24th TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AIMS TO SUPPORT EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI VICTIMS by Alex Deleon   Jūzō Itami  The Tokyo International film festival (TIFF) which came into being in 1985 and is now in its 24th edition forms, is, along with Pusan in neighboring Korea, what might be called the "one-two punch" of leading Asian film festivals. This festival started off slowly and was only held every other year between 1985 and 1991, but fi...

School day friend Danny DeVito to accept the award on behalf of Michael Douglas US-American actor and producer Michael Douglas will receive the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Icon Award for his life’s work. Douglas had already agreed to collect the award in Zurich before he received the news that he had cancer. The award will now be collected on his behalf at the festival’s October 3 Closing Night by his school day friend, companion and fellow actor Danny DeVito. Michael Douglas stands alon...

It was "Michelle Ma Belle" on the Berlin front pages this morning announcing the arrival on day six of still fairly pretty, 49 year old Hollywood star, Michelle Pfeiffer, here to rep her competition film "Chéri" in which she plays an aging coutrtesan (French euphemism for "high class hooker") in hopeless love with a much younger debauché -- French for "degenerate profligate", of masculin gender. The classy period piece set in "Belle Epoche" France (the period from the turn of the century to W...

The feature competition winner for Best Picture was a film called “Delta” by a young director, Kornél Mundruczó, which was also awarded the traditional Gene Moskowitz prize by the foreign press delegation. However, due to my unfortunately vast degree of geographical separation from the festival grounds I didn’t get to see it, and therefore am not in a position to comment critically one way or another. This year’s Best Director Prize went to Elemer Ragalyi, for the film “Nincs Kegye...

The North American premiere of the grand French spectacle 'Moliere" closed out the 2007 edition of the Seattle International Film festival at the vast Cinerama Theater in what might aptly be described as "a blaze of glory". While the opening films have already been forgotten this one will undoubtedly go into wide US release and is a sure contender for many commendations come Oscar time, 2008. Billed as "The French answer to Shakespeare in Love" (which swept all kinds of Oscars not too msany yea...