(Above: Kate Winslet and Philip Kaufman on the set of Quills.)
By Richard von Busack
San Francisco-based film director Philip Kaufman goes to the Silicon Valley film festival Cinequest this March 9 to discuss his life and …

by Richard von Busack
(Plays Feb 21-23 in Palo Alto, California at the Stanford Theatre.)
Hamlet is famous for a scene of a conversation between a man and a skull. (The skull says nothing but it has …

by Richard von Busack
Filmed on the streets of Teheran, in defiance of “The Committee,” Iran’s morals police, Hossein Keshavarz’ unauthorized film Dog Sweat has been playing the world film festival circuit playing this Thursday in …

By Richard von Busack
HAYAO MIYAZAKI is in his 70s now. He supervised and co-wrote The Secret World of Arrietty, a Japanese animated version of the children’s tale The Borrowers. Hiromasa Yonebayashi is credited as the …

by Richard von Busack
THE MOLDINESS of the 1950s musical plot of Chico & Rita is mitigated a little by stirring, even lavish, animated recreations of mid-20th-century Havana and New York City, as seen from convertible …

by Richard von Busack
ANOTHER BRILLIANT movie from the land of brilliant movies, Iran’s A Separation unfolds in layers, with a secret revealed in the last 20 minutes.
There isn’t a lead actor per se; the cast …

(Showtimes and tickets here)
By Richard von Busack
The heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen, African-Americans who fought and died for a nation that treated them as second-class citizens, will never be forgot. The movie Red Tails, however…forget …

by Richard von Busack
STEPHEN DALDRY’S film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (ticket info here)  like Jonathan Safran Foer’s source novel, concerns a child’s act of denial about Sept. 11. He ultimately reverses time’s arrow through …

by Richard von Busack
More adventures of the Elric brothers, blasted by the power of alchemy, restored somewhat by metal prosthetics. One is the intrepid, golden-eyed Ed, who sacrificed his arm to keep his Al alive …

by Richard von Busack
AFTER THE American Civil War, politicians used to make hay by reminding the crowd of Confederate atrocities. “Waving the bloody shirt” was the expression. Whatever the Bosnian word for “shirt” is, director/writer …