News

The 18th annual San Antonio Film Festival will run for a solid week, June 18-24, at several locations around the city and will feature, as it always does, an expansive and impressive lineup of documentaries, thrillers, dramas and a ton of short films.

The fest kicks off on the 18th with the Canadian culture clash comedy French Immersion, directed by Kevin Tierney, followed by a block of homegrown short films from all over the great state of Texas. The next night’s programming, the 19th, pays tribute to San Antonio’s neighbors to the south with two feature films from Mexico, the drama Burros by Odin Salazar Flores and the documentary Die Standing Up by Jacaranda Correa, as well as a block of short films.

Some of the feature-length documentaries include Stephanie Hubbard’s Christian theme park quest Bible Storyland (watch the trailer); James Lane’s expose of the Oklahoma...

Woody Allen's 39th feature film brings him back to Manhattan where he belongs – and where his humour works best

Cast your mind back 30 years or so, and a weekend with new films from both Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola arriving on our screens would herald the most exciting few days of the year for cinephiles. These days, the latest works from two of the most distinguished American film-makers are buried under the blanket of the World Cup. (There's a newly restored one out from Jean-Luc Godard, too, and he's no slouch.)

I'll discuss Coppola's film below, but here we must focus on Woody Allen, whose films, along with those of Godard, first made me love cinema. Alas, the current critical orthodoxy is that Woody is a spent force. Whatever Works is his 39th feature film and opinion varies as to exactly when the fires went out. Some say...

To create the entertainment of the future, writer-director Drew Daywalt reaches back into the past to fuel his imagination. The creator of Camera Obscura, the upcoming supernatural thriller web series from Mwg Entertainment, draws much of his inspiration from the short form storytelling of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the horror of anticipation. Camera Obscura shares the sense of dread prevalent in such literary classics as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The series follows Clara, an orphan brought up by her alcoholic, absent grandfather. After he dies, she finds a camera that belonged to him, and discovers that it can capture demons. She also discovers that her grandfather's work was not done, and it falls on her shoulders to complete his task. It's a nice little family story with a whole lotta' scary going on. The cast features familiar...