Andy Lau, Jet Li, and Takeshi Kaneshiro in The Warlords If you enjoyed the balletic elegance of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the epic scale and outrageous haute couture of Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, you might still enjoy director Peter Chan’s The Warlords, a Chinese historical drama from 2007 only […]
John Seal
Freelancer John Seal is Berkeleyside’s film critic. A movie connoisseur with a penchant for natty hats who lives in Oakland, John writes a weekly film recommendation column at Box Office Prophets, as well as a column in The Phantom of the Movie’s Videoscope, an old-fashioned paper magazine, published quarterly. He also writes regular film reviews for IMDB, which can be read here.
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Big Screen Berkeley: (Almost) locally grown produce
Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort in Harold and Maude This is the second post in an occasional series by John Seal on movies made in Berkeley. Read the first, on Hall Bartlett’s Changes, here. I’ve read for years that Harold and Maude was partly shot in Our Town. It’s demonstrably true that director Hal Ashby’s […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo First things first: the new Swedish thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has been re-titled for American consumption, and done so in clumsy but understandable fashion. Based on a novel by Stieg Larsson entitled Män som hatar kvinnor — Men who Hate Women — the […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Up close in North Korea
On rare occasions, the North Korean government has granted European filmmakers permission to film inside The Hermit Kingdom, and the results are almost always fascinating. In Austria’s Hana, dul, sed, a new documentary screening at Pacific Film Archive this coming Thursday at 7:00 pm as part of the ongoing San Francisco International Asian American Film […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee
Deann Borshay in 1966 The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival gets under way this Thursday, March 11, with a gala opening at the Castro Theatre. Though the focus of this year’s festival is on Filipino cinema, it also features an impressive selection of films from other Asian countries, while the Asian diaspora […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Pick of the flicks
Maria Heiskanen in Everlasting Moments If you’re in the mood for an old-fashioned drama bereft of flashy gimmicks and nausea-inducing shaky-cam, you may want to plan on spending the evening of Thursday March 4 at Pacific Film Archive. The Archive will be screening director Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments, a Scandinavian co-production with primary funding supplied […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Locally grown produce
Filmmaking has a long, rich history in the East Bay, extending from the World War I-era silent comedies produced at the Essanay-West Studio in Niles (now incorporated in Fremont) to the present-day animated blockbusters created by Emeryville’s Pixar Studios. Despite the best efforts of the Wayans Brothers, however, Oakland has never had its own film […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: In “North Face” a summit stars
There are plenty of human characters in North Face, a new German-Austrian drama opening this coming weekend at the Shattuck Cinemas. Unfortunately, none of them are particularly interesting characters, but the film does include one larger than life presence that will keep your attention throughout North Face’s two-hour running time: Switzerland’s Eiger Mountain. Previously Clint […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: “Terribly Happy” is awfully good
Kim Bodnia in "Terribly Happy" There’s a new Danish film coming to town on Friday, and it’s the best film I’ve seen so far this year. Terribly Happy tells the tale of Copenhagen copper Robert (Jakob Cedergren, looking a bit like a young Donald Sutherland), reassigned after a bitter divorce and a nervous breakdown to […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: A good trailer is hard to find
Do filmmakers and studios pay enough attention to the humble preview? Trailers have only a few minutes in which to pitch their product, but all too frequently they consist of hastily cobbled together collections of off-cuts. (I’ve seen countless previews featuring scenes or shots that ultimately didn’t appear in the movie.) Often they give away […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Bettany slums, Bridges sings
Some intriguing smaller pictures opened in Berkeley this past weekend, giving moviegoers ample opportunity to sample something a little more refined than, for example, the new wide-release apocalyptic thriller Legion. Truth be told, though, I’m probably going to check out Legion at some point (it’s currently playing at the UA Berkeley 7). For those of us who […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Gilliam’s still got it
Just another sight you'll see on the streets of Terry Gilliam's London After the tempered enthusiasm I offered it last week, I’m delighted to report that Terry Gilliam’s latest film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is the director’s best in ages. This comes as something of a relief after his two previous misfires—the off-kilter The […]
