World Cinema

With a dozen or more films opening every weekend in L.A., you might assume we get the best of the best, yet a surprising amount of top-flight world cinema never gets a full theatrical run here. Even the films of well-known directors such as Tsai Ming-liang ("What Time Is It There?") are increasingly limited to festival stopovers. The filmmaker's dreamlike "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" debuted at Venice in 2006 and played the Los Angeles Film Festival in June this year, but that was it.

"THE New World," Terrence Malick's sweeping interpretation of the Pocahontas/John Smith story, will raise the curtain on the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Jan. 5. The famously private Malick isn't expected to attend, but Q'orianka Kilcher, who plays the Native American princess, will be there. It's not clear whether she will be joined by Colin Farrell, who plays Smith. He checked into rehab recently.

Look at the lineup for AFI Fest, which gets underway in Hollywood on Thursday, and you'll find a handful of award season hopefuls. It's a list that includes "The Artist," a black-and-white silent movie paying homage to the beginnings of cinema's Golden Age; "My Week With Marilyn," in which Michelle Williams takes on tragic icon Marilyn Monroe; and "Shame," an NC-17 rated film about a sex addict played by Michael Fassbender. While none of those movies has opened in theaters, they have all unspooled at high-profile festivals earlier in the year including in Cannes, Toronto and New York.

I usually try to avoid getting caught up in criticism of year-end 10-best film lists. But then you had to go and publish the myopic letter from Jim Davis of Signal Hill that slammed reviewer Kevin Thomas, yet ended so tellingly with the comment that it possibly "needs to be explained for those of us like myself who don't quite get it" (Letters, Jan. 5). Year in and year out, my friends and I look forward to the insightful reviews of Kevin Thomas. Much like Charles Champlin in earlier days, Thomas loves film and his remarks always come from a place that reflects that fondness.

Tonino Guerra, an internationally renowned Italian screenwriter who collaborated with Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and other greats of Italian and world cinema on films such as Fellini's "Amarcord" and Antonioni's "L'Avventura" and "Blow-Up," has died. He was 92. Guerra died Wednesday at his home in Santarcangelo di Romagna, in northern Italy, according to an announcement on the Tonino Guerra Cultural Assn. website. A poet, novelist and former schoolteacher, Guerra began his screenwriting career in Rome in the mid-1950s.

This year's international film festival circuit has been a showcase for South Korean cinema, with a handful of major filmmakers delivering new works alongside first-time directors making notable debuts. AFI Fest, which kicked off Thursday in Hollywood, spotlights six films from this wave. In the festival's World Cinema section are "Hahaha" (a prize winner at Cannes) and "Oki's Movie," two films by Hong Sang-soo, known for his candid explorations of the complexities of modern everyday life.

Martin Scorsese's superb, monumental "My Voyage to Italy" began in his parents' Little Italy living room in the late '40s when his Sicilian immigrant family gathered around its new TV on Friday nights to watch Italian movies. He tells us that were it not for this weekly ritual, which started when Scorsese was 7 and already an avid moviegoer, he would have been "a very different person and a very different filmmaker."