Fests and events, 7/19.

First, what's coming: "Salivate and prepare to be completely blown away by the first half of the Sitges 2008 program!" yippies Blake Ethridge at Twitch. October 2 through 12.

"The homegrown but internationally lauded Fantastic Fest - ground zero for all things horror, sci-fi, fantasy, animé, and the catch-all 'cult' - announced [on Thursday] the first wave of its 2008 festival lineup." Kimberly Jones in the Austin Chronicle. September 18 through 25.

Derek Elley has the lineup for the Locarno Film Festival (August 6 through 16) in Variety.

"The Melbourne Film Festival's Romanian collection comes, perhaps, rather late in the Bucharest spring; and it is a pity that it only gives us half the sandwich." Still, it gives Stephanie Bunbury an opportunity to look back over the wave in the Age. The festival runs from July 25 through August 10.

The Chicago Reader's JR Jones previews the Silent Film Society of Chicago's Summer Festival, running Fridays through August 22.

The Philadelphia City Paper and the Philadelphia Weekly present their guides to the second week of the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

"Every year the Brick Theater in Williamsburg manages to come up with a snappy new theme to capture summer headlines amid the festival fray (last year's was the Pretentious Festival)," writes Alexis Clements in the L Magazine. "This year's [Film Festival: A Theater Festival] began a few weeks ago, but because of its success they've extended the run of many pieces until July 27." Kate Lowenstein has a bit more for Time Out New York.

Online listening tip. Erik Davis and James Rocchi preview ComicCon at Cinematical. July 24 through 27 in San Diego.

Now then; what's been:

Capsule reviews galore, from David Bordwell at the Brussels Film Festival, which wrapped a few weeks ago.

At Moving Image Source, Jonathan Rosenbaum looks back to Bologna and Il Cinema Ritrovato: "Throughout the festival, [Lev] Kuleshov and [Josef von] Sternberg proved to be rather strange bedfellows, offering an intriguing dialectic of what it meant to be pioneering mavericks in both Russian and Hollywood cinema of the silent and early sound periods and all the perils this might entail."

Bergman Week "has made me reassess my notions of what defines a film festival," blogs Criterion's Michael Koresky. "Rather than the usual community of film journalists and programmers fighting each other over screenings and proffering instantaneous responses to films once the lights came up, I was surrounded by what seemed like an equal number of local islanders and Bergman devotees who had traveled from far and wide, all of whom were enjoying being outside as much as in the darkened spaces of the theaters. Indeed, Bergman Week is as much about the setting as the artist."

"The 54th edition of the notorious Flaherty Film Seminar (June 21 - 27) kicked off with some steamy words from president Patti Bruck. 'We're not here to discuss film,' she insinuated; 'we're here to argue about film.'" A report from Jason Sanders for Filmmaker. Chi-hui Yang has a full report, too - for SF360.

"George Balanchine and Mikhail Baryshnikov called him one of the greatest dancers in history, while Gershwin and Irving Berlin preferred him over all other vocalists," writes Paula Marantz Cohen in the Times Literary Supplement. "[Fred] Astaire made art which, in the words of his character in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), seemed to be 'fun set to music.' Film scholars, English professors, dance and music historians, performers and plain enthusiasts gathered at Oriel College, Oxford, last month to pay homage to this achievement with semiotic analysis and singalongs."

Twitch's Todd Brown has the New York Asian Film Festival award-winners.

Posted by dwhudson at July 19, 2008 5:15 AM