As a fan of film and of reggae music, I say goodbye to an important figure. Perry Henzell, who directed The Harder They Come, died of cancer Thursday at the age of 70. Henzell wasn't a prolific filmmaker, but his 1972 classic helped popularize reggae music throughout the world. It is one of those films where the soundtrack is just as important as the actual picture.

Henzell shot a second film thirty years ago, but it wasn't finished until just recently. No Place Like Home premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival and is opening in Jamaica this weekend, screening at the Flashpoint Film Festival.

Having grown up listening to Jamaican music and performing in a ska/reggae band, I have to wonder if my life would have been different had The Harder They Come never been made. Sure, reggae would have likely been exposed to the world without the film, but that isn't important. What is important is that Henzell was able to showcase the music and its locale with such a raw, realistic portrayal. Outsiders were able to not only grab hold of the sound, but also its roots and its environment, as they were introduced to a music in its context, something rarely displayed so definitively.

Beginning this weekend, Cinematical contributor Martha Fischer and myself will begin to bring you highlights from the long-anticipated Pre-Code festival at Manhattan's Film Forum. The festival, which runs from December 1 through December 21, will showcase a large sampling of films released prior to 1934, the year when Hollywood adopted the infamous Hays Code. The code was a strict set of industry guidelines on what could and could not be shown in an industry film, and was rigorously followed for the next 30-odd years. The code forbade such things as nudity, revenge killings, depiction of drug use, interracial coupling, crime methodology (you can't demonstrate to the audience how to crack a safe), child-birth scenes, and depiction of priests as criminals, among many other things.

While we don't yet have an exact list of what films we will be reviewing for you, a quick consultation with Martha earlier today has given me a good idea of which films are more likely than not to be written up. You can almost certainly count on us to cover 1932's Call Her Savage, staring Clara Bow as an incurable wild woman who brains her husband with a stool one day and heads down to the local gay bar. Hoopla, another Clara Bow sizzler in which she educates a dizzy farm boy about the ways of the world, is also on our list. 1933's Blood Money, a heist film condemned by the Legion of Decency for inciting "law abiding citizens to crime" will not be missed. Nor, in all likelihood, will the Joan Blondell vehicle Broadway Bad or the Spencer Tracy film Bottoms Up, about a scam involving the movie business.

Other films being screened that we hope to cover, time permitting, include The Bowery, Now I'll Tell, The Yellow Ticket, The Tria of Vivianne Ware and Sailor's Luck. Stay tuned to Cinematical for all the coverage, and if you're in the Manhattan area, check out more information about the festival on Film Forum's Web site.

image+nation is the name given to Montreal 's International LGBT film festival. The 19th installment just wrapped up, and the jury has announced their winners. Each year, the festival picks both feature-length and short films to be honored, and this year shows a diverse cross-section of talent, including a tie for the top grand jury prize as well as best documentary.

It's an interesting collection of films. On the one hand, there's Good Boys, which discusses a relationship between two young men who are both struggling with issues like prostitution and drugs. On the other, there's one of the documentary nods -- Camp Out, which is about a Christian camp that accepts gay children as they come to terms with the disconnect between their sexuality and religion. In short, the winners, along with the long list of films included in the festival, definitely show a diverse cross-section of cultures and circumstance, and can provide a great guide for those looking for more LGBT cinema.

Grand Jury Prize: The jury elected to award a tie to two films, Yair Hochner's Good Boys, and Tudor Giurgiu's Love Sick.

Coup de Coeur Prize: Fat Girls - Ash Christian

Shorts Grand Jury Prize: Jean Genet in Chicago by Frederic Moffet

Audience Prize for Best Feature: Loving Annabelle by Katherine Brooks

Best Documentary: The second tie, the best doc prize is shared by Larry Grimaldi and Kirk Marcolina's Camp Out and Nancy Nicol's La Politique du Coeur, or Politics of the Heart.

Audience Prize for Best Short: Vaguement Romantique by Sebastien Gauthier

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam is happening this week, and in addition to showcasing a ton of old and new docs from all around the world, the event features a number of discussion panels. On Saturday, for instance, was the First Annual IDFA UnDebate, which presented representatives from China, India, Australia, the United States, Israel and Brazil talking about the state of documentary film. IndieWIRE has a full report on this talk, and from their perspective it seems that global non-fiction cinema is in a great place right now.

Aside from the overall consensus that documentary films are experiencing good times all over, there were some interesting points to be learned from the UnDebate. For example, distribution for docs in China is pretty much limited to pirated DVDs. In Brazil, docs account for one-third of the country's theatrical exhibition. Australia is experiencing a thriving doc industry via television. In numerous areas, the fashion of using talking heads is going out of style.

Not everything is rosy in the doc world, however, and the American representatives were more attuned to the problems being faced with the genre (are we just more pessimistic here in the States?). Oscar-nominated director Jonathan Stack (The Farm: Angola, USA) expressed a frustration with trying to find a balance between activism and passivity. He apparently has issues with the self-servicing model happening a lot these days, having abandoned a recent project after becoming too involved in its political subject matter. Steven Bognar warned about too many pop docs following familiar models, such as the currently in vogue "contest films." He also claimed too many docs are too long (his latest, A Lion in the House, is 230 min., by the way). His directing partner, Julia Reichert, stated that because it is presently "sexy" to be a documentary filmmaker, that more docs are being produced than can find distribution.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is my type of actress. I started following her when she was an ever-lovable Satanist make-up artist in Cecil B. Demented. The film inspired me to make my only memorabilia purchase, fighting tooth and nail on eBay for her character's eyelash curler, beating out a girl who ultimately decided her money would be better spent on the branding iron she actually wanted to use. Since then, Gyllenhaal has picked some great films, has been forgiven for the not-so-great, and is now a two-time best actress winner, scoring the Best Actress prize at the Stockholm Film Festival.

Maggie received the top prize for her portrayal of Sherry Swanson in Sherrybaby, a film by Laurie Collyer that Jeffrey M. Anderson reports also grabbed the Best Film award from the jury. These aren't the first bits of praise to come for the film. Our own Kim Voynar gave a great review earlier this year during Sundance, and it gained nominations both there and at the Gotham Awards. Sherrybaby, in short, is the story of a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter after a prison sentence. However, it's also an incredibly serious and heart-wrenching film that made the Sundance Q&A a river of tears.

This just could be Maggie's ticket to an Oscar, although anything is possible in a ceremony that raises Brockovich above Burstyn. Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that she's got a long career ahead of her. She's on a steady train forward, which isn't stopping for elevator shenanigans and party girl diversions.

[via Hollywood.com]

A recent political column by Michael Moore is circulating around various movie-related sites: for example, Jeffrey Wells posted a copy at Hollywood Elsewhere, and Anne Thompson posted it on the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog. The column is entitled "Cut and Run: The Only Brave Thing to Do" and it's not about editing chase scenes in films, either. Moore would like the U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, and he's urging the Democrat-majority Congress to take immediate action.

It's not a bad column, although a bit obvious at times, but I had two questions after seeing it excerpted in the above locations: First of all, why is this appearing on film-related sites? Moore is a filmmaker, but the column has nothing to do with his movies or with the movie industry. (And why republish the entire column, instead of excerpting and then linking to Moore's site?) It's not as though he were a filmmaker or actor who only occasionally dabbles in politics, which might be newsworthy in the film biz; this is business as usual for Moore. However, since blogs are supposed to be free-and-easy and not limited to mainstream rules, I suppose film sites can occasionally veer into politics.

More importantly, though, why is Moore dilly-dallying with all this column writing when he's got at least two films to get out of the door? He's supposed to be finishing Sicko, his documentary about the American health-care industry, which is supposed to be released sometime next summer. And he also needs to complete The Great Slacker '04 Uprising, about Moore's travels during the 2004 Presidential campaign, although no release date (or year) has been set for that film. Finally, Moore has been selected as one of the guest curators for the "Power of Ten" series at the Full Frame Documentary Festival next April, and he needs to get cracking on that -- I'm hoping to attend the festival and I don't want him slacking on his programming duties. Although I am not always a fan of Moore's films, I'd like him to put down the keyboard, take a break from the column writing, and get back behind the camera and in the editing suite. I want to see those movies in the next year, mister, and I don't mean maybe. (For inspiration, look at how quickly Spike Lee made When the Levees Broke.)

Sure, the big festivals like Tribeca are fun to attend, but every once and a while it's nice to settle into one of the smaller fests, where the seats are cheap, the beer is free and you're guaranteed plenty of entertainment. One of the things I love about The Big Apple Film Festival (now in its third year) is its focus on short films -- in fact (and here's a rarity in festival world), Big Apple will open this Thursday with a shorts program, instead of a feature. Refreshing, ain't it?

Some of the other highlights at this year's fest are the premieres of Everything's Jake (Friday night) and Searching for Bobby D. (Saturday night). Following the screening of Jake on Friday, Ernie Hudson (remember him from Ghost Busters?) will receive a lifetime achievement award. Also, on Saturday afternoon, there's a free panel discussion on indie film distribution featuring folks like Jason Leaf (co-President, Avatar Films), David Paterson (writer, Love Ludlow) and Cleo Godsey (Director of Business Affairs, First Run Features). Oh, and don't forget about the Horrorfest Series -- this year, four shorts will be featured including Witchwise and Penny Dreadful. Yours truly is on the fest's advisory board, and I'll also be there for most of the screenings -- so feel free to say hello (just look for the hot shot in the Cinematical t-shirt). For more info on Big Apple (which will be held at Tribeca Cinemas), check out the official website.

We know about a lot of dynasties. There's the Qing, the Justinian, and even the Carringtons. One that is not so well-known however, outside of Jewish circles, is the Soloveitchik. A dynasty of rabbinical scholars and students stretching back a few hundred years, they have left their mark on Judaism around the world. One of the most famous Rabbis was Rav Joseph Soloveitchik.

Now Ethan Isenberg, a new director from New York , has made a documentary about the controversial Rabbi -- Lonely Man of Faith: The Life and Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. The film had its sold-out world premiere on Thursday when it screened at the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Soloveitchik was a Rabbi known for his controversy on both sides of the fence. To some, he was a man too entrenched in the Old World . To others, he was too interested in the New World and modernization. Although he died in 1993, his life still inspires passionate and varied discourse.

Isenberg's motivations came from a desire to relay the world of Judaism beyond Fiddlers and the Holocaust, and I am ready to see it. While I think that many of us can list aspects of Chris tianity without being a follower, Judaism has remained the shadow behind ever-present stereotypical figures. I'm hoping the film is full of insight, and doesn't succumb to the vague, surface, photo-album blandness present in other docs like Yokohama Mary.

If any of you were present at the screening, please comment and share your thoughts! If you haven't, feel free to share other films that shed light into the Jewish shadow.

I used to live in Rochester, New York. It sits nestled on Lake Ontario. In the fall, the foliage is spectacular. In the winter, the town competes with Buffalo for who gets the most snow (the last year we lived there, Rochester won -- if you can call it that -- with 92"). There's a cute little indie theater nestled near downtown Rochester called The Little Theater, where Rochesterians can sample a fine selection of independent film -- maybe not quite as soon as the folks down south in New York City get to see them, but they do get them pretty darn quickly. What they didn't have when I lived in Rochester, though, was a film festival. Now that I live 3,000 or so miles away in Seattle, of course, they have one.

2006 marks the sixth year of the High Falls Film Festival, one of the few fests in the country that focuses on Women in Film. This makes sense, because conservative Rochester has a rich history of feminism under its surface. Susan B. Anthony lived in Rochester (if you're going to be in Rochester for the fest, you can take a tour of her house while you're there), and Rochester is also the home of Eastman Kodak founder George Eastman -- the man whose ideas helped make it possible for us to have movies today. It's a great city to host a regional film festival

This year's fest runs November 8-13, and features a pretty impressive slate. The fest opens with Copying Beethoven, and other films I'd recommend include Ten Canoes ( which got good buzz around Telluride and Toronto), Deliver Us From Evil (I'm curious how that film will play in Rochester, which has so many Catholics that the Friday Night Fish Fry is a local tradition -- mmmm, fried haddock), Little Red Flowers, American Blackout, The Lives of Others, After the Wedding, and 13 (Tzameti), which doesn't have any women in it, but is a good film nonetheless. You can check out the full schedule here.

Regional film festivals are one of the best ways to see the kinds of films that play major fests like Sundance, Cannes and Toronto, without having to travel too far from home. If you're in upstate New York, and you make it to the High Falls Film Festival, pop on back here and let us know how it is. Oh, and stop off at Kelly's Apple Farm and pick me up a Dutch Apple Pie while you're out that way.

[via Movie City News ]

While out promoting her new movie Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus at the Rome Film Festival, Nicole Kidman reportedly told the press that she has dropped out of Wong Kar-Wai's (remake of?) Lady from Shanghai. According to CRI, their article makes it seem as if the decision was provoked by her husband's recent trip to rehab. If you want my opinion (not that it matters much), it seems Kidman wants to keep an eye on Keith Urban once he leaves rehab to make sure he remains clean. Why do I feel like a quickie divorce is imminent?

What's odd about this news is that WKW is still in post on My Blueberry Nights, and knowing him, there's no way he has a production schedule lined up yet for Shanghai. Furthermore, Kidman is also set to star in the Untitled Baz Luhrmann Project with Hugh Jackman, as well as The Golden Compass (which is filming now), and so will either of those two be affected? Also, if she's so determined to spend more time with hubby, then why is she in Rome right now? Kidman was supposed to star alongside Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in Lady from Shanghai, and as of right now there's no word on who her replacement will be.

[via IFC Blog]

You know how I feel about the proliferation of film festivals all over the globe, but as this particular one happens to be in my own backyard, I guess I can make an exception ... this time. Which film festival gets this special treatment? Why, it's the Film Independent Los Angeles Film Festival of course.

According to Variety, the festival announced this week that on October 24 it will start accepting submissions for the 13th annual event, held June 21 - July 1 2007 in Los Angeles. The entry deadline for short films and music videos is Feb. 9, while the deadline for feature-length narrative and documentary films is March 1. And, if you act now (or at least before January 12) you can even get a discount on your entry fees. Not a bad thing considering the minuscule budgets of most of these films.

Some of last years fest winners include Steve Collins, writer/director of Gretchen, who won for best narrative feature and Amy Berg, writer/director of Deliver Us From Evil, (which our own Kim reviewed) who won for best documentary feature. Both winners received $50,000, money they will probably use to pay off all the credit cards they maxed out to finance their films. Oscar-winning actress and producer Charlize Theron, whose indie credits include Monster and the documentary East of Havana, was also awarded the Spirit of Independence Award for her commitment to artistic independence in film at the event.

Especially of note for aspiring filmmakers looking for exposure is that the Los Angeles Film Festival is a qualifying fest in all categories for not only the Independent Spirit Awards but for the Academy Awards' short film categories as well. So indie filmmakers, dust off those scripts hidden in your drawer, borrow your parents' video camera, gather your friends, find a barn and start shooting because the next Academy Award for short films might just go to you. (And if it does, Cinematical wants a spot in that acceptance speech.)

While working the Rome Film Festival for his film The Departed, Martin Scorsese has announced a project with festival organizers to re-store and preserve 100 Italian cinema classics. First on the block is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West starring Henry Fonda and Jason Robards. Leone's classic western has been hanging by a thread for a while now; few prints exist and those that do are in terrible condition.

Scorsese has always been one of the loudest supporters of maintaining and preserving classic films. At a festival event, Scorsese spoke to journalists about the project: "You can find that color (deterioration) can happen as quickly as within six years ... Millions of dollars goes into this industry and nobody thought about preserving the film. It's incredible."

So far, Scorsese and the National Film Preservation Foundation have convinced Sony, Warner Bros., and other major studios to start preserving their collections. The Rome Film Festival is promising to help finance the project and do a few films per year (with no word yet on how much this might actually cost). Film restoration is an incredibly expensive and time consuming endeavor but it's worth it when you think of all the amazing films that could have been lost. Being the classic movie junkie that I am, I'm thrilled that someone is leading the charge, and what better person than Martin Scorsese -- a God to film nerds everywhere.

Which movies would you like to see saved for posterity?

Related Scorsese:

Scorsese is Ready for a Break

Getting Up Close and Personal With Scorsese

One of the fascinating aspects of attending aGLIFF was the "I" in the festival name: International. The festival showed a number of foreign-language films this year, which provided Austin (and American) audiences with the opportunity to see how gay and gender issues are addressed in other countries. Eleven Men Out provides a glimpse into gay culture and its acceptance (or rejection) in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Eleven Men Out begins and ends in a sports arena. Ottar Thor (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) is a professional soccer star who decides, after scoring an amazing kick to win a championship game, to come out of the closet. He's essentially kicked off the team, and his father, one of the managers, keeps trying to convince Ottar to change his mind. Ottar's teenage son Magnus (Arnaldur Ernst) is disgusted and convinced that Ottar doesn't care about him and the effect his coming-out has on his own life. Ottar's ex-wife Gugga (Lilja Nótt Þórarinsdóttir), an alcoholic former Miss Iceland, is only concerned because Ottar won't sleep with her anymore. Ottar's friend Pétur gets him involved with an amateur soccer team with a few gay men on it, which suddenly becomes labeled "the gay team," causing all kinds of trouble. Other teams in the league forfeit games rather than have to play with gay men, but the team itself becomes stronger and more confident as more gay teammates join.

Despite hurricanes and floods and a city with a substantially smaller population, the New Orleans Film Festival is underway. Last year's festival was cancelled and financial woes made it uncertain whether the festival would be able to return. However, the 17th annual festival kicked off Thursday with a gala fundraiser, and begins a week of films starting tonight. Opening-night films include The Queen, Shut Up and Sing, and Brothers of the Head.

The lineup of marquee films might not look impressive to those of us outside of Louisiana, but it's important to remember that this might be one of the few, if not only, chances for New Orleanians to see some of these non-multiplex arthouse and documentary films. Among the list of films, I was pleased to see The Puffy Chair -- it's the first time that the film from New Orleans area-natives Jay and Mark Duplass will screen in the city. Their parents helped finance the film, so you know the whole family's happy to get to show it off to their hometown. And NOLA, a film scripted by a class of film-writing students from several New Orleans colleges and universities, is premiering at the festival.

The real gem at NOFF this year is a series called "Shooting Katrina" that includes narrative and documentary shorts as well as a few feature-length documentaries. The films range from interviews of post-Katrina flood survivors to a look at the devastated Lower Ninth Ward to stories about rebuilding. This is the one section of the festival I truly am sorry I'm missing, although judging from my reaction to When the Levees Broke, I'd have to bring a case of tissues. There are also a number of conference panels this weekend, all of which are free to the public. Tim League, founder of Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, will speak on a panel about distribution and exhibition. I grew up in the New Orleans area, and I wish I could see the festival's triumphant return in person, but three local film festivals in a month is all I can handle. If you're in driving distance of New Orleans, this would be a great weekend to stop by and catch some good films.

Seriously, this is getting a little ridiculous. Yet another film festival is about to debut this week. This one, dubbed Festa del Cinema, is being held in Rome, Italy and should not be confused with the fest already being held in Rome, Georgia. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Rome. Either one of them.

I don't have a problem with this latest Rome festival in particular either. I just wonder if the world really needs another film festival at all. In the good old days (like maybe five years ago) you had your big, important fests like Cannes, Sundance, Venice, Toronto and maybe a few others. These festivals had been around for many years and had developed a certain cachet'. Winning an award at one of these festivals was something that very few people accomplished.

So, if you did manage to win something for your film, or even get your film screened at the fest, it meant that your film was probably worthwhile (at least to people who program and judge film festivals) and almost certainly destined for some kind of success, if only on the fest circuit. In other words, it was a pretty big deal. But now it seems you can't swing a dead cat (not that you would want to necessarily, could get messy) without hitting a film festival.

There are so many, in fact, that there is an entire website specifically devoted to keeping track of them. There are also any one of a dozen other sites, including an IMDB page, where you can get some information about the over 1,400 different film festivals held each year. You have festivals in almost ever major city in the US and in cities all over the world. Even the tiny island community of Turks and Caicos, population 18,000, has an international film festival. I'm not kidding

I'm really surprised that the nearby island of Tuvalu hasn't heard about Turks and Caicos trying to keep all of that fat film festival dough for itself. I'm sure Tuvalu will soon wise up and want to cash in and get a festival of their very own. It's only a matter of time. But I have to ask, is all of this really necessary?

I guess people feel that the greater the number of film festivals the better their chances are of winning something. Then, when they win, they get to call themselves award-winning filmmakers. But the problem with that is if everyone goes around calling themselves an award-winning filmmaker it kinda takes away the importance and prestige of winning, doesn't it? If everyone is a winner how can you really tell who the winners actually are? Not everyone can or should win or else winning loses its point.

Besides, the world needs ditch diggers too (bonus points for the first person to tell me what movie that's from).