The Year's Best Films
1. The Tree of Life No studio release this year was more ambitious, emotional, or elegant than The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's searching epic about our place in a family, a town, a galaxy, the universe. Emmanuel Lubezki's innovative cinematography beautifully painted with light and shadow and color, while boy lead H... 
The Year's Best Films
1. Blue Valentine This master class in acting from the next generation of top talent (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) takes the pulse of modern love. With American divorce rates still hovering near 50%, few stories could be more wistfully relevant than this intimate look at the birth and death of love. First-time di... 
The Year's Best Narrative Films 1. Sita Sings the Blues Notice a theme here? 2009 was a banner year for animated films, and the most creative was this little charmer written, directed, produced, and animated by Nina Paley (it’s legally available for free online, but don’t be a cheapskate: make a donation or buy the DVD). Paley app... 
The Year's Best Films
1. Waltz with Bashir Waltz with Bashir works equally well as a potent anti-war film and as a creative examination of the nature of memory. Mature and possessed with significant psychological depth, Ari Folman’s animated film is an autobiographical documentary as much as it is anything else. Folman, unable to recon... 
Goosebump alert: the disc kicks off with one of the all-time great movie themes, the "Raiders March"...a magnificent, brassy piece of music. 
The definitive book on the Adam West Batman. 
Brilliant...essential reading on the modern myth of Batman, its meaning, and its enduring hold on the American imagination. 
Frank Miller revolutionized Batman (and arguably the comic-book industry) with the hugely successful graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns (1986), about an aged Batman. 
Batman in the 1970s took the lead of writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams, who collectively drew the character back into complexity and strength... 
When Batman premiered on ABC in January 1966, everything changed for the Caped Crusader; the runaway hit sparked the first wave of Batman hysteria and—to many in the general public—branded Batman as a figure of camp for decades. 
Reinhart subjects each film to minute detail, providing complete cast lists, release information, elaborate plot summaries, historical context, critiques, and-in the case of the serials-chapter titles with individual release dates. 
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's sequel to The Long Halloween dredges up unresolved issues between Batman, James Gordon (newly appointed police commissioner), and Harvey Dent. The disfigured Dent—once a D.A.—now walks the other side of the fine line of the law; sprung from his cell in Arkham Asylum, Dent calls himself Two-Face,... 
Certainly the most extraordinary Batman story ever devised, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth applies a Grand Guignol aesthetic and the theories of Carl Gustav Jung to a superstitious story on the border of consciousness and nightmare. On one level, Arkham Asylum can be taken as a very simple Batman story (the inmate... 
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale got the attention of Batman fans with three Halloween tales (available in the single-volume Batman: Haunted Knight—The Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Specials). Not long thereafter, then-DC-editor Archie Goodwin suggested they collaborate on a Batman story that would pick up the gangsters from Fr... 
The 1991 trade paperback Batman: Tales of the Demon collects eleven of writer Dennis O'Neil's Rā's Al Ghūl stories from the pages of Batman and Detective Comics. Rā's Al Ghūl is Arabic for "the demon's head," and the character is Batman's most mysterious foe, wealthy mastermind of a criminal organization bent on... 
In 1986, writer Frank Miller and illustrator David Mazzucchelli dropped a bomb called Batman: Year One. A bona fide classic Batman story, Year One arguably tells the best kind of Batman story, one that's more concerned with gritty street reality and emotional turmoil than supervillains or needlessly ornate distractions. Mazzucchel... 
The lushly illustrated updated edition of Batman: The Ultimate Guide to the Dark Knight (published by Dorling Kindersley) employs dynamic graphics to tell the history of Batman, as per the sprawling, official canon that includes "well over 3,000 comic book appearances" and the influence of animated and live-action incarnations. Sc... 
A year or two before Batman, [Bob] Kane began collaborating with writer Bill Finger (1914-1974), now widely accepted as the unsung co-creator of Batman...Finger is now acknowledged as the creator of Robin, Alfred, Catwoman, Penguin, Two-Face and, eventual 
Batman Begins: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 
The Art of Batman Begins 
The 5 books Christopher Nolan (director), Christian Bale (star), and David Goyer (screenwriter) cite as inspiration. 
It isn't mere hype to call this book "a must for every Batman fan's bookshelf"—any fan of the Batman comics, that is. 
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FESTIVAL DATES:
San Francisco: March 13-23, 2008 (primary venues: Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, Castro Theatre, Landmark Clay Theatre)
Berkeley: March 14-22, 2008 (venue: Pacific Film Archive)
San Jose: March 21-23, 2008 (venue: Camera 12 Cinema)
As ever, the San Francisco International Asian American F... 
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Cinequest is back! Rolling out another bold program--crammed with 70 narrative features, 14 documentary features, 8 programs of shorts, 17 special events, 41 Maverick Spirit Tributes, and, of course, a few parties--Cinequest offers the biggest little city of San Jose the film festival it deserves. The tr... 
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The San Francisco International Film Festival—the original American film festival—celebrates 50 years of excellence this year with a program that's filled to bursting with 108 features and 92 shorts; the star-studded guest list includes plenty of local heroes of cinema. This year's fest kicks... 
As always, SF Indiefest offers up an eclectic slate of eccentric flicks, starting with the Opening Night film Inland Empire. The latest from auteur filmmaker David Lynch, Inland Empire represents new directions for a man who has kept his independent spirit intact. It's his inaugural film on digital video (he says he'll never return to film), and it... 
The ninth annual United Nations Association Film Festival (running October 25-29, 2006 at Stanford and through 2007 as a touring entity) unspools a program of 31 films from all over the planet. Established in 1998 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNAFF is a product of the collaborati... 
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With 97 features and 130 shorts, the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival gleefully gluts film buffs. From opening night film Perhaps Love—a Hong Kong musical romance with a pan-Asian cast—to the closing night film—Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (both events with par... FESTIVAL DATES:
San Francisco: March 16-23, 2006 (primary venues: AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, Castro Theatre, Palace of Fine Arts)
Berkeley: March 17-25, 2006 (venue: Pacific Film Archive)
San Jose: March 24-26, 2006 (venue: Camera 12 Cinema)
This year's festival kicks off with a gala screening and reception for Americanese, Eric Byler's adaptation... 
Cinequest's sweet sixteen party has another bountiful sampling of party favors and guests. Around sixty-five narrative features, twenty documentaries, and eight short-film programs are the meat of a schedule that includes tribute events, multiple filmmaking and technology forums, two silent-film bills, and a few good parties. Edward James Olmos&mda... Here you'll find Groucho's reviews of film-related books...
Chronicle Books' The Art of Batman Begins: Shadows of the Dark Knight
McFarland & Company's The Batman Filmography: Live Action Features, 1943-1997
[For reviews of Batman graphic novels and related reference works, click here.]
Newmarket Press' YES: Screenplay and Notes by Sally... Here you'll find Groucho's takes on movie music, like
Warner Sunset Records' Batman Begins: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
and many more below...... 
The 10th Anniversary San Francisco Silent Film Festival kicks off at the Castro Theatre on Friday, July 8 with a classic Harold Lloyd feature: 1926's For Heaven's Sake (8pm). Though Lloyd is still undervalued as a silent comedy star, and few of his films spark name recognition from the average film buff (Safety Last being the exception), Lloyd is a... 
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"Home base" for the San Francisco International Film Festival remains the AMC Kabuki 8, though other venues include the glorious Castro Theatre, the Palace of Fine Arts, and, stretching into other corners of the Bay Area, the invaluable Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and Landmark's Aquarius Theater in... FESTIVAL DATES:
San Francisco: March 10-20, 2005 (primary venues: AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, Castro Theatre)
Berkeley: March 11-20, 2005 (venue: Pacific Film Archive)
San Jose: March 18-20, 2005 (venue: Camera 12 Cinema)
This year's festival kicks off with a gala screening and reception for Saving Face, Check out the film on a big screen at the Kab... Cinequest has always been a reliable purveyor of international cinema, so it's appropriate that, this year, the festival will open and close with foreign-film selections. Cinequest 15 rolls out March 2 with a gala screening and reception of the Brazilian romantic comedy Manual for Love Stories. The U.S. premiere will play at the newly restored Cali... 
Access the Batcomputer! As in recent years, the "home" of the festival is the AMC Kabuki 8, though other venues include the glorious Castro Theatre and, stretching into other corners of the Bay Area, the invaluable Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the Century Cinema 16 Mountain View. The SFIFF—which kicks off April 15 with a screening and party for Jim Jarmusch'... FESTIVAL DATES:
San Francisco: March 4 - 11, 2004 (primary venues: AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, Castro Theatre)
Berkeley: March 5 - 10, 2004 (venue: Pacific Film Archive)
San Jose: March 19 - 21, 2004 (primary venue: Camera 3 Cinema)
This year's festival will kick off with a gala screening and reception for Hero, Zhang Yimou's swordplay extravaganza... Cinequest 14 opens March 3 with a gala screening and reception for the Norse film United, in its U.S. premiere (at the San Jose Repertory Theatre), followed by a gala reception (with special festival guests) in the San Jose Ballroom at the San Jose Marriott. Closing night will round out the festival with The Conscientious Objector. The evening will... 