Film

Merchants in Montrose are mulling ways to better accommodate a burgeoning demand for their location from production companies who have been flocking to the area for its quaint setting. On Monday, NBC's “Awake” shut down the first block of Honolulu Avenue in the Montrose Shopping Park for much of the day and a commercial shoot could close off a block all day later this month. The easternmost block of Honolulu Avenue, especially, is popular with film shoots because of its high density of small shops and restaurants.

Al Gore's new documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in limited release around Southern California, is by far one of the best documentaries released in years. The film deals with a slideshow Gore presents on global warming. This has been a passion of the former vice president since the early 1990s, when he wrote his best selling book, "Earth In The Balance." That book was a warning of things to come with the thinning ozone layer and the warming of the Earth. This film takes that warning further, using studies and technology that have scientists agreeing that the Earth is heating up at a more rapid pace because of human involvement.

With my oldest son away on a boy scout camping trip, I've had some one-on-one time with my youngest son. The house has been much quieter this week since no compromises have had to be made between the two brothers in terms of video game playing time and TV show choices. I was able to take my 7-year-old to see the new Winnie the Pooh film, something I couldn't drag my other son to.  Boy, what a surprise that movie is. No foul language, no sexual innuendo, not even a flatulence comment or sound.  An old-fashioned G-rated movie that's imaginative, not boring or condescending.  Oh, and two other unusual aspects to the film:  it's not in 3-D, and it's not computer animated.  How strange this film must appear to young children who have grown up solely on a diet of computerizedanimation.

There were two big movies released last week, one of which was amazing, while the other was a classic done poorly. First "V for Vendetta," starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. Set several years in London's future, a corrupt and all-controlling government is abusing its power over its citizens. They are defenseless except for one voice known only as V. One night, he saves a woman named Evey (Portman) and takes her to see his handiwork of violence when he blows up a government building.

A La Crescenta woman is on a mission to solve a mystery involving a man with three last names for each of the three countries he lived in. The inventor, artist, filmmaker, medical student and businessman was born in Russia in 1895, and he would eventually create the Bolex line of cameras. The cameras have been used by professional filmmakers as well as those who simply wanted to document their lives. Jacques Bolsey's desire to bring filmmaking capability to the masses first came to life in 1914 with the Cinegraph-Bol 35mm motion-picture camera.

Glendale resident Sevak Ohanian recreates the problems of growing up in an Armenian American family in his new film “My Big Fat Armenian Family” but adds a twist of humor. The film, which will premiere July 12 and 18 at Glendale High School, tells the story of a family of four — a father, mother, son and daughter. The son can’t seem to do anything right in his father’s eyes, and there is a constant air of friction between them. The parents, Robert and Rima, are played by one man, Ajmin Baghramian, Ohanian said.

The film and television industry in Los Angeles County has lost more than 16,000 jobs since 2004, mostly due to work migrating out of state, a new report revealed. Last year, the entertainment business generated 102,100 jobs in the county, down 14% from its peak of 118,200 jobs in 2004, according to a study released Friday by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. During the same period, L.A.'s share of overall jobs in the motion picture and video category fell to 51% from 60%. (The figures exclude employment in the music and post-production industries.)

Lawmakers gave a preliminary thumbs up to a two-year extension of California's film tax credit, a mixed result for Hollywood backers who had pressed for a five-year extension but were relieved to get more money given the state's budget crunch. By a 5-1 vote Thursday, the Senate Governance and Finance Committee supported a bill that would extend the tax credit, which was due to expire in July 2013, through 2015. The original bill would have provided funding through 2018. California currently sets aside $100 million annually for dozens of film and television projects applying for credits that cover 20% to 25% of qualified production expenses.

Joyce Rudolph, Weekend GLENDALE -- A deluxe, blue-ribbon selection of Three Stooges classics is planned for the fourth annual Alex Film Society's Big Screen Event, said board member Frank Gladstone. Those who can't catch the 2 p.m. matinee, can catch the second show at 8 tonight at Glendale's Alex Theatre. Gladstone, head of training and recruitment at DreamWorks/SKG Animation in Glendale, chose the films along with fellow society members Steve McCoy and Leonard Maltin and Michael Schlesinger, head of the film department at Sony Pictures, which owns the Stooges' film rights.

For all of us who grumble that movies offer up little of value, "Good Night and Good Luck" is here. You may have to hunt for a theater to see it, in spite of the film grossing a staggering $38,000 per screen early on. But when you do find a screening, it will be like finding a polished diamond in a mountain of slag. To call this film a George Clooney spectacular might be misleading. We have come to expect extravagance from this "s" word, something this film is not. It is spare and smoky (both literally and figuratively)

In 2009, the "Star Trek" franchise was put in the hands of J.J. Abrams ("Lost," "Mission Impossible 3"), who confessed to never having been much of a Trekkie. This, of course, sent the dyed-in-the-wool Trekkies into a tizzy, but it turned out to be exactly what was needed. Abrams managed to pull off one of the trickiest reboots imaginable: The original cast had played their characters on TV and film for 25 years; and no one else had attempted those roles for 43 years. It's too soon to judge whether Abrams' new "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a little better or a little worse, but it's definitely in the same league.

"The Iceman" - directed by Ariel Vroman from a script he cowrote with Morgan Land - is based on the life of Richard Kuklinski, a hired killer who is believed to have murdered more people than any number of serial killers. In a 1992 HBO special with the same title, Kuklinski, when asked for a specific figure, says, "I don't know. Over a hundred, I think. " In this fictionalized version - which wisely tampers with facts and dates - we meet Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) as he woos and wins Deborah Pellicotti (Winona Ryder)

"Magical realism" is one of those descriptive terms that gets thrown around promiscuously: Its scope and characteristics shift significantly depending on who is doing the describing. Still, it's hard to imagine anyone denying that Salman Rushdie's second novel, "Midnight's Children," belongs firmly in that realm. Deepa Mehta's new film version of the book is as close to an "authorized" adaptation as possible, with Rushdie serving as screenwriter, producer and narrator. In a manner that inevitably reminds us of Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" (and, for the few who have seen it, the criminally obscure 1989 "Queen of Hearts")

Road pictures come, off the shelf, with an automatic story arc: the characters must get from point A to point B, not just geographically but thematically. More often than not, they end up at a different point B than they had intended or hoped for. The genre is available in three major flavors: person or persons on the run from pursuers (cops, gangsters, or both); unlikely heroes desperately trying to deliver something (like the rare vaccine for a pandemic); romantic comedy odd couple thrown together by chance, then learning how to get along.

"Django Unchained," Quentin Tarantino's double-Oscar-winning Southern Western - about a former slave (Jamie Foxx) trying to free his wife (Kerry Washington) from a vile plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) with the aid of a witty German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) - was one of last year's most memorable films. Like most Tarantino movies, it improves with multiple viewings. For an action film, the sound mix on the new home video release (from Anchor Bay Entertainment and the Weinstein Company)

Terrence Malick became a critics' darling, a hot young director to watch, with his first two features, "Badlands" (1973) and "Days of Heaven" (1978). Then he disappeared for 20 years. By the time he returned with "The Thin Red Line," he had become, not surprisingly, a cinema legend. His 2011 "Tree of Life" was the best of four "recent" (i.e., within the last 15 years) efforts. A slightly disguised memoir of his youth, that film was almost a memory-driven time machine, making suburban Texas in the '50s so real, so tangible, that the viewer had the remarkable sensation of being there.

You should consider going to the movies to see “42,” the new biographical film on baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson's first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The actual date of his major league debut, April 15, is commemorated in baseball by all players on all teams wearing his number, the only one that is permanently retired. The film is only the second one that's been made on his life and it is well done.  The film is straight-forward storytelling, with solid acting.

Shane Carruth made an impressive debut in 2004 with "Primer," which cost $7,000 and is surely the most complexly structured time-travel film ever made. For that matter, it may be one of the most complexly structured films ever made, period. Carruth seemed to have fallen off the map shortly thereafter. Now, after nine years, his second feature, "Upstream Color," opens this week. There is no real protagonist here. Carruth opts for multiple points of view; sometimes the transitions are so sudden and the durations so short that the movie suggests an "objective" point of view.

Though the work of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been criticized on many grounds, it's doubtful that a lack of subtlety is among them. From "The Killing" (1956) through "Dr. Strangelove" (1964), his work was brilliant, but from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) on, it was not only brilliant but also complex and ambiguous in ways that almost demand analysis. Rodney Ascher's "Room 237" focuses in on one Kubrick film, "The Shining" (1980), which in recent years has surpassed "2001" as the center of Kubrick analysis.

To summarize the economics behind "G.I. Joe: Retaliation": the 2009 "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra" made enough moolah ($150 million domestic, $150 million elsewhere) to justify - nay, demand - a sequel. As for the aesthetics of the film, "G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra" made enough moolah to justify - nay, demand - a sequel. Really. There are very few moments here where the filmmakers seem to have thought about anything else. You expect your basic action blockbuster to follow a rigid, demographically driven template, but with surprising frequency, the pieces superimposed upon that template include funny dialogue, distinctive characters, ingenious action concepts, or all three.