Film #144: The Tree of Life

The most special special effect in Terrence Malick's ultimate, unrelenting, devout cinematic achievement occurs at its outset: a valuable jewel-like dalliance of light and dark, color and blackness. It lingers, morphs, disappears and then returns to us at key moments.

I cannot help but open this piece by considering these apparitions. They happen so importantly. Why are they there? Why do

BREAKING NEWS about Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE. And what, exactly, is it like to select titles for a film festival crowd?

Upon seeing Anne Thompson's tweet about New York Film Festival selection committee member Todd McCarthy's incisive new post about what it's like to attack that laborious job, I was immediately reminded of my own odyssey as the Programming Director for the Dahlonega International Film Festival (now the Rome International Film Festival) back in the early 2000s. The festival's Executive Director,

Film #130: Days of Heaven

A lonely Victorian house stands guard in the midst of winding wheat fields. Grays and oranges seep through the torrid air of a Chicago smelting plant. Smothering swarms of hungry grasshoppers attack a newly-birthed harvest. Nighttime bonfires spread out of control as murder swirls bloody in the Midwestern breeze. A migrant worker gleefully tap-dances away on a dusty springboard. A brother