Film Preview

French filmmaker Claire Denis often structures her films like a good fiction writer; her films are character-driven, dropping the viewer in the middle of an ongoing narrative while leaving out a few details and never resorting to any tidy endings. White Material, Denis’ 10th feature film, returns to Western Africa for the third time, joining […]

Nearly 30 years after his death, pianist Glenn Gould remains an icon. He’s one of the few classical musicians revered by peers who also has awestruck fans without expertise in that area of music. I’m one of those. I’ve collected his recordings, read two biographies, and have listened to few pieces of music — and […]

Harry Nilsson was a musical force in the early 1970s as a singer and songwriter, though he never quite became a star. But as this DVD demonstrates, he did achieve a mythological status and musical immortality. At one time or another I owned the first 10 of his 15 albums and I still have four: […]

The Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi weaves elements of documentary into his narratives, which mainly focus on the Kurdish villagers who live on the harsh terrain at the borders of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Language, culture, livelihood, survival and music have been common threads in Ghobadi’s films since the release of his excellent debut, Time For […]

The Humboldt County Library Based on the Book film series for April is underway with a focus on classic films by director John Ford. Wynston Jones serves as host for a Tuesday, April 12, screening of How Green Was My Valley, winner of the 1941 Best Picture and Best Director Oscar, starring Walter Pidgeon, Roddy […]

The title of Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s sixth feature, Still Walking, is derived from the lyrics of a 1968 Japanese pop song, “Blue Light Yokohama,” by Ayumi Ishida. What appears to be a sentimental connection to the recording by aging matriarch Toshiko (played brilliantly by Kirin Kiki) turns out to be a bitter memory. This […]

The Humboldt County Library Eureka branch “Based on the Book” film series for January foregoes screenplays based on novels for a different sort of “book.” Take it From the Top: Classic Movie Musicals spans almost four decades, from the frothy 1935 Top Hat to the darker Cabaret released in 1972. The series runs in chronological […]

The bare intimacy that Leonard Cohen brings to his songs defines vulnerability. Yet to have that type of vulnerability in the music business has its dangers. The recently unearthed and painstakingly reconstructed documentary, Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire, follows Cohen and his band on a 20-city European tour in the spring of 1972. Directed […]

Any student of silent movies knows The General. Buster Keaton’s highly refined slackstick tale of a runaway Civil War train is a classic of early cinema deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress. Back in the ’20s, moviegoers may have seen it with piano accompaniment or, if they lived in a […]

The WildRivers 101 Film Festival 2010 kicks off this weekend with screenings of indie and documentary films in various venues along the Hwy 101 corridor through Oct. 11 and filmmakers in attendance from here and abroad. Centerpiece for the fest is the indie feature Redland from first-time director Asiel Norton, a rising star who grew […]

Somewhere in the world, this very second, someone is suffering the indignity of not having food to eat. Even now, in 20-freakin’-10, with the benefit of once unimaginable agricultural, technological and political advances, people are still going hungry. In other news, Thomas Malthus’s favorite comedian, Gallagher is coming to the Eureka Theater on Sept. 24 […]