Frieze. 118.

Duncan Campbell writes the "Life in Film" column for the new issue of frieze: "Firstly, I'd like to pay my dues to John T Davis. Davis was born in Belfast. His first experience of filmmaking came via a chance encounter in 1966 with DA Pennebaker, who was on a Belfast street, camera on shoulder, recording Bob Dylan for his film Don't Look Back. Having previously considered a career as an art teacher, Davis decided there and then that filmmaking was for him." Also in the October issue: Mary Ellen Bute "is today less well known than other early film animators such as [Len] Lye, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling or Oskar Fischinger," notes Melissa Gronlund, "and this exhibition of her early 35mm films at Sketch, transferred onto DVD and shown on 12 simultaneous projections in the gallery space, was a rare event.... Rather than painting or scratching directly on film, Bute used cartoon animation as well as the filming of a variety of inventively used household items - combs, coffee, colanders - to create her visual abstractions. She was particularly interested in mathematics and science, expressing their formal propositions in filmic form, in addition to her renderings of music." Continue reading "Frieze. 118."

Shorts, 10/11.

"I come from Portugal, but I have not spoken Portuguese in years. I am proud of this, even though I have never learnt to speak another language properly. I suppose you could say that makes me feel twice as Portuguese." So begins Raúl Ruiz's just published In Pursuit of Treasure Island, described as "a prelude and a continuation to Raul Rúiz's film, Treasure Island," and a "follow up, or rather, a pursuit of Stevenson's novel." From the December 1951 issue of Films in Review: Herman G Weinberg on Hans Richter. The Parallax View runs Richard T Jameson's 1974 piece on Chinatown for Movietone News. Continue reading "Shorts, 10/11."

NYFF 08, 10/11.

How to spend the New York Film Festival's last weekend? John Magary has recommendations at the Reeler. The Nation's letting non-subscribers see only a bit of Stuart Klawans's NYFF dispatch, but even just that bit's very much worth noting: Continue reading "NYFF 08, 10/11."

Fests and events, 10/11.

"The only thing, perhaps, that has prevented [Andrzej] Wajda from becoming the sort of art-household name that Fellini and Bergman and Antonioni became is that his style, unlike those of his more famous contemporaries, is changeable, unsettled, hard to define. You never know quite what to expect from a Wajda picture." The occasion for Terrence Rafferty's career assessment in the New York Times is Truth or Dare: The Films of Andrzej Wajda, running at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from October 17 through November 13. "And a week later Anthology Film Archives chimes in with a five-day series of half a dozen films made by Mr Wajda for Polish Television Theater, none of which have been shown in the United States before." Continue reading "Fests and events, 10/11."

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/10.

Twitch's Todd Brown is at Sitges, and he's been busy as hell. He talks with King of the Hill director Gonzalo Lopez, who's got "two productions gearing up in North America and a third in Spain"; notes that Let the Right One In has won a "Golden Melies Award as the Best European Genre Film of the year"; that IFC's picked up AJ Annila's horror film Sauna; and he reviews Monster X Strikes Back, Fumihiko Sori's Ichi, Agnes Merlet's "chilling new possession film" Dorothy, Ryu Seung-Wan's Dachimawa Lee, Albert Arizza's Ramirez, Nicolas Lopez's Santos and The Embodiment of Evil, "a shocking, potent reminder that the creative blood still runs strong in [Jose Mojica] Marins's veins." Continue reading "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/10."

Nights and Weekends.

"What's bold one day becomes blasé the next, and the sub-subgenre known as mumblecore had no sooner been declared cinema's lo-fi savior than people started sharpening their knives," writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "The result: We've seen a few emerging talents (viva Aaron Katz!) and suffered through a lot of twentysomething filmmakers who mistake solipsism for insight. The jury is still out regarding which category Joe Swanberg fits in, and his latest collaboration with the Julie Christie of no-budget indies - actor, cowriter and codirector Greta Gerwig - doesn't clear up the matter. There are elements of this relationship drama that reflect both what these homegrown, handmade miniatures have to offer and what makes them unbearably grating." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "Nights and Weekends."

Breakfast with Scot.

"Welcome to the gay family film," writes Rachel Abramowitz in the Los Angeles Times, "as mild and sweet as anything out of the Disney empire. [Breakfast with Scot] stars Ed's Tom Cavanagh and Angels in America's Ben Shenkman as the gay couple, who aren't technically married but might as well be, and Noah Bernett as their new child. The movie is certainly topical, given the newfound media prominence of hockey parenting and, of course, the recent legalization of gay marriage in California and the resulting battle with Proposition 8, this year's ballot proposal that would ban same-sex marriage in the state." Continue reading "Breakfast with Scot."

City of Ember.

"The exasperated rumble of dying machinery - to our pampered ears, the sound of civilization ending - is the aural backdrop of City of Ember, a grim fantasy about a cloistered subterranean metropolis that wants to be both a kids' adventure and a dystopian finger-wag," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. "That director Gil Kenan's second feature - following the snappy motion-capture animated film Monster House - never quite succeeds as either is a shame for all the dazzling craftsmanship brought forth from its production team." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "City of Ember."

Fests and events, 10/9.

'"There are currently two fantastic art exhibitions in Los Angeles that cinephiles won't want to miss, both offered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences," notes Doug Cummings. "I've already written about Frédéric Back: A Life's Drawings in Hollywood (through November 1st). The second is Akira Kurosawa: Film Artist in Beverly Hills (through December 14th)." Leslie Caron, "who was discovered at 19 by Gene Kelly to star opposite him in 1951's An American in Paris, will be discussing Gigi on Friday with critic Stephen Farber at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The evening culminates with a screening of a new digital restoration of Gigi. Susan King talks with her for the Los Angeles Times. Also: an overview of David Lean: Ten British Classics, at UCLA through October 26. Continue reading "Fests and events, 10/9."

Sight & Sound, Times. LFF 08.

The full title of the event that'll be the talk of the town in London from October 15 through 30 is The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival. And now, both entities are presenting big editorial packages to whip up Vorfreude: the BFI's Sight & Sound and the London Times. Times editor James Harding: "We at the newspaper love film, in all its parts: the art of it, the glamour of it, the entertainment of it, the business of it, the science of it and the humanity of it. This year, the feeling is mutual. By some happy accident, this year's selection of the world's best films will also excite people with an interest in the news." The paper's also offering a free guide to the festival as a downloadable PDF, while critic James Christopher lists ten must-sees; S&S adds 20 more (in addition to the films covered in features we'll get to in a moment). Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "Sight & Sound, Times. LFF 08."

NYFF Podcast. Scott Foundas.

Aaron Hillis and Andrew Grant have all sorts of questions for Scott Foundas, film critic for the LA Weekly and Variety, and New York Film Festival selection committee member. First, of course, is the story of how he wound up on the committee. Next: What's the process? Are decisions unanimous? And which films would he most recommend catching, now or whenever possible? To listen or download, click here.

Austin Chronicle. AFF 08.

Opening up the Austin Chronicle's Austin Film Festival preview package, Kimberly Jones finds lots to laugh about: "Hitting every shade of funny from sunshine-silly to black, blacker, blackest comedy, exhibits A through C: award recipients such as The Office's Greg Daniels and film director Danny Boyle (who found sick, hilarious stuff in a junkie's toilet bowl dip in Trainspotting), the festival's indie-oriented Comedy Vanguard sidebar, and sneak looks at Hollywood films such as possible sleeper hit Bart Got a Room and Oliver Stone's long-awaited biopic W., which by definition is surely as much a comedy as a tragedy." Continue reading "Austin Chronicle. AFF 08."

Nobel. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 has been awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." What a banner year for French culture. Laurent Cantet's The Class wins the Palme d'Or and opens a French-tinged New York Film Festival; the San Francisco Film Society launches its first annual French Cinema Now series; and New French Films will be screening next month at BAM. Meanwhile, Michel Houellebecq has debuted as a feature director (with The Possibility of an Island), Bernard-Henri Lévy carries on his campaign to become the contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville and President Nicolas Sarkozy stows away the bling and grabs the reins of the EU Presidency to actually get stuff done. Bravo. Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "Nobel. Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio."

NYFF. The Windmill Movie.

We begin with David D'Arcy's take (see also the entries on Waltz with Bashir and Gomorrah); others follow. The Windmill Movie is the film that Richard P "Dick" Rogers wanted to make, and tried to make, for much of his life. It's an autobiography, assembled from footage and papers that Rogers left behind, by Alexander Olch, a former Harvard student who financed his archaeology of his former teacher by designing neckties that are sold at the finest department stores in New York. Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "NYFF. The Windmill Movie."

NYFF Podcast. Changeling.

Rallying to the defense of Clint Eastwood's Changeling [site] are Mike D'Angelo and Glenn Kenny; arguing the case against it are Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis. To listen or download click here. "Why this film was chosen as the Centerpiece for the 2008 New York Film Festival is beyond me," grumbles Marcy Dermansky. Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF Podcast. Changeling."

NYFF. The Headless Woman.

"The Headless Woman [site] is a scrupulously crafted, thematically sound social critique masquerading as a character study that, to put it bluntly, is so affected and emotionally inaccessible as to be borderline intolerable," writes Nick Schager. "The film's opener - a series of glidingly crosscut images of children running and Verónica fussing with her girlfriends, capped by the haunting image of palm prints fading on a car window - is a tour de force of economical storytelling that makes the next 80 or so minutes moot," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "NYFF. The Headless Woman."

NYFF. Four Nights with Anna.

"Grey and waterlogged, Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna is something like the Eastern European answer to Rear Window and Chungking Express, a deeply gothic, but no less romantic tale of voyeurism, breaking and entering, and secret love," writes Leo Goldsmith in Reverse Shot. "Instead of a wheelchair-bound James Stewart, we have Artur Steranko as emotionally crippled ex-con Leon Okrasa, who, like Faye Wong in Wong Kar-wai's film, opts to anonymously clean his beloved's lodgings rather than announce his love. But in Four Nights with Anna, as the title suggests, Leon does his housework (and a few other unsolicited things) nocturnally while Anna, the object of his distorted affection, lies drugged from the crushed sleeping pills Leon has slipped into her sugar." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "NYFF. Four Nights with Anna."

Shorts, fests, etc, 10/8.

"In Tokyo, Takahiko Iimura read about the American underground film movement, the work of avant-garde artists like Jack Smith and Stan Brakhage. He couldn't see the films, but he began making experimental works based on what he'd read. Soon he was a leading experimental filmmaker." Michael Barrett watches his work for PopMatters. Just up at kino fist: a series of texts on the theme of "Apocalypse." Continue reading "Shorts, fests, etc, 10/8."

Happy-Go-Lucky.

"After extended cameos in two previous [Mike] Leigh films (as a resourceful pop tart in All or Nothing and the date-raped rich girl in Vera Drake), fine-boned Sally Hawkins shoulders the burden of every scene as the most relentlessly upbeat 30-year-old kindergarten teacher ever to bicycle London's chartered streets." J Hoberman in the Voice: "The blithe spirit who animates Happy-Go-Lucky is a priestess of positive polarization; she's either irritating or endearing—whichever you find her, you have to wonder why.... Will this lighthearted creature fulfill her earthly mission? At the very least, the spectacle of Poppy's devotion and desire, not to mention her all-around sunny disposish, left this viewer feeling unaccountably happy - at least for the moment." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "Happy-Go-Lucky."

RocknRolla.

"Guy Ritchie reshuffles a worn-out deck in RocknRolla, a return to the shady stylings that characterized his earlier flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "The on-screen names have changed, and the edited rhythms have been somewhat slowed, but more or less everything else follows formula: pump up the volume, tilt the camera, flex the muscle, strut the stuff, bang bang, blah blah." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "RocknRolla."

NYFF. Ashes of Time Redux.

Following its premiere in Cannes and two screenings at the New York Film Festival, Ashes of Time Redux sees a release on Friday in New York and Los Angeles. Wong Kar-wai "has followed up his Blueberry mess by returning to one of his first films, 1994's spottily available Ashes of Time, which has, since its initial release, floated around in various versions," explains Chris Wisniewski in Reverse Shot, and the result is "an unqualified triumph, the kind of cinematic experience that will remind audiences why they fell in love with Wong in the first place, whether they're rediscovering the film or seeing it for the first time." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "NYFF. Ashes of Time Redux."

Shorts, 10/7.

"The saga of John Howard Lawson has, from a certain standpoint, always been a Cold War blacklisters' favorite," notes Paul Buhle, reviewing Gerald Horne's The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten for Film International. "The brilliant avant-gardist playwright of the 1920s who became a leading Hollywood Communist in the 1930s wielded the polemical pen if not whip in the 1940s, following Central Committee commands to constrain dissent and artistic freedom. The 'Maltz Incident' in which a leading screenwriter, Albert Maltz, was made to repent his supposed sins, became the perfect excuse for cold warriors (notably historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, a 'communist expert' for the slick magazines) to call the Hollywood Communists dangerous, even when nobody could say in what ways exactly. The FBI penetration, the hearings, the Blacklist and the mood of fear that shut down Hollywood's social themes went in all directions, but never got entirely away from Lawson." Continue reading "Shorts, 10/7."

Fests and events, 10/7.

"If John Waters is 'the Pope of Trash' (according to the gospel of William S Burroughs) then freelance curator and film fanatic Jack Stevenson is a shoe-in for Cardinal," writes Matt Sussman, introducing his interview. "The last time Stevenson rolled into town in 2006, he arrived with a stack of film canisters that were a veritable Pandora's box filled with drug scare propaganda, witchcraft and Scandinavian skin flicks. This time he comes bearing amateur blue movies, a gritty portrait of a bisexual hustler, and grainy reels documenting live, nude girls - all shot in San Francisco - for the series The Superstars Next Door at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts." Thursday and Saturday. Continue reading "Fests and events, 10/7."

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/7.

At Twitch, Swarez marvels at Jeff Kleinsmith's poster for The Shining, commissioned by the Alamo Drafthouse. A couple of recommendations from Richard Harland Smith: "Every day is Halloween for the minds behind Kindertrauma, where you can find confessions of childhood nightmares spawned by mindless entertainment, a sausage surprise recipe you won't soon forget and some traum-mercials that will scar your soul (no, I really mean that) and what has to be the scariest album cover ever." And "Frankensteinia is always a good time and host Pierre Fournier is a gracious and affable host in possession of an encyclopedia-like brain (which is to say it's very heavy and dry) about all things related to Mary Shelley's undying Creature." Continue reading "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/7."

DVDs, 10/7.

"Despite his commitment to forward-actuated narratives and his characters' ability to move—and fast; they often run—through the world, Jean-Pierre Melville makes meaty films, a cinema of heft." Ryland Walker Knight begins his review of Le Doulos by lining it up against Army of Shadows: "Both films adhere to a delimited set (often trios, sometimes quartets) of masculine characters with little narrative space for women...; both films are 'about' the world's tests for fraternal bonds; both are about failure; both are marked by a curious attention to giveaway interstitials of clocks, of a look up, of walls empty and plentiful, so many things) and inward trajectories where the end game is less fatal than illuminative, however brutal and deliberate the swath carved across desolate earth winds." Continue reading "DVDs, 10/7."

Universal's Touch of Evil.

"I have long championed the critical recording by James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum on Criterion's The Complete Mr Arkadin as being one of the most pleasurable and informative DVD commentaries of recent years, and their new tag team recording on Universal's 50th anniversary edition of Touch of Evil (released today) is a worthy followup," writes Doug Cummings. "Watching the film again this year, it's a stunning example of socially relevant dramaturgy that centers not only on immigration issues that still dominate the headlines, but also highlights issues such as the ethics of tyrannical power and torture versus criminal rights and legal procedures that have been (or should have been) equally front and center in the mainstream conscience the past five years." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "Universal's Touch of Evil."

Jamie Stuart's NYFF46, part 3.

This episode's got plenty of stars, terrifically photographed, too, but mostly you may find yourself wondering what that Jamie Stuart character is really up to, where he comes from and why he's here.

NYFF. Nathaniel Dorsky.

"As he writes in his short book, Devotional Cinema (2003), Nathaniel Dorsky aspires to discover in film a way of 'approaching and manifesting the ineffable,'" writes Darren Hughes, introducing his interview with the filmmaker for the Auteurs' Notebook. "In recent years that has meant fixing his camera on the world around him, usually his adopted home town of San Francisco, and finding in its mundane details images of extraordinary wonder. His work counters what Peter Hutton, another practitioner of devotional cinema, calls the 'emotional velocity and visual velocity' of our times. Dorsky's films manage to shift our perception, making us more alive to the strange beauty of the physical world we inhabit." Continue reading "NYFF. Nathaniel Dorsky."

Ken Ogata, 1937 - 2008.

Japanese actor Ken Ogata, who starred in a number of films for the great director Shohei Imamura, died of liver cancer on Sunday. He was 71. Ogata is perhaps best known to an international audience for his role in Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama, in which he played a man who, by village tradition, has to leave his elderly mother up a nearby mountain to die; the film won the Palme d'Or and Ogata won the Japanese equivalent of the best actor Oscar in 1984. In total he was nominated 11 times for the gong, winning three times. Other collaborations with Imamura include Vengeance Is Mine (1979), Eijanaika (1981) and Zegen (1987). Ben Child, the Guardian. Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "Ken Ogata, 1937 - 2008."

W., round 1.

"Oliver Stone's unusual and inescapably interesting W. feels like a rough draft of a film it might behoove him to remake in 10 or 15 years," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "The director's third feature to hinge on a modern-era presidency, after JFK and Nixon, offers a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive's psychological makeup and, considering Stone's reputation and Bush's vast unpopularity, a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics. For a film that could have been either a scorching satire or an outright tragedy, W. is, if anything, overly conventional, especially stylistically. The picture possesses dramatic and entertainment value, but beyond serious filmgoers curious about how Stone deals with all this president's men and women, it's questionable how wide a public will pony up to immerse itself in a story that still lacks an ending." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "W., round 1."

NYFF. I'm Gonna Explode.

"Voy a Explotar (I'm Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn't care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs's The GoodTimeskid), it's the rare love letter to influence that's infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving." Updated through 10/8. Continue reading "NYFF. I'm Gonna Explode."

NYFF. Hunger.

"For all its grimy aesthetic beauty and stylishly horrifying images of bodily abuse and decay, the most powerful impression made by Hunger is a stationary 20-minute single-take conversation between imprisoned IRA leader Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a priest (Liam Cunningham) seated at a table in London's infamous Maze prison in 1981," writes Nick Schager. "A doomed man's final meeting with religious counsel is a scene seen countless times over, yet video-artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen turns his variation into a tour-de-force of controlled dramatics, his camera's rigid medium-shot gaze so intense that one can soon feel the propulsive movement of their back-and-forth verbal volleys, which bluntly lay out their differing views on Sands' plan to stage a suicidal hunger strike." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. Hunger."

NYFF. The Wrestler.

The Wrestler (site) "may best be described as an existentialist tragicomedy about the nature of identity and performance, but the movie itself is as light as low-calorie mayonnaise - which is saying a lot when you consider that, in director Darren Aronofsky's previous film, The Fountain (2006), even a mere snowflake was hunkered down with several tons of symbolic importance," writes Scott Foundas in Cinema Scope. "The result is a movie far closer in look and feel to the New American Cinema of the 70s (which Aronofsky clearly idolizes) than any of its maker's more laboured sacrifices at that hallowed altar." And profiling Mickey Rourke in a cover story for the Voice, Foundas notes that his is "a characterization of rare intensity and pathos that bristles with the lived-in authority of someone who knows what it means to live with his back against the ropes." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. The Wrestler."

NYFF. Lola Montès.

"A bodice-ripper invested with the profundity of a Stendhal novel, Lola Montès is also, even more than La Ronde, [Max] Ophüls's definite commentary on movie-watching," writes Fernando F Croce in Slant. "The Earrings of Madame de... is a smoother and more precise valse romantique, but Lola Montès is Ophüls's boldest vision of film as a medium that reveres beauty in order to both nurture and mock dreams. After their own sobering affair with the film, viewers are left to echo Liszt's compliment to Lola: 'Thank you for the illusion.'" "Artificiality and performance, in other words, are major concerns of this film, both on the level of the narrative, with characters playing literal and metaphoric roles, and, more reflexively, on the level of the film itself." Malcolm Turvey for Artforum: "Lola Montès is one of the most scrupulously honest films in the history of cinema, shining a light - long before political modernists of the 1960s such as Jean-Luc Godard and Nagisa Oshima - on the filmmaker's and viewers' willing complicity in the fabrications of the film's characters." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. Lola Montès."

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/6.

Row Three's a few days into its "31 Days of Horror" special. So far John Allison has survived My Little Eye, Road Games, À l'Interieur (Inside) and Identity. Quint's horror movie of the day at AICN: Salò. And here's the full list for October. Updated through 10/7. Continue reading "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/6."

NYFF. Summer Hours.

"Olivier Assayas has said that his intention with Summer Hours [site] was to return home and make a “French film†in the wake of his globetrotting trilogy of demonlover, Clean and Boarding Gate," notes Jeff Reichert in Reverse Shot. "[H]e doesn't seek to dampen the bustle of everyday life and contain it with his camera, rather, like Hou Hsiao-hsien he reacts to the rhythms of a gathering with deft sensitivity. This setup is all very universal in its generalities, but the particulars couldn't be more (stereo)typically 'French' - mission accomplished, Olivier." Updated through 10/11. Continue reading "NYFF. Summer Hours."

Shorts, fests, etc, 10/6.

"The result of [Lisa] Dombrowski's laborious paper-trail is that she is able vividly to describe and place much of [Sam] Fuller's career firmly in the context of the Hollywood film-making business," notes Tom von Logue Newth in his review of The Films of Sam Fuller: If You Die, I'll Kill You! for Film International. "Her grasp of the structure of distribution, the place of B pictures within the Hollywood system, shooting conditions and what was expected/required of the sorts of films that Fuller was making is excellent, and the section on each film typically ends with a close examination of how that particular picture's pattern of distribution, reception by press and public, and financial success (or not) affected the immediately subsequent course that Fuller's career was to take. It cannot be underestimated - although it is all too often overlooked - how the economics and accepted practices of the business shaped the path of many film-making careers, and to some extent, shaped even the films themselves." Continue reading "Shorts, fests, etc, 10/6."

NYFF. Che.

"Che seems to me almost the polar opposite of agitprop," writes Glenn Kenny. "It flat out does not ask for the kind of emotional engagement that more conventional epic biopics do, and that's a good thing. To see people who position themselves as new voices, with new perspectives, in cinematic discourse, complain about this movie's lack of 'human drama' is mildly exasperating." Brace yourself, Glenn, here we go... "If the traditional biopic is felled by forced emotional touchpoints that exaggerate or misrepresent their real-life equivalents," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog, "Che has the opposite problem: in producing a versimilar portrait of two temporally disconnected chunks of Che's public life, Soderbergh has made a movie called Che that tells us nothing about Che, which largely relies on that lovely cinematography and dynamic score to fill in the emotional beats that the directior hasn't brought out of the material." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. Che."

Filmmaker overviews.

The "filmmaker overview essay" is "an immensely useful and educational form," notes Girish, who then points to a healthy handful, only one of which has been noted before here: Jonathan Rosenbaum's piece on Nagisa Oshima for Artforum. The occasion for that one, of course, is In the Realm of Oshima, the series co-organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Cinematheque Ontario and curated by James Quandt - whose essay on Oshima for the Cinematheque is now online. Two more Girish has been reading: Adrian Martin on Abel Ferrara for 16:9 and, again, Jonathan Rosenbaum, this time with a 1988 piece on Sergei Parajanov. "Finally, the Senses of Cinema Great Directors database is the definitive resource of its kind on the Interwebs," adds Girish, who, having recommended several books as well, naturally wraps it all up with a question: "Do you have some favorite examples of either books or individual essays, print or online, of filmmaker overview pieces?" If so, head to Girish's place and add to the collection.

NYFF. Gomorrah.

"Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah [site] is the latest in a long line of hyperlink films, like Syriana and Babel, that employ multiple storylines to weave a massive, web-like plot meant to illustrate a complex socio-political issue," writes Timothy Sun at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "In this case, it is the Camorra, Naples’ omnipotent, omnipresent organized crime ring. Garrone’s neorealist, nearly journalistic indictment of this societal cancer follows five different story strands whose only connective tissue is the fact that all of the characters, willingly or not, are controlled by the Camorra." And while he finds the film "brave and sincere, rigorous in its anti-Hollywood, down-and-dirty aesthetic, full of sound and plenty of fury," he nevertheless explains, too, why "a series like The Wire is profound in ways that Gomorrah is not." Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. Gomorrah."

Interview. Lance Hammer.

"Lance Hammer began his filmmaking career working with the art department, designing the architecture of Gotham buildings used in Joel Schumacher's Batman films. His feature film debut as a writer and director might be seen as an aesthetic laying down of a gauntlet: art thrives best when developed far from any Hollywood departments. Written, cast, set and shot in a wintery Mississippi Delta locale, Ballast emerged from its premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival with top awards for Hammer's direction and Lol Crawley's cinematography." Brian Darr introduces his interview with Hammer - they talk about nonprofessional actors, documentaries and some of Hammer's own favorite filmmakers. Ballast is currently playing at New York's Film Forum and opens in selected cities on October 17. Earlier: Thursday's entry.

NYFF Podcast. Wendy and Lucy.

To follow up on the initial NYFF entry on Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy , Aaron Hillis and Andrew Grant discuss the film with Sam Adams, who writes for the Philadelphia City Paper, the AV Club and the Los Angeles Times, and IFC.com editor Alison Willmore. To download or listen, click here. Now then. Larry Fessenden is a producer of Wendy and Lucy (he also appears as "Man in Park") and, as you'll hear in the podcast, Aaron has recently performed alongside the actor in a rousing rendition of... well, you'll see. Update, 10/8: Online viewing tip. Kevin Lee has video from the press conference.

NYFF. Afterschool.

"Afterschool, the debut feature of Antonio Campos, a 25-year-old New Yorker, unfolds in the cloistered environment of an elite boarding school, though it is perhaps more relevant to say that it takes place within the brave new world of digital information overload," writes Dennis Lim in the New York Times. "Shot mainly on old-fashioned celluloid but fluent in the language of viral video, the film combines the timeless bewilderment of adolescence with a very contemporary recognition that for many of us - not least adolescents - reality is now largely a virtual experience." "Remember in Mulholland Dr when that creepy dude points at the headshot and says, flatly, 'This is the girl'?" asks Mike D'Angelo at Filmcatcher. "Try to imagine me heavier and much more intimidating as I tell you with equally unshakable certitude: This is the film." It's also "the first movie I've seen that seems to recognize how drastically the (developed) world has changed in just the last several years, and the extent to which we're now both starved for authenticity and dedicated to pretense." Updated through 10/8. Continue reading "NYFF. Afterschool."

Vancouver Dispatch. 1.

Sean Axmaker, from the Vancouver International Film Festival, running through October 10. I've always found Vancouver the most enjoyable film festival of my year, whether for a couple of days or a full week. It's an easy fest to navigate, with seven screens of a downtown multiplex dedicated to the festival and all but one of the ten screens within a few blocks of one another. Set two weeks after Toronto, showcases many of TIFF's North American premieres. And it's Dragons and Tigers sidebar is a fascinating snapshot of Asian cinema that takes chances on early works by promising directors in addition to the big names and domestic hits. More on the smaller films and early works later. For this dispatch, let's take a look at some of the established filmmakers and bigger films. Continue reading "Vancouver Dispatch. 1."

NYFF. Waltz with Bashir.

We begin with a take from David D'Arcy; others follow. Waltz with Bashir [site], the animated memoir directed by Ari Folman, is once again testing whether audiences will respond to animation if it doesn't deal with outer space or talking animals (see my recent piece on Bill Plympton, Bashir and other animated things in the Wall Street Journal). It's challenging enough that Waltz with Bashir is dealing with memory of war and serious emotions - even more challenging that it takes its characters and the audience back to the nightmarish Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and to the Sabra and Shatila massacres committed by Phalangist militias against the Palestinians who lived in those refugee camps. (Even more troubling that Israel invaded Lebanon again in 2006). Israeli troops who controlled the territory were present as the Phalangists entered the camp in 1982, and witnessed the killings without intervening. The film suggests that Israel had an even greater role. Updated through 10/10. Continue reading "NYFF. Waltz with Bashir."