Veronica Cartwright on "The Field"; Musso & Frank turns 100, Silent films' universally accessible power; 'Mrs. Maisel' actresses battle restraints on women; In defense of "The Fanatic."
Over two dozen underrated horror movies for your Halloween marathon planning.
A FFC essay on Paul Schrader's 1997 darkly powerful drama Affliction.
An open letter from Woody Allen; an Edna Krabappel tribute; the possibility of a "Prometheus 2"; why film festivals reject good films; the return of "Black Angel" (the film meant to precede "Empire Strikes Back").
This will be the year that revenue from streaming passes revenue from DVD sales, according to a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter.
How do we feel about this? I ask as a movie-watcher who subscribes to Netflix, Hulu and Fandor, and also rents online from Amazon and Vudu. iTunes gets none of my business because the iTunes Store has been misbehaving on my computer. I average three streaming movies a week and three or four on DVD. I'm not an average consumer, because a lot of my viewing is for work. But often of an evening I'll stream for pleasure. All of my streaming happens through a Roku Player on HDTV.
Marie writes: Ever since he was a boy, photographer John Hallmén has been fascinated by insects. And he's become well-known for photographing the creatures he finds in the Nackareservatet nature reserve not far from his home in Stockholm, Sweden. Hallmén uses various methods to capture his subjects and the results are remarkable. Bugs can be creepy, to be sure, but they can also be astonishingly beautiful...
Blue Damsel Fly [click to enlarge photos]
UPDATED 10/16: Here are brief reviews of all the Chicago Film Festival movies we have seen, in alphabetical order, written by Bill Stamets and Roger Ebert. More will be added as we view them. For a full CIFF schedule, go to www.chicagofilmfestival.com or call (312) 332-FILM.
TORONTO, Ont. -- “The Walker” is another of Paul Schrader’s “man in a room” films, and his best film since “Affliction” (1997). It’s a fascinating character study with as fine a performance as Woody Harrelson has given, and certainly the most unexpected. Schrader defined the films as centering on the image of a man in a room preparing to go out and do something, and then doing it, while remaining focused by his preparation. That would define Schrader’s “American Gigolo” (1980), with Richard Gere in training for his profession as a professional lover of women. And “Light Sleeper” (1992), with Willem Dafoe as a drug dealer who is also a recovering addict.
Q. Last week the Tomatometer at RottenTomatoes.com read 98% favorable for Miyazaki's "Spirited Away," because of a single negative review by someone whose name I can't recall now. Today I see that the green splatter is gone, and the meter is pegged out at a solid 100% "fresh." If there's one film that I've seen recently which deserves a 100% tomato rating, it's this one, so I have no objection to the removal of that negative link. But I am wondering how often RT adjusts its ratings in this way. Do they do it according to some standard, or in response to user complaints? (Joe Lippl, Minneapolis)
TORONTO, Canada - There is a time when a film festival looks just like a convention of hardware dealers, and that time is at 2 in the morning in the hotel hospitality suite when everyone has collapsed exhausted onto the couches and started to contemplate the possibility of dawn. Into the gloom that was enveloping him, the film director Paul Schrader poured a glass of Canadian whiskey. He was scheduled to have breakfast with me at 8:30 a.m., but now he thought it over and said it might be better if we just went ahead and talked now, because he doubted that he would make any sense in the morning.
NEW YORK -- So there I was, sitting in Woody Allen’s living room, up in the penthouse overlooking Central Park, waiting for Woody and meditating on the dimensions of his talent. There must not be, I decided, many people who can simultaneously star in their own comic strip and make a movie the critics call Bergmanesque… and then of course there’s Woody the jazz clarinetist, and Woody’s Academy Award for “Annie Hall,” and the first prize in the O. Henry Awards that one of his New Yorker short stories won this year. How can a guy this successful still be seeing an analyst? How could I get the name of his shrink?
Great Movies
