For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, Sfsff has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The auditorium, primarily a performance space, seats nearly a thousand and features a spacious foyer where passholders could visit and relax between shows (particularly useful on chilly weekends).
Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.
The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.
Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.
The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.
- 4/20/2024
- by Sean Axmaker
- Slant Magazine
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSGuy Maddin’s next film, Rumours, recently wrapped production in Hungary. The ensemble piece is led by Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander, who play world leaders who end up stranded in a forest during the annual G7 summit. Maddin has shared a breathless, spoof press release (below) announcing the film, describing the project as “an elevated dramedy and erotico-political threnody cum sylvan moodbank.”Paul Thomas Anderson is also at work on something new. So far, all we know is that his project is set in the present day and will star Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Regina Hall. Production begins in California later this year.Recommended VIEWINGOne of the most exciting rediscoveries of the 2023 Il Cinema Ritrovato festival was the restoration of David Schickele’s Bushman...
- 1/17/2024
- MUBI
For reasons both related and unrelated to the contents of the movie itself, "Don't Worry Darling" has been dominating headlines in the film world. When the Olivia Wilde-directed psychological thriller arrived in American theaters in late September 2022 following a much-discussed festival bow, it was one of the most hotly-anticipated mainstream releases of the fall season. All that buzz has translated to plentiful financial gains during the film's first week of release, even in the wake of very mixed reviews. Love it or hate it, "Don't Worry Darling" appears to be making quite a splash.
You can, like me, be of the opinion that the work done by Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman is accomplished enough to deserve some presence in the public consciousness. But whether or not the flaws of "Don't Worry Darling" tip the film past the point of enjoyability for you, the movie clearly owes a lot...
You can, like me, be of the opinion that the work done by Wilde and screenwriter Katie Silberman is accomplished enough to deserve some presence in the public consciousness. But whether or not the flaws of "Don't Worry Darling" tip the film past the point of enjoyability for you, the movie clearly owes a lot...
- 9/30/2022
- by Leo Noboru Lima
- Slash Film
'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...
- 6/29/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Stage and screen actor best known for his roles in Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley and Harry Potter
The talented and idiosyncratic character actor Roger Lloyd Pack, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 69, achieved national recognition, and huge popularity, as Colin "Trigger" Ball, the lugubrious Peckham road sweeper in John Sullivan's brilliantly acted comedy series Only Fools and Horses. He appeared alongside David Jason's Del Boy and Nicholas Lyndhurst's "plonker" Rodney from 1981 for 10 years, with many a seasonal "special" for another decade.
This success cemented a career in which, up to that point, he had played important roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Almeida theatre in north London – he was a notably anguished Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the National in 1987, opposite Suzanne Bertish – without recognition any wider than usually appreciative reviews.
His enhanced status led to another...
The talented and idiosyncratic character actor Roger Lloyd Pack, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 69, achieved national recognition, and huge popularity, as Colin "Trigger" Ball, the lugubrious Peckham road sweeper in John Sullivan's brilliantly acted comedy series Only Fools and Horses. He appeared alongside David Jason's Del Boy and Nicholas Lyndhurst's "plonker" Rodney from 1981 for 10 years, with many a seasonal "special" for another decade.
This success cemented a career in which, up to that point, he had played important roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Almeida theatre in north London – he was a notably anguished Rosmer in Ibsen's Rosmersholm at the National in 1987, opposite Suzanne Bertish – without recognition any wider than usually appreciative reviews.
His enhanced status led to another...
- 1/17/2014
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Kevin Brownlow has won a lifetime-achievement Oscar and made superb films. So why isn't he better known?
On 13 November last year Kevin Brownlow received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, alongside Francis Ford Coppola (Jean-Luc Godard didn't turn up). In his letter of nomination, Martin Scorsese declared that "Mr Brownlow is a giant among film historians and preservationists, known and justifiably respected throughout the world for his multiple achievements: as the author of The Parade's Gone By, a definitive history of the silent era, and . . . a biography of David Lean . . . and as the director with Andrew Mollo of two absolutely unique fiction films, Winstanley (1975) and It Happened Here (1964) . . . On a broader level, you might say that Mr Brownlow is film history." This sums up pretty well the extraordinary record of a remarkable Englishman.
But while Brownlow's achievements – as a historian of film, in preserving and restoring silent-era classics, and...
On 13 November last year Kevin Brownlow received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, alongside Francis Ford Coppola (Jean-Luc Godard didn't turn up). In his letter of nomination, Martin Scorsese declared that "Mr Brownlow is a giant among film historians and preservationists, known and justifiably respected throughout the world for his multiple achievements: as the author of The Parade's Gone By, a definitive history of the silent era, and . . . a biography of David Lean . . . and as the director with Andrew Mollo of two absolutely unique fiction films, Winstanley (1975) and It Happened Here (1964) . . . On a broader level, you might say that Mr Brownlow is film history." This sums up pretty well the extraordinary record of a remarkable Englishman.
But while Brownlow's achievements – as a historian of film, in preserving and restoring silent-era classics, and...
- 7/22/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
(Albert Parker, 1926, U, Park Circus)
As Johnny Depp is about to make his fourth appearance as Captain Jack Sparrow in the latest film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it's worth looking back to the authentic, silent, swashbuckling classic, an early two-colour Technicolor production that the athletic Douglas Fairbanks starred in 85 years ago. Fairbanks, who'd created United Artists with Chaplin, Dw Griffith and Mary Pickford, came to the role after appearing as Zorro, D'Artagnan and Robin Hood, and he's a marvellous presence as the only survivor of a brutal pirate attack, bent on avenging his father's death by infiltrating a pirate crew. He performs his own stunts, fences gracefully and rescues the beautiful heroine, Billie Dove. This is a handsomely restored print, using the original score, and has an informative commentary by film historian Rudy Behlmer. The film's American director, Albert Parker, came to Britain and gave up film-making to become a successful agent,...
As Johnny Depp is about to make his fourth appearance as Captain Jack Sparrow in the latest film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it's worth looking back to the authentic, silent, swashbuckling classic, an early two-colour Technicolor production that the athletic Douglas Fairbanks starred in 85 years ago. Fairbanks, who'd created United Artists with Chaplin, Dw Griffith and Mary Pickford, came to the role after appearing as Zorro, D'Artagnan and Robin Hood, and he's a marvellous presence as the only survivor of a brutal pirate attack, bent on avenging his father's death by infiltrating a pirate crew. He performs his own stunts, fences gracefully and rescues the beautiful heroine, Billie Dove. This is a handsomely restored print, using the original score, and has an informative commentary by film historian Rudy Behlmer. The film's American director, Albert Parker, came to Britain and gave up film-making to become a successful agent,...
- 5/14/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
A look at what's new on DVD today:
"Gasland" (2010)
Directed by Josh Fox
Released by New Video Group
"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"
Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg
Released by Mpi Home Video
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" (2010)
Directed by Banksy
Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories
If you haven't caught up on the year's best documentaries in time to fill out your top 10 list, three of them will be hitting DVD shelves this week, beginning with Josh Fox's Sundance award-winning "Gasland," an exploration of the "hydraulic fracturing" going on in own backyard, a type of drilling that has spread to 34 states in the U.S. and has left a host of reservoirs of toxic waste and frequent gas explosions along the way. For something less serious, but equally compelling, there is also Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," which follows the...
"Gasland" (2010)
Directed by Josh Fox
Released by New Video Group
"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work"
Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg
Released by Mpi Home Video
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" (2010)
Directed by Banksy
Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories
If you haven't caught up on the year's best documentaries in time to fill out your top 10 list, three of them will be hitting DVD shelves this week, beginning with Josh Fox's Sundance award-winning "Gasland," an exploration of the "hydraulic fracturing" going on in own backyard, a type of drilling that has spread to 34 states in the U.S. and has left a host of reservoirs of toxic waste and frequent gas explosions along the way. For something less serious, but equally compelling, there is also Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg's "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," which follows the...
- 12/12/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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