The October 2012 session of Framing Pictures is available for online viewing at http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3411205 
      Robert Horton, Bruce Reid, and I talk about Shirley Clarke's 1961 Underground movie The Connection, Ted Kotcheff's Aussie landmark Wake in Fright, the Universal Pictures centenary, and the mystique of celluloid vs. digital. This will not be on the exam.

Back in September, Kathleen and I and Framing Pictures interlocutor Bruce Reid were entranced by two moments when the movies changed: the shift from silents to talkies in 1928-29, as refracted through the adventurous work of little-known director Paul Fejos; and 1958, when Otto Preminger's Bonjour, Tristesse redefined CinemaScope as a format for subtlety and ambiguity and helped inspire the French New Wave.

It's mean season again—a Presidential election year with inanity in full cry—and time to haul out an old review of a 1986 movie I may never have heard anyone speak of in the years since, or seen programmed on TV. There was a DVD release, so if you're curious, maybe you can do something about it. (These days I kinda like Richard Gere. Yes, and moreover I think Robert Pattinson is quite good in Cosmopolis. Is my life coming unstuck or what?) —RTJ

Last Friday's session turned out to be Murphyless and "action"less: Kathleen was laid up with a bum knee, and so Robert Horton, Bruce Reid, and I tabled the projected portion of the talk on Andre De Toth's Ramrod, Otto Preminger's River of No Return, et al. which KAM was jazzed to spearhead. Later ... say, when the enterprising Olive digital distribution outfit brings out Ramrod on disk....
      Meanwhile, the July 13 installment is now up in the "An Evening With..." section of The Seattle Channel's website. Kathleen's in that one: http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3411202  -RTJ

More than one film critic has already said, "We all owe Andrew Sarris everything." This invaluable writer, lifelong lover of movies, and irreplaceable man died Wednesday, June 21, at the age of 83. To write about his importance and influence is to be forced into using, in News publisher Mike Dillon's phrase, "the vertical pronoun." That is to say, it's impossible not to keep coming back to "I," "I," "I"—because any film critic worthy of the name has had Andrew Sarris as spiritual companion while watching every film, and writing every consideration of same. Kathleen and I were also blessed to have him and his lovely and eloquent wife Molly Haskell as personal friends. We shall all miss him terribly. Then again, we'll never be without him, because his words and teaching and example shine as they have for the past half-century, and will continue to shine wherever movies matter.
      Clicking "Read More" will get you to Kathleen's tribute she wrote for inclusion in the 2001 Festschrift Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic. And clicking the following URL will bring you a definitive portrait by Andrew's good friend and most stellar pupil, Time film critic and former Film Comment editor Richard Corliss: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/06/21/remembering-andrew-sarris-a-great-american-film-critic/

Quite by chance, I recently came upon an item in the 49th issue of the Seattle Film Society's journal Movietone News, published in April 1976, which anticipated the launch of something quaintly termed the "First Seattle Festival of International Films." It makes for nostalgic and perhaps instructive reading. Were there as many estimable films in that inaugural, 19-film, two-and-a-half-week event as in any recent season of SIFF? Discuss amongst yourselves. Photo at left is from the Opening Night film The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, with Angela Winkler. —RTJ

"I never know how each film will end. When I'm filming, I shoot each scene as if it were a short film. It's only when I edit that I worry about the narrative. My objective is to tell a story, but that's the final thing I do."
      Writer-director André Téchiné said that sometime in the mid-Nineties, but I'd enjoy thinking he was moved to these remarks by his 2011 film Unforgivable (Impardonnables).

Among the best reasons for feeling optimistic about the expanded reach of SIFF Cinema—the new facilities at Seattle Center and the acquisition of the three Uptown screens nearby—is that it increases Seattleites' chances of getting access to institutional film programming from elsewhere in the movie universe. Case in point: the imminent sampling of "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema," due this Friday through Sunday. The crown jewel of it is the restoration of Children of Paradise, with Jean-Louis Barrault (pictured here).

How many generations of little girls, tired of playing with dollhouses, have let their imaginations run wild with Robin Hood, Arthur, Huckleberry Finn and all the other adventurous boys in the pantheon of heroic questers? Go ask Alice, the rare bird who, passing through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, embarked on a full-fledged heroine’s journey. She’d likely tell you that Luke Skywalker, Frodo and Harry Potter may have benefited from distaff sidekicks and allies, but in the end the big myth, the sweet dream, had their names on it.

Hollywood's annual prize day is a half-week away, and it can't come too soon. We're in another of those seasons when the winner of the top Oscars seems a lock, and that puts a bit of a damper on things even if you agree with the Academy's likely choice. Agree, or at least have come to look fondly on the prospect.