ENTERTAINMENT
April 23, 2014 | By Saba Hamedy
Tumultuous marriages, father-son relationships and film censorship are just three of the themes explored in the 12 Iranian films featured at this year's UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema. Beginning Thursday, the series will show the films at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood Village through May 14. Four of the screenings will be accompanied by Q&As with the movies' directors. Iranian cinema is "one of the most exciting on Earth," said Paul Malcolm, programmer at UCLA's Film & Television Archive, which presents more than 200 professionally curated public screenings each year.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 21, 2014 | By Michael Miller and Rhea Mahbubani
Fourteen years ago, a group of movie lovers banded together to organize the first Newport Beach Film Festival. For the opening-night attraction at Fashion Island, they chose "Sunset Blvd.," the 1950 Billy Wilder drama which famously features a faded Hollywood actress snapping, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small!" As co-founder Todd Quartararo fretted outside the Edwards Big Newport 6 theater before showtime, though, he was more concerned about the size of the crowd than the size of the pictures.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 18, 2014 | By Steven Zeitchik
The Cannes Film Festival can certainly welcome, and boost, movies that aim to be Academy Awards players - the festival has premiered at least one best picture nominee in four of the last five years, including "Nebraska" in 2013. But as it made clear when it announced this year's official selection Thursday, Cannes also operates independently from the awards machinery of its late-summer and early-fall counterparts, emphasizing such things as returning directors and dues-paying. As festival director Thierry Fremaux announced this year's selections at a Paris news conference, the returnees were much in evidence.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 15, 2014 | By Steven Zeitchik
NEW YORK - Since it was founded 12 years ago, the Tribeca Film Festival has sometimes swerved between identities like a barfly at happy hour, exuberant but hardly always clear. The festival looks to change that this time around. Tribeca has entered an era in which it hopes the sale last month of a 50% stake to James Dolan's Madison Square Garden Corp. gives it economic stability. It also believes it has finally found a mix of eclectic documentaries, international favorites, well-chosen independent features and even digital experiments to supplant earlier missions, which relied on a kitchen-sink approach to U.S. features or, for a number of years, star-heavy studio premieres.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 15, 2014 | By Oliver Gettell
Loyola High School in Los Angeles will showcase the work of young filmmakers from across the country via a student-run film festival, the first such event in the school's 149-year history, to be held May 17. Open to all U.S. high-school students, the Loyola Film Festival will feature three categories: narrative short, documentary short and action sports. Festival founder Adam Faze, a junior at Loyola, said in an email, "As the oldest high school in Southern California (and being in the entertainment capital of the world)
ENTERTAINMENT
April 11, 2014 | By Susan King
The secrets of Sherwood Forest will be revealed Sunday at the TCM Classic Film Festival's "Academy Conversations: The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Oscar-winning sound designer, editor and mixer Ben Burtt ( “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”) and Oscar-winning visual-effects supervisor Craig Barron (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) will be presenting newly discovered stills, recordings and outtakes to illustrate how Warner Bros.' landmark 1938 Technicolor adventure was brought to life.