This week we bring you Big Screen Berkeley with a difference — a chance to test your knowledge of movies, movie stars and movie locations with a Berkeley connection. Berkeleyside film writer John Seal has crafted a list of 20 tricky questions for all film or quiz buffs out there. The person with the most […]
Movies
Posted inArts
Crooner Eddie Fisher dies in Berkeley
Eddie Fisher, the 1950s singer whose career was overshadowed by his marriages to Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, died in Berkeley on Wednesday, according to new reports. Fisher, 82, died as a result of complications from hip surgery, his daughter Tricia Leigh Fisher, told the Associated Press. When his other daughter, Carrie Fisher, was performing […]
Posted inArts
Berkeley boys aim to be web sensation
Why would two 26-year old Berkeley natives, one a graduate from Yale, the other from Harvard, give up their cushy desk jobs to train to be boxers? To reinvent web television, of course. On September 21, Nate Houghteling and Kai Hasson, who were born and raised in Berkeley, debuted an interactive web documentary series called […]
Posted inArts
Made in Berkeley: The Assassination of Richard Nixon
Sean Penn about to board his flight in The Assassination of Richard Nixon This is the fourth post in an occasional series by John Seal on movies made in Berkeley. The other movies reviewed in the series are: “Changes”; “Harold and Maude”; and “Tear Gas and Law Enforcement”. Berkeley has a well-earned reputation as a hotbed of […]
Posted inArts, Schools
Documentary maker Frederick Wiseman is on campus
Frederick Wiseman, who is shooting a film about UC Berkeley. Photo: Peg Skorpinski. Renowned documentary maker Frederick Wiseman is making his 39th film and it’s going to be all about the university in our midst. The Boston-based director began shooting on the UC Berkeley campus last month, according to Barry Bergman writing in UC Berkeley News. With […]
Posted inArts
Big Screen Berkeley: The Sicilian Girl
Young Rita (Miriana Faja) sees too much in "The Sicilian Girl". The writhing tentacles of the Cosa Nostra have been catnip for filmmakers in both the United States and Italy for many years. But is the gangster film beginning to lose a little juice? Has the last drop of drama finally been wrung from the […]
Posted inArts, Events
Uncovering scraper bikes in West Berkeley
Emauj Roos, Gianni Brown, Freddie Leary, Markez Robinson and Faheem Cokes. When West Berkeley’s Church Without Walls got a small grant from the San Francisco Foundation, the idea was to paint a mural. But when that project fell through, the church tried to give the $2,000 back. “Do something artsy in West Berkeley,” was the […]
Posted inArts
Berkeley director’s film debuts in Toronto
Independent filmmaking turns up all sorts of unlikely combinations, but Little Sister (Mei Mei) by Berkeley-based director Richard Bowen may be one of the more unusual. It tells the Cinderella story — but based on the Chinese original. Bowen shot the film in China, where he was the only Westerner on set. Financing comes from […]
Posted inArts
Big Screen Berkeley: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector
A bewigged Phil Spector shares screen time with John Lennon's famous white piano in The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector. Phil Spector is a musical genius. He’s also an egomaniac who compares himself favorably to Michelangelo, Galileo and Da Vinci, a recluse with a penchant for firearms, and an inmate in Corcoran State Prison, […]
Posted inArts
Big Screen Berkeley: In a Lonely Place
Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place It’s no secret that actors aren’t always acknowledged by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their best work. Take for example Humphrey Bogart: one of America’s finest screen actors of the mid-twentieth century, Bogart didn’t win an Oscar until his late career […]
Posted inArts
Meet the director and actors of White Wedding movie
Tonight, Lot 68 Lounge at the Shattuck Cinemas movie theater will hold a film release party for South African comedy White Wedding, with the movie’s director Jann Turner, and actors-co-producers Kenneth Nkosi and Rapulana Seiphemo in attendance. The Lot 68 bar will be open for drinks and complimentary appetizers, and there’s the chance to win […]
Posted inArts
Big Screen Berkeley: The Expendables
Jason Statham displays his range in The Expendables Every now and then I indulge myself with a good old-fashioned popcorn movie. Man cannot live on foreign films, documentaries, and Gus Van Sant movies alone after all, and when promotional teasers for The Expendables began inundating the net earlier this year, I knew I’d found my […]