Director Maiwenn on the set of her film Polisse (Photo credit by David Verlant) Copyright Les Productions du Trésor. A Sundance Selects Release Since winning the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Polisse has won two Cesar awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars), screened at numerous festivals worldwide, played to great success (read…)

Going into this year’s Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Sunset Stories was one of the hotly-anticipated features, coming off a world premiere run at South by Southwest and being the feature directorial debut from writer/director/producer Ernesto Foronda (Better Luck Tomorrow). Sunset Stories is the story of May (Monique Gabriela Curnen), a nurse who must (read…)

Alcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide fellowship of over two million men and women, and its impact and influence have permeated innumerable aspects of American and global culture. What’s lesser known is the life and story of Bill W., aka Bill Wilson, who co-founded the organization in an attempt to reclaim his life from alcoholism. The (read…)

Among the many wonderful and unique films showing at the on-going Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Two Shadows stands out as being the first dramatic film to explore the contemporary Cambodian-American experience, and particularly that of the refugees of the Khmer Rouge genocide in the late Seventies, as they continue to search for and (read…)

Having recently premiered at SXSW, Seeking Asian Female came into the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival this weekend with great fanfare, enjoyed two sold-out screenings, and inspired robust Q&As. Seeking Asian Female is the first feature from documentarian Debbie Lum, who wanted to explore the lives of American men with so-called “Yellow Fever” – (read…)

While film festival auditoriums feel at times overrun with bleakness and tragedy, The Crumbles is the ultimate love letter to youthful, rock n’ roll exuberance and a case study of the glory and pitfalls inherent in the pursuit of dreams. The Echo Park indie rock tragicomedy premiered this weekend at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific (read…)

This past weekend found the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in full swing in Los Angeles, Koreatown, and Long Beach. This year’s festival goes through Sunday, May 20th, with an array of remarkable narrative and documentary films being shown. One of the festivals’ standout documentaries is Restoring the Light, the first feature from festival (read…)

Since premiering at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Where Do We Go Now? has become an international hit with audiences and critics alike. First a blockbuster in its native Lebanon, the film went on to show Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival, win the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the (read…)

Individually and collectively, Christina Bailey, Sara Bollwinkel, and Lauren Shera have a long history of writing and recording beautiful music, and bringing their genre-bending and melodic sounds to new audiences across the nation. In 2010, the three ladies (with a little help from band husbands Matt Bailey and Matt Bollwinkel) joined forces to create their (read…)

*Video: all in: the poker movie – openingClick above for clip of All In: The Poker Movie featuring the music of Peitor Angell Composer Peitor Angell is a multi-talented songwriter, musician, producer, arranger, conductor, and engineer. Last year Angell appeared in the documentary This Time, bringing a greater audience to his passion projects with Pat (read…)

Over the course of her prolific 30-year career, writer/director/producer Carol Polakoff earned three daytime Emmy nominations and two awards from the Directors Guild of America. After spending fifteen years working in Paris, Polakoff moved back to the U.S. two years ago and began developing film and TV projects under her Carol Polakoff Productions International banner (read…)

Documentarian Douglas Tirola has had an incredibly diverse career in the film industry, dating back to 1989 as production assistant on When Harry Met Sally. In the decades since, Tirola’s career in numerous aspects of directing, writing, and producing studio and independent films have led him to found 4th Row Films, where he is currently (read…)

Lawrence Kasdan on the “Darling Companions” Set Photo by Wilson Webb, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Over the course of thirty-plus years, the career of Lawrence Kasdan has included co-writing some of the highest-grossing movies of all time (The Empire Strikes Back, The Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark), co-writing and directing (read…)

Documentarians Michael Tucker and Perta Epperlein became well-known within the documentary community upon the 2005 release of their first film, Iraq war documentary Gunner Palace. The film received mainstream press and attention for receiving a “PG-13” rating, despite over forty uses of the infamous f-word. Tucker and Epperlein documented the war from a series of (read…)

Fellag as Bachir Lazhar in Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar (image courtesy of Music Box Films) After receiving an Oscar-nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, playing festivals all over the world including Sundance and Toronto, and winning six Genie awards (Canada’s Oscar equivalent), Monsieur Lazhar is getting a stateside release from Music Box Films, opening April (read…)

Over the course of the last forty years, Tom Russell has evolved into arguably the greatest singer/songwriter currently writing and releasing albums. While many of his contemporaries (Russell is in his mid-sixties) are happy releasing compilations and performing nostalgia tours, Russell redefines Americana music and breaks through new barriers with each album and gig. Some (read…)

As I wrote in my piece about the best films of 2011, Steven Gaydos penned the year’s best screenplay in Road to Nowhere, director Monte Hellman’s (Two-Lane Blacktop) film-within-a-film-within-a-film story of intrigue, lust, obsession, and murder. Road to Nowhere combines the story of filmmaker Mitchell Haven’s (Tygh Runyan) creative crisis and film set torn asunder (read…)

Daniel Nettheim filming The Hunter – Photo by Matt Nettheim In Daniel Nettheim’s character drama/thriller The Hunter, Willem Dafoe stars as a professional hunter hired by a shady biotech concern to track, kill and extract the DNA of a Tasmanian tiger, an animal believed to have gone extinct 80 years ago but unverified sightings of (read…)

Jon Shenk on location with President Mohamed Nasheed – Photo by Lincoln Else “Observational documentary filmmaking is kind of like hunting when you’re really hungry. You’re never satisfied.” – Documentarian Jon Shenk “It won’t be any good to have a democracy if we don’t have a country.” – Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed The Island President (read…)

Whit Stillman on the set of Damsels in Distress “One of the beautiful parts of doing Metropolitan…the one subject that certain film critics and film journalists do not consider themselves experts in, it’s debutante parties. They’re experts on absolutely everything else in creation, except for debutante parties. So they allowed us to make a film (read…)

Filmmaker David Brooks’ debut film, ATM, has been making the rounds on Video-On-Demand via the Independent Film Channel before its theatrical release Friday, April 6th.  ATM follows young professionals David (Brian Geraghty), Emily (Alice Eve), and Corey (Josh Peck) on a late-night run into an ATM vestibule in the middle of a desolate parking lot. (read…)

Benjamin Mee and Matt Damon Upon its release this past Christmas, We Bought a Zoo found and moved an audience, despite not doing blockbuster numbers at the Box Office (read my review of the film here). The latest film from Oscar-winning filmmaker Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) hits shelves on Blu-ray and DVD on April 3rd. (read…)

Director Lee Hirsch and Alex Libby “Some of the poorest schools in this country have some of the best school climates. It’s not money. It’s commitment. It’s care. It’s ‘Do we value social and emotional learning as much as we do hard numbers testing?’” – Lee Hirsch A tragic increase in suicide rates among kids, (read…)

Listening to the early recordings of the heavy metal band Pentagram, songs including “Forever My Queen,” “Earth Flight,” and “Last Days Here,” it’s easy to see why their small but devoted fan base considers them to have been one of the best bands of the early seventies. Their raw recordings manage to feel angrier than (read…)

[Be sure also to check out my review of the film as well as Jackson's interview with the film's co-composer Joseph Trapanese] Following an incredible reception at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival The Raid: Redemption has been picked up for distribution for Sony Pictures Classics, screened at Sundance, and already become a cult phenomenon before (read…)

While Joseph Trapanese may be best-known for his work arranging and orchestrating the  TRON: Legacy score written by Daft Punk, his prolific body of work includes various aspects of composing, arranging, and mixing music for numerous films, albums, web series, TV shows, concerts, recitals, plays, and sporting events. Trapanese recently collaborated with Mike Shinoda of (read…)

Belgium’s two-time Palme d’Or-winning brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are back with their latest film, The Kid with a Bike which opens in the US on March 16th. It tells the story of a boy who is abandoned by his father (Jeremie Renier), but offered a chance at staying out of an orphanage by a (read…)

Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning film The Descendants hits shelves Tuesday, March 13 on Blu-ray and DVD. The eponymous novel upon which the film is based was written with such a deft literary hand that it was easy to imagine it being turned into such a bittersweet and acclaimed film. It’s that same quiet brilliance felt throughout (read…)

Director of photography Aaron Phillips and director Lucy Walker filming The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom [Editor’s Note: While The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom did not ultimately win the Oscar for documentary short, it was clearly the class of the field. Jackson previously interviewed Ms. Walker for Waste Land which was my pick for (read…)

Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, directors of SOUND OF NOISE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. Photo credit: Nils Bergendal In 2001, Swedish filmmakers Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson made the short film Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers, which won over thirty awards at film festivals around the (read…)