Fests and events, 8/23.

"These films take you back to the stories and shine new light on them." Owen Richardson revels in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image's "Focus on Robert Altman & Raymond Carver," through September 3, in the Age.

At Facets Features, Dan Mucha notes the highlights of the first half of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, wrapping tomorrow.

For the London Times, Wendy Ide surveys the contenders for awards at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (through August 27). Related: Filmstalker's ongoing coverage and Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian on Sommer '04: "The spirit of Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water is revived in this engrossing and disquieting film from Germany, directed by Stefan Krohmer."

Time Out's Nigel Floyd previews London's FrightFest (August 25 through 28).

On September 8, Exhumed Films and the Philadelphia International House will be presenting Valerie and Her Week of Wonders with a new soundtrack performed live by members of various bands representing the new folk movement. Via Todd at Twitch.

In the Voice:

• J Hoberman: "Film Forum is following The Girl Can't Help It with a week of [Frank] Tashlin features and one program of his animated cartoons. The two forms should be seen together. Tashlin's animations are characterized by cinematic angles and editing, even as his features are implacably anti-natural." As for Girl, though, it's "a veritable Parthenon of vulgarity and a supremely unfunny comedy that is pure eau de Fifty-Six."

• Elliott Stein previews Judy Holliday: The Smart Dumb Blonde, August 25 through 31: "In Cukor's Born Yesterday (1950), a clever reworking of the Pygmalion theme, her priceless work as the malaprop-mouthing mistress of a crooked junk tycoon who discovers that the Rights of Man also apply to women earned her a Best Actress Oscar (she beat out perhaps the toughest competition in history: Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis in All About Eve)."

• Scott Foundas on the Lee Man-hee Retrospective (August 30 and 31), which "proves that, in an age when seemingly no cinematic stone remains unturned, there are still major careers to be reclaimed from obscurity."

Dennis Harvey previews the Friday's Midnites for Maniacs: Digital Sex: 80s Style Triple Feature at the Castro for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Also: Viva Pedro.

SF360 is co-published by indieWIRE and the San Francisco Film Society, which runs the SF International Film Festival, so Susan Gerhard's naturally got details on the Academy's hefty grant to the fest.

Ars Electronica: August 31 through September 5 in Linz, Austria.

At A Nutshell Review, Stefan reports on the first screening of Saint Jack in Singapore since the ban was lifted earlier this year. The Q&A afterwards was moderated by Ben Slater, author of Kinda Hot, a thoroughly engaging making-of story you'll be hearing more about around here a little further into the fall reading season.

Posted by dwhudson at August 23, 2006 4:40 PM