Mike Sragow | Maryland Film Festival Blog

Posts Tagged 'Mike Sragow'

Mother and Child: MFF 2010 Closing Night Film

Published April 15, 2010 1 Closed
Tags: 2010, Baltimore, Closing Night, Friends of the Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Mike Sragow, Mother and Child, Programming Preview, Rodrigo Garcia

Last night at the FOF Programming Preview we unveiled most of our selection including our closing night film, Rodrigo Garcia’s “Mother and Child.” Check out Mike Sragow’s blog profiling the film!

Mike Sragow Profiles Victor Fleming in NY Times

Published March 1, 2010 1 Closed
Tags: Clark Gable, Film Forum, Gary Cooper, Jed Dietz, Judy Garland, MICA, Mike Sragow, retrospective, Spencer Tracy, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Victor Fleming

It’s so ironic that Mike Sragow, The Baltimore Sun’s great film critic and writer, (now under-used by The Chicago Tribune editors that oversee the newspaper) has a magnificent piece in yesterday’s New York Times. The piece is about the seminal Hollywood director Victor Fleming who will have a retrospective at NY’s Film Forum from March 5 – 18. The article features a photo of Jean Harlow in Fleming’s film BOMBSHELL (remember that great screening we did with Sragow at MICA?), and chronicles the frustration Sragow feels that Fleming, who helped thrust Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Judy Garland and many more towards stardom, hasn’t received more recognition for his outstanding career. Sragow’s great book on Fleming has won universal praise and is certainly one of the best profiles of the American movie art form, in the time of its adolescence, ever written.

~Jed Dietz, MFF Director

Jed Dietz to host Oscar-Nominated Shorts at The Charles!

Published February 19, 2010 1 Closed
Tags: 2/19, Bret McCabe, Jed Dietz, Logorama, Mike Sragow, nominated, Oscar, shorts, sundance, The Baltimore Sun, The Charles Theatre, The City Paper, Wallace and Gromit

I’m really looking forward to hosting the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts at 5:00pm this evening at the Charles. I saw LOGORAMA at Sundance, and am a big Wallace and Gromit fan. Whether or not you can join us this evening, I hope you can fit these two programs in to your weekend. Here’s Mike Sragow’s piece in today’s Sun.

~Jed Dietz, MFF Director

COME SEE THE OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORTS AT THE CHARLES!

Continuing a popular tradition, the Charles will offer two programs this weekend of Academy Award nominated Shorts- Animated and Live Action. These are not to be missed because they are hard to find anywhere else, and this will probably be the only chance you’ll get to see them on the big screen.

This represents a particularly diverse range of filmmaking talents, so we hope you can catch both Shorts Programs. Here’s Bret McCabe’s posting from 2/1710 on the City Paper website.

The Maryland Film Festival has a special commitment to Short Films, programming lots of them, and devoting our Opening Night to them (with crucial support from the Baker Fund). Festival Director Jed Dietz will host the Animated Shorts Program that starts at 5:00PM on Friday. There will be a brief intro and some Q&A afterwards. The whole program runs about 90 minutes.

Sragow Profiles Local and Nation Oscar Noms

Published February 4, 2010 1 Closed
Tags: American Heart, Baltimore, Edward Furlong, Jeff Bridges, MICA, Mike Sragow, Music by Prudence, Oscar Nominations, Oscars, Patrick Wright, shorts

Nice piece by Michael Sragow in Wednesday’s Sun exploring some local links to the recent Oscar nominees

Sragow, one of the best film writers in the country, explores one of the documentary short nominees, MUSIC BY PRUDENCE, produced and co-edited by MICA’s Patrick Wright. Patrick’s been such a great partner with us on the film series’ we’ve done at MICA, often including special sessions in the classroom with the students and visiting filmmakers. He’s put together a pretty great film program for MICA students. I haven’t seen his finished film, but early scenes I saw were unbelievable, and it’s been fun watching the project grow. MICA has been supportive from the beginning. I don’t know any of the other nominees, but I hope this one wins.

No news flash: Jeff Bridges is going to win the Oscar for Best Actor. It will act as a Lifetime Achievement Award and, on that basis, is richly deserved. If you want to see him deliver a really fresh performance of a man struggling with self-destructive impulses, rent AMERICAN HEART. Bridges plays a reluctant father to Edward Furlong (discovered by Jim Cameron for TERMINATOR), and he’s just great.