The signs have come down, the films are shipped back and the intense rush from screen to party to screen has stopped as the 12th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival has come to a close. But not for the bloggers. This year, 4 bloggers and myself prepared you for movie-watching and the joys of Santa [...]
Here’s a question: Why should you watch an art film? Keep that thought in rotation. Now let’s back up. Everyone has walked out of a movie at least once (more than once if you’re unlucky) and thought: “That gave me nothing.” There’s only so much analysis that one can do in this situation. Questions you [...]
At the risk of making light of isolation and depression, the audience of director Terence Davies’ “A Deep Blue Sea” may need a pocket guide and a second viewing to gain perspective on the film. A portfolio of symbolism to look for, themes to explore and questions to ask along the way could make for [...]
“Monsieur Lazhar,” Canada’s official entry for the 2011 Best Foreign Film Oscar, concerns an Algerian immigrant that finds work in Montreal standing in for an elementary school teacher who recently committed suicide. It sounds straightforward enough, but nothing is as it appears on the surface–and yet the story does not play out like a mystery [...]
“Sleeping Beauty,” which played in a discreet 9:30 slot on Saturday night at the 12th Annual Santa Fe Film Festival, has already gained a reputation for being erotic, insipid, brave, disappointing, groundbreaking, regressive and a host of other contradictions. It’s no wonder. A young woman consents to being drugged for the purpose of complete submission [...]
Snacking, by its very concept in the US, is something we do as a reward. It’s a time of cramming stuff in our mouths in a moment of celebration (okay, or stress). But when we do it in a movie theater, it’s a critical time of matching the consumption with the, well, visual consumption before [...]
When Oscar-winning editor Hughes Winborne spoke with great humor at the Santa Fe Film Festival’s special presentation of “The Final Rewrite,” his idea of a Hollywood movie editor’s Help Wanted ad might have sounded something like this: HELP WANTED: creative, driven, film editor, must have developed sense of humor and willing to work with slightly [...]
I had the pleasure of attending one of the 2011 Santa Fe Film Festival’s panel discussions Friday afternoon at Zane Bennett Gallery. Brent Kliewer, this year’s program director for the festival, hosted the conversation. The audience was made up of hungry local film lovers like me and guest filmmakers, from various parts in and outside [...]
“A Useful Life” by Federico Vieroj is a 67 minute mini-feature that focuses on a major turning point in the life of Jorge, the curator of a small art house cinema in Montevideo, Uruguay. Vieroj’s movie is about the fate of film in a digital world and an adoring ode to the days before the [...]
The packed audience at the Screen today on the last day of the Santa Fe Film Festival were all wondering if Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”, would give us both a great story and a great film. A third of the way into it I wrote in my notebook in [...]
