (No Longer There) in the festival. Like Someone In Love is a terrific example of a filmmaker working on a low budget in a foreign country, and I suspect anyone interested in the kinds of films CAAM programs would get a lot out of squeezing this into their screening schedule over the next couple weeks, whether in the next couple days or in a free slot after CAAMFest begins.

HOW: Like Someone In Love screens as a digital projection at both theatres.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

WHO: Quvenzhané Wallis was just great in this. her first film role with more on the way.

WHAT: This wasn't among my favorite films of 2012, mostly because I found it stylistically and/or thematically derivative of prior films by David Gordon Green, Spike Jonze and especially Terence Malick, whose influence hangs over the proceedings like a storm cloud over the Bayou. But it contains performances (Wallis's especially) that seem remarkable, and a number of scenes (I'm thinking of the "Girls Girls Girls" scene in particular) that capture a singular poetry worthy of comparison to the films it seems to be emulating.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens three times daily at the Opera Plaza, and twice daily at the Balboa and (in Berkeley) the Elmwood, at least until this Thursday.

WHY: Yes, my hunch was wrong about Amour getting shut out at the Oscars yesterday. I will have to modify my generalized, stereotypical image of Academy members accordingly. In fact, of the nine Best Picture nominees, only one team came out of the evening completely empty-handed: Beasts of the Southern Wild, which went 0 for 4. It had the least number of nominations among the nine (less even than Skyfall, which failed to make the Best Picture slate). During the ceremony, jokes were made from the stage about its status as the most truly "indie" of the nominees (one song lyric said it cost "fifty bucks"; I hope the folks at the San Francisco Film Society have a sense of humor; they awarded a pair of post-production grants and helped ensure editing and visual effects work was done here in San Francisco) and perhaps its nominated participants were simply happy to be there, amidst the entitled Hollywood royalty epitomized by Ben Affleck, whose receipt of a statue as producer of Best Picture-winning Argo didn't seem to do much to change his petulant demeanor, worn presumably because of the massive injustice done to him by the directors' branch that failed to nominate him in that category as well. Never mind the massive injustice his movie does to a great "stranger than fiction" story that deserved a better movie in my opinion. I shudder to think of latecomers entering the theatre to watch this movie after its opening montage has already completed; it's the only moment of the film that provides appropriate political context to a film that teeters dangerously close to jingoistic propaganda otherwise. Anyway, if you can't tell, I wish Beasts of the Southern Wild or any of the other nominees had bested Argo. Now the latter is likely to hang around on local cinema screens a lot longer than the former, which having gone winless I suspect doesn't have much of a theatrical life left in it. Its more modest flaws deserve to be overwhelmed by the big-screen experience.


HOW: In 35mm at the Opera Plaza and the Balboa. Digitally at the Elmwood.

In Another Country (2012)

WHO: Hong Sangsoo's fourteenth film as a director, and his first collaboration with an international movie star. Isabelle Huppert breaks the ice.

WHAT: If you've seen even a couple of Hong Sangsoo's films before, you should know what to expect. Characters drinking, smoking, talking, being unfaithful to their partners (or at least trying to be), all shot in an exquisitely distanced style that reminds us that the director is using his characters as stand-ins for himself and his peers in South Korea's world of artists and intellectuals, putting this milieu under a microscope for film festival and arthouse audiences worldwide to see.

Casting Huppert in this film makes it clear that Hong is keenly interested in the different ways Korean and foreign audiences respond to his films, his characters, and the situations held within. In Another Country is, unlike many of his films, not bifurcated into two interlocking parts. This time (like in Oki's Movie) he employs a trifurcation instead. Huppert plays three different, but not so different, women named Anna, each struggling with intercultural relationships while spending time in a small seaside village called Mohang (found in the South Korean province furthest from Kangwon Province in case you're curious). Seeing a famous French actress interacting with Hongian characters in Hongian scenarios invites the experienced Hong viewer to reflect on the ways his films serve, and perhaps more importantly, do not serve, as cross-cultural artifacts. This is a new twist for the director; it seems he's always able to come up with a knew way to frame the variations on his superficially similar themes.

WHERE/WHEN: Three showtimes daily at the Opera Plaza Cinema, from now until Thursday.

WHY: I believe In Another Country is not only the first of Hong's films to get a week-long release in a Frisco Bay commercial cinema without the support of a non-profit organization (the San Francisco Film Society presented week-long runs of two of his best films, Woman on the Beach and The Day He Arrives), but it's the first time one his films has had a commercial run here extended. It's important to support such events if we want to see a theatre chain like Landmark continue to book marginally-marketable films by important international auteurs.

HOW: Screened via a projected Blu-Ray disc.

Tristana (1970)

   

WHO: Luis Buñuel directing Fernando Rey, Catherine Deneuve and Franco Nero (the latter two pictured above.)

WHAT: Tristana was at one time widely considered one of Buñuel's greatest masterworks, and therefore one of the great films of all time. According to the 1980 edition of Film Facts, it came in at #8 in the results of a 1975 "all-time favorite films" poll held by the Association of French Film Critics, just between Roberto Rossellini's Paisan and Josef Von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress. (#1 was Antonioni's L'Avventura). At some point along the way, Tristana became, at least in the United States, eclipsed in reputation by other Buñuel films, particularly some of the ones made widely available on DVD through Criterion. Whether availability is the chicken or the egg to reputation I can't determine, especially without ever having seen the title in question myself. I'm pretty sure it hasn't screened in a local cinema once in the dozen or so years I've been keeping my eye our for Buñuel showings, and it hasn't been available on home video in this country since the LaserDisc days.

WHERE/WHEN: Three to five shows daily at the Opera Plaza Cinema, in a week-long run starting today.

WHY: Quentin Tarantino fever has revived interest in Sergio Corbucci's 1966 film Django, starring Franco Nero in the title role. It will screen digitally at the Castro January 18th if you missed its recent run at the Elmwood. If Nero's involvement in Tristana helped secure a week-long theatrical engagement of a Buñuel movie in anticipation of its upcoming Blu-Ray DVD release, then Tarantino's new film has to be seen as an ultimate good for movie culture, no matter whether you line up closer to Odie Henderson or Steven Boone or to Spike Lee or Laura Washington when it comes to the merits of the film itself. Nero also appears in Corbucci's The Mercenary, which the Pacific Film Archive brings to town later this month as part of a nakedly-Tarantino-inspired series of Spaghetti Westerns. As for Django Unchained, it's still playing at various Frisco Bay theatres. If you want to see it on 35mm film you might try the 4-Star, though I also suspect it will appear in this form at the Castro in the near-ish future, at least if the final minutes of this interview can be used as a premonition.

HOW: I'm told this will be a digital presentation; presumably sourced from a Blu-Ray.

Betty Nguyen's Two Eyes

Since my own two eyes were not nearly enough to see and evaluate all the repertory/revival film screenings here on Frisco Bay, I'm honored to present local filmgoers' lists of the year's favorites. An index of participants is found here.

The following list comes from independent curator/art director Betty Nguyen, editor-in-chief of First Person Magazine:

1. If I wasn't a total zombie after our Holiday fundraiser at Living ARTS Fund, (I don't get out of bed for anything the next day after I throw a party) I woulda tried my darndest to get to the Roxie Theatre's benefit w. John Waters. That would definitely be top on my list. He's wonderful and so is that theatre.

2. I watched a great screening of a film by artist Lawrence Jordan, animator, with a new soundtrack by a local Bay Area drone band at this new little hole in the wall, called Musical Chairs Gallery. The venue located on Geary and Hyde street downtown was being curated by someone local who programmed a month of performances and screenings and I caught this one. It was small and everyone sat on the floor, but the film was so inspiring and charming.

3. Hauntology at the Berkeley Museum was an event program curated by local SF artist Scott Hewicker. It was on Oct. 29th and began with a procession of ghosts and an eerie single violin that echoed throughout the cavernous concrete space but what really kept me engaged were the several screens he set up with different short films. He cleverly also hung pillow cases up like ghosts on a clothes line and made a slide projection of what resembled the swirls of Edward Munch's "Scream" painting for the backdrop to define the area of play for one of the bands. A lot of the L@TE programs this year at BAM were entertaining bits of music mainly, but Scott's was a great integration of sights that one could immerse into a filmic experience of black and white visuals.

4. Jonathan Grothman is a new Bay Area artist whose films are abstract and simple in form, restrained but poetic. I might categorize them as repertory as they repeated all night long during the Living ARTS Fund's Holiday party in the Excelsior for which he made them. But it his projections washed the space in colorful shapes and patterns that never tired and transformed the 1,700 ft venue into something tactile, alien and larger than life as performers became a part of his designs. It reminded me of the iconic visuals of the Velvet Underground shot for their album cover in dots. Or even the psychedelia of Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore with their oil visuals done live. As Director for the space we didn't want any incandescents in the space, so projection loops proved a powerful medium of setting the tone for mystery, event, and secrecy when you walked in from the lit storefront back into this warp of technicolored sand and kaleidoscopic figures.

5. I've decided to live my life, starting with this New Year beginning right this very night, like the film Pina in honor of my favorite artist of all time Pina Baushch who filled me with laughter, tears, desire and thrills. The film shot in 3D by Wim Wenders is "for Pina Bausch", one of the most extraordinary choreographers of our time who passed away in 2009. Last year, the only film program I saw that paid homage to her was by Joel Shepard, of course, at YBCA. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the screenings but I was elated that he put this together. The new film has just released a trailer and looks spectacular. Wim and Pina worked on the film together, but she was diagnosed with cancer a few days into the shooting, but is now completed. I look forward to its release in 2011. I think it may debut at the Berlinale.

6. Ryan Trecartin kinda slayed it this year. Adored, embraced by art establishment but repping a generation of texters, ravers, and tweakers who talk a mile a minute about life, about getting somewhere and about their consciousness. His art videos are everywhere not just museums but splashed throughout the tabloids of life. The psycho babble of wisdom his characters ramble on is filled with gen NOW savvy. Their makeup, closeups, digital editing quick cuts and filters are what not to do's in the cutting room and made it exactly right for ART that made its own system of rules and broke every one along the way. I love his films and the way they look totally wrong everywhere I've seen them - at the Whitney Biennial to the SFMoMA right now on the 5th floor. Amongst a quiet stark room of minimal colors and formality, lives in this small screen with exposed wire, his mayhem and life with friends shot in nightvision or low res. Its relevancy to our culture is breathing.

7. I almost puked watching Enter the Void for the first hour in the daytime. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't stand it. But it's in my memory.

8. I found out about this Parking Garage show in the Mission and literally bands were playing while cars were pulling in and out. My youthful days of going to guerilla shows was sparked again, and I felt really special to be there. Most of the bands had visuals and the two I remember was one duo, who just had their laptop projecting a video of the moon. It was jarring and effective. Nothing fantastic or out of the ordinary, but like their music, it was simple but a little bit off in a good way. The moonlight kinda danced ever slightly as their music seemed cut off in square waves. And another artist played blaring keyboards while showing a flicker of portraits he made. It was intense like the flicker films genre can be, reminding me of the Vasulkas and artists that Nate Boyce had turned me onto while curating films for the SFAI. Hypnotizing...

9. My friend works at Opera Plaza and it's always great to have a friend who works at a theatre. He invites me from time to time to come watch a film and I saw the Tom Ford film A Single Man. I liked its uncomplicatedness. I liked the story of the neighbors played by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore when she said something like, "You're fucking this up by being gay. We coulda been so right for each other." There was a lot of build up to nowhere in particular. It was a bit rigid, but probably the best part of this filmic experience was when my friend snuck in and handed me a huge box of buttered corn. He's so sweet.

10. Well, the last one, I kinda wanted to really thank the invention of the internet for allowing me to see all kinds of things whenever I let my fingers do the walking. From Gossip Girl episodes to Madmen, most recently Louie on Netflix streaming, Agnes Varda's The Gleaners & I, and my friend suggesting John and Mary and Seraphine. Sometimes not being able to know when something's coming out, etc. even torrenting stuff. I hope I'm not being a bah humbug, but gosh, the movie going experience in bed is a great one! In my Tumblr blog, I've enjoyed countless shared music videos by bands, fashion fans, and sharing is caring when you come to think that millions of people out there are taking the time to upload any of this stuff. It's not ego it's like hey youtube let's put up this rare video, or my cat chasing itself, or gosh, endless hours of that shiba inu puppy cam got me through some shitty days. So, thank you to everyone who posts something. Cuz you never know how it's going to affect someone else - inspiration, wisdom, entertainment, career opportunity. The internet is a good tv and film screen.

Québec Film Week -Adam Hartzell

Hi, Brian here. Just a quick introduction this time, without stopping to recommend another unrelated film or series...well, maybe just one, the Alain Robbe-Grillet series currently at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and recently discussed by Carl Martin and Matt Sussman. 'Tis the season for films spoken in French, with English subtitles here on Frisco Bay. The reliably Canada-attuned Adam Hartzell has more to say on another series just around the corner:

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While we weren’t paying attention, our neighbors to the north were having their own election. And according to the CBC's wonderful culture program Q, hosted by former Moxy Früvous member Jian Ghomeshi, one of the issues concerning this year's election was culture and arts funding. Although actual funding had increased under Stephen Harper’s minority government, as Gemini-winning actress Wendy Crewson said on the September 24th edition of Q, "They have increased funding in bricks and mortar. That is where the money has gone. It has not gone to the artists." Although how much this was an issue of concern for the "Tim Horton’s Crowd" (the Canadian voter equivalent of Joe-Six-Pack and his estranged wife the Soccer Mom), people were out in the streets of Montreal and Québec City even before the election was called to put arts funding on the table.

And it makes sense that these two cities in the province of Québec would rally for arts funding, since Québec's French-language films thrive in Québec whereas English-language films can't seem to pull the same percentages in the English-speaking provinces. So those who talk about how Canadian films mostly don't perform will really need to addend themselves. It’s the Anglophonic films that don't perform well. The Francophonic films are doing just fine, merci beau coup.

We in the States rarely get the opportunity to see examples from the Québec film industry, which is why San Franciscans can be so grateful to the San Francisco Film Society, with the assistance of the Québec Government Office in Los Angeles, for putting together the Québec Film Week from December 10-14th (yes, it's not technically a 'week') at the Opera Plaza Cinemas.

SFFS has programmed an ocular octagon of films from Québec. From the child-like gazes of Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalatte's The Fight (2007) and Léa Pool's Mommy Is at the Hairdresser's (2008) to the dystopian adult skews of Stéphane Lafleur's Continental, a Film Without Guns (2007) and Director Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance (2006). Adding to the mix of fiction films is the documentary (narrated for us Anglophones by Canadian Donald Sutherland) The Last Continent (2007), Jean Lemire's adventurous nine-month stint witnessing the slow death of the dead of winter in Antarctica brought about by global warming. Rounding out the contemporary films is the personal demons-facing Borderline, directed by Lyne Chalabois (2007) and the devious documentation of doubt, Missing Victor Pellerin, directed by Sophie Deraspe (2006).

Thankfully, SFFS has seen to it that a classic is featured as well, director Claude Jutra's 1971 feature Mon Oncle Antoine. The opening sequence involves the slow development of a snowball fight that appears to involve the entire town. It sits in my mind as one of the most smile-inducing, simple pleasure moments in all of cinema. Lensed by a cinematographer featured at the PFA in 2006, Michel Brault, Mon Oncle Antoine is one of many films from the archives of the National Film Board of Canada that demonstrate what great cinema can result from public support of the arts.

As for the films I have yet to see, I am most anticipating Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance. I have seen four of Arcand's films, including the 2003 Academy Award winning The Barbarian Invasions, the "demonstrably operatic" (Peter Harcourt's words in his contribution to The Cinema of Canada) 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire, the less famous treatise on fame that is 2000's Stardom, and my favorite of Arcand's endeavors, Jesus of Montreal from 1989. (Is it just me, or does the downtown side of the Castro Street MUNI underground station remind you of the Montreal Metro scene near the end of Jesus of Montreal?) With a track record like those four films, I anxiously await The Age of Ignorance with studied reverence for a consistently demanding and intellectually fulfilling filmmaker.

In my impatience for San Francisco's Québec film 'week', I might try to distract myself by eating some poutine from Salt House, listening to the Karkwa CD I picked up in Montréal this summer, walking through San Francisco listening to CBC's C’est Le Vie or YouTube-ing Radio Radio video video. (Yes, the latter are not from Québec but Moncton, New Brunswick, but it's still Francophonic even if in their Chiac dialect.) All the more to prepare for what should be a satisfying five days in the intimate venue of Opera Plaza Cinemas.