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FILM While he's always kept a fairly low profile doing it, probably no director who calls the Bay Area home has balanced our penchant for documentary work and independence with a successful commercial (meaning Hollywood) career as gracefully, or as long, as John Korty. Now 75, the Marin resident is in the midst of a major retrospective — incredibly, his first — at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, which runs through December 4.Read more »

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FILM Having brought life to a host of magical creatures and creations in movies including the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park (1993), RoboCop (1987), Starship Troopers (1997), and more, special effects legend Phil Tippett's film credits span more than three decades and counting.Read more »

GOLDIES In a city that boasts far more film festivals than movie theaters, one of the most singularly focused is the annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival — the largest German-language film festival in the United States. Carefully curated for 14 years by Dr. Ingrid Eggers, former program coordinator of the San Francisco branch of the Goethe-Institut, Berlin and Beyond has showcased an eclectic mix of movies by established filmmakers, debut features, documentaries, shorts, and silent films, from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Read more »

GOLDIES Whether we're talking about his verging live projections or crystalline short films, Paul Clipson makes things happen onscreen. His exploratory form of lyricism is composed for Super 8 film. That for is critical, since Clipson shoots with a well-practiced intuition for what shows up as gold in Super 8 (an increasingly rare form of presentiment). While taking great advantage of the small-gauge camera's pencil-like responsiveness to movement, Clipson works from a keen appreciation for the interrelation between fine-grained detail and expansive volumes. Read more »

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FILM Of all Elliot Lavine's noir programs for the Roxie, "Not Necessarily Noir" is both the toughest sell and the most creative from a curatorial perspective. There are two programs in this abbreviated "Not Necessarily Noir" run that should have built-in audiences — a slam dunk Joan Crawford double bill of Johnny Guitar (1954) and Female on the Beach (1955), and a full course of Ed Wood — but the terrifically nervous movies at the start of the series do the most to stake out its intuitive terrain.Read more »

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FILM It's a sunny day in Los Angeles, and Omi Vaidya is puttering around, looking for a neighbor who'll loan him a lawnmower. Vaidya is an actor of the "working" (as opposed to "unemployed" or "superstar") variety, with bit parts on shows like Arrested Development and The Office dotting his resume. Finding work as an Indian American actor can be frustrating — "a lot of it is typecasting," he notes. Computer nerds and such.Read more »

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FILM In 1990, cable was still a luxury many chose not to afford. The Big Three — it was now grudgingly being admitted that Fox might make it Four — weren't doing anything all that different from what they had a decade or two or three before. Certainly the popular likes of Major Dad, Beverly Hills 90210, and America's Funniest Home Videos weren't exactly rocking the boat as thus far known to viewers and sponsors.Read more »

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FILM "We are going to eat you!" Accompanied by a close-up shot of a vile, undead head, the iconic poster for Lucio Fulci's 1979 Zombie clearly delineates the fate of all human flesh. It's not a threat — it's a guarantee, oozing with maggots and emphasized with a follow-up promise: "The dead are among us!"Read more »

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