Omid Abtahi in Ocean of Pearls Sarab Singh Neelam’s Ocean of Pearls, a drama about traditional (Sikh) values coming into conflict with life in 21st-century North America, opens exclusively in the Los Angeles area on Friday, December 18, at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. Director Neelam will take part in a q&a following the 7pm shows on Friday, December 18, and Saturday, December 19. According to the Ocean of Pearls press release, Neelam is the first Sikh director in American Cinema to make a film with Sikh lead actors. Written by Neelam and V. Prasad, Ocean of Pearls follows a young Toronto-based Sikh doctor — turban and long hair and all — whose life is upended following [...]

Julie Harris, Claire Bloom in The Haunting (top); The Village People in Can’t Stop the Music (bottom) "Out at the Pictures" at London’s bfi Southbank: Robert Wise’s horror-house classic The Haunting (1963), starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn Nancy Walker’s costly box-office disaster Can’t Stop the Music (1980), starring a rollerblading Steve Guttenberg (in some tight, tight shorts that would get him arrested today for indecent underexposure), Valerie Perrine, and The Village People The Haunting is one the best horror movies ever made. Julie Harris is sensational, and Claire Bloom is almost as good in a less showy role — a Lesbian. Now, who’s that knocking...

A digitally restored version of Remember the Night, the 1940 classic written by Preston Sturges, directed by Mitchell Leisen, and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, is one of Turner Classic Movies‘ Christmas presentations this December. Remember the Night will air several times throughout the month, including on Christmas Eve at 5 p.m. (PT). “It’s one of those quirky twists of fate that a film as exceptional as Remember the Night has been so overlooked when it comes to great Christmas movies,” TCM host Robert Osborne was quoted as saying. “It’s our hope at TCM that our special Christmas Eve showing of this holiday gem, now fully remastered, will help give it a much-deserved new...

Sandra Bullock, the star of the year-end sleeper hit The Blind Side, will receive the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s American Riviera Award on Friday, February 5, 2010. Among Bullock’s credits are Love Potion No. 9, While You Were Sleeping, Practical Magic, Miss Congeniality, The Net, A Time to Kill, 28 Days, Murder By Numbers, The Lake House, the Academy Award winner Crash, the recent hit The Proposal, and the recent flop All About Steve. As per the SBFF’s website, the American Riviera Award, sponsored by Chopin Vodka, "was established to recognize an actor who has had a strong influence on American Cinema." Past recipients include: Mickey Rourke (09), Tommy Lee Jones (08), Forest Whitaker...

2009 Asian Festival of 1st Films Awards 2009 Asian Festival of 1st Films: Singapore, Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 2009 � Kazuko Yoshiyuki in Looking for Anne, the story of a young woman looking for the wartime lover of her grandmother on Canada’s Prince Edward Island, the setting of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of the Green Gables. � Best Film: Looking for Anne Takako Miyahira Best Documentary: Superman of Malegaon Faiza Ahmad Khan Best Producer: For Real Sona Jain Best Director: Looking for Anne Takako Miyahira Best Director of Documentary: Addicted in Afghanistan Jawed Taiman and Superman of Malegaon Faiza Ahmad Khan Best Male Actor: For Real Sriharsh Sharma Churai Best Female Actor: For Real Zoya S...

2009 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 2009 Los Angeles Film Critics winners: Dec. 12, 2009 � Carey Mulligan, Dominic Cooper in An Education � Nine, The Lovely Bones, Avatar, and The Blind Side may all be Oscar possibilities, but I don’t believe they have a chance with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association — at least not when it comes to the top categories. Much more likely winners come next Dec. 12 are those that have already been doing well elsewhere: Jason Reitman’s socially conscious comedy-drama Up in the Air, Clint Eastwood’s nation-building drama Invictus, Lone Scherfig’s virginity-on-the-go drama An Education, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, and Lee...

San Francisco is a town of many pleasant associations. To start, there’s sourdough bread, Pier 7, 826 Valencia, the Embarcadero, fog, Keith Hufnagel, Barry McGee, burritos, bridges, hills, bookstores, FTC, Amoeba, and so forth. The list goes on. That’s why it’s particularly exciting that Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly comes to us in the form of [...]

After a one-week engagement at The Auteurs', this soon-to-be-concluded feature returns to its home. (Now's as good a time as any to beg, once again, any readers with a line on Appointment To Danger to help me out if they...

Examining a Marc Bell drawing is like gaining entry into the mind of a psychotically talented and slightly autistic doodle-machine. It’s art that’s fun to look at but funner to snuggle up with, which is why we’re happy that the Vancouver artist has released a book of comics and artwork on drawn and quarterly. Hot [...]