FilmBlogGroupHug Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Time once again to check in on to see what's going on with some of our favorite film blogs ... and by the bye, folks -- if you have a film blog that I don't know about, please drop me a line and point me to it. I love, love, love my fave film blog reads, but, like any good addict, I just can't get enough, so bring on your film blogs! Drop me a line at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com ...

It's technically not a blog, I suppose, but MCN Voices has an excellent piece up by screenwriter Larry Gross on Ingmar Bergman, in which he analyzes the director's genius and influence. If you want to learn more about Bergman, you can check out the always excellent Senses of Cinema's Great Directors piece on the auteur. While you're over there, you can read up on the other directors Gross mentions in his Bergman piece -- filmmaking greats from Fellini to Cuaron to Welles to Altman -- and another recently deceased filmmaking legend, Michelangelo Antonioni, who passed away July 30 at the age of 94. For even more on both Bergman and Antonioni, check out Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips very excellent piece on both directors on his Talking Pictures blog, and Roger Ebert, who we're ever so glad to see back in action, with his own tribute to Bergman.

More group-hugging action after the jump ...

It's time to take a little peek around the world of indie film sites and see what other folks are talking about. We're going to be posting a regular Indie Film Blog Group Hug. Do you have a blog where you're writing about indie films, foreign films or docs? Are you an indie filmmaker with a site up about your film that you'd like us to take a look at? Run a little film fest you want to get the word out on? Feel free to send your indie film links, hot tips and other fun stuff to me at kim (at) cinematical (dot) com.

And now, for this week's Group Hug:

• Over at Deep Structure, Christopher John Stack is writing about his film, An Exercise in Vigilance, which will screen at the Action on Film International Film Festival in Long Beach, CA, which apparently runs to coincide with a big martial arts fest -- so all you action film fans who live in that area might want to check it out. An Exercise in Vigilance screens at the fest at theater 4, 5:30PM on Sunday. And just to be really nice and throw other filmmakers some love, Stack even has a breakdown of the sched for you right there on his site. Congrats to Stack on his film getting into the fest.
• Movie City Indie's Ray Pride has a fasciYnating interview up with filmmaker Usama Alshaibi, who in 2004 returned to his native Iraq to shoot a documentary titled Nice Bombs, which won a best doc prize at the 2006 Chicago Underground Film Festival.
• DVD Panache, which runs a regular bit called "Friday Screen Test," wherein various film bloggers are asked all sorts of questions -- kind a True Confessions for film geeks -- put my fave Amsterdam-based film blogger, Peet Gelderblom, to the test. What's Peet like when his feet are put to the fire? Well, he once saw Famke Jenssen's sister in her underwear, so I guess that makes him just one degree removed from Famke herself. Check it out, and if you don't read Peet's blog, Lost in Negative Space, already, hunker down with some french fries with mayo to give you that "Amsterdam feeling" and check him out.
• You gotta love a film site that calls itself Burbanked: All the Smug of Hollywood, in a Much Less Desirable Location. Alan Lopuszynski, who runs the site, posits the question: Can one scene make a movie a classic?
• Another of my regular blog reads, Strange Culture, almost always has something intriguing to check out. This week, RC has a post up about torture as it relates to -- ahem -- "unorthodox" and secret torture used by government officials in interrogations. How does this relate to film? Rendition, an upcoming film due out in October, starring a pretty impressive cast including Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhall, Alan Arkin and Peter Saarsgard. Check it out.
• Peter Nellhaus has a blog called Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee, where he writes about all kinds of interesting film-related stuff. Most recently, Peter has a great little DVD review of the 1960 film called Seven Thieves, complete with some nice black-and-white stills, and another more recent flick, 2004's The Taste of Tea.
• It's been a while since we checked in with NYC blog Blank Screen. Most recently, the Blank Screen folks have been interviewing Thumbsucker director Mike Mills (who's currently dating another indie-film darling, Miranda July -- now that's material for an indie flick!). Side note: They also have tons of info on what's going on in the arts in NYC; if you live there and don't have them bookmarked, what are you waiting for? Bookmark, already!

It's been a while since we did a film blog group hug around here, and I, for one, have missed checking in with some of my fave smaller (and bigger) movie blogs. Let's see what's going on as we head into the second week of 2007, shall we? January movie releases suck, we know, and the weather is dismal and gloomy here in Seattle (I know, shocking, right?), so let's take an imaginary trip to places a wee less gloomy (or at least amusing enough to be distracting). Let's go see what's up around the world of film blogging ...

When the Cinemasters told me it was my turn to do a Film Blog Group Hug, I knew it was time for some of the horror-heads to get a little extra time in the spotlight. Of all the most popular movie genres, few seem to inspire as many blogs, websites, fansites and message fora as Horror ... but it takes a helluva lot more than a creepy background and an affection for Fred Krueger to impress me. So to those blogs/writers who are listed below, I say thanks for maintaining an air of creativity, intelligence and passion for an oft-maligned genre. Lord knows horror could stand to get a little more respect.

• It's pretty tough to come up with five or six movie titles that I've never even heard of, but the crew over at Twitch does it at least three times a week. Showing a devotion to genre flicks of all shapes and sizes (not to mention nationalities) that borders on obsessive (which is meant as a compliment), Twitch is where you go when you need some information on that new zombie flick from North Korea, or that sci-fi soft-porn flick from the southern coast of France. And yes, they show love to the English-speaking genre fare, too. Plus, and this is a big one for me, those Twitch guys really know how to write, as evidenced by this excellent feature entitled The Five Films That Made Me Love Movie Gore.

We're going to be expanding our Film Blog Group Hug coverage, dear Cinematical readers, so this is your big chance. If you have a blog (or just a film site, you don't have to call it a blog) and you write primarily about movies, we want to know about it. Are you an indie film freak? Can't get enough of those obscure foreign pics? Do you wax eloquent about film theory and delve deeply into the careers of directors no one outside your circle of cinepheliac friends has heard of? Know more about horror film than even our own Scott Weinberg? We want to know about your site. If we like what we see there, and you post interesting stuff on a regular basis, you just might find your blog featured here on Cinematical, where it will be read about by zillions of people.

Think you have a site that shines? Send the following info directly to kim@cinematical.com. Do NOT post it in the comments, because it won't get included on my list if it's there. Here are the guidelines for how to submit your site:

*In the subject line, please put "Film Blog Group Hug." Just that, nothing else. I get a ton of email, and that's how I'm sorting these, so if you try to be clever, it's just going to get buried beneath reams of spam emails trying to sell me Viagra, or sent to the virtual trash heap.

*Your site must have original content -- no aggregate feed reader sites, please.

*Yes, if you are a filmmaker and have a blog for your film, you can submit it.

*Yes, we will consider your site even if you have posted mean or nasty comments here on Cinematical. We're forgiving folks.

*In the body of your email, please include the following information:

YOUR NAME

NAME OF YOUR SITE

URL

TYPE OF MOVIE-RELATED CONTENT YOU COVER

GEOGRAPHICAL AREA YOU COVER (if you focus on, say, film in Austin or Burkina Faso or whatever)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR SITE

That's it, folks. Submit away, and I will faithfully check out each and every site submitted and add those that don't suck to the list of sites our madcap team of writers will be surveying for this weekly feature.