Email Author Tod Booth

1998 Stories by Tod Booth

• Last Picture Shows

  published October 7, 1998

  The second week of the Mill Valley Film Festival, running through Sunday at various venues in that town and also at Larkspur's Lark Theater,... More >>

• Festival Harvest

  published September 30, 1998

  Every autumn Mill Valley is transformed into a movie festival town that, while perhaps not on par with Cannes or Telluride, has at least some of... More >>

• Zoom Lens

  published September 16, 1998

  Junk Food Masashi Yamamoto's Junk Food opens at dawn and ends as the sun rises again the following day. During that 24-hour stretch, the... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published August 26, 1998

  Scarface-san: Two More by Tai Kato Ya gotta love those bluntly explicit Japanese movie titles. Swordplay-film master Tai Kato's 1966... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published August 5, 1998

  "Blossoms and Swords: The Films of Tai Kato" Samurai and yakuza films dominated Japan's movie screens for decades; but here in the U.S.... More >>

• Snake Sisters and Naked Killers

  published July 29, 1998

  The East Bay stands sadly Chow-less now that the UC Theater has shut down its Thursday night "Festival Hong Kong" movie series due to dwindling... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published July 22, 1998

  Blind Beast One of 1997's great moviegoing pleasures was the Yasuzo Masumura retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive. Masumura's work --... More >>

• Zoom Lens

  published May 20, 1998

  New Asian Cinema Starting the second edition of the New Asian Cinema series on the same day as the Godzilla invasion may be like shooting... More >>

• Zoom Lens

  published May 6, 1998

  Hitman A terrifically funny Hong Kong thriller with Jet Li as a shy bumpkin from the mainland trying to make a living in a crew of low-rent... More >>

• Week 2 of the 41st S.F. International Film Festival

  published April 29, 1998

  Animated by Dr. Freud (Various) Jim Trainor's peculiar The Fetishist is clearly the centerpiece of this program of animation for grown-ups,... More >>

• Im Kwon-Taek: Drawing Down the Moon

  published April 22, 1998

  You've probably never seen an Im Kwon-Taek film. Though his work has occasionally graced the SFIFF's screens over the years and regularly travels... More >>

• Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll. Korea.

  published April 22, 1998

  A few decades ago, a controversial Bay Area critic named Pauline Kael -- yes, the same wild original who went on to become Pauline Kael -- wrote... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published April 1, 1998

  Prodigal Son/Encounter of the Spooky Kind The casting call must have looked something like this: "Extremely ugly actors needed for kung fu... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published March 11, 1998

  "Edward Yang: A New Day in Taiwan" Sleek, eerily uninhabited high-rises. Pop music blaring in minimalls and restaurants. Cheap framed... More >>

• Beauty and the East

  published March 4, 1998

  Ancestors in the Americas, Part II (U.S.A., 1998) The men who left China to come to California in the mid-19th century were called "gold... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published February 18, 1998

  A Tribute to Robert Wise One of the last of the old-style Hollywood craftsmen, Robert Wise made his share of both gems and junk. There... More >>

• Second Time Around

  published February 4, 1998

  "Walk on the Wild Side: Olivier Assayas" Irma Vep, one of the best films of 1997, may have seemed like it came out of nowhere, so ripe it... More >>

• Zoom Lens

  published January 28, 1998

  Fallen Angels "Daddy, daddy/ Speak my language," croons Laurie Anderson on the soundtrack, while one of Fallen Angels' half-dozen lovelorn... More >>

• Zoom Lens

  published January 21, 1998

  Hero Corey Yuen Kwai, like many longtime Hong Kong directors, has had a preposterously spotty career, from the sublime Fong Sai Yuk to the... More >>

• The Lighthouse at the End of the World

  published January 7, 1998

  Imagine a medical condition in which you retain your memories for only an hour or two at a time. The recent past disappears from your... More >>