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2009 CIFF: A Frozen Flower (Ssang-hwa-jeom, 2008)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
A Frozen Flower (Ssang-hwa-jeom, 2008)
Director: Yu Ha
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Movie buffs with any sense at all don’t expect historical dramas to offer much in the way of, well, history. An overwhelming number of historical dramas offer audiences an escape from the drab and dreary present into the pageantry and intrigues of defunct monarchies, the noble battles of knights in armor, and the bucolic gentility of country living. A Frozen Flower, a King ...
2009 CIFF: Looking for Eric (2009)/The Castle (1997)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival /
Double Bill Blogathon 2
Looking for Eric (2009)/The Castle (1997)
Directors: Ken Loach/Rob Sitch
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Gautam Valluri’s Double Bill Blogathon II is going on this week at The Broken Projector. So is my coverage of the 2009 CIFF. I promised Gautam that if I could find a good double bill among the festival offerings, I’d participate in his blogathon, which I enjoyed so much the ...
THE 45TH ANNUAL CHICAGO FILM FESTIVAL
Antagony & Ecstasy —
CIFF '09 starts tomorrow (full festival info here ), and while it is as always not so cool as the bigger fests in Europe and Toronto, there's more to be excited about, in my vaguely-educated opinion, than there was last year. So everyone can follow along at home, here's the list of everything I'll be going to this year, barring the unavoidable last-minute cancellations: 10/9 ...
2009 CIFF: The Athlete (Atletu, 2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
The Athlete (Atletu, 2009)
Directors/Screenwriters: Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew
By Marilyn Ferdinand
This Sunday, October 11, the annual running of the Chicago Marathon will take place. Part of the route surrounds the theatre where the CIFF films are being shown, which will make it very difficult for moviegoers to navigate their way to any screenings before 5 p.m. (just another reason we shouldn’t have gotten the 2016 Olympics—bad handling of multiple ...
2009 CIFF: About Elly (Darbareye Elly, 2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
About Elly (Darbareye Elly, 2009)
Director/Screenwriter: Asghar Farhadi
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Asghar Farhadi, whose film Fireworks Wednesday won the Gold Hugo at the 2006 CIFF, is back again with another strong contender for that top prize. About Elly sets up a predictable, even clichéd conflict and smartly, compellingly shows the many ways people have of reacting and coping with it. Such an examination has a faint, but insistent connection ...
2009 CIFF: Beyond Ipanema (2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
Beyond Ipanema (2009)
Coproducer/Director: Guto Barra
Coproducer/Music Director: Béco Dranoff
By Marilyn Ferdinand
If you thought Brazilian music in America started with Carmen Miranda and ended with Antonio Carlos Jobim—not far from my previous belief, though I go as current as Flora Purim and Airto—Beyond Ipanema is just the pulsing primer for you. David Byrne, Devendra Banhart, M.I.A., Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, Seu ...
2009 CIFF: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot, 2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot, 2009)
Directors: Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Film history is littered with the carcasses of unfinished films, scraps of film tests, legendary ideas that never got off the ground. Among them, the aborted Inferno, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s attempt at trying to make a film in the style of the Nouvelle Vague, is one of the more notorious. Clouzot, scorned by the ...
2009 CIFF: Chicago Overcoat (2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
Chicago Overcoat (2009)
Director: Brian Caunter
By Marilyn Ferdinand
On Sunday, as the hubby and I were on our way into the AMC theatre for the day’s films, I spotted a weathered, red-haired man standing on the sunshine-filled sidewalk talking to some people. “Isn’t that the guy we saw last night in Chicago Overcoat, the detective?” I asked. Sure enough, it was. We waited patiently for said actor—Danny Goldring—to finish his conversation and then ...
2009 CIFF: Girls on the Wall (2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
Girls on the Wall (2009)
Director: Heather Ross
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Those of us who love the movies do so for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons I love them is that they tell us the stories of our lives. Depending on mood, we might want to get a thrill from an action-adventure film or feel the touch of love from a romance. But stories do more than evoke feelings we want to have; they also release feelings we do not want to have. When a film ...
2009 CIFF: A Place of One's Own (2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
A Place of One’s Own (Yi Shi Zhi De, 2009)
Director: Lou Yi-an
By Marilyn Ferdinand
At last year’s CIFF, among the many embarrassingly dumb questions director Mike Leigh had to field in the Q&A; following the screening of Happy-Go-Lucky was one about why the characters in his films always seem to be crammed into tiny living quarters. Leigh growled that the question could only have come from an American, with our sense of limitless space. Britain, he ...
2009 CIFF: Backyard (El traspatio, 2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
Backyard (El traspatio, 2009)
Director: Carlos Carrera
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Radio commentator Peralta (Joaquín Cosio) tells his listeners in the greater Ciudad Juárez-El Paso, Texas area the facts about their home. It is the site of 60,000 legal border crossings a day as goods and cheap labor head north to American markets and American boys go south looking to lose their virginity among “our world-famous sex workers.” Ciudad Juárez also is a mecca for ...
A Note from the Chicago: I Came for Communism but Kanikôsen Just Gave Me Crabs Instead
Film Experience Blog —
... , posting a note from beneath the mountains of work I've been buried under for the past two months or so. As you may know, the Chicago International Film Festival is currently taking place in the Windy City. While I had been resigned to skipping it entirely this year, last night I was compelled to ignore my obligations and take in a Sunday night screening of ...
CIFF 2009: A Single Man (2009)
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
A Single Man (2009)
Director/Screenwriter: Tom Ford
By Marilyn Ferdinand
A lot has been made about superstar fashion designer Tom Ford entering the movie business with his own production company, Fade to Black. Now we have Fade to Black’s first film and Ford’s directorial debut, an adaptation of the 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel A Single Man. Although Ford costumed Colin Firth, who plays the title character George Falconer, and his eye for ...
cinemadaily | Despite “Second City Syndrome,” Chicago Fest Prevails
indieWIRE Recent —
The awards may have already been handed out, but the 45th Chicago International Film Festival doesn’t officially wrap until tomorrow. Catch up with the coverage coming out of the festival:“For its trouble, CIFF has always struggled with the second-city syndrome that swept through Daley Plaza last Friday,” notes ...
CIFF 2009: What I Did for Love
Ferdy on Films, etc. —
2009 Chicago International Film Festival
What I Did for Love
By Marilyn Ferdinand
Last night, finally free to watch whatever movie I wanted, I popped in Every Little Step, a 2008 documentary about casting the 2006 Broadway remounting of that singular sensation A Chorus Line. The film reminds us of the very hard work it is to be a triple threat on Broadway and then to beat out 8,000 people for one role. The song that exemplifies the dedication this kind of career takes is “What I Did for ...
