Fests and events, 3/5.

With Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa on at the Pacific Film Archive through April 12, Mark Peranson offers a few "initial notes toward understanding why Costa matters" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "[C]alling him a 'Straubian neorealist,' to quote J Hoberman, is misleading; if anything, his films, with their rejection of rational structures, are more neosurrealist. Rather, the progression in Costa's cinema has been to give voice to his subjects and to treat them as worthy of existing as fictional characters (Bones, 1997); then, to delve further into their world, their personalities, and their ways of living (In Vanda's Room, 2000); and most recently, with great success, to combine the two approaches (Colossal Youth, 2006)." More from Ryland Walker Knight at the House Next Door.

30 Years of J Hoberman is a series at BAM running Monday through April 3. To celebrate, the Voice is running Hoberman's 1992 review of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. More Hoberman, more BAM: The Talking Pictures of Manoel de Oliveira, Friday through March 30.

The Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival runs Friday through Sunday.

El Topo screens Saturday as part of SFMOMA's Non-Western Westerns series and, in Pixel Vision, Erik Morse insists that this "only reconfirms that the religiosity of El Topo demands 35MM theatrical presentation."

"Baby Mama, the comedy by first-timer Michael McCullers starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, will open the Tribeca Film Festival," notes the Circuit's Michael Jones.

Matt Prigge rounds up local goings on in the Philadelphia Weekly.

"Rutger Wolfson has been appointed general director of the Rotterdam International Film Festival for the next four years," reports Steve Clarke for Variety.

Eugene Hernandez files an indieWIRE dispatch from the weekend's True/False Film Festival.

Online listening tip. Joel Heller talks with True/False founders Paul Sturtz and David Wilson.

Online viewing tip. Mike Everleth has the trailer for the Boston Underground Film Festival (March 20 through 23).

Posted by dwhudson at March 5, 2008 2:40 PM