The Placido Domingo 40th Anniversary Gala Concert

Plácido Domingo and Patricia Racette (Robert Millard)

At 67, Plácido Domingo is not content to rest on his laurels. The world famous opera singer has recently taken on conducting opera and concert performances. He has also signed on through the 2010-11 season as the General Director of the Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera. Earlier this year he made news by asking filmmakers Woody Allen, William Friedkin and David Cronenberg to each direct a production for the Los Angeles Opera in the 2008/09 season. This Mother's Day, you can enjoy Domingo on the big screen for a 40th Anniversary Gala Concert (Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 2:00pm at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Maybe to complement his selection of movie directors for a trio of upcoming projects at the L.A. Opera, Domingo is taking the L.A. Opera into movie theatres. Twenty-two Landmark Theatres around the country will be screening the concert recorded before a live audience on April 18, 2008, which celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Domingo's first professional appearance in Los Angeles. 

You can purchase tickets online at www.landmarktheatres.com. Ticket proces for this event: $20.00 adults, $18.00 seniors, and $15.00 children.

Companion viewing: Francesco Rosi's Carmen, Franco Zeffirelli's La Traviata, Franco Zeffirelli's Otello

10 Best of 2007

Choosing the top ten films of 2007 is like choosing which of your children you like best. I love them all but in different ways. This year the family grew larger than expected and was all over the map. You can listen to my rundown of the 10 best of 2007. I'm also including here some other noteworthy films of the year.

First, I'll mention a few films that might have made my ten best if studios had only decided to release them in San Diego. The trippy anime Tekkon Kinkreet; David Lynch's mind bending Inland Empire; the slyly ironic Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days; the abortion documentary Lake of Fire; and a pair of Johnnie To Hong Kong actioners Exiled and Triad Election (known as Election 2 in Hong Kong) all dazzled in their own unique ways. But none were deemed worthy of release here. I'm particularly irked by the fact that Johnnie To repeatedly fails to get his films released here. In these two films he served up gangster tales that were darker and more existential than what American audiences probably expect from Hong Kong actioners. He manges to mix action elements with a French New Wave freshness and Wong Kar Wai's lush stylish flourishes. To delivers consistently stunning work yet has failed to convince U.S. distributors to give his films an art house release that extends beyond a few cities. This needs to change.

Eastern Promises

The real star of Eastern Promises--director David Cronenberg (Focus Features)

When I interviewed David Cronenberg years ago he said something that still sums up his approach to filmmaking: "Most Hollywood filmmaking these days is the cinema of comfort. Im not looking to make comfortable cinema, theres enough of that around and thats the easiest and safest stuff to do. Somebodys got to do the other stuff." And that somebody is still Cronenberg. He's reteaming with his A History of Violence star Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises (opening September 14 throughout San Diego), a dark tale about the Russian Mafia--but that's only the surface.

Blood will have blood says Macbeth in Shakespeare's bloodiest play, and that holds true in Eastern Promises. The film opens with blood: bloodletting in the form of a graphic throat slitting, and the bloody hemorrhaging in a fourteen-year-old girl who dies giving birth. But both ultimately lead back to the same bloody source, a Russian crime family with ties to the Vory V Zakone. Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is the family patriarch, a grandfatherly old man that we find doing a lot of the cooking in his posh Trans-Siberian restaurant. His son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) is brutish and often drunk. He's the heir-apparent to the throne but his father doesn't seem willing to acknowledge that. Moderating between the two family members is Nikolai Luzhin (Mortensen), a chilly, impeccably dressed "chauffeur" whose carefully groomed exterior masks a ruthless brutality.

Slither

Elizabeth Banks responds appropriately in Slither (Universal)

James Gunn's Troma roots are showing in his feature film debut, Slither (opening March 31 throughout San Diego). Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Blob meets Night of the Living Dead meets... well you get the idea.

A History of Violence

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence.

David Cronenberg is a filmmaker who's built his reputation on movies that confound viewer expectations. Movies such as Naked Lunch, The Fly and Crash subvert the line between reality and fantasy. His previous film, Spider, was a small budget effort that took viewers inside an unhinged mind. Cronenberg's latest film opens this weekend in LA, New York and select cities. It's called A History of Violence. Once again, Cronenberg is likely to set viewers on edge.

David Cronenberg says hes not interested in comfortable cinema.

DAVID CRONENBERG: "Comfort is not a great place to launch creativity from And so I feel the same way about my audience, for an interesting experience, for a self-reflective experience comfort is not the way to go."

But Cronenberg begins A History of Violence in a comfortable place -- the fictional Millbrook, Indiana, a very normal, very nice Midwestern town.

DAVID CRONENBERG: "This is a possible ideal that I am showing you now and lets see what happens to it when something disrupts it."

The disruption comes in the form of two outsiders who arrive late one night at Tom Stall's family diner.

Spider

Ralph Fiennes in David Cronenberg's Spider.

David Cronenberg isn't interested in making "feel-good" movies -- unless you consdier the rush you get from his filmmaking genius as a way of inspiring you -- and his new film Spider (opening March 21 at Landmarks Hillcrest Cinemas) represents his unique cinematic vision. When I interviewed David Cronenberg in 1997, the year he made Crash, he explained, "Most Hollywood filmmaking these days is the cinema of comfort. I'm not looking to make comfortable cinema, there's enough of that around and that's the easiest and safest stuff to do. Somebody's got to do the other stuff." Cronenberg has been that somebody for years and Spider definitely represents that other stuff.

Based on Patrick McGrath's novel, Spider focuses on Dennis Cleg (Ralph Fiennes), a man coping with schizophrenia and haunted memories from the past. As a young boy (exquisitely played by 10-year-old Bradley Hall), Dennis received the nickname Spider for his interest in the intricate webs the tiny creatures spin. The clever open uses textures of rust and chipped paint to create a credit sequence of naturally occurring Rorschach tests, most of which have a spidery look. Cronenberg's first shot of the movie represents the only time we're allowed to see the world from a perspective other than Spider's. The shot takes us through a bustling crowd of people exiting a train. As the crowd thins, the camera finds Spider cautiously emerging. As we move in closer, the rest of the world fades away and we enter Spider's world exclusively.

Mimic

Mira Sorvino stars in Guillermo Del Toro's first American film Mimic.

In 1993, Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro won acclaim for his feature debut Cronos, a stylish take on the vampire film. This year he releases his first American film Mimic (opening August 21).

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro says that he was raised on a diet of "Catholic horror," and even though he considers himself an atheist, he can't shed his Catholic upbringing. In his first feature, Cronos, he gave a Catholic twist to the vampire genre by offering a Christ-like bloodsucker that's redeemed through his suffering. Now Del Toro explores what happens when man plays god in his new sci-fi horror film Mimic.