HOLEHEAD 2014—BLOODY KNUCKLES (2014)

It's difficult not to get heavy-handed with the puns when writing about Matt O'Mahoney's debut feature Bloody Knuckles (2014) [IMDb / Facebook], which boasted its world premiere at Fantasia in their newly-launched Underground sidebar. Bloody Knuckles has since gained fans at a handful of genre festivals on both sides of the Atlantic. Did I mention it was shot digitally?Bloody Knuckles arrives to San Francisco as the first of three opening night entries for the 11th edition of IndieFest's Another Hole in the Head Film Festival (Holehead). With an indirect tip of the hat to San Francisco's C

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AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)—A Few Evening Class Questions for Screenwriter Jason Hall

Yet another eleventh hour entry in this year's Oscars® race is American Sniper (2014), directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, decorated United States Navy SEAL and the most lethal sniper in American military history. Based on Kyle's autobiography of the same name, American Sniper's screenplay was written by Jason Hall, a struggling television actor who has since become one of Hollywood's up-and-coming screenwriters.When Hall first approached Chris Kyle about adapting his bestselling autobiography into a film, Kyle was "a little prickly at first", his "eyes fill

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SELMA (2014)—Q&A With Director Ava DuVernay, Actor David Oyelowo, and Producers Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner & Jeremy Kleiner

On Sunday, November 16, 2014, I attended an advance screening of Ava DuVernay's Selma (2014) at the Castro Theatre, co-presented by Paramount Studios and the San Francisco Film Society. Only the second screening of the film after its celebrated premiere the week before at AFI Fest, Selma is an eleventh hour entry in the Oscars® race with projected nominations for its director (only four other women have ever been nominated in this category), its lead actor, David Oyelowo, in the role of Dr. Martin Luther King, and its supporting actors Tom Wilkinson (as President Lyndon Baines Johnson) and O

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THE WAY HE LOOKS / HOJE EU QUERO VOLTAR SOZINHO (2014)—Frameline Q&A With Daniel Ribeiro

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."—Antoine St. Exupery, The Little Prince.Brazilian writer / director / producer Daniel Ribeiro is no stranger to Frameline. In 2008, he screened his first short film Cafe Com Leite (You, Me, Him) and followed up in 2010 with Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho, which was received so favorably that it inspired him to develop the short into a full feature, Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (The Way He Looks, 2014) [Wikipedia / Facebook], his entry for Frameline's 38th edition earlier this year. This tender comi

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SFFS: FALL SEASON 2014—Michael Hawley Previews the Line-up

The San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) Fall Season has revamped itself into a trio of mini-festivals for 2014 and will hold court at San Francisco's 114-year-old Vogue Theatre over three consecutive November weekends. The three events—French Cinema Now (Nov. 6-9), Hong Kong Cinema (Nov. 14-16), and New Italian Cinema (Nov. 19-23)—feature a healthy mix of 2014 festival breakouts, mainstream hits and artsy obscurities, along with a handful of revivals, documentaries and animated features. To boot, each harbors a movie competing in this year's Oscar® race for Best Foreign Language Film. Here's

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FORCE MAJEURE (2014)

As Michael Hawley synopsized in his Evening Class preview for the recent 37th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival, a prize-winner from Cannes' Un Certain Regard sidebar, "Sweden's satiric Force Majeure lampoons contemporary notions of masculinity and took home the sidebar's jury prize. It traces the repercussions faced by a husband and father after he initially abandons his family during a ski resort avalanche. Director Ruben Öslund's previous film was the excruciating (in a good way) bullying treatise Play." Force Majeure has since screened in the Special Presentations sidebar at the

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