"Juno," "Michael Clayton," "The Savages," "Knocked Up" and "Lars and the Real Girl" have received WGA nominations for original screenplay, while "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the Wild" and "Zodiac" have taken adapted screenplay nods. Documentary noms went to "The Camden 28," "Nanking," "No End in Sight," "The Rape of Europa," "Sicko" and "Taxi to the Dark Side." Winners will be announced Feb. 9. ...

And we're off.....the awards season has kicked off in high gear this past week, with the announcement of the Gotham Awards in New York, the nominations for the Film Independent Spirit Awards and now the National Board of Review, the first of the end-of-the-year critics groups to bestow prizes. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel and Ethan Coen's nouveau Western, was named Best Film of the Year. The film also won a Best Adapted Screenplay prize for the Coens, as well as an award for Best Ensemble Cast, ...

 Wednesday, December 5--------And we're off.....the awards season has kicked off in high gear this past week, with the announcement of the Gotham Awards in New York, the nominations for the Film Independent Spirit Awards and now the National Board of Review, the first of the end-of-the-year critics groups to bestow prizes. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel and Ethan Coen's nouveau Western, was named Best Film of the Year. The film also won a Best Adapted Screenplay prize for the Coens, as well as an...

Directed in tandem by Bill Gutenburg and Dan Sturman, "NANKING" (USA 2007, RT, 91 minutes, in Mandarin, English and Japanese) is a startling and shocking reconstruction of a gigantic atrocity perpetrated by the Japanese army in China nearly 70 years ago, but presented in part by leading actors as if it were taking place today. The result, graphically depicting the sack and destruction of the city along with the indiscriminate bestial massacre of just about the entire civilian population, is a p...

The 33rd edition of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) initiated its marathon 24 day run on Friday, May 25, with 18 films bursting out of the starting gates at six festival venues strategically located around the city from the landmark Space Needle to the University District (and a seventh across the lake in satellite city Bellevue). The opening event I chose to attend was "An Evening with Lisa Gerrard", hypnotic Australian song-bird/composer, introducing the screening of a mystico-...