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Leonard Maltin
Quality Time With Martin Scorsese
- By Leonard Maltin
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- February 1, 2012 12:14 AM
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- 9 Comments
All This And George Clooney, Too!
- By Leonard Maltin
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- September 6, 2011 6:31 AM
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- 4 Comments
George Clooney poses with his director, Alexander Payne, at the world premiere of The Descendants.
The Telluride Film Festival has hosted many famous people over the past 38 years, including celebrated filmmakers and actors. But there’s something about George Clooney that makes women swoon and men want to hang out with him. He’s a Movie Star, and while he wears other hats (and wears them well) there’s no getting around his personal magnetism. He charmed everyone he met this past weekend, graciously posed for pictures, and reaffirmed his reputation as—
Silent Films Soar In San Francisco
- By Leonard Maltin
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- July 20, 2011 4:25 AM
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- 4 Comments
Rare films from around the globe, featuring everyone from Marlene Dietrich to Walt Disney’s earliest animated characters, marked the 16th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival this past weekend…along with the announcement of the Festival’s plans to screen Abel Gance’s Napoleon with a live orchestra next spring. (see separate story HERE).
Executive director Stacey Wisnia, Artistic director Anita Monga, their dedicated staff and board of directors put on another great, wide-ranging show featuring films from Sweden, Japan, Germany, Italy, England, and Russia. It’s a far cry from the early years of the festival when founders Melissa Chittick and Stephen Salmons were grateful that anyone would show up to see Hollywood classics of the silent era. Now, the SFSFF has built up an audience that is willing to try unusual and challenging fare along with old favorites.
One of the happiest discoveries was the world premiere of a newly-restored Douglas Fairbanks film from 1918, Mr. Fix-It, written and directed by Allan Dwan. The day before its screening, preservationist Ken Fox (a graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation) described the challenge of translating its—
Stepping Into The Past
- By Leonard Maltin
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- November 1, 2009 5:12 AM
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- 0 Comments
As long as I’ve been attending the San Francisco Silent Film Festival I’ve been promising myself to visit the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum...and this year I finally got there. It’s an easy drive over the Bay Bridge to Fremont, California and the charming village of Niles, which looks much as it did when G.M. “Bronco Billy” Anderson discovered it in the teens and decided to build a studio there. Dedicated volunteers have restored the theater on Niles Boulevard that once showed silent films and turned it into a wonderful museum, filled with evocative memorabilia and early filmmaking equipment. It’s also a working theater where silent films are screened every Saturday, and tour groups are welcomed.
The day I visited the museum, along with some friends, a fourth grade class had just been shown Charlie Chaplin’s The Champion (1915). Not only did they respond to the scrappy, funny film, but they expressed a proper sense of wonder that a palm tree visible in one scene was still growing right across the street, and a corner of the studio was still identifiable outside. My friends and I were given a—
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