Movie Magazine International Blog

By Jonathan W. Wind Two broadcast combined report: -------------------------------------------------------------- The 2 week long 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the Americas. This year featuring 177 films from 46 countries in 31 languages it will attract a crowd of 80,000 to the venues in San Francisco. Though a primary objective is wider circulation, that happens somewhat rarely, so the only chance to see some offbeat foreign films is at a good festival, and San Francisco's is considered one of the best. I have been fortunate enough to view many of the films available, here are some capsule review of the movies I have liked the best so far. First, of course, there is Joan Rivers in A Piece of Work When you think of Joan Rivers you don't think maybe she needs money, but there she is, here and just about everywhere; "I'll wear a diaper" she says, but it's more than money. Her agent says "Joan knows if you ...

By Jonathan W. Wind Christmas with Walt Disney Christmas with Walt Disney is the latest effort to humanize an icon, but somehow there is a lack of warmth even in this one hour special feature. Narrated by Diane Disney Miller, Walt's daughter, now in her mid 70's, the movie shows the Disney family over the years on foreign vacations and the Christmases spent at Disneyland, at his studio and at home, for his family and of course the fans. Diane and her adopted sister Sharon are shown enjoying all the perks of the rich and famous, a big house, a 40 foot Xmas tree in the living room and a Xmas gift playhouse complete with running water and electricity, their excitement caught on film. Most exceptional of these perks was their access to film and photo equipment. How many near octogenarians have home movies of themselves splashing in the family pool at age 2, or vacationing in France as toddlers. Walt Disney was married to Lillian, she appears ethereally here and th...

By Jonathan W. Wind Uncertainty begins in an uncertain way. It's July 4th and young lovers Bobbie and Kate are walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Plainly in love they need to make a crucial decision. So they flip a coin at the center of the bridge. Suddenly he takes off toward Manhattan and she sprints off toward Brooklyn. On the Manhattan side he hails a yellow cab, jumps in and seems unsurprised to find Kate, they speed off for dinner in Chinatown. On the Brooklyn side Kate steps into a green sedan driven by no other than Bobbie. So begins this cinema of alternate realities played out on the same day in different boroughs by the same couple. Along with scene-matching color coordinated wardrobes, the words yellow for the cab, and green for the sedan, are prominently displayed on screen as a reminder of how to keep track, because it only gets stranger from there. In Manhattan Bobbie and Kate's plans turn nightmarish as Bobbie's attempt to return a lost ...

(click any image to enlarge) By Jonathan W. Wind Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics is the story of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer,who died in July of this year. Shulman photographed nearly every well known architect's creations, beginning in the early 1930s. Such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Frank Gehry created the modernist architectural movement, centered in Southern California. In the 1950s and 1960s Shulman's iconic images showed the rest of the nation the mystique of Beverly Hills and the “Southern California lifestyle.” Modernism draws on the formula that form follows function meaning that the form of a building or object should be foremost based upon the function or purpose for which it is intended. Interestingly, though this would seem to always makes good sense, often there are aesthetic issues, the form of an object and its intended purpose is not by itself a entire design solution. If only the f...

(click any image to enlarge) By Jonathan W. Wind "Daddy, why don't I have good hair?" So queries Chris Rock's daughter's after school one day, sending Chris upon a quest. "Good Hair" is directed by established Hollywood comedy writer Jeff Stilson , and produced by Chris Rock for HBO Films. Now, Chris Rock is someone I watch with the remote in one hand, just in case I have to mute it right away or switch channels. He's funny in a mealy sort of way. But this time Chris Rock is a gentleman, a court jester with a research degree and an agenda, letting his subjects laugh at themselves and each other without rancor. Without pandering he chats up everyday people asking their opinions, listening intently and relying on the irony in their own words. He cracks a few cultural jokes, but seems saddened by the spectacle of young African American women intent on beating the odds by by achieving the admired "good hair" through any means possible. The ...

(click any image to enlarge) By Jonathan W. Wind Birdwatchers chronicles the land battles of indigenous Brazilians forced to find work on their own lands as seasonal laborers. In the southern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sol, a small band of Guarani Indians, unable and unwilling to subsist on the reserve mapped out for them by wealthy white settlers, camp out in shaky trash bag tents on the roadside fringe of a plantation intent on reclaiming what was once their holy ground. Led by Osvaldo, the tribe's young hero, and the venerable tribe Shaman, their presence on the land creates distrust with the owners mixed with a quiet curiosity, what does the other really want? The tribe itself just stares at the fields, waiting for a miracle. Even this is better than the reserve where poverty and suicide have reduced their numbers and damaged their spirit. But they are hounded even by their own most exalted spirit, Anques, and, as ends most stories of indigenous peoples, they lose the...

By Jonathan W. Wind Five Minutes of Heaven is a movie about revenge and redemption, bravely tackling these subjects with only mixed results, asking if the pull towards retaliation is greater than the pull towards forgiveness. "I'll have my Five Minutes of Heaven" shouts Joe Griffin, a Catholic, as the possible sweet revenge he has waited so long for becomes ever more imminent. Based on a true story, in Belfast in 1975, 11 year old Joe witnesses his older brother's murder and is blamed by his own mother and family for not stopping it somehow. His family is broken and his young life becomes a darkness of incrimination and remorse. The killer, 16 year old Alistair Little is caught and serves 12 years in prison for the murder. In the sectarian conflict of Northern Ireland - it was Protestants against Catholics, Christians fighting Christians. Whose god would win?. It all seemed so Medieval, Americans seemed mostly sorry but uncomprehending; was it worth dying for? I...

By Jonathan W. Wind "What's D&G," asks Bruno, "Why Dolce & Gabanna, Hello?" I have to say I wasn't really expecting to enjoy Bruno, so when we arrived at the movie theater I was already uneasy, I'd seen the trailer - would I be inclined to storm out indignantly, as some people actually did?. My partner and I settled ourselves in, expecting a kind of gay "Borat." "Borat" was Sacha Baron Cohen's first foray into the "reality movie," not a documentary, mind you, more the thinking man's expose, and it was pretty funny. But all I kept hearing about "Bruno" was "it's over the top," and, well, it is, but it's even more than that. From the opening frame, no credits, Bruno plunges in. Bruno is a flamboyant limp-wristed fashion reporterr from Austria, a screamer with no boundaries. There are suggestively graphic scenes so preposterous I pondered my own sanity, but gradually the message ...