Every holiday has its own traditions, and watching certain holiday-themed movies has long been part of many family’s annual observations of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and others. Easter is no exception. As practiced in America (and many other Western countries), Easter has become an especially odd blend of sacred and secular, as some approach the…
I’ve been covering the San Francisco International Film Festival for over ten years now, so long that it’s changed its name. Now it’s known as the SFFILM Festival and it’s running now through April 23 at a variety of venues in the Bay Area. My day began with a “check-in” at the Festival Lounge. This…
OUTwatch, the wine country film festival dedicated to cinema that shows the fabulous, rich diversity of the LGBTQI experience, opens this Friday, October 12. Now in its sixth year, the Festival will be presenting seven films over three days at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol. This year, in addition to their slate of films, they’ve added…
To a vast number of local film fans, the annual Mill Valley Film Festival is like a 10-day-long Roman feast, a cinematic bacchanal in which roasted pigs and hand-peeled grapes have been metaphorically substituted with movies, movies and more movies. Running through mid-October, the 2018 MVFF—now in its 41st year—will screen more than 200 movies…
Local vintner Robert Mark Kamen of Sonoma’s Kamen Estate Wines also happens to be one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters. Kamen, who back in 1979 took the money from his first script sale and invested it in Sonoma property, is responsible for three extremely successful film series – The Transporter series starring Jason Statham the…
I’ve been covering the San Francisco International Film Festival for ten years now for another web site. I’ve screened, reviewed and discussed well over one hundred films – some great, some good, and some real clunkers – and conducted numerous interviews over those ten years. This year’s festival, the 61st, runs April 4 through April…
To Sonoma County film fans — including roughly 100 Santa Rosa Junior College cinema students per semester — there is no movie-going experience quite like the Petaluma Film Alliance’s year-long movie-and-lecture series at Petaluma’s Carole L. Ellis Auditorium. Open to the public as well as to students, taking place every Wednesday evening during school term,…
For years now, a number of notable cable television stations and movie revival houses have marked St. Patrick’s Day by playing the John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara classic “The Quiet Man,” among other shamrock-flavored films. It makes sense. The 65-year-old film does still hold up, dramatically – for its charming small town setting and magnificent fist-fight-brawl at…
There’s a theory known as ‘Biophilia,’ says writer-director-filmmaker Marina Michelson. “It was first put out there in the 1980s, and it basically suggests that human beings possess this innate drive, this deep need or tendency, to want to connect with nature in really intense, intimate ways.” It was during a wedding two-and-a-half years ago, held…
There’s no doubt about it. Whenever Sonoma County residents talk about Alfred Hitchcock, and the extraordinary films he made here, the conversation almost always alights on “The Birds,” the classic shocker Hitchcock filmed in Bodega in 1963. That cinematic flight of horrific fancy is not the only movie Hitch helmed in the area, however. In…
North Bay Stage and Screen 