Apologies to you – and to Stephen – for not getting to this earlier today. But Tuesday night I went to the Tex Avery award presentation, which honors achievement in animation. As we’ve noted, Henry Selick was this year’s winner. Selick had a great conversation with Gary Cogill, which was broken up by three clip [...]
Might I recommend: Paris 36 – A theater manager tries to keep the lights up on his stage during a tumultuous period in the City of Lights. Some knockout singing from lovely newcomer Nora Arnezeder and heartfelt conviction from the manager (Gerard Jugnot) make this one a must for Francophiles. 4 p.m., NorthPark The Two [...]
AFI BITS: As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I’m not the only person in this town covering AFI Dallas. And with more than 170 features and shorts, I can’t get to every one of them. So I thought I would pass along some of the good work being done on films I haven’t [...]
The opening image of Monday night’s centerpiece film, The Burning Plain, shows am Airstream-like trailer engulfed in flames in the middle of an open field. As the story unfolds, we learn who’s in that trailer, why they are there and how that fire got started. But what was it about a fire, as opposed to [...]
Desdemona: A Love Story may well be the most gorgeous looking film at the AFI Film Festival. Good or bad, consciously or not, it’s one of those judgments viewers make about an independent film: Does this thing look as good as a Hollywood studio product? Thanks to cinematographer and editor Philip Roy, Desdemona doesn’t look like a Hollywood film. It looks like a beautifully crafted Hollywood film.
Yes, a beautifully crafted Hollywood film whose slowness and obviousness are likely to make a viewer pinch himself on occasion to make sure he hasn’t fallen into a coma.
Curious about what to see today at AFI Dallas? I assume you will all be going to the Art&Seek-sponsored screening of Say My Name (5:30, NorthPark). But you might also consider: The Garden – A community garden and the City of Los Angeles’ attempt to shut it down are at the center of this Oscar-nominated [...]
Running concurrent with AFI this weekend is a symposium on concept art and design. It’s called Reverie, and it’s sponsored by ConceptArt.org and Massive Black. It makes sense to hold a training event for folks who want to design characters in movies or work in animation, comics or video games, during a film festival. And [...]
If I had any question as to whether or not I was in the right theater to see the energy doc Houston We Have a Problem, that question was answered when a guy sat down two rows in front of me wearing a 10 gallon hat. Not a modern Stetson, mind you, but a Old [...]
The title of one of the panels Saturday afternoon at the Nasher Sculpture Center was “Documentary or VLog: What’s a Documentary Really?” And that proved to be the subject of the panel. For about five minutes. The rest of the time, though, was an education for anyone who has ever thought about making a doc [...]
At 3 o’clock on Friday afternoon, Terry Walstrom and his 18-year-old son, Nicholas, were settling into a movie at AFI Dallas. The fact that a father and son would be catching a movie together wasn’t unusual, but the movie they had picked was. The 1944 Billy Wilder classic Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray, Edward G. [...]
