Education
Swarthmore College.
( Almost every day of the year a film festival takes plac...)
Almost every day of the year a film festival takes place somewhere in the world--from sub-Saharan Africa to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Sundance to Sarajevo is a tour of the world's film festivals by an insider whose familiarity with the personalities, places, and culture surrounding the cinema makes him uniquely suited to his role. Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, writes about the most unusual as well as the most important film festivals, and the cities in which they occur, with an eye toward the larger picture. His lively narrative emphasizes the cultural, political, and sociological aspects of each event as well as the human stories that influence the various and telling ways the film world and the real world intersect. Of the festivals profiled in detail, Cannes and Sundance are obvious choices as the biggest, brashest, and most influential of the bunch. The others were selected for their ability to open a window onto a wider, more diverse world and cinema's place in it. Sometimes, as with Sarajevo and Havana, film is a vehicle for understanding the international political community's most vexing dilemmas. Sometimes, as with Burkina Faso's FESPACO and Pordenone's Giornate del Cinema Muto, it's a chance to examine the very nature of the cinematic experience. But always the stories in this book show us that film means more and touches deeper chords than anyone might have expected. No other book explores so many different festivals in such detail or provides a context beyond the merely cinematic.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520240723/?tag=2022091-20
( It is in the nature of today's movie business that whil...)
It is in the nature of today's movie business that while Hollywood blockbusters invade every megaplex, smaller, quality films often don't get screen time. Fans of finer films have to count on catching up with them on video and DVD, but even the most hard-core devotees have trouble remembering what sounded good when a film was originally released. Never Coming to a Theater Near You will remedy that situation. This selection of renowned film critic Kenneth Turan's absorbing and illuminating reviews, now revised and updated to factor in the tests of time, point viewers toward the films they can't quite remember, but should not miss. Moviegoers know they can trust Turan's impeccable taste. His eclectic selection represents the kind of sophisticated, adult, and entertaining films intelligent viewers are hungry for. More importantly, Turan shows readers what makes these unusual films so great, revealing how talented filmmakers and actors have managed to create the wonderful highs we experience in front of the silver screen.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1586483498/?tag=2022091-20
( The images and memories that matter most are those that...)
The images and memories that matter most are those that are unshakeable, unforgettable. Kenneth Turan's fifty-four favorite films embrace a century of the world's most satisfying romances and funniest comedies, the most heart-stopping dramas and chilling thrillers. Turan discovered film as a child left undisturbed to watch Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York, a daily showcase for older Hollywood features. It was then that he developed a love of cinema that never left him and honed his eye for the most acute details and the grandest of scenes. Not to be Missed blends cultural criticism, historical anecdote, and inside-Hollywood controversy. Turan's selection of favorites ranges across all genres. From All About Eve to Seven Samurai to Sherlock Jr., these are all timeless filmsclassic and contemporary, familiar and obscure, with big budgets and smalleach underscoring the truth of director Ingmar Bergman's observation that no form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158648396X/?tag=2022091-20
Swarthmore College.
Turan was raised in an observant Jewish family in Brooklyn. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University"s Graduate School of Journalism. He has been a film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1991 and the Director for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Los Angeles Times since 1993.
He is the founding film critic for Arts Alive on KUSC-FM and www.kusc.org.
He also provides regular reviews for Morning Edition on National Public Radio. Kenneth Turan is featured in the documentary Foreign the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism discussing his famous public quarrel with James Cameron, and recalling how Cameron e-mailed the Los Angeles Times’s editors calling for Turan’s firing after Turan wrote a negative review of Titanic.
He serves on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center.
( It is in the nature of today's movie business that whil...)
( Almost every day of the year a film festival takes plac...)
( The images and memories that matter most are those that...)
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