Weekend fests and events.

Rob Epstein's 1984 movie is one of the best nonfiction features ever made. It's also one of the greatest movies about this city. Only time will tell whether Stanley Nelson's new documentary, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, is a work of similar importance, but the fact that I'm even mentioning it in the same context as Epstein's movie says something about the reserved precision of its journalistic reasoning and the overwhelming emotional force of its finale.

That's a grabber, and what follows is doubly intriguing. The San Francisco Bay Guardian has invited former SF mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez to do the interview with Nelson. Then, Cheryl Eddy reviews the doc to be featured at the San Francisco International Film Festival (April - May): "Why the tragedy happened may never be explained, but seldom before has the how of Jonestown been so clearly delineated."

Michael Guillen previews In Bed and SFIFF's Latino lineup.

Back in the SFBG: The Outsider, Nicholas Jarecki's doc on James Toback, misses the mark, argues Dennis Harvey; the real reason "reason he's been worth following for three decades or so is precisely because his work is often obnoxious, crackpot, and uneven at best and ouch-bad at worst. Toback's moments of garishly questionable judgment are sometimes world-class ones you can't forget." The Roxie is screening the doc along with a whole series of Toback's films.

Miriam Wolf at SF360: "Aside from setting up a roster of wine events in honor of the festival, Chris Sawyer, co-wine-steward at the Carneros Bistro, has created wine pairings to go with each of the more than 70 films in this year's [Sonoma Valley Film Festival, through tomorrow]."

For the Chicago Reader, Fred Camper previews a series of early Warhol films screening at the Museum of Contemporary Art this weekend.

The lineup for Austin's Best of QT Fest (April 24 through 30) has been, well, lined up. At Cinema Strikes Back, Blake offers his takes on the titles; at Dumb Distraction, Micah offers his.

Philadelphia Film Festival rolls on through April 11 and the Philadelphia City Paper offers its takes on the lineup for the second week. A bit more from James Houston in the Philadelphia Weekly, where someone reviews Wassup Rockers: "Just as I was gearing up to take a critical hatchet to everything [Larry Clark] stands for, he had to go and make a good movie."

At Twitch, Todd unleashes a slew of reviews from the fest: The King, Kinky Boots, Kissed By Winter and It's Only Talk.

Like Saul Symonds, Grady Hendrix is in Hong Kong, capturing the atmo and reviewing - so far - Heavenly Kings, Election 2, Black Night and Imprint.

The Films of Elia Kazan is a series running at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through April 29. "It seems to me that those who are quick to judge Kazan should think twice," argues Kent Jones.

Also in the LA Weekly, Hazel-Dawn Dumpert previews Janet Gaynor: A Centennial Celebration (at the UCLA Film and Television Archive through April 28): "[A] large part of Gaynor's appeal was her capacity to embody a spunky living doll to whom it was safe to ascribe adult passions." And Scott Foundas takes a last look at City of Lights, City of Angels, wrapping on Sunday.

Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times: "The Beverly Hills Film Festival runs through Sunday, offering international films dealing with the effects of war as well as a variety of comedies and dramas."

Steve Vineberg in the Boston Phoenix: "The riveting young Barbara Stanwyck who stars in Night Nurse (1931), Baby Face, and Ladies They Talk About (both 1933) - three potboilers the Brattle Theatre has billed over the next week - is an embodiment of that blessedly uncorseted but sadly brief era just before Hollywood was battened down by the self-censoring Hays (Production) Code in 1934."

Reverse Shot Presents is a weeklong festival at Makor in NYC, April 22 through 30, thrown by the excellent online publication.

Metro's Richard von Busack previews a Ronald Coleman festival at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, a retrospective "bringing around a wealth of rarely shown films" through April, May and on into June.

Cinematical's Tribeca coverage begins:

• Martha Fischer: "While there are powerful individual stories in Encounter Point, the film's major weakness is that it fails to effectively tie those stories together."

• Christopher Campbell: "Paul Davids's documentary The Sci-Fi Boys is the kind of mediocre effort that makes its way onto DVDs as supplement material, although finding an appropriate special edition to include it with would be tough, as its focus isn't limited to any specific film or filmmaker."

• Campbell again: "Follow My Voice gives no history or in depth examination of the actual school's program or why it makes sense for the album to provide it a benefit."

Also, Erik Davis notes the opening of the Gen Arts Film Festival (through April 11), Kim Voynar rounds up Seattle area goings on and Jette Kernion does the same for Austinites.

At Twitch X passes along, from Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org, the lineup for this summer's Far East Film Festival in Udine.

Kevin Maher in the Times of London: "According to the festival's director, Beadie Finzi (the producer of the recent doc Unknown White Male), Britdoc [July 26 through 28] will every year transform Oxford and its environs in the same way that Park City, Utah, is transformed by the high-profile Sundance Film Festival. 'But, more importantly, the festival will show young British film-makers that making feature documentaries for the cinema is now imperative,' Finzi says."

Posted by dwhudson at April 8, 2006 2:03 PM