Belle de Jour at Berkeley’s PFA

Luis Buñuel‘s masterpiece with Catherine Deneuve, Belle de Jour (1967) is playing at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (PFA) on July 22 at 7pm. The film is screening as part of the “Luis Buñuel’s Magnificent Weapon” series which includes all the director’s important movies.

In Belle de jour, Catherine Deneuve’s beauty is a thing in itself. Like writer Jean-Claude Carrière, Deneuve was a collaborator in Luis Buñuel’s vision, and she gives a knowing performance as Séverine, a bored-cold bourgeoise who discovers how good evil can be on afternoons spent in a high-class brothel, where fantasy itself is a fetish object. The film is as endlessly mysterious and fascinating as the Chinese lacquer box into which Séverine peers—and what does she see? Don’t quit your day job, Séverine. It takes violence, the more fantasized the better, to make any sort of crack in the lacquer. Belle de jour is L’age d’or updated and in color. As Raymond Durgnat wrote, “Glittery, cool and urbane, Buñuel’s film looks just like Lubitsch à la mode—almost a design for living in the Playgirl era. But underneath it’s a bleak and sharp surrealist object.”

—Judy Bloch

Filed under: Events, Classic Films, Film

“Harold and Maude” at The Vogue

Harold and Maude (1971) at the Vogue Theater July 5 and 6

Harold and Maude on Wikipedia, Amazon and Kanopy.

Filed under: Events, Film, What's On

Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars at the Roxie

Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture

David Bowie’s retirement of his Ziggy Stardust alter ego in front of 5,000 fans at London’s Hammersmith Odeon was captured on film by award-winning director D.A. Pennebaker on July 3, 1973. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of one of the most iconic performances in the history of modern music, the original uncut version of the film has been restored in 4K and with a 5.1 theatrical mix and will feature never-before-seen performances with legendary guitar player Jeff Beck. Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture 50th Anniversary is the closest audiences will come to being there on that unforgettable night 50 years ago.

At the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District, July 9 and 10

Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture – newly restored version, on Blu-ray

Filed under: Events, Film, San Francisco

San Francisco Documentary Festival 2023

The San Francisco Documentary Festival 2023 is currently going on – through next week – at the Roxie Theater in the Mission District.

Filed under: Events, Film

Jeanne Dielman at PFA

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (PFA) on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, at 7 pm.

Depicts three days in the life of a middle-aged widow, Jeanne (Delphine Seyrig), living alone with her teenage son. Those days are filled with a precisely circumscribed series of domestic tasks, framed straight on and taking place in what feels like real time.

A rare chance to see the surprise number one film of Sight & Sound’s 2022 Poll of the 100 Greatest Films on 35mm film on a decent screen (as opposed to streaming video).

Filed under: Events, Film

Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952) at the Pacific Film Archive

An aging city official, dying of cancer, finds meaning in his life as he builds a playground for children during his final days.

Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952) at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive (PFA) on Sunday, Jul 16, 2023

Kurosawa is of course most commonly known for his samurai movies (chambara) like Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, but he made a great variety of films, and the quiet but searing drama of contemporary Japanese society, Ikiru, is one of his finest, ranking up there with Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai (1954).

It’s somewhat noteworthy that his three greatest films come essentially back to back in his filmography. But Kurosawa’s overall level of accomplishment is fairly phenomenal. Another astonishing run, from 1958 to 1962, produced The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, Yojimbo and Sanjurō, one after the other.

Also available on Amazon and at the San Francisco Public Library and streaming via the Kanopy service (free to patrons of various library systems).

Filed under: Events, Film, Japanese movies

Claudia Cardinale at PFA

The Pacific Film Archive is hosting a retrospective on Claudia Cardinale through July 22, concluding with Sergio Leone’s weird and incredible Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Coproduced by Cinecittà, Rome, and featuring new restorations, Claudia Cardinale Once Upon a Time focuses on her great performances from the late 1950s through the 1960s in films imbued with an intelligence and depth that surpass the confines of the scripted characters. It addition to more widely know works like Once Upon a Time and 8 1/2, it’s a chance to see some lesser known and less commonly screened works.

Filed under: Events, Film

Roger Ebert, Film Critic, Dies

Roger Ebert, Film Critic, Dies

Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday. He was 70.

(via NYTimes.com.)

There are other film critics, and new ones come along all the time.  But it is hard to imagine another film critic achieving the stature of Roger Ebert.

Pauline Kael is very popular and influential, but outside the circle of film buffs doesn’t have the sort of impact and recognition that Ebert has and I hope will continue to have, through his books and online access to his reviews and other writing.

And while the interwebs have opened up new spaces for film reviews and criticism, and allowed new voices to be heard, they have also made it hard for any one voice to build the kind of audience that Ebert had for so many years.

Some people, while mourning the loss of such a generally decent guy, may feel that his passing will open up more space for those other voices, many of whom disagree, directly or indirectly, with Ebert. I don’t think so. In recent years, Ebert has probably done more to bring attention to other, lesser known film reviewers than any other force in the public sphere, and has always been unfailingly gracious to respectful dissenting views.

I disagreed with many of his reviews. Perversely, I sometimes thought him both too accepting of mainstream fare and too willing to overlook the difficulties, flaws, and obscurantism of independent and avant-garde fare. But I knew he was smarter than me, and knew more about film than I ever would, and that he would be the first person to agree that issues of taste were always open.  He was very good, though, at making the case for his point of view, and distinguishing between personal preferences and some sort of shared cultural space in which films could be evaluated and criticized.

His show with Gene Siskel, “Sneak Previews,” will be – probably forever – the model for film reviewing on television, and we’re lucky to have had such a model. And with any luck, Ebert’s writing will continue to serve as model for intelligent film reviewing aimed at a general audience.  If we’re even luckier, Ebert’s internet presence will also be an influence on discourse in the still new, and still pretty raw and vicious, public sphere of the interwebs.  He was a smart, sensitive, honest public voice, and he will be missed.

Filed under: Events, Movies

Halloween Critical Mass ride in SF (updated)

“Tonight is the night of the annual Halloween Critical Mass in San Francisco…” (via Cycle Chic™ – The Original from Copenhagen.)

Update: Now over, obviously, since San Francisco’s “Critical Mass” bike ride is always held on Friday evening.

Demotix – the website that distributes photo journalism by amateur photographers from all over the world – has a wonderful collection of images from last night’s ride by Steve Rhodes:

Halloween Critical Mass in San Francisco | Demotix.com

More photos, and some video, are available from Indybay a “non-commercial, democratic collective of bay area independent media makers and media outlets,” part of the IndyMedia network:

Thousands Ride in Halloween Critical Mass in San Francisco, 10/30/09 : Indybay

For more…

• San Francisco Critical Mass
• The Revolution Will Not Be Motorized | the bad days will end

Filed under: Events, bicycles, Halloween, San Francisco

Event: Music critic Alex Ross in Berkeley this Thur, Oct 14

A couple days ago I posted a bit of a review of Listen to This, the most recent book from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross – consistently one of the most exciting and informative voices in music criticism today, who writes as well about punk as he does about Bach. I’m a huge fan.  Ross is speaking this Thursday at Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. Tickets start at $28. A full description of this Cal Performances event is below.

If you’re not familiar with Alex Ross, you should check out his work in The New Yorker. Anyone with an interest in music should read his previous book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, a truly engaging piece of critical commentary that will be as much fun for general readers with little or no background as for academics and critics.

Alex Ross, Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History: “Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker and author of the award-winning international bestseller The Rest Is Noise, conducts a whirlwind history of music as told through bass lines. In an audio-rich lecture based on a chapter of his new book, Listen to This, Ross shows how lusty Spanish dances were transformed into somber masterpieces of Purcell, Bach, and Fats Waller; he also explores the fascinating link between figures of lament in Eastern European folk music, Renaissance Masses, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the songs of Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin. This is an extraordinary tale of the interconnectedness of musical language and the universality of human emotion.” (via Cal Performances.)

Filed under: Events, Music

I’m So There

I knew there was a reason for giving up and moving back to San Francisco:

Janelle Monáe – appearing live for an in-store performance at Rasputin Music in Berkeley, next Friday, June 18, at 4pm, and then in concert with Erykah Badu that evening at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland.

For info on other upcoming shows and live appearances, see Janelle Monae | Concerts | Tour Dates – jmonae.com.

Filed under: Events, music

Event (NYC): An Ethics Occurs at the Edge / of What We Know

An Ethics Occurs at the Edge / of  What We Know

May 29, 2010
1:00pm-3:00pmA

Author of Practical Water, among other poetry books, Brenda Hillman discusses poetry and activism, writing about the elements and ecopoetics, and the writing process in relation to political commitment and spiritual ideas.

Poets House
10 River Terrace, New York, NY 10282

212-431-7920

via bookforum.com / outposts.

Filed under: Events, NYC, Poetry, events, poems