with a footnote on Woody Allen
by Alex Deleon
for <www.filmfestivals.con>
This year's ninth edition of the Los Angeles Jewish Film festival with the cooperation of the widely read Jewish Journal Weekly was better organized than in previous years and had an unusually strong selection of films. Films are, of course, chosen on the basis of having some connection with Jewishness, director, subject matter, or whatever, and are aimed at a primarily Jewish audience, which can be pretty...
LOS ANGELES JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH TONY CURTIS DOC AND MAMIE VAN DOREN APPEARANCE
by Alex Deleon for http://www.filmfestivals.com/
The seventh edition of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (LAJFF) opened on May 4 at the plush Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills with a feature length documentary on
recently deceased Jewish actor Tony Curtis and a Gala reception at which another legendary youth idol and sex symbol of the fifties, Mamie Van Doren, was the...
The 7th Annual Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (LAJFF) http://www.lajfilmfest.org/ presented by The Jewish Journal, kicks off their excellent line-up of 26 films with an opening night star studded red carpet celebration and premiere of the authorized Documentary Tony Curtis: Driven to Stardom. http://www.7thart.com/films/Tony-Curtis-Driven-to-Stardom . As a boy in the streets of the Bronx, to the silver screen, Bernie Schwartz reinvented himself as a Hollywood pop idol becoming Tony Curtis....
The 7th Annual Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (LAJFF) www.lajfilmfest.org presented by The Jewish Journal, kicks off their excellent line-up of 26 films with an opening night star studded red carpet celebration and premiere of the authorized Documentary Tony Curtis: Driven to Stardom. http://www.7thart.com/films/Tony-Curtis-Driven-to-Stardom . As a boy in the streets of the Bronx, to the silver screen, Bernie Schwartz reinvented himself as a Hollywood...
Jules Verne Festival creators Jean-Christophe Jeauffre and Frederic Dieudonne (http://www.julesverne.org) proudly announce the official tribute to John Wayne, welcoming to the stage the Wayne family, the cast of True Grit, the film that won him his Oscar, and special celebrity guests, among them actress and costar Kim Darby, a.k.a. Mattie Ross in True Grit and harmonica player Tommy Morgan (Rio Bravo, The Cowboys, Dances with Wolves, and more).
Sons Patrick Wayne and Ethan Wayne will accept the...
It is a great pleasure and honour to announce the arrival of the legendary Israeli producer, director and script writer Menahem Golan to this year's Grossmann Fantastic Film and Wine Festival, where he will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award. The festival will take place from July 25 to July 30 in Ljutomer, Slovenia.
Menahem Golan has produced over 200 and directed over 40 films. He is renowned as one of the most important independent film producers of all times and has provided Israeli cin...
Sidney Poitier, an iconic screen presence and a game changer for the way that African Americans were perceived in the turbulent years of the 1950s and 1960s, is being honored this evening by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York with the 2011 Chaplin Award. Poitier will be praised by an eclectic and star-studded list of celebrities including Dan Ackroyd, Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Ruby Dee, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, Norman Jewison, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones, Ben Ki...
With a rare Christmas weekend blizzard extending the holiday in the Northeast corridor of the United States, and before Christmas dinners are completely digested, it is time to clear the palate for a smorgasboard of Jewish-themed films. The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present the 20th annual New York Jewish Film Festival at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater, The Jewish Museum, and The JCC in Manhattan from January 12 to 27. In all, 36 features and sh...
Blake Edwards, the American director whose comedic films were always presented with a dose of acid, passed away in his Los Angeles home yesterday. In a career of highs and lows, Edwards carved a particular niche as a funny man with a dark underside and a dramatist who sometimes injected humor into dark tales of desperation. His 1961 film BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, a huge success despite the smoothing out of the edges of its bohemian party girl Holy Gollightly, is a true classic of American...
While the main focus of the American Film Festival, Eastern Europe's first all-American film showcase, is on contemporary directors, the Festival is also presenting an eye-opening hommage to classic films and filmmakers from both the golden age of Hollywood and the last decade of American indie gems. The result is a full schedule designed to intrigue any casual or ardent admirer of American cinema.
In the section Play It Again, Sam, the Festival is bringing a smorgasboard of film ...
By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles CorrespondentWhat is that thing covering up the real street sign on Hollywood Boulevard? "TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES WAY:" this is the sky blue new moniker for the venerable walk of fame installed for the four-day first-ever TCM Classic Film Festival, Hollywood 2010. Hundreds of TCM fans have flocked from around the country -- Ohio, Iowa, Kansas -- to join thousands of locals to see TCM beloved host Robert Osborne, his The Essentials co-host Alec Baldwin, and a dazzl...
For a classically trained actor, it has probably been a source of much amusement to him that he is best remembered for his role in a low budget sci-fi film that has since become a classic. As the lead in the 1950s film THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, Kevin McCarthy played a doctor who becomes alarmed when he discovers that the people in his small town have been transformed.....into aliens. The fact that the film, produced at the height of the McCarthy period, was a deep allegory...
Los Angeles – The 8th Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles, running 15-23 October 2008, has officially opened its doors tonight at Wilshire Boulevard’s Fine Arts Theater. Presented by Bunyik Entertainment, this one-week showcase of Hungarian films is the newest shining star on the skies of the 2008 Hollywood film scene. As Sir Alexander Korda once said, “It is not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent as well”. Well, concerning the film industry, Hungarians sure have some talent...
AWARDS THE AWARDS WATCH ON FEST21.COM Hollywood Awards will honor Danny Elfman KinÈo Cinema Italiano in Venice Awards "I Vicerè" Departure, a Japanese film, wins Top Prize In Montreal P.T. Anderson will receive the Fipresci Grand Prix The European Film Academy opens the vote for the People's Choice Awar...
Friday, August 29-----One of the treats of the Montreal World Film Festival are the free outdoor screenings on the Place des Arts of classic and recent European, American and Canadian films. Every evening, Cinema Under The Stars is presenting films on a huge screen with enormous speakers that beckon people to what is literally a cinema street party.This year's selection of films includes: CHARIOTS OF FIRE(United Kingdom 1981), the Oscar winning true story of British track athletes competing ...
Tuesday, August 25------Calling himself "one of the last of the Hollywood movie stars", the Montreal World Film Festival welcomed iconic actor Tony Curtis this past weekend. Entering the press conference in a wheel chair and looking a bit puffy, the 79 year old actor, once hailed as the most beautiful face in movies, was still remarkably spry and witty, with a voice that revealed his early roots as a street tough in New York City. Curtis was in Montreal to accept the Prix des Ameriques...
Calling himself "one of the last of the Hollywood movie stars", the Montreal World Film Festival welcomed iconic actor Tony Curtis this past weekend. Entering the press conference in a wheel chair and looking a bit puffy, the 79 year old actor, once hailed as the most beautiful face in movies, was still remarkably spry and witty, with a voice that revealed his early roots as a street tough in New York City. Curtis was in Montreal to accept the Prix des Ameriques for his lifetime career achievent...
Gavras was here again in 2002 with the hard-hitting and under-rated “Amen” which tells the story of papal collusion in the German mass murder of the Jews. The poster for that film, showing a cross and a Swastika intertwined, was even more controversial than the film itself. In short, Costa-Gavras is no stranger to this long-running festival. An interesting sidelight on the this Grecian born director’s name: He was actually born in Greece in 1933 under the name of Konstantinos Gavras,...
Friday, May 23-----If you are a lover of film (guilty) and also a lover of jazz (guilty again), then you are destined for movie and musical heaven at the on-going film series Jazz Score at the Museum of Modern Art. Starting last month, this unique retrospective will showcase 50 feature films and a selection of shorts that meld the power of jazz and the moving image.The series celebrates well-known and obscure jazz scores composed for films from the 1950s to the present, with a particular emph...
Friday, May 16-------Warren Cowan, 87, one of Hollywood's most influential press agents who represented a who's who of A-list stars during a seven-decade career, has died of heart failure and cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Cowan began working as a publicist while still at student at UCLA. One of his first clients was actress Linda Darnell. In 1950, he became a partner with Henry Rogers in the firm Rogers & Cowan, which grew to become the largest public relations agenc...
Thessaloniki: Tandem Master Class with Chris Cooper & David Strathairn November 22, 2007 Day number five of the fest opened with a One-Two punch tandem Master Class delivered by Oscar winner Chris Cooper and multiple award nominee Davis Strathairn, two of the best character actors currently active in American cinema. Both are here in Thessaloniki accompanying director John Sayles on his full-scale career retrospective, ongoing throughout the festival. Both actors have appeare...
Winners and nominees Following the Academy's practice, the films below are listed by year of their Los Angeles qualifying run, which is usually (but not always) the film's year of release. For example, the Oscar for Best Actor of 1999 was announced during the award ceremony held in 2000. Winners are listed first in bold, followed by the other nominees.1920s1928 Emil Jannings - The Last Command as "Gen. Dolgorucki/Grand Duke Sergius Alexander" and The Way of All Flesh as "August Sc...
Day number five of the fest opened with a One-Two punch tandem Master Class delivered by Oscar winner Chris Cooper and multiple award nominee Davis Strathairn, two of the best character actors currently active in American cinema. Both are here in Thessaloniki accompanying director John Sayles on his full-scale career retrospective, ongoing throughout the festival. Both actors have appeared in a wide variety of roles in Sayles pictures and have made their mark in countless other films with variou...
The 20th edition of this specialized festival in north-western France (March 21-- April 01, 2007) was a bit of a disappointment this year in terms of competition films and visiting personalities, at least compared to the four previous times I have made it my business to be here. In the past there have always been unusual films in the competition section and visitations by major figures, actors and/or directors, from the countries covered here, which includes, incidentally, Belgium, Holland and...
During the 33rd Flanders International Film Festival-Ghent French filmmaker Agnes Varda will receive the Joseph Plateau Lifetime Achievement Award. As a tribute to Varda, the festival is putting together a retrospective of her film work. In cooperation with S.M.A.K. (the Ghent museum of contemporary art), two of her recent video installations will be shown.Agnes Varda is the leading lady of the French Nouvelle Vague movement that thrilled the European film audience in the sixties. With films as ...
