While Spanish films have always had a certain cachet amongst American moviegoers, Latin American cinema has not always met with the same curiosity, and certainly not with the same critical engagement. But these last few years have been a breakthrough for Latin American movies in the US. Mexican directors Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo Del Toro all featured prominently at the 79th Academy Awards, with Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth considered by many to be the best movie of 2007. Only a few years earlier, City of God captivated American audiences with its mix of wistful, lighthearted storytelling and unflinching exploration of urban poverty in a society orphaned by drugs....

Sam Peckinpah, Blood Poet Harvard Film Archive 24 Quincy St., Cambridge September 5-12 More information Sam Peckinpah was a drunk and a drug addict, a narcissist and a misogynist, a genius and a crap artist. He's known for the extremes of his life and the violence of his work. He shares an obsessive attention to detail, and a detailed attention to obsessives, with his mentor, Don Siegel, and an attraction to bilious melodrama with his......

Modesty Blaise (1966) Friday, 7:00 PM and Boom! (1968) Saturday, 9:00 PM Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge More Information The Harvard Film Archive wraps-up its Joseph Losey retrospective this weekend with two of Losey's campier films, Boom! and Modesty Blaise. Starring Elizabeth Taylor and her sometimes-husband Richard Burton, Boom! has a long line of defenders eager to declare the movie an over-the-top classic (no-one would go so......

Night of the Comet and Q: The Winged Serpent Harvard Film Archive Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge Saturday, July 19 7:00 p.m. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) is easily the best movie about an Aztec god (Quetzalcoatl) rampaging through New York City starring David Carradine. The stop-motion rubber serpent is enough to make the most tech-positive film geek long for old fashioned, artisanal special effects. Law & Order's Michael Moriarty makes a fantastic......

Robert Breer, Kinetic Poet of the Avant-Garde Harvard Film Archive Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge Today, 7:00pm, $10 More information Robert Breer brought pop art to abstract animation. He’s an artist whose work could fit equally well alongside the European “cubist” film of the early twentieth century and American Saturday morning cartoons. (Breer worked as an animator on the PBS series Electric Company in the early 70s.) Billed by HFA as a “founding member......

Tony Conrad, violinist and experimental filmmaker, stood prepared to electrocute a six foot strip of film Sunday evening. "Experimental filmmaking isn't like real experiments because you don't have to be careful," he told the crowd at Harvard Film Archive. "If you talk to an experimental filmmaker, ask if they know what they're doing." It was a sentiment that seemed charming until a Tesla coil launched a quarter million volt arc of purple light across......

Jorge Furtado's Porto Alegre Harvard Film Archive Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge Friday, March 7 -- Saturday, March 8 More information Brazilian director Jorge Furtado's work should be better known among American film audiences. His movies are hilarious, thoughtful and unpretentious -- they aim to entertain above all else. The Man Who Copied (O Homem Que Copiava) (2003, screening Friday) is a case in point. It's the story of André (Lázaro Ramos), whose humdrum......

Books Is it possible to be saved by the Sex Pistols? The answer to that is a resounding yes. Michael Patrick MacDonald will be reading from Easter Rising, an account of his youth in the Boston punk scene, at Brookline Booksmith. Bostonist had the opportunity to hear him read from the book when he spoke at UMass-Boston, and we say with great emphasis that this is a must-see, not just for those who love......

Boston's King of Boogie-Woogie With his long hair and white beard, Preacher Jack may look like a wild-eyed holy man descended from a lonely mountaintop. He's actually a living piece of boogie-woogie/rockabilly history who grew up and resides on the North Shore. Pounding the keys for fifty years, he may not keep a weekly residence at Frank's Steak House anymore, but Preacher Jack comes down to Cambridge & Boston every couple weeks to spread......

Books Susan Choi draws on real-life, high-profile crimes for her literary works. Her last book was American Woman, based on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and now she's inspired by her father's real-life experience as a former colleague of the Unabomber in her latest, A Person of Interest. Brookline Booksmith, 7:00 pm, free. Movies Child of the Big City and Daydreams are two silent films from the vanguard of pre-revolution Russian cinema. The former......

Nothing helps avant garde art go down like a good gimmick, and filmmaker Robert Fenz had a great one. Fenz screened two films Monday at the Harvard Film Archive, each accompanied by live improvisation from the renowned jazz trumpeter Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith. Fenz is a young filmmaker who shoots in black and white 16mm. His work consists largely of urban landscapes rendered in richly composed shots. Unlike structuralist filmmakers, however, Fenz's films also have......

Dark Side of the Moon, Sorta... --The last lunar eclipse for the next 2 years is happening tonight. With binoculars or even the naked eye, the moon will start to look pretty darn red around 9:00 pm EST, as if the green cheese has turned into a port wine spread. The prime time will be between 10pm and 10:30pm. Why not get a better look at an obsevatory? Harvard Observatory, 60 Garden St, Cambridge,......

Books Manil Suri's The Age of Shiva follows a woman as she tries to find a life outside male expectations. Meera, a young woman in India, marries the man she desires, only to discover he's Mr. Wrong. Eventually, she throws all her hopes on her son, and the intensity of her feelings prompted the San Francisco Chronicle to call the work "a steamy, hot-out-of-the-oven offering of mother love." Whoa, there! Brookline Booksmith, 7:00 pm,......

Jazzy Movies Avant garde filmmaker Robert Fenz and free music composer and multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith team up tonight at the Harvard Film Archive to "create a 'space' that grows out of the combination of disciplines, with neither sound nor image subjugated." Fenz screens his film Meditations on Revolution and Smith provides live improvisational accompaniment. Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 7:00pm. $10. (RS) Rabbits Bored on President's Day? Get in......

In the Mood For Love (花样年华) Tonight at 7:30 7:00 (oops) Harvard Film Archive (Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge) Free admission! For anyone looking to launch a pre-Valentine's Day attack, Bostonist recommends tonight's free screening of Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love. This is a cheap date that says, I am sensitive (but not in an Eat, Pray, Love way). I am stylish (but not in a leggings-and-Uggs way). I can put up......

Some super-snazzy stuff is going on around Boston this week in the film world. The African Film Festival at the MFA is going strong, and Harvard Film Archive brings us José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia (En la ciudad de Sylvia) with the director live and in person. (Sometimes we wonder what the point of saying "live and in person" is--would we really go to an event with someone dead and in person?......

Bookgasms There is no public institution that inspires Bostonist with so many warm feelings as the public library. And there is no charity event quite like a library book sale to make Bostonist into a heartless marauder, fighting tooth and nail with no quarter given nor expected. City-wide Friends of the BPL are offering one today at Copley. Stay out of our freaking way. Central Library, Copley Square, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm. Movies It's......

Music --Haven't you always wanted to go to an event called HARVAPALOOZA? Well, now you can. Local band The Franklin Kite bring a special combination of musical prowess and astrophysics knowledge to Tommy Doyle's, where they'll play alongside Maya and The Trolleys to commemorate the palooza that is Harvard. Or something like that? Anyway, the show starts at 9 and it's totally free. A dance party will follow, so put your best foot forward. Hopefully......

Arthur Penn, American Auteur Harvard Film Archive (HFA) Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge Friday-Monday More details Filmmaker Arthur Penn's reputation rests so firmly on Bonnie and Clyde (1967), that you could be excused if you thought he only made one good movie. You'd be wrong, of course. It's a point that will be reiterated throughout the weekend as the Harvard Film Archive presents a retrospective of his work. Penn doesn't get the press that......

Meet the Spartans, which is now at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes after starting off in the negative, is enjoying the number-one position at the box office this week. Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone's comeback vehicle of-sorts, Rambo, wound up in second place. Seriously, Diedrich Bader is cool, but you're way better off watching him as a "Dog the Bounty Hunter" rip-off during this season's "Reno 911." At least Mark Feeney at the Globe found something to like......

Late-Breaking Event Johnny Pesky will be at the Barnes & Noble in Peabody tonight from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm signing books. Movies A Hong Kong drug-runner (Asia Argento) finds herself in trouble in Boarding Gate, Olivier Assayas' stylish thriller, which comes with side orders of sex and violence. Make that heaping side orders, plus a dash of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon. (She acts? Who knew?) Assayas will be at the Harvard Film Archive......

This weekend's Hollywood blockbuster openings are even more depressing than usual, with an ancient Stallone (looking like "an overcooked Ball Park frank," according to E), a cybercrime flick, and a take on a decade-old SNL skit "leading" the pack. Rambo, Untraceable, and Meet the Spartans (which currently has a negative rating at Rotten Tomatoes, something we haven't seen very often, if ever!) will open this weekend, most likely to some box office clamor despite the......

Movies --Normally, Bostonist commends the Brattle for its impeccable taste in movies, but they are boldly venturing into stinker territory with the Lindsay Lohan polefest I Know Who Killed Me. It's listed as part of the Brattle's Best of 2007 series. The inclusion of La Lohan means we've entered an alternate universe. Midnight, tonight and tomorrow night. More info on this shlocker. --The Harvard Film Archive is back open again and starting off with an......

The 2008 Golden Globe nominees were announced yesterday, and to nobody's surprise, they skewed heavily toward the period drama Atonement. Charlie Wilson's War, No Country for Old Men, American Gangster, and Sweeney Todd all emerged with at least 4 noms each. Local fave Casey Affleck was nominated for his (non-Jesse James) title role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and though Gone Baby Gone didn't get a nod in the......

How did The Golden Compass, Juno, and Atonement do critically and commercially? Of Compass and its controversy, the Dig's David Wildman said, "So screw the religious nuts, there's no reason not to see this fun little flick." James Verniere at the Herald disagreed, finding it a "long and often tedious slog." Unless you're a sci-fi fan or want to stick it to The Man, you might want to stay away. The movie opened at Number......

This big movie news this weekend is The Golden Compass, the adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel of the same name. The first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Golden Compass tells the tale of the "orphan" Lyra as she and her polar bear Iorek (voiced by Gandalf--er, Ian McKellen) embark on a journey to rescue Lyra's friend Roger from his kidnappers. We hear the movie's anti-religious themes have been played down (maybe thanks......

A Tribute to Ingmar Bergman Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge Friday, December 7-Wednesday, December 12 Tickets and more information Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who died in July, made too many movies to fit neatly into a polite retrospective. With that in mind, be grateful that the Brattle Theatre has arranged its Bergman tribute around a tidy theme -- films starring Liv Ullmann -- that demonstrates the broad range of Bergman's mastery. (The Harvard Film......

A Girl in Every Port (1928) and The Canary Murder Case (1929) Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge Sunday, 7:00pm More information Come for the haircut. Silent film's iconic flapper, actress, writer, and theorist Louise Brooks is the subject of a double feature tomorrow night at the Harvard Film Archive. Brooks is best known for playing a pair of prostitutes in the daring New Objectivity movies of German......

Magner's Boston Irish Film Festival November 9-11, 2007 Brattle Theatre and Harvard Film Archive $8-10 If you haven't got enough Irish in your everyday slang, be sure to check out the 2007 Boston Irish Film Festival (BIFF) for a strong shot of Irish flavor. This year focuses on four strong feature films: The Front Line, On Broadway, Short Order, and The Tiger's Tale, but features several other Irish films as well. View the trailers and......

Southland Tales Directed by Richard Kelly With Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott Tonight, 9:15 p.m. Harvard Film Archives, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge Tickets $8 for general public More information Tricky, Harvard, tricky! We've had Richard Kelly on the brain this week, thanks to A.R.T.'s world premiere of the stage adaptation of Kelly's 2001 flick "Donnie Darko." The Harvard Film Archive is ready to provide even more of the director's work......