A Berkeley based film company is in the final stages of making a documentary about the Bay Area’s urban food movement which features several Berkeley faces. Edible City tells the stories of people responding to the global food crisis in their communities and in their own backyards. It is the work of East Bay Pictures, […]
Movies
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Where’s My DVD? The forgotten Alraune
Hildegard Knef and Erich von Stroheim in Alraune This week, Berkeleyside’s film writer John Seal looks at a movie he recommends you check out on DVD. Think of Erich von Stroheim, and you’ll probably visualize two memorable characters: stiff-collared Captain von Rauffenstein, the aristocratic Prussian officer of Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion (1937), and Max von […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: High and Low
Toshiro Mifune inspects ladies' footwear in High and Low March 23rd marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who died in 1998 at the age of 88. The birthday celebrations have been suitably impressive: almost every feature film he ever made screened on Turner Classic Movies in March, and Pacific […]
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Brad and Angelina in Berkeley
People at the Claremont Hotel apparently kept their cool on Saturday when the world’s hottest celebrity couple appeared in their midst. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their brood of six children spent the afternoon at the Claremont’s pool and health club, according to some members of the club. While Pitt worked out in the exercise […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Breathless
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Breathless. What more is there to be said about Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle)? Probably not a great deal, but there is this: recently restored and re-subtitled, Godard’s loving tribute to Monogram Pictures is getting a theatrical re-release to mark its 50th anniversary. A new print of […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: Metflopolis
Lino Ventura (center right, in overcoat) in Illustrious Corpses By the time this is published, the 15th San Francisco Silent Film Festival will have concluded. So consider this a warning for next year: if you plan on taking public transportation to the Castro Theatre for an evening show, don’t bother going. Last Friday night’s screening […]
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Night Fliers special screening coming to Berkeley
On July 22, the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood is presenting a special screening of the award-winning movie Night Fliers to support the East Bay programs of the Bay Area based LGBTQ family organization Our Family Coalition. The director of the coming-of-age film, Sara St. Martin Lynne, as well as actors from the movie, will attend a […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: [Rec] 2… terrible things happen
Jonathan Mellor (center) in Rec 2 Though horror has always been one of my favorite genres, 2007’s well-reviewed Spanish chiller [Rec] passed me by, probably because it went straight to DVD in the US. A huge hit in its native land, [Rec] was remade in 2008 for subtitle-shy Anglophones as Quarantine (and no, I haven’t […]
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Move over Andy Samberg, Ben Affleck is Berkeley boy
Most Berkeley celebrities are professors, writers and political firebrands. But it turns out that actor Ben Affleck, usually dubbed a Boston native, was born in Berkeley. He moved to Boston when young, but something of the Berkeley spirit seems to have infected him. The photo of Affleck, above, was taken during a discussion on America’s […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Mattei Case
Luigi Squarzina and Gian Maria Volonte in The Mattei Case Francesco Rosi is probably not one of the first names you think of when you hear the words ‘Italian cinema’, but the director—who turns 88 later this year—has created an impressive body of work nonetheless. Beginning Thursday, July 8, Pacific Film Archive’s new series, Modernist […]
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Big Screen Berkeley: The Killer Inside Me
Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck The knives are out for Michael Winterbottom’s latest film, The Killer Inside Me, which opens this coming Friday July 2 at the Shattuck Cinemas. An adaptation of hardboiled novelist Jim Thompson’s most famous work, Winterbottom’s film stands accused of looking kindly upon violence against women, and (worst of all) suggesting […]
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Berkeley Art Museum selects architects for new home
Future site of BAM-PFA. White building is former printing plant. Photo: UC Berkeley. The Berkeley Art Museum-Pacific Film Archive has chosen New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design its new building in downtown Berkeley. The announcement follows a nationwide search which saw ten architecture firms considered for the project. DS+R is tasked with […]