March 3, 2004
Two steps forward...
How much of the first couple of months of 2004 was spent arouwnd here slicing and dicing, collating and calculating the previous year in movies? I don't even want to know. You'll find this entry struggling to shake off the shackles of 2003 toward the end, but let's start out looking full-speed ahead with Michael Atkinson introducing the Village Voice's selective preview of the films set to hit screens between March 12 and May 28: "It's difficult to get hyperactive about the spring in film, generally speaking, but it's a relief to see movies shed their padded-pectoral identities as self-shilling juggernaut events and simply become movies again." Surely there's at least a handful in that bunch to get excited about, yes?
Also in the Voice:
On the occasion of the first, a terrific cover package in the SF Bay Guardian, with B Ruby Rich, full of hope and eloquence, explaining why "the legacy of the first Chinese American actress of extraordinary talent and fame may well be secured at last," and Chuck Stephens on the film that aimed to do just that back in 1929: "The wrong the film was most eager to right was the American film industry's underutilization of actor Anna May Wong, whose star turn in Piccadilly helped secure her fleeting international position as a trend-and-fashion-setting cause célèbre and the intermittently flickering status she's enjoyed, as one of the silent screen's most venomous vamps, ever since." And Johnny Ray Huston previews Im Sang-Soo's A Good Lawyer's Wife and Gina Kim's Invisible Light.
As for the festival that follows, Milos Forman is to be the recipient of the Film Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing. He'll chat onstage about Hair and the fest will also be screening his 1971 film Taking Off, and of course, Fireman's Ball, crest of the Czech New Wave in 1967 and shown the following year at the SFIFF.
Filmmaker has an update on Tom Kalin's recently announced next feature, Savage Grace with Julianne Moore. Do read the bit where Christine Vachon gives the elevator pitch.
For Time Europe, Jumana Farouky looks at the ways the European film industry is trying to reinvent itself so that it has a chance of "taking its place beside Hollywood on cinema screens, instead of just sulking in its shadow." And James Inverne explains what happened on the British film industry's "Black Tuesday."
The Guardian's Xan Brooks listens to Nick Broomfield talk about his father, photographer Maurice Broomfield; and vice versa.
For the New York Times, Carlotta Gall checks in on Marina Golbahari, the star of Osama. See if you don't come up with a few ideas for what a few Academy members might do with the schwag they scooped up Sunday night. Which leads us, of course, to quite possibly (but not necessarily) the last wrap-up of the 2003 wrap-up, the Oscars wrap-up:
- Via Doug Cummings, the national screening schedule for Apollo Cinema's program of Oscar-nominated live action and animated shorts.
- Big, gossipy report from Jake Brooks in the New York Observer.
- The Snarkfest at Chuck's Blogumentary.
- In Slate, Lee Siegel sees the Oscars as an opportunity to reflect on the state of acting in America.
- Margeret Cho watches: "This is really getting long... Charlize Theron is more beautiful as Aileen Wournos. I mean really, she is hot in Monster."
- In the Guardian, Andrew Pulver expands on the following thesis: "Antipodeans have taken over Hollywood."
- Hoo-boy: "Now that Oscars are over for this year, Hollywood insiders are already speculating on possible nominees for the 77th annual Academy Awards that will be handed out in February 2005." Bill Zwecker reports for the Sun-Times.
Posted by dwhudson at March 3, 2004 3:27 PM
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