The 2009 festival runs just over three weeks, from Friday, June 12 through Sunday, July 5, with music starting anywhere from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. every night and films beginning at 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. This year’s schedule features superheroes, spies, sharks, vampires and cartoon characters, among others. Ingalls Mall is located near E. Washington and Fletcher St., across from Rackham Auditorium. Here are some highlights…

“Iron Man” (2008) Rated PG-13. While testing his company’s newest military weapons, wealthy inventor Tony Stark faces a near brush with death that necessitates engineering an armored suit to sustain life and escape from his captors. Realizing the human cost of warfare from the very technology he has devised, Stark decides to dedicate his company’s technologies to more peaceful pursuits. Will he be able to, now that there are those who know that he has invented the ultimate soldier’s armor? The film reinvents the origin of the Marvel Comics character for the modern age with the help of stunning special effects, smart writing and solid acting. See it Sunday, June 14 at 10 p.m.

“Harold & Maude” (1971) Not rated, but material not suited to children. Young Harold’s theatrical suicide stunts are ignored by his mother and a bit of a turn-off for the potential dates she arranges for him. He seems bored with life and obsessed with death. Attending a random funeral, Harold meets the fascinating Maude, a seasoned soul with a zest for life that awakens a new perspective in him. View it Monday, June 22 at 10 p.m.

“Jaws” (1975) Rated PG. When a body washes up on shore, Police Chief Martin Brody discovers a shark danger off the shores of popular vacation spot Amity Island. When the town refuses to risk losing tourist dollars by closing the beaches, Brody must pursue the terrible shark with grizzled fisherman Quint and marine biologist Matt Hooper. Catch it Wednesday, June 24 at 10 p.m.

“Les Triplettes de  Belleville” ["The Triplets of Belleville"] (2003) Rated PG-13. A lonely orphan raised by his grandmother Madame Souza, Champion takes an interest in cycling and eventually makes the Tour de France. When Champion is kidnapped, Souza and her dog Bruno set out to rescue him. Along the way, they team up with a once-famous, quirky trio of sister singers to travel through the dangerous French underworld. The story is inventive, the animation is amusing and the music is unusual. See it Wednesday, July 1 at 10 p.m.

Please come and join us for several evenings with Professor Emeritus Frank Beaver, faculty emeritus of the University of Michigan’s Screen Arts and Cultures Department. Professor Beaver selected and will discuss each of the films in the series.

Thursday, March 5, 2009, 7:00 pm
Frank’s Picks Film Series Kick Off: Secret Honor (1984) (90 minutes)
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

In this one-man drama, former President Richard Milhous Nixon alone in his study, dictates his thoughts into a tape recorder. His only company is a four-screen closed-circuit TV setup, the portraits on the walls, a bottle of scotch – and a loaded pistol. In a series of meandering monologues Nixon contemplates his Quaker upbringing, his school days, his family and a political career that reached all the way to the White House leading up to he reasons for the Watergate scandal that resulted in his resignation – an act he views as one of “secret honor.” The University of Michigan Library’s Special Collection Library is the home of the Robert Altman Archives, and the film is presented with permission of Sandcastle Productions.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 7:00 pm Frank’s Picks Film Series: The Bicycle Thief (Ladri di biciclete, 1948) (93 minutes)

Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

Antonio Ricci, an unemployed young father in post-war Rome, is overjoyed when he’s finally given a job putting up posters. There’s a catch, though – he needs a bicycle as a requirement of the job, so he pawns the family linen to get a pawned bicycle back. When his bicycle is stolen, father and son chase the thief. This film directed by Vittorio De Sica helped define the Italian neo-realist film movement. It depicts the hardship and despair that Europeans, specifically Italians, went through after the death and destruction of the war. Shot in. grainy black and white with non-professional actors, the result delivers an emotional punch.

Thursday, March 12, 2009, 7:00 pm
Frank’s Picks Film Series: The Garden of the Finzi Contini (Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini, 1971) (94 minutes)
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

The film was adapted from Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel and was directed by Vittorio de Sica. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The story explores the relationships between the narrator and the doomed children of the Finzi-Contini family in the period of the rise of Mussolini through the start of World War II. The creeping shadow of fascism and the racial laws that restricted Jews’ participation in Italian society looms over the story.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 7:00 pm
Frank’s Picks Film Series: The Scent of Green Papaya (1994) (104 minutes)
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

French director Tran Anh Hung produced this Vietnamese language film in France. It won the 1993 Cannes Film Festival award and was on the shortlist for the 1993 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This was Hung’s first feature film. A ‘visually intoxicating tone-poem’ (www.allmovie.com). Set in 1951, the film is the story of a Saigon peasant girl hired to work for an affluent family.

Thursday, March 19, 2009, 7:00 pm
Frank’s Picks Film Series: The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006) (137 minutes)
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

The Lives of Others is a story of the way people were observed in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, a successful couple is popular intellectual stars in the socialist state, despite the fact that privately they do not always agree with the party line. When the Minister of Culture becomes interested in the woman, a secret service agent is ordered to observe them. As he does so, their life fascinates him.

And other film-related events @ the library

Thursday, March 26, 2009, 7:00 pm
Film Screening: Dr. Zhivago (1965) (197 minutes)
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

In 1959 in the midst of the Cold War, the University of Michigan Press issued the first publication of the book Dr. Zhivago in the Russian language. In honor of the 50th anniversary of this publication, join us for a screening of the film version. Set in the years before and after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the story follows the life of Zhivago as it is disrupted first by World War One and then the Revolution. An epic story. Directed by David Lean. With Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin.

Friday, March 27, 2009, 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Symposium on Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago Organized by Kathryn Beam and Janet Crayne, University of Michigan Library
Gallery in Room 100, Hatcher Graduate Library

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of this book by the University of Michigan Press in the Russian language. Join us for an examination of the writing of this classic work, the controversy surrounding its publication in Russian and other languages in the context of the Cold War, its publication in Ann Arbor by the UM Press, and poetry of this work within the novel. Speakers include Kathryn Beam, Librarian, University of Michigan, Special Collections; Janet Crayne, Head, Slavic and East European Division, University of Michigan Library; Toby Holtzman on collecting Pasternak; Michael Makin, Professor, Associate Professor, LSA Slavic Languages & Lit.; Dmitry Urnov, member of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, Moscow and retired professor of Russian literature at Adelphi University.

See full schedule at www.lib.umich.edu/events. Sponsored by the University of Michigan Library with generous support from Toby Holtzman.

In December 2008, I looked around for possible interviews with Tandan to get a fuller perspective on the film and couldn’t find anything. Alright, I thought, it’s her first co-directing credit, so it might take some time for people to take notice. She has already worked with director Mira Nair as second assistant director on “Monsoon Wedding” (2001), though, so it’s not as if she is new to the game.

When the 2009 Golden Globe Awards nominees were announced I noticed that  “Slumdog Millionaire” was nominated for “Best Director – Motion Picture,” yet curiously, the nominee list only mentioned Danny Boyle. I can understand the omission from other film awards, but the Golden Globe Awards is sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, so I thought they might be hip to Tandan’s role.

I’m not the only one who is concerned, either. Here’s an interesting “Wall Street Journal” article by John Jurgensen from February 9, 2009 about the issue.

Here’s another article about Tandan in the January 29, 2009 issue of “The Telegraph,” this one by Anita Singh.

Blogger Melissa Silverstein mentioned this too in a Women & Hollywood blog post about co-directing.

Women’s Media Center Media Director Trista Aaron also spoke about this at the Women’s Media Center Majority Post blog.

In interviews I read with Boyle, he was very appreciative of her contribution, so much so that he elevated her from casting director to co-director status during the making of the film. Kudos to Boyle for making that decision.

I’m surprised that Boyle didn’t remember to thank her when he won the Oscar for best director, though, especially since he remembered to mention his favorite pub. Here’s a transcription of his acceptance speech from ABC TV’s Oscars Web site.

To his credit, Boyle does mention Tandan when receiving the honor of best director at the Golden Globe Awards, although it’s a bit buried towards the end of his acceptance speech, shown here at NBC TV’s Bay Area Web site.

Tandan has been very gracious about the lack of attention for her work. In a January 21, 2009 post by Subhash K. Jha on Bollywood Hungama, Tandan mentions that she wasn’t invited to the Golden Globes, adding, “Please don’t create a controversy over it. I’m very happy for the way the film is moving forward. And I’ve been with the project to many festivals.”

Tandan talks about her role in “Slumdog Millionaire” in this February 21, 2009 interview with “The Times” at the Times Online.

Well, Ms. Tandan, you might be too modest to admit it, but you deserve more attention for your co-directing role in “Slumdog Millionaire.”

about it.

This article includes a 6 megapixel capture of the painting, which you can download and inspect in any image viewing software, perhaps zooming in on the mirror and the inscription on the wall above the mirror. To grab the image off the Wikipedia page, with Windows, right-click on the image and choose “Save Picture As…”. I don’t know Macs – maybe you just Will It To Happen with those.

Convex mirrors like these always give an upright image. Concave mirrors, as are found commonly in astronomical telescopes like the Hubble or an amateur’s Newtonian Reflector, are trickier. In telescopes, there is always a second optical element, usually a glass lens. Women’s makeup mirrors are also concave. The image one gets from these depends on the ratio of the distance of the object (say a woman’s face) from the mirror, divided by the radius of curvature of the mirror. If this ratio is less than 0.5, the image will be upright. If the ratio is greater than 0.5, the image is inverted. There are of course formulas for the magnification, again as a function of this ratio.

Simple astronomical telescopes, using just two optical elements, have a concave mirror with parabolic shape, in fact this is very important. When the Hubble telescope first went up in the early 1990s, after the Space Shuttle had placed it into orbit and returned to Earth, NASA opened the front flap of the telescope and took a picture and it was very blurry. The specifications for the mirror had been hand-copied, erroneously, by someone, and the company which manufactured the mirror, Perkin-Elmer, had decided to save a million dollars and not build a test rig for it. So, a few years later, NASA sent up another shuttle with a very nicely figured special lens to insert in the optical path of the telescope to correct the aberration and got fantastic images afterwards. In the intervening years, decent but not exceptional images were obtained by using mathematical algorithms (Deconvolution) on the images sent down from Hubble.

In maybe 5 years, mathematical algorithms like Deconvolution, but fancier, will be paired with multiple image sensing pixel arrays in digital cameras for the consumer, to allow taking a picture without worrying much about focusing the picture at all, or worrying about a background object being out of focus while a foreground object is in focus. The file from the camera will go into special software, like Photoshop, where the user can turn a software knob or slide a slider, and bring any desired part of the image into focus. The main company developing this technology is Refocus Imaging, which has a nice demo of this capability on their web site;  

http://www.refocusimaging.com/about/

This same technology will greatly lessen the demands on the optical quality of the optical elements in the camera, namely the lenses, so great photographs, with perfect focus, will come from perhaps cheaper cameras. 

Our very last film of 2008, co-directors Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan’s “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) fared rather well. It took Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Actress Sally Hawkins was honored as Best Actress (Musical or Comedy) for her role as Poppy in director Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” (2008), which we saw towards the end of the year.

The critical buzz around director Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” (2008) seems to have been confirmed with Mickey Rourke clinching the Best Actor (Drama) award. This film is slated to be an early film in our winter quarter first term, so look forward to seeing what all the fuss is about!

Take note that there is a nice set of links on the lower right of our blog, which will lead you to the Golden Globe Awards, the Academy Awards, movie reviews, local theaters and film series, and other film resources.

Stay tuned for the Tree Town Cinema Club’s very own International Film Awards, the nominees for which will be announced next week on Tuesday, January 20.

As Katrina’s clouds began to darken the sky and cars sped out of town, Kimberly admits, “If I had wheels, I’d be gone too.”

Kimberly and Scott did not have a car or the means to leave New Orleans as Katrina approached, so they waited out the storm.

Eventually the levee failed, flooding the lower Ninth Ward and forcing residents left behind to seek shelter. As local, state and federal government failed to respond effectively to Katrina, those who remained behind had to fend for themselves. The experience left many disappointed with authorities.

“If you don’t have money, if you don’t have status — you don’t have a government,” says one of Kimberly’s relatives, bitter about the bungled response to Katrina. She vows to do whatever it takes to make sure that her son is able to get an education. Some are not so lucky.

“Trouble the Water” highlights how large-scale poverty and lack of education contribute to a downward spiral of a lack of opportunities and crime. Kimberly has struggled to survive since her mother died of AIDS, and a brother waited out Katrina in prison.

Kimberly’s husband Scott talks with amazement of how enemies — rival gang members one might assume from an image shown of him proudly brandishing a gun — helped each other out during Katrina as they worked to rescue victims of the flooding.

Shocked and distrustful of authorities, some lower Ninth Ward residents left New Orleans for good. Yet a number of those residents returned after finding it difficult to make a new start elsewhere. Luckily, Scott found a job in construction back in New Orleans after offering to watch over a foreman’s construction supplies. He was happy just to have work. Not everyone was as lucky as Scott, however, and eventually reconstruction will cease. What then?

The role of poverty and lack of education in urban America was examined by the 1968 Kerner Commission Report, known fully as the “National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.” Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, Jr., chaired the commission, whose mission from President Lyndon B. Johnson was to examine civil disorders that were happening in the late-1960s and ask what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Johnson thought that the rioting was some sort of conspiracy, but the commission found that the conditions in inner-city America were so severe that almost anything could provoke people to riot. Among the conditions observed: low income, high unemployment, poor education and poor transportation.

Former Oklahoma Senator Fred R. Harris, who worked on the commission, spoke with Bill Moyers on the March 28, 2008 edition of the PBS television show the “Bill Moyers Journal” about the commission’s work.

“Crime, narcotics and so forth — these are the handmaidens of poverty,” said Harris. “There are a lot of people who want to punish people for being poor,” he added. “What you need to do is give people a hand up.”

Today Harris teaches political science at the University of New Mexico and works with the Eisenhower Foundation, an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to continue the work of the Kerner Commission.

Allowing poverty and lack of education to continue only leads to difficulties, not only for the poor, but for society as a whole. America will be a better place when more people can afford to survive and provide for themselves and their families. Otherwise, the structural failure witnessed in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina will happen again and again — in New Orleans and in other urban centers.

This concept of random chance bringing great change to people’s lives reminded me of a scene in the BBC TV miniseries “Brideshead Revisited” from 1982. The pivotal scene where Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte meet is fleshed out more in the miniseries than the movie the Cinema Club members saw earlier this year. In the miniseries, Charles has invited a number of his friends to his rooms to discuss worldly topics and they happen to be discussing Newton’s Laws of Motion, and considering whether if the orbits of the planets can be precisely calculated based on simple physical laws and are therefore deterministic, that the whole universe itself, including all humans’ lives, might also be deterministic, that is, there would be no such thing as Free Will. The mathematician or philosopher of the bunch has just said “Shouldn’t we say, then, that Chance is the very basic principle of our life in this rational universe?” when Sebastian, having been out drinking with his friends, appears at the open ground floor window of Charles’ living room and has a queasy look on his face and glances at Charles and then leans in slightly through the window and pukes onto Charles’ carpet. His friend apologizes and the next day multiple bouquets of flowers appear unbidden in Charles’ rooms and their friendship is launched, a friendship will alters each of their lives and those around them in profound and irreversible ways.

In a 1996 interview in “Salon” magazine entitled “Listening to the World: An Interview with Mike Leigh,” Leigh speaks of the history of such filmmaking. “There is a great tradition, which exists in Europe and plenty of other places, not least Japan, of making films about real life, uncluttered and unfettered and uninterfered with by the kind of disease that you can — broadly speaking — diagnose as Hollywood.”

Japanese filmmaking certainly contains examples of this. Although Japanese director Akira Kurosawa was known especially for “Shichinin No Samurai” ["Seven Samurai"] (1954), the basis for the popular American Western movie “The Magnificent Seven,” he made some beautiful films about ordinary people. The one which most easily comes to mind is “Ikiru” ["To Live"] (1952), a powerful story about a city clerk who re-examines his life and decides do something to bring joy into people’s lives. Even “Tengoku to Jigoku” ["High and Low"] (1963) offered a sympathetic view of ordinary people, couched in the form of a police drama inspired by American crime novelist Ed McBain’s “King’s Gambit.”

Some fellow British filmmakers have also demonstrated a knack for this. Director Ken Loach has made some wonderful humanist films. My favorite is “Riff-Raff” (1991), about a construction worker who tries to eke out a living in lower-class London in the 1980s. Director Neil Jordan also has a rare talent with ordinary characters, evident even in his thrillers “Mona Lisa” (1986) and “The Crying Game” (1992). Despite the sensational nature of the latter, actors Stephen Rea and Forest Whitaker essentially play two ordinary characters caught up in a larger struggle, and there is a transcendent message of human kindness in this film. I frequently return to Jordan’s films to enjoy that message.

I’m sure there are many more. Perhaps you can think of some here…

I originally read Alfred Lansing’s excellent 1959 book “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” for an overview, watched Hurley’s film and saw a few movies about Shackleton. I missed the March 26, 2002 “Nova” episode “Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance” on PBS, however. The PBS Nova Web site has some great information about the expedition and its context in the history of Antarctic exploration.

Featuring Kenneth Branagh, director and writer Charles Sturridge’s 2002 Channel Four Television dramatization “Shackleton” helped bring the story to life for me. This was broadcast in the U.S. via the A&E network.

The Independent Film Channel posted a nice interview with director Herzog on their Web site about the making of his South Pole documentary and his life in general.