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Although sporadic updates may be found in “Events” and necessary modifications (plus relevant new material) will accrue to “Biography,” Das Blog mainly serves to link to material published in other venues, with new stuff featured on “The Home Page” [see below]
On David Cronenberg’s museum shows [NYRBlog] While movie directors are regularly given retrospectives, few have been the subject of museum exhibitions. Read more…
On Inside Llewyn Davis [Tablet] There’s an art of contempt—Alfred Jarry opening Ubu Roi with a bellowed expletive, Marcel Duchamp exhibiting a urinal as art, Johnny Rotten snarling “God save the Queen,” or the young Bob Dylan hurling accusations at “Mr. Jones” over a wailing wall of sound. And then there’s the artful contempt perfected by filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. Read more…
On Louise Steinman’s memoir The Crooked Mirror [Los Angeles Times] More than 3 million Jews lived in pre-World War II Poland, making up 10% of the population. Today, the Jewish population is at best a tenth of a percent of what it was in 1939. Yet the world is not devoid of Polish Jews. Read more…
On smoking pot at the movies [The Nation.com] I’ve heard that the French call one’s late teens and early 20s the “age of moviegoing.” It certainly was mine; it was also, for me, the age of smoking pot—and for a period of seven or eight years, the two activities were not unrelated. Read more…
On the controversy over Aftermath [New York Times] A man returns to his hometown after 20 years abroad. Something is clearly amiss. Neighbors are unaccountably hostile. The family farm is seemingly under siege. His estranged brother greets him with an ax in hand for a reunion rendered all the more tense by a rock crashing through the window. Read more…
On performance artist Ralston Farina [Artforum] I remember Ralston Farina. Or rather, I remember being aware of the name Ralston Farina back in the mid-1970s, in the context of work that was not yet called performance but was something newer and funkier than Happenings. Read more...
2013 REVIEWS: Nebraska . The Wind Rises . At Berkeley . The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology . Blue is the Warmest Color . The Fifth Estate . Gravity . Captain Phillips . A Touch of Sin . Enough Said . Newly Weeds . Le joli mai . Shark . Katzelmacher . Our Nixon . The Grandmaster . Ain’t Them Bodies Saints . The Act of Killing . Computer Chess . Viola . Crystal Fairy . Museum Hours . I’m So Excited! . The Bling Ring . Behind the Candelabra . Hannah Arendt . Old Dog . The Great Gatsby . Something in the Air . Post Tenebras Lux . Spring Breakers . Room 237 . Portrait of Jason . Un Flic . This Ain’t California. To the Wonder . Blancanieves . Le Pont du Nord . Beyond the Hills . Caesar Must Die . The Gatekeepers . Hors Satan . Gangster Squad . San Diego Sunset.
Late 2012: Tabu . Zero Dark Thirty . Django Unchained . Barbara . The Hobbit . Tchoupitoulos . Killing Them Softly. Beware of Mr. Baker . Hitchcock . Silver Linings Playbook . Starlet . Lincoln . The Master . Flight . The Loneliest Planet . Charlie is My Darling . The Flat . Holy Motors .
PRINT ONLY: On Eleanor Antin’s memoir Conversations with Stalin, Bookforum (Dec-Jan); On reviewing Eraserhead and Killer of Sheep back in the day, Film Comment (September-October); On Mike Kuchar’s Sins of the Fleshapoids and the Now Futurism, Artforum (Summer); On Pablo Larrain and No, Harper’s (May); On Leviathan, Artforum (April); On Amour, Gebo and the Shadow, and Death-at-Work, Film Comment (January-February).
… and don’t forget the “Movie Journal” blog at Artinfo! Reports on the New York, Toronto, Tribeca film festivals & reviews going back to Spring 2012.
Time is the Essence in “Cousin Jules”
November 26, 2013, 5:04 pm
A documentary classic that slipped through the cracks, the late Dominique Benicheti’s
1973 Locarno prize winner “Cousin Jules” gets its belated US theatrical
premiere
at Film Forum in a new 2K digital restoration.Continue Reading
The Edge of “Night Tide”
November 23, 2013, 7:47 pm
Literally as well as figuratively, Curtis Harrington’s
first feature—the stilted but effectively moody nocturne “Night Tide”,
newly out in a restored Blu-Ray—is a product of the Hollywood fringe.Continue Reading
“Narco Cultura”: Day of the Dead 4 Ever
November 22, 2013, 5:39 pm
Musicians
brandishing bazookas on stage, cops masked like El Santo, a posh
Sinaloa necropolis in which the tombs have bullet proof glass, mutilated
corpses in the streets of Ciudad Juárez: Mexican photographer Shaul Schwarz’s “Narco Cultura” is the most scarific doc I’ve seen since “The Act of Killing.”Continue Reading
Agnieszka Holland: “A Woman Alone”
November 21, 2013, 2:14 pm
Contemplating Agnieszka Holland’s career I get the sense of a slugger who won’t quit or powerful swimmer heading resolutely upstream.Continue Reading
Payne’s “Nebraska”: On the Road Again
November 13, 2013, 11:01 am
Underachieving son (played against type by the comedian Will Forte) drives his near demented, alcohol sozzled old father (Bruce Dern) across the Midwest in search of a nonexistent pot of gold: Alexander Payne’s
“Nebraska” is a slow-burning heart-warmer that neatly dodges the
cornball bullet of a climactic manly hug. Indeed, it’s Payne’s best
movie since his old Jack Nicholson road movie “About Schmidt”—and, in its absence of grandstanding, perhaps better than that.Read the full article here.
Continue Reading
Miyazaki’s “Wind Rises” Briefly
November 8, 2013, 6:43 am
With one-week Oscar qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles, anime master Hayao Miyazaki’s
“The Wind Rises” is getting an extremely careful roll-out from
distributor Walt Disney—as well it might. The animated feature that the
72-year-old Miyazaki has said will be his last, is a fanciful bio-pic of
the aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, introduced
as a boy who dreams of designing airplanes that somehow become Japan’s
most feared World War II weapon, the Mitsubishi Zero fighter.Continue Reading
On Screen, Around the Quad: “At Berkeley”
November 6, 2013, 12:32 pm
Frederick Wiseman,
now well into his 80s, returned to school a few years ago, “At
Berkeley.” For the better part of the Fall 2009 semester (and perhaps
into 2010), America’s preeminent documentary filmmaker audited America’s
preeminent public university, distilling 250 hours of footage into a
four-hour mosaic.Read the full article here.
Continue Reading
“Golden Slumbers”: Ghost of Cinema Past
October 30, 2013, 6:52 pm
An
exotic and elegant meta movie, “Golden Slumbers” shores the fragments
of a ruined cinema—namely the 400 or so films made in Cambodia between
1960, when an indigenous movie industry was inspired by king and
sometime filmmaker Norodom Sihanouk, and 1975, when that industry was destroyed in the Khmer Rouge bloodbath that murdered over a million people.Continue Reading
Old Films Capture the Nazis as New
October 27, 2013, 6:38 pm
Reconstructed interview in 1934 doc "Hitler's Reign of Terror"
“I Married a Witch”: Whatcha See, I Don’t Get
October 26, 2013, 4:35 pm
Rene Clair’s 1942 fantasy “I Married a Witch” has some distinguished artists among its fans. Jack Smith included it in the syllabus for a class he never ever came close to teaching; Guy Maddin writes a long appreciation for the new Criterion DVD, out in time for Halloween. But I’m afraid I can’t join the club.Continue Reading
Kechiche’s Cannes-Winning “Blue” Movie
October 23, 2013, 2:11 pm
One is the loneliest number in “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Adellatif Kechiche’s
inflated but not inconsequential lesbian love story. The
French-Tunisian filmmaker’s fifth feature caused a sensation last May at
Cannes. The conclusion of the long, explicit sex scene that is the
movie’s set piece was reportedly greeted with applause at its press
screening and received maximum ink in the ensuing coverage. The jury
headed by Steven Spielberg gave “Blue” the Palme d’Or with a special ooh-la-la twist, honoring a threesome with the movie’s intrepid co-stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos laureled as equal creators alongside its writer-director.Read the full article here.
Image: IFC Films
Continue Reading
New Doc Shows Bauhaus on the Beach
October 16, 2013, 8:42 pm
Cape
Cod, where I spend as much time as I can, can not only boast fantastic
beaches, world famous oysters, and the wild east that is Provincetown,
but a number of Bauhaus-inspired dune-dwellings—some by celebrated
architects, many of them abandoned and falling apart.Continue Reading
Hyperactive “Fifth Estate” Taxes the Mind
October 16, 2013, 2:49 pm
The
latest installment in the post-internet multimedia extravaganza that
might be called, after Trollope, “the way we live now,” Bill Condon’s portrait of Julian Assange
is an appropriately zappy torrent of computer screens. Think “The
Social Network” + “Tron” with a soupçon of “Zero Dark Thirty.”Read the full article here.
Continue Reading
Demy’s “Donkey Skin”: Deneuve Undercover
October 11, 2013, 3:44 pm
New York Film Festival ends this weekend with a segue into the giant Jean-Luc Godard retrospective and… too much stuff to see in New York, including MoMA’s always fascinating “To Save and Project” and an ongoing Jacques Demy retro, through October 17.Continue Reading
“Captain Phillips”: Action and Ordeal
October 10, 2013, 4:34 pm
Between his artfully verité docudramas (“Bloody Sunday” and “United 93”) and Matt Damon-ized conspiratorial thrillers (“The Bourne Supremacy,” “The Bourne Ultimatum,” and “Green Zone”), Paul Greengrass
is arguably the best action director working today — and “Captain
Phillips, opening October 11 following its New York Film Festival world
premiere, only strengthens the case.Read the full article here.
Continue Reading
NYFF Weekend Update
October 4, 2013, 6:46 pm
When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism
Broken China: Jia Zhangke’s “Touch of Sin”
October 3, 2013, 1:32 pm
Titled
and opening like a spaghetti western, Jia Zhangke’s new movie opens
with a tomato-ladden truck toppled to block a two-lane highway. Three
young toughs waylay a passing motorcyclist. He takes out a gun and mows
them down. Something explodes: “A Touch of Sin”.Continue Reading
Mario Montez 1935-2013
October 2, 2013, 11:09 am
Asked to name his favorite superstar, Jack Smith singled out the appealing madcap known as Mario Montez, explaining that “he [sic] immediately enlists the sympathy of the audience.”Mario—who was born Rene Rivera in Puerto Rico in 1935 and died of a stroke last week at his Florida home—was an unclassifiable gender blur and underground luminary of the first order. A post office clerk “discovered” and given his stage name by Smith, he first graced the screen as a Spanish dancer in Smith’s “Flaming Creatures” (1963), billed as Dolores Flores and making a regal, giggling entrance that’s all the more impressive for its false start.
Although Mario would appear in subsequent films by Smith, including “Normal Love” (1964), in which he appeared as a mermaid, and “No President” (1968), as well as movies by Ron Rice, Bill Vehr, Piero Heliczer and José Rodríguez-Soltero, and various productions in the Theater of the Ridiculous, his best-known performances were in a half dozen or more Andy Warhol films, made during the Factory’s mid ‘60s Silver Age. Mario appeared in Warhol’s first sync-sound movie, “Harlot” (1965), wearing a platinum-blond wig while lasciviously peels and eats a bushel of bananas; he starred in “Screen Test #2” (1965), auditioning for the role of the gypsy girl Esmeralda in a remake of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Read the full article here.
Continue Reading
Something “Wicker” This Way Comes
September 29, 2013, 6:25 pm
Restored on its 40th anniversary in director Robin Hardy’s “final cut” and, courtesy of Rialto, back in release, “The Wicker Man”—explicated here by Graham Fuller—is the culminating work in a tradition that never gotten its due, namely Brit Goth.Continue Reading
NYFF: The Fourth Marathon
September 26, 2013, 6:50 pm
The 51st
New York Film Festival opens Friday night with the yet to preview
action flick “Captain Phillips”; it yesterday press screened the fourth
of its four-hour marathons, Agnieszka Holland’s “Burning Bush.”Continue Reading
Ye Olde Village Voice
- A Search for a Corpse is So Much More in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
- A few days into 2012, and we already have a favorite for the New Year’s best movie: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Read more… Read more – ‘A Search for a Corpse is So Much More in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’.
- American History, from the Mind of Ken Jacobs, in Seeking the Monkey King
- One of last year’s best films, Ken Jacobs’ Seeking the Monkey King is showing Saturday at Anthology as part of a program presented in support of Occupy Wall Street. An exhilarating audiovisual workout that simultaneously engages multiple parts of the brain, Jacobs’s 40-minute movie is a sort of hallucinatory jeremiad. Read more… Read more – ‘American History, from the Mind of Ken Jacobs, in Seeking the Monkey King’.
- You Be the Judge in the High-Stakes Iranian Legal Drama, A Separation
- A Separation—the fifth feature by Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi—is an urgently shot courtroom drama designed to put you in the jury box. Dispensing with preliminaries, it opens at a judicial hearing where, facing the camera that stands in for the judge, a quarrelsome husband and wife each make their case. Read more… Read more – ‘You Be the Judge in the High-Stakes Iranian Legal Drama, A Separation’.
- Looking Back on Laura
- Strange by even film noir standards, Otto Preminger’s 1944 Laura, which is showing in a new 35mm print at Film Forum, starts out with a voiceover narration delivered from beyond the grave by hornet queen Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb):) “I will never forget the weekend Laura died.” Read more… Read more – ‘Looking Back on Laura’.
- The Year in Film: J. Hoberman’s Personal Best
- The past 12 months brought a number of powerful, introspective, big-theme cine-statements, many of them by old masters (see below). Some pondered history—as well as its end. A few upended the old-fashioned movie-house paradigm. In recognition of the medium’s ongoing mutation, my annual list is bookended by two such extra-theatrical projections. Read more… Read more – ‘The Year in Film: J. Hoberman’s Personal Best’.
- The Year in Film: Handicapping the Poll
- “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees,” per William Blake. Ain’t that the truth! Although listed by barely half of the 95 participating voters, Terrence Malick’s polarizing Tree of Life sits comfortably atop the 2011 Voice Film Critics’ Poll. Part Brakhage, part Tarkovsky, part Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Malick’s cosmic […] Read more – ‘The Year in Film: Handicapping the Poll’.
- Taming Creatures: WWI gets Spielberg’d, Fincher’s new girl in town
- Consummate technicians with bankable interests and personal trademarks, Steven Spielberg and David Fincher are something more than auteurs, but also something less—closer to skilled craftsmen than creative artists. Read more – ‘Taming Creatures: WWI gets Spielberg’d, Fincher’s new girl in town’.
- Former Prom Queen Tries to Go Home Again in Young Adult
- Described as a “psychotic prom-queen bitch,” the anti-heroine of Young Adult is a prize part that affords Charlize Theron one of the season’s prize performances—although, to judge from the voting at the New York Film Critics Circle conclave last week, few of my colleagues seem to agree. Read more… Read more – ‘Former Prom Queen Tries to Go Home Again in Young Adult’.
- Back to the Cold War with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
- John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the 1974 spy novel generally regarded as the writer’s finest, is predicated on a pair of enigmatic personalities: the colorless bureaucratic master-spook George Smiley and the double agent the Soviets have planted near the top of British intelligence whom Smiley must unmask. Although not without violence, the novel […] Read more – ‘Back to the Cold War with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’.
- Harvey Weinstein is Back — NY Film Critics
- The big news to emerge from yesterday’s New York Film Critics Circle voting–held early this year to scoop the other year end awards–is, of course, the second coming of homeboy Harvey Weinstein. Not only was The Artist voted best picture and its director Michel Hazanavicius anointed Best Director but NYFCC perennial Meryl Streep, who stars […] Read more – ‘Harvey Weinstein is Back — NY Film Critics’.
- Extreme Sex Addiction in Shame; Extreme Everything in Possession
- Steve McQueen‘s first two films both star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to watch as they must have been to make. But where Shame might be almost as excruciating as 2008′s Hunger, it’s a lot less exalted. In Hunger, Fassbender’s imprisoned Irish revolutionary Bobby Sands starved himself to death; […] Read more – ‘Extreme Sex Addiction in Shame; Extreme Everything in Possession’.
- Birth of Psychoanalysis in A Dangerous Method; Last Days of the Brothel in House of Pleasures
- A Dangerous Method, the title of David Cronenberg’s viscerally cerebral new film, is something of an understatement. As cataclysmic as it is, this historically scrupulous science-fiction romance concerning the discovery of the unconscious mind might have been titled War of the Worlds or The Beast From 5,000 Fathoms. Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his play, […] Read more – ‘Birth of Psychoanalysis in A Dangerous Method; Last Days of the Brothel in House of Pleasures’.
- Fantasy Island: Alexander Payne’s Feel-Good Hawaiian Excursion, The Descendants
- As life-or-death dramedy, The Descendants poses several important questions: Why has it taken Alexander Payne seven years to follow up on his critically beloved, box-office boffo, merlot-squelching Sideways? And what has blunted this gifted writer-director’s edge? Payne topped his debut feature, the provocatively obnoxious abortion comedy Citizen Ruth (1996), with Election (1999), an even sharper […] Read more – ‘Fantasy Island: Alexander Payne’s Feel-Good Hawaiian Excursion, The Descendants’.
- Satirizing War in Technicolor: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
- For those combatant nations able to produce movies, World War II inspired all manner of morale-boosting epics. The Nazis conjured up the period extravaganza Kolberg; Japan released The War at Sea From Hawaii to Malaya. Hollywood uncorked Since You Went Away and, on behalf of our Soviet allies, Song of Russia. The Russians themselves had […] Read more – ‘Satirizing War in Technicolor: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’.
- Robert Gardner’s Visions
- A man of many worlds, Robert Gardner is a descendent of Boston aristocrat Isabella Stewart Gardner (as in the Museum), the founder (and funder) of Harvard’s Film Study Center, and mainly the globetrotting ethno-aesthete of American cinema—a filmmaker whose documentaries have been hailed by the avant-garde’s godfather Stan Brakhage and anthropology’s grand dame Margaret Meade. […] Read more – ‘Robert Gardner’s Visions’.
- Great Man Theories: Clint Eastwood on J. Edgar
- A resounding “yes” to the question trembling on every lip: There is life after Hereafter! Clint Eastwood goes deep into Oliver Stone territory and emerges victorious with J. Edgar. Although hardly flawless, Eastwood’s biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the Letters From Iwo Jima–Flags of Our Fathers duo, if not Unforgiven. Read more Read more – ‘Great Man Theories: Clint Eastwood on J. Edgar’.
- Not With a Whimper But a Bang: The End Times of Melancholia
- The first thing you see in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is a tight close-up of Kirsten Dunst’s face. Behind her, slow as molasses, birds are dropping from the sky. Brueghel’s The Flight of Icarus turns leisurely to ash; a passage from Tristan und Isolde swells on the soundtrack as lightning bolts flash from Dunst’s fingertips. […] Read more – ‘Not With a Whimper But a Bang: The End Times of Melancholia’.
- Deserved Second Act for Paul Newman’s Sometimes a Great Notion
- One great thing about Paris: New prints of old movies from the ’70s, ’60s, and even the ’50s get extended runs in large theaters, apropos of nothing. A nice thing about New York: It sometimes happens here, too, as with this week’s revivals of François Truffaut’s 1968 The Bride Wore Black and Paul Newman’s 1971 […] Read more – ‘Deserved Second Act for Paul Newman’s Sometimes a Great Notion’.
- The Ghost of Hunter Thompson, A Tame Rum Diary
- Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, The Rum Diary is what the Brits might call a rum movie—an oddly inoffensive piece and a personal project for its disconcertingly unengaged star, Johnny Depp. … Read more – ‘The Ghost of Hunter Thompson, A Tame Rum Diary’.
- Pop Art Movement: On Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Landscapes
- However commonplace today, gallery video or film installations were once seen as blatantly vanguard—evidence of art’s forward march beyond the portable, static object. A bit of this history is excavated at the Whitney with the belated local premiere of painter Roy Lichtenstein’s sole excursion into motion pictures, the 1969 installation Three Landscapes. Read more Read more – ‘Pop Art Movement: On Roy Lichtenstein’s Three Landscapes’.
- The Perils of Communal Living in Martha Marcy May Marlene
- As taut and economical as its title is unwieldy, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene—a first feature that won the Best Director award last January at Sundance—is a deft, old-school psychological thriller (or perhaps horror film) that relies mainly on the power of suggestion and memories of hippie cult crazies… Read more Read more – ‘The Perils of Communal Living in Martha Marcy May Marlene’.
- Dream Act: Town Rallies to Help an Immigrant in Utopian Le Havre
- Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is something of a comeback for the Finnish filmmaker. His warmhearted comedy of underdog working-class solidarity, made with a mixed Finnish-French-Senegalese cast in the French port city Le Havre…Read More Read more – ‘Dream Act: Town Rallies to Help an Immigrant in Utopian Le Havre’.
- To Save and Project Fest: Long Live Cinema!
- Digital might be the future of the motion-picture medium, but for film preservation, it’s a mixed blessing. Archivists polled in a recent Cineaste make it clear that digital technology is part of the solution—and part of the problem. Read more… Read more – ‘To Save and Project Fest: Long Live Cinema!’.
- Weekend: When Godard Burned the Movie House Down
- Jean-Luc Godard changed the course of film history with his debut Breathless (1960) and then again when he capped an unprecedented seven-year run with... Read more – ‘Weekend: When Godard Burned the Movie House Down’.
- NYFF: The Lineup, Plus 5 Must-Sees
- Golden anniversary approaching, the New York Film Festival maintains a singular position. Because it’s curated rather than competitive, the annua... Read more – ‘NYFF: The Lineup, Plus 5 Must-Sees’.
- The Long Journey to Goodbye in Silent Souls
- Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko surfaced here back in 2005 with First on the Moon, an eccentric, wistful mockumentary inventing a Soviet lunar mi... Read more – ‘The Long Journey to Goodbye in Silent Souls’.
- Ryan Gosling at the Wheel in the Retro Thrill Ride Drive
- As stripped-down and propulsive as its robotic title, Drive is the most "American" movie yet by Danish genre director Nicolas Winding Refn. The film, ... Read more – ‘Ryan Gosling at the Wheel in the Retro Thrill Ride Drive’.
- George Kuchar 1942-2011
- George Kuchar, the Bronx-raised filmmaker who began his career, along with twin brother Mike, at age 12, died this week in San Francisco after ... Read more – ‘George Kuchar 1942-2011’.
- The Struggle: Black Power Mixtape and Bobby Fischer
- "The revolution will not be televised." So Gil Scott-Heron asserted in 1970, and so it was not—at least not on American TV. As demonstrated by T... Read more – ‘The Struggle: Black Power Mixtape and Bobby Fischer’.
- On Fire: Tsui Hark Back in Action with Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
- Tsui Hark's visually sumptuous Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is a strong comeback for the veteran Hong Kong wuxia-maker and anoth... Read more – ‘On Fire: Tsui Hark Back in Action with Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame’.
- Serge Gainsbourg Boxed into a Biopic in Heroic Life
- Sometimes it's easier for life to imitate art than vice versa—witness French cartoonist Joann Sfar's first feature, an ambitious attempt to cage... Read more – ‘Serge Gainsbourg Boxed into a Biopic in Heroic Life’.
- The Good Old Days: Tales From the Golden Age and "Ostalgia"
- The 1990s coinage ostalgie, which combines the German words for "east" and "nostalgia," describes a particular sort of longing. Ostalgie is not so muc... Read more – ‘The Good Old Days: Tales From the Golden Age and "Ostalgia"’.
- Raul Ruiz, 1941-2011
- One of the most innovative and prolific narrative filmmakers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Chilean-born, Paris-based director Raul... Read more – ‘Raul Ruiz, 1941-2011’.
- Robert Breer, 1926-2011
- A pioneering kinetic sculptor, a key member of the great generation of American avant-garde filmmakers, and one of the most influential animato... Read more – ‘Robert Breer, 1926-2011’.
- With Friends Like These: John Sayles on the Philippine-American War in Amigo
- John Sayles's Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it's no less engrossing for that. Torn from the pages of history, if not those of Sayl... Read more – ‘With Friends Like These: John Sayles on the Philippine-American War in Amigo’.
- On the Long and Winding Road of Raul Ruiz’s Epic Mysteries of Lisbon
- Say what you will about 19th-century literature—they had stories in those days (and stories within stories). None of the 260 books authored by C... Read more – ‘On the Long and Winding Road of Raul Ruiz’s Epic Mysteries of Lisbon’.
- Acid Flashback: On the Road with Ken Kesey’s Magic Trip
- The subject of Magic Trip is the LSD-powered, cross-country road movie orchestrated by novelist Ken Kesey in the summer of '64. More than a footnote b... Read more – ‘Acid Flashback: On the Road with Ken Kesey’s Magic Trip’.
- In The Future, Miranda July Grows Up
- Is there such thing as a sincerely calculated naïveté? Or put another way, does Miranda July have any idea of how annoying she is? On the... Read more – ‘In The Future, Miranda July Grows Up’.
- Shooting to Kill and Kill Again in French Adrenaline Pumper Point Blank
- Point Blank, a French action film that has nothing to do with the 1967 (and highly Frenchified) John Boorman flick of the same name, opens with a bang... Read more – ‘Shooting to Kill and Kill Again in French Adrenaline Pumper Point Blank’.
- Warren William: As Titan of Industry, King of Pre-Code
- The talkies came, the stock market crashed, and Hollywood ran a race against hysteria. For those who like their movies short, snappy, and sensational,... Read more – ‘Warren William: As Titan of Industry, King of Pre-Code’.
- Back to the Future: World on a Wire Is Just in Time
- A virtually unknown, newly restored 1973 two-part telefilm directed by long-gone wunderkind R.W. Fassbinder at the height of his powers, World on a Wi... Read more – ‘Back to the Future: World on a Wire Is Just in Time’.
- Scandal and Subjective Reality in Errol Morris’s Tabloid
- As a documentarian, Errol Morris is less a humanist than a connoisseur of “human interest,” and Tabloid, his ecstatically received and queas... Read more – ‘Scandal and Subjective Reality in Errol Morris’s Tabloid’.
- Ghetto Bards: Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish and Sholem Aleichem
- Where once there were millions, there are now, at best, a few hundred thousand Yiddish speakers—mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, klezmer revivalists, ... Read more – ‘Ghetto Bards: Romeo & Juliet in Yiddish and Sholem Aleichem’.
- Robert Sklar, 1936-2011
- The New York film community was shocked and saddened this past weekend upon receiving news that Robert Sklar, longtime pillar of NYU's Departme... Read more – ‘Robert Sklar, 1936-2011’.
- High School Outcast Finds His Place in Terri
- A genially despised genre appealing to a constant and constantly expanding demographic, the high school movie has for years provided ambitious or oddb... Read more – ‘High School Outcast Finds His Place in Terri’.
- Mystery Killer on the Loose, Observed, in Aurora
- Romanian director Cristi Puiu’s follow-up to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, a bleak comedy following a dying man from hospital to hospital, is in so... Read more – ‘Mystery Killer on the Loose, Observed, in Aurora’.
- Cannes 2011
- May 11 The Quest to Avoid Lady Ga-Ga Begins May 13 Good Movies Where Are You? May 16 The Tree of Life May 17 Cannes Has Issues May 18 Melancholia. Wow. May 19 Lars von Trier Kicked Out May 20 We the Jury May 23 The Winners May 25 Cannes Outdoes Itself Read more – ‘Cannes 2011’.
Blogging & Blog-rolling
- Mario Montez 1935-2013
- Asked to name his favorite superstar, Jack Smith singled out the appealing madcap known asMario Montez, explaining that “he [sic] immediately enlists the sympathy of the audience.” Read more… Read more – ‘Mario Montez 1935-2013’.
- Something “Wicker” This Way Comes [Artinfo]
- Restored on its 40th anniversary in director Robin Hardy’s “final cut” and, courtesy of Rialto, back in release, “The Wicker Man”—explicated here by Graham Fuller—is the culminating work in a tradition that never gotten its due, namely Brit Goth. Read more… Read more – ‘Something “Wicker” This Way Comes [Artinfo]’.
- The Bling Ring: Whatever
- “The Bling Ring,” which goes wide this weekend, didn’t get much respect when it had its world premiere last month in Cannes; nor has Sofia Coppola’s fifth feature proved to be a critical darling. Read more… Read more – ‘The Bling Ring: Whatever’.
- Les Blank 1936-2013 [Artinfo]
- Les Blank, who died Sunday at age 77, was King of the Folkie Filmmakers, a professional Stranger in Paradise, the ramshackle poet laureate of a lost American gemeinschaft. Read more… Read more – ‘Les Blank 1936-2013 [Artinfo]’.
- Maya Deren: Cat Woman [Artinfo]
- Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the Afternoon”, shot 70 years ago this May in and around a bungalow north of Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills, is the American avant-garde movie most often screened in American film classes, which is why it has been visually quoted, consciously or not, by everyone from Madonna to David Lynch. […] Read more – ‘Maya Deren: Cat Woman [Artinfo]’.
- Hollywood and the CIA Can Agree on Argo [Artinfo]
- The Oscar balloting continues and with two weeks left before the voting ends, is being handicapped in the trades as though it were America’s second most important national election which, unless you’re a die-hard baseball fan voting early and often for hometown representation on the all-star team, it more or less is. Read more… Read more – ‘Hollywood and the CIA Can Agree on Argo [Artinfo]’.
- On “The Yellow Ticket” [Tablet]
- Now in its 22nd year, the New York Jewish Film Festival has a long-standing interest in archival material. Read more… Read more – ‘On “The Yellow Ticket” [Tablet]’.
- On “The Clock” [Artinfo]
- The great paradox of “The Clock” is that it uses the conventions of commercial narrative cinema (the very stuff of time-killing “escapism”) to tell time in real time and thus create an audience of self-aware spectators. The experience of watching a movie is forcibly literalized. Read more… Read more – ‘On “The Clock” [Artinfo]’.
- Report from the Front: NYFCC Garlands “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln”
- In one of the lengthiest sessions I’ve sat through since joining the New York Film Critics Circle in 1981, the group took over five hours to decide upon its 12 annual awards, with Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” — serious pictures, both filled with topical resonance — emerging as the two […] Read more – ‘Report from the Front: NYFCC Garlands “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Lincoln”’.
- Total Recall – The Drive-In
- Seeing the totally superfluous “Total Recall” $200 million remake, under a full harvest moon, at Cape Cod’s Wellfleet Drive-in prompts another sort recall. The last of its kind left on the Cape, and one the few in New England if not the whole Northeast, the Wellfleet Drive-in lends itself to implanted memories. Read more… Read more – ‘Total Recall – The Drive-In’.
- In Honor of Mr Vidal, Praising Ms Breckinridge
- The author hated the movie, as did most of the cast; it bombed at the box-office, received what may have been the worst reviews ever accorded a major studio release, and ruined its director’s career. Read more… Read more – ‘In Honor of Mr Vidal, Praising Ms Breckinridge’.
- Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
- One face was ubiquitous in Berlin last month, and it didn’t belong to Spider Man. S-Bahn stations and bus shelters across the city were festooned with a poster announcing Alison Klayman’s documentary-portrait “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.” Has this 55-year-old Chinese conceptual artist cum political activist supplanted Damon Hirst or Jeff Koons as the art world’s […] Read more – ‘Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry’.
- Kusama’s Self Obliteration: Part of Our Time
- Tucked into the irresistible biomorphic carnival that is the Whitney’s current Yayoi Kusama retro is a continuous showing of “Kusama Self-Obliteration,” Jud Yalkut’s 1967 16mm documentation of the artist’s once-notorious “body festivals.” Read more… Read more – ‘Kusama’s Self Obliteration: Part of Our Time’.
- Disney in Reaganland
- Movie Journal notes with interest the opening of the exhibition “Treasures of the Walt DisneyArchives” at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California—although, to my mind, the more appropriate coupling would have been the creation of a Ronald Reagan “New Morning” Land in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Read more… Read more – ‘Disney in Reaganland’.
- Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012)
- Returning from holiday, I got word that the American avant-garde filmmaker Steve Dwoskin had died June 28 in London, his home for nearly five decades. Read more… Read more – ‘Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012)’.
- Rediscoveries alla Bolognese
- Cannes is for film journalists, festival directors, and star-gazers. Il Cinema Ritrovato, the annual festival of restoration and rediscovery held each year in Bologna, is for film programmers, academics, and cinephiles whose idea of a star is a director–say the Soviet filmmaker Ivan Pyr’ev–who’s been dead for at least half a century. Read more… Read more – ‘Rediscoveries alla Bolognese’.
- Andrew Sarris (1928-2012)
- Andrew Sarris, the most influential movie critic of his generation, died today at age 83. Read more… Read more – ‘Andrew Sarris (1928-2012)’.
- Death in Syria, in Berlin
- Seen in Berlin (on a break from an event marking the 30th anniversary of R.W. Fassbinder’s death), Lebanese multi-media artist Rabih Mroué’s harrowing film piece “Double Shooting,” installed in a remote part of the old Tempelhof airfield as part of a month-long mock international expo “The World is Not Fair.” Read more… Read more – ‘Death in Syria, in Berlin’.
- “Star Wars Uncut” Comes to Lincoln Center: Midnight in Cyberspace?
- A most fascinating experiment at Lincoln Center tonight: The Elinor Bunim Munroe Film Center, known to habitués as the Boon-Moon Room, has begun a series of weekly midnight movies, thus posing the question–can the course of exhibition history be reversed? Read more… Read more – ‘“Star Wars Uncut” Comes to Lincoln Center: Midnight in Cyberspace?’.
- Sweet Little 16mm
- Taking a busman’s holiday at MoMA’s Werner Schroeter retro, I saw a beautiful 16mm print of the late German director’s “Death of Maria Malibran” [above] and was knocked out by the sheer 16mm-ness of his 1972 masterpiece. Even blown up to 35mm, Schroeter’s brilliant first feature “Eika Katappa” (1969), also shot on 16mm color reversal […] Read more – ‘Sweet Little 16mm’.
- Cooper Student Arrested Trying to Get to (My) Class
- Walking up the Bowery late Wednesday afternoon en route to Cooper Union to teach my course “American Movies in the Age of Reagan,” I passed a procession of Occupy Wall Street student-debt protestors (accompanied by a phalanx of New York City police) to find Cooper Square filled with cops… Read more Read more – ‘Cooper Student Arrested Trying to Get to (My) Class’.
- Four Days at BAFICI
- In downtown Buenos Aires for a few days as the guest of BAFICI [Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente], which has published a Spanish-language anthology of my work. Read more… Read more – ‘Four Days at BAFICI’.
- Goodis Gold
- The Library of America grows ever more cinephilic, witness the tough little B-movie twin bill Wednesday night at the Walter Reade to mark the induction of pulp fictioneer and noir-iste David Goodis (1917-67) into the Library’s austerely uniformed ranks, with a five-novel anthology edited by Robert Polito. Read more… Read more – ‘Goodis Gold’.
- A Spoil Sport at “The Hunger Games”
- I went, I saw (so you don’t have to), I wasn’t unduly bored — although “The Hunger Games” requires nearly half its two-hour-and-twenty-minute running time to get the show on the road. Read more… Read more – ‘A Spoil Sport at “The Hunger Games”’.
- Not Seeing “The Hunger Games” Isn’t the End of the World
- … or maybe it is. There are three excellent movies opening in New York and Los Angeles this weekend and one of them, Abel Ferrara’s “4:44 Last Day on Earth,” is about that very thing. Read more… Read more – ‘Not Seeing “The Hunger Games” Isn’t the End of the World’.
- Jury Duty; Or, What I Saw at SXSW
- First time at SXSW (also Austin, not to mention Texas), I can’t help but note that the fabled film/music/“interactive” media festival has a demographic suggesting a shaggier version of the L train on a Saturday night. Read more… Read more – ‘Jury Duty; Or, What I Saw at SXSW’.
- “John Carter”: Cowboy and Indians on Mars
- Poised to plunge into distribution tomorrow, Disney’s elaborately retro space opera “John Carter” is the movie that dares to ask, “Would a Princess of Mars ever consider marriage to a wayward Virginia cavalryman?” It’s a proposal worthy of Newt Gingrich. Still, this quarter-billion dollar, retrofitted 3D production is hardly the “Waterworld”-scale debacle that many feared […] Read more – ‘“John Carter”: Cowboy and Indians on Mars’.
- Controversial New “Lorax” Bizarrely True to Dr. Seuss
- I don’t expect to spend any part of my weekend (or my life) with the 3-D animated version of Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax” that opens today, but it is interesting to note that, beginning with a Lou Dobbs screed on Fox TV, the movie has been attacked by the right, left (Huffpo and NPR), and […] Read more – ‘Controversial New “Lorax” Bizarrely True to Dr. Seuss’.
- Asghar Farhadi, Jafar Panahi, and the Oscars: This Was Not the Time
- Kudos to the Academy for naming Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” last year’s Best Foreign Film — not just the first Iranian feature so honored but the first ever from a Muslim country… Read more Read more – ‘Asghar Farhadi, Jafar Panahi, and the Oscars: This Was Not the Time’.
- On Béla Tarr’s “The Turin Horse”
- “It’s something more than a movie … or maybe it’s something less.” So said Hungarian director Béla Tarr, speaking in English to introduce “The Turin Horse” at a film festival in Wrocław, Poland where I first saw it last summer… Read more Read more – ‘On Béla Tarr’s “The Turin Horse”’.
- The Wrong Margaret Got the Oscar
- What then to say in the sober aftermath of an Oscar night that was not only set up to be the most retro in recent memory but the most consecrated to conventional wisdom? Read more… Read more – ‘The Wrong Margaret Got the Oscar’.
- Harvey Weinstein is Back — NY Film Critics
- The big news to emerge from yesterday’s New York Film Critics Circle voting–held early this year to scoop the other year end awards–is, of course, the second coming of homeboy Harvey Weinstein. Not only was The Artist voted best picture and its director Michel Hazanavicius anointed Best Director but NYFCC perennial Meryl Streep, who stars […] Read more – ‘Harvey Weinstein is Back — NY Film Critics’.
- George Kuchar 1942-2011
- George Kuchar, the Bronx-raised filmmaker who began his career, along with twin brother Mike, at age 12, died this week in San Francisco after ... Read more – ‘George Kuchar 1942-2011’.
- Raul Ruiz, 1941-2011
- One of the most innovative and prolific narrative filmmakers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Chilean-born, Paris-based director Raul... Read more – ‘Raul Ruiz, 1941-2011’.
- Robert Breer, 1926-2011
- A pioneering kinetic sculptor, a key member of the great generation of American avant-garde filmmakers, and one of the most influential animato... Read more – ‘Robert Breer, 1926-2011’.
- Robert Sklar, 1936-2011
- The New York film community was shocked and saddened this past weekend upon receiving news that Robert Sklar, longtime pillar of NYU's Departme... Read more – ‘Robert Sklar, 1936-2011’.
- Cannes 2011
- May 11 The Quest to Avoid Lady Ga-Ga Begins May 13 Good Movies Where Are You? May 16 The Tree of Life May 17 Cannes Has Issues May 18 Melancholia. Wow. May 19 Lars von Trier Kicked Out May 20 We the Jury May 23 The Winners May 25 Cannes Outdoes Itself Read more – ‘Cannes 2011’.
Articles & Reviews
- Drowning in the Digital Abyss [NYRBlog]
- Floating free from their damaged space shuttle, the astronaut protagonists of Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, rookie Sandra Bullock and veteran George Clooney, seem to swim (or drown) in an immeasurable fish tank. Depth and volume are illusory. Mass has no weight. In this 3-D spectacle, best seen on the outsized IMAX screen, Cuarón promotes sensory disorientation—or […] Read more – ‘Drowning in the Digital Abyss [NYRBlog]’.
- Gathered Acts of an Auteur Provocateur [New York Times]
- Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. No filmmaker was more identified with the New York Film Festival’s first decade than Jean-Luc Godard; now entering its second half-century with a new programming director, Kent Jones, the festival is poised to begin New York’s first comprehensive retrospective devoted to … Jean-Luc Godard. Read more… Read more – ‘Gathered Acts of an Auteur Provocateur [New York Times]’.
- Samuel Fuller’s ‘Shock Corridor’ arrived in mad times
- Not a guy to mince words, two-fisted writer-director Samuel Fuller began (and ended) his tabloid classic “Shock Corridor” with a spurious quote from Euripides: “Whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad.” But he might just have well taken his epigraph from Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed […] Read more – ‘Samuel Fuller’s ‘Shock Corridor’ arrived in mad times’.
- Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Dissident Gardens’ visits a family of American lefties
- A red Rose grows in Brooklyn, marries German refugee Albert (from a once-wealthy family but also a gung-ho Jewish communist like herself), and after some debate (a specialty), moves with him to the planned community of Sunnyside Gardens, Queens. There in this imagined socialist utopia, Rose Angrush Zimmer gives birth to daughter Miriam, who at […] Read more – ‘Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Dissident Gardens’ visits a family of American lefties’.
- On The Act of Killing [Tablet]
- The title of Joshua Oppenheimer’s grotesque and provocative documentary The Act of Killing is a pun. Read more… Read more – ‘On The Act of Killing [Tablet]’.
- Prague’s Savage Spring
- František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová (1967) is a virtual terra incognita. Thirty years after its release, it was named overwhelmingly by a poll of Czech critics and filmmakers as the best movie ever produced in Czechoslovakia, yet it remains little known outside its native land. Read more… Read more – ‘Prague’s Savage Spring’.
- Liberace Lives: “Behind the Candalabra”
- Glitz on glitz. It would have been most Liberace-like had the TV premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s HBO production, the Liberace bio-pic “Behind the Candelabra”, been presaged by the announcement that star Michael Douglas had won the Best Actor Award at Cannes. Read more… Read more – ‘Liberace Lives: “Behind the Candalabra”’.
- Hannah Arendt, Guilty Pleasure [Tablet]
- You can keep Fast & Furious 6 and The Hangover Part III. My guilty pleasure this week is Hannah Arendt, the latest collaboration between actress Barbara Sukowa and director Margarethe von Trotta. Guilt, of course, being the operative word. Read more… Read more – ‘Hannah Arendt, Guilty Pleasure [Tablet]’.
- Almost 80, He Continues the Ruckus [on Ken Jacobs] NYT
- There are artists who burn out at 30 and others who, accelerating as they mature, begin to seem like forces of nature. One such force is Ken Jacobs, who turns 80 next Saturday — an occasion marked by a recent tribute at the Museum of Modern Art, with another next weekend at Anthology Film Archives. […] Read more – ‘Almost 80, He Continues the Ruckus [on Ken Jacobs] NYT’.
- Something in the Air [Artinfo]
- A youthful movie in more ways than one, Olivier Assayas’s “Something in the Air” evokes an irretrievable past even as it manages to embody the total excitement of a particular historical moment and even, self-reflexively, the trajectory of the French director’s career. Read more… Read more – ‘Something in the Air [Artinfo]’.
- Post Tenebras Lux [Artinfo]
- The showiest member of the new Mexican cinema, Carlos Reygadas, is part stuntmeister, part visionary — a wildly ambitious post-Warhol impresario who, often working without a screenplay, seeks out exalted landscapes and orchestrates conditions where nonprofessional actors are compelled to expose themselves, sometimes cruelly, on camera. Read more… Read more – ‘Post Tenebras Lux [Artinfo]’.
- Portrait of Jason [Artinfo]
- Restored and back in distribution thanks to the tireless folks at Milestone Films, the 1967 documentary “Portrait of Jason” is, without a doubt, Shirley Clarke’s most radical, as well as her most personal, film. Read more… Read more – ‘Portrait of Jason [Artinfo]’.
- New York in Slow Motion [NYRBlog]
- James Nares’s Street, an engrossing and celebratory hour-long, oversized video projection of life in New York City, is a monument to evanescence. Read more… Read more – ‘New York in Slow Motion [NYRBlog]’.
- On “Moscow, the Fourth Rome” by Katerina Clark [Bookforum]
- Author of The Soviet Novel, a classic analysis of socialist-realist fiction of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, and a professor of Slavic literature at Yale, Katerina Clark here reads the text of High Stalinism. Read more… Read more – ‘On “Moscow, the Fourth Rome” by Katerina Clark [Bookforum]’.
- “Girls” Gone Wild [NYRBlog]
- Spring Breakers, the new film by Harmony Korine, opens with an impressively staged shot of pure pulchritude—a mass of golden bodies gyrating on a Florida beach—rendered somewhat absurd by the cartoonish sounds of Skrillex’s wacky techno distortions. Read more… Read more – ‘“Girls” Gone Wild [NYRBlog]’.
- “The Shining” is About What? [Tablet]
- Even people who haven’t seen it know that The Shining, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel, is the scarific tale of a stir-crazy caretaker—Jack Nicholson, no less—driven mad by the ghosts haunting an isolated, off-season hotel… Read more Read more – ‘“The Shining” is About What? [Tablet]’.
- Le Pont du Norde [Artinfo]
- Jacques Rivette had his great period in the 1970s and “Le Pont du Nord,” opening for a week at BAM on Friday in a new 35mm print (possibly the first subtitled print shown here since the 1981 New York Film Festival), extends the territory Rivette mapped out in “Out 1,” “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” […] Read more – ‘Le Pont du Norde [Artinfo]’.
- The Jewish Brando [Tablet]
- A half dozen years ago, while teaching a college class called “Jews & American Cinema: Outsiders In or Insiders Out?”, I asked each student to name the Jewish-American media figure they thought most prominent. Read more... Read more – ‘The Jewish Brando [Tablet]’.
- On Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills [Artforum]
- Beyond the Hills, Cristian Mungiu’s new film, is in some ways the quintessential expression of the Romanian New Wave. Read more… Read more – ‘On Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills [Artforum]’.
- American Obsession: ‘The Searchers’ [NYT Book Review]
- There are a few Hollywood movies so thematically rich and so historically resonant they may be considered part of American literature. “The Searchers” is one. Read more… Read more – ‘American Obsession: ‘The Searchers’ [NYT Book Review]’.
- A Warhol Film Surfaces, but Is It His? [New York Times]
- Andy Warhol created movies by design, by chance, by mistake, and sometimes by doing nothing at all. Read more… Read more – ‘A Warhol Film Surfaces, but Is It His? [New York Times]’.
- Zero Dark Thirty: the US election vehicle that came off the rails [Guardian]
- When the Obama re-election machine began gearing up last winter, its presumed winning formula had the brevity of a high-concept Hollywood pitch: “General Motors is alive, Osama bin Laden is dead. Read more… Read more – ‘Zero Dark Thirty: the US election vehicle that came off the rails [Guardian]’.
- A Jewy Little Christmas [Tablet]
- ‘Twas the night before Christmas 1967: home from college, hanging around somebody’s East Village hovel, smoking dope with the Channel 11 “Yule Log” emanating from a cheap black-and-white TV, getting the munchies and leading a magical mystery tour over to Ratner’s on Second Avenue. Read more… Read more – ‘A Jewy Little Christmas [Tablet]’.
- The Trembling Upper World: On Siegfried Kracauer [The Nation]
- Seeing motion pictures is a matter of perception; understanding them is the perception of that perception. For the American motion picture industry, the spring of 1947 was the season certain perceptions changed. Read more… Read more – ‘The Trembling Upper World: On Siegfried Kracauer [The Nation]’.
- Tolkien vs. Technology [NYRBlog]
- There is a good deal to be said about Peter Jackson’s long-awaited and exceedingly long adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, most of it bad. Read more... Read more – ‘Tolkien vs. Technology [NYRBlog]’.
- Avraham Lincoln Avinu [Tablet]
- “President Lincoln who was bearded, whose first name was Abraham, and who had freed the slaves [was], therefore, no doubt at all, a Jew, something the goyim would not concede, of course.” So riffed Yiddish poet J. L. Teller on behalf of his landslayt in his flavorsome memoir Strangers and Natives: The Evolution of the […] Read more – ‘Avraham Lincoln Avinu [Tablet]’.
- On “The Master” [The Guardian]
- Hollywood’s prestige season is upon us and, despite a parade of heavy hitters, including Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and the Wachowski-Tykwer adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, no potential Oscar winner is more ambitious – or more likely to provoke discussion regarding its meaning and intent – than Paul Thomas Anderson’s sixth feature, The Master. Read […] Read more – ‘On “The Master” [The Guardian]’.
- On “The Loneliest Planet” [Tablet]
- Julia Loktev called her first feature, a documentary about the sudden accident that forever changed her parents’ lives, Moment of Impact. It’s a title that could apply to Loktev’s brilliant second feature, Day Night Day Night (2006), as well as her latest, opening this week, The Loneliest Planet. Read more… Read more – ‘On “The Loneliest Planet” [Tablet]’.
- Trick or Truth? On “Faking It!” at the Met [NYRBlog]
- “Every photograph is a fake from start to finish,” the photographer Edward Steichen asserted in the first issue of Camera Work in 1903. In what amounts to a backhanded defense of photography as art, Steichen explained that “a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph” was “practically impossible.” Read more… Read more – ‘Trick or Truth? On “Faking It!” at the Met [NYRBlog]’.
- Obama’s Evil Twin [NYRBlog]
- Surpassed only by The Expendables 2, with Sylvester Stallone, the Dinesh D’Souza political documentary 2016: Obama’s America was the second-highest grossing movie in America the week that it opened in late August—timed to coincide with the Republican National Convention—and is now among the top ten highest earning documentaries in history. Read more… Read more – ‘Obama’s Evil Twin [NYRBlog]’.
- Schlocky Horror Picture Show [Tablet]
- You might imagine that the past hundred years of Jewish history have been sufficiently horrendous to preclude the possibility of a Jewish horror film. And you might be right. But that has hardly deterred people from trying to make one. Read more… Read more – ‘Schlocky Horror Picture Show [Tablet]’.
- Cosmopolis Take 2 [Artinfo]
- On first viewing, David Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis” struck me as a perversely faithful yet detached adaptation of an uncharacteristically tedious Don DeLillo novel in which, apparently motivated by a not entirely conscious desire for self-annihilation as well as a chauffeur, a self-made 28-year-old billionaire spends an entire day traversing the gridlock of midtown Manhattan because he wants a […] Read more – ‘Cosmopolis Take 2 [Artinfo]’.
- The Lost Futures of Chris Marker [NYRBlog]
- Gracefully off-kilter, stylized as semaphores, the shadow of a man and an outlined woman are positioned at the center of a sea shell spiral. Are they dancing on air—or falling into the void? Read more… Read more – ‘The Lost Futures of Chris Marker [NYRBlog]’.
- On Wallace Markfield [Tablet]
- Had he lived, Wallace Markfield would have celebrated his 86th birthday this week. But it’s been 10 years since this word-slinging tummler left the stage, and you have to wonder if he didn’t write his own epitaph decades earlier. In the most famous line of his first and best-remembered novel, To an Early Grave—a book […] Read more – ‘On Wallace Markfield [Tablet]’.
- On David Cronenberg and “Cosmopolis” [LA Times]
- Hypnotic or stupefying? “This is the third time I’ve seen it, and I still don’t know if it works,” a colleague told me as we left a screening of David Cronenberg’s”Cosmopolis.” I totally understand. The movie is undeniably something — but what exactly? Read more… Read more – ‘On David Cronenberg and “Cosmopolis” [LA Times]’.
- Almayer’s Folly [Artinfo]
- “Almayer’s Folly,” the great Belgian-born film-artist Chantal Akerman’s first narrative feature in seven years (playing New York for a week at Anthology Film Archives), is a brilliant, wayward mash-up suggesting European colonialism as a madman’s fantasy — namely a white father’s hopeless passion for his mixed race daughter. Read more… Read more – ‘Almayer’s Folly [Artinfo]’.
- 2 Days in New York [Artinfo]
- Woody Allen’s name is all over the newspaper ads for “2 Days in New York” and you can find his fingerprints on Julie Delpy’s new movie as well—this sequel to her 2007 comedy “2 Days in Paris” is a wacky Woodmanesque comedy of cultural difference in which the French director-actress gets to play ditzy neurotic […] Read more – ‘2 Days in New York [Artinfo]’.
- Free Radicals [Artinfo]
- A documentary on what’s usually called “avant-garde” film, Pip Chodorov’s “Free Radicals” opens with a weirdly solarized, emulsion-cracked or perhaps painted-over high-angle shot of a small boy held by his mother. Is it a clip from Stan Brakhage or maybe Robert Breer? Then the filmmaker’s voice is heard: “These were my home movies until my […] Read more – ‘Free Radicals [Artinfo]’.
- The Dark Knight Rises [Artinfo]
- Sad but true: Save for an occasional oddball comedy, the summer blockbuster is pretty much Hollywood’s remaining contribution to world film culture — with those movies that draw on comic book superheroes having the added advantage of elaborating a cherished national mythology. Read more… Read more – ‘The Dark Knight Rises [Artinfo]’.
- On Robert Siodmak [New York Times]
- A Hollywood director once bracketed with Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak (1900-73) is credited by some scholars with developing the German-French-American synthesis known as film noir and dismissed by others as an impersonal technician whose greatest talent was successively adapting himself to three national movie industries and whose trademark on-set joke was “It […] Read more – ‘On Robert Siodmak [New York Times]’.
- Beasts of the Southern Wild [Artinfo]
- A sensation in Sundance, Cannes, and points in between, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is set to explode on the nation’s screens this week. My only concern is that Benh Zeitlin’s exuberantly ramshackle exercise in gumbo magic realism may have been a bit oversold. Read more… Read more – ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild [Artinfo]’.
- The Single Antidote to Thoughts of Suicide: RW Fassbinder’s American friends [Moving Image Source]
- The following talk was given on June 10, 2012, in Berlin as part of “Hands on Fassbinder,” a series of lectures and screenings organized by the editors of Revolver. Read more… Read more – ‘The Single Antidote to Thoughts of Suicide: RW Fassbinder’s American friends [Moving Image Source]’.
- Solondz’s Schlubs [Tablet]
- “Wistful” is not a word one would ordinarily use to describe a Todd Solondz production, but Dark Horse—the 51-year-old filmmaker’s fifth feature since his 1995 Welcome to the Dollhouse put him on the indie map with its hilariously bleak vision of junior-high-school hell—is an exercise in compassionate misanthropy. Read more… Read more – ‘Solondz’s Schlubs [Tablet]’.
- On Franco Solinas & the Un-American Western [NYRBlog]
- With the escalation of the Vietnam War, every Marxist intellectual, it seemed, wanted to write a Western. The most notable was Franco Solinas (1927–1982), a teenaged partisan and longtime member of the Italian Communist Party, journalist for the Communist newspaper L’Unità, and author. Solinas worked on four Spaghetti Westerns—all included in a three-week-long series at […] Read more – ‘On Franco Solinas & the Un-American Western [NYRBlog]’.
- Moonrise Kingdom [Artinfo]
- A kinder, gentler, altogether more soulful “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” is a triumph of marionette show mise-en-scène and a paean to precocious puppy love. Read more… Read more – ‘Moonrise Kingdom [Artinfo]’.
- Oslo, August 31 [Artinfo]
- The dead man walking through Joachim Trier’s affecting second feature “Oslo, August 31” would seem to have every reason to live—and that’s the point. “I’m a spoiled brat who fucked up,” he remarks during the course of a day in which his first activity is a desultory attempt to drown himself in a sylvan lake […] Read more – ‘Oslo, August 31 [Artinfo]’.
- Elena [Artinfo]
- Andrey Zvyagintsev is the most internationally-acclaimed Russian filmmaker to emerge during the Putin era, and his expertly directed third feature “Elena” is, albeit oblique, the most vivid evocation I’ve seen of Moscow’s contemporary society. Read more… Read more – ‘Elena [Artinfo]’.
- The Not-So-Great ‘Dictator’ [Tablet]
- Tasteless but by no means mindless, Sacha Baron Cohen is the most incendiary Jewish performance artist since Lenny Bruce. (You were thinking Jackie Mason?) Although his personal ideology would seem to be some form of left Zionism, his vaudeville travesties and gross-out pranks outrage nationalists of all persuasions and moralizers across the political spectrum. Read […] Read more – ‘The Not-So-Great ‘Dictator’ [Tablet]’.
- On The Avengers and 9/11 [Guardian]
- Mad terror in the streets as flying whatsits and killer robots from outer space ricochet off and, more often, crash through 70-story skyscrapers. Mighty towers crumble; concrete chunks spray from the screen. Total Sensurround: the theatre itself shakes as the non-stop cosmic battle-cum-pinball game that is The Avengers reaches its climax in a digital midtown […] Read more – ‘On The Avengers and 9/11 [Guardian]’.
- Bonsái [Artinfo]
- Chilean director Cristián Jiménez’s “Bonsái” is the essence of cosmopolitan provincialism — a superbly grounded, programmatically small, meta-literary tragicomedy of student-boho life. Read more… Read more – ‘Bonsái [Artinfo]’.
- Dark Shadows [Artinfo]
- Over the past two decades, Tim Burton has cast Johnny Depp as a succession of Anglo-American archetypes: Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane, Willy Wonka (an interpretation many thought inspired by Anna Wintour), Sweeney Todd, the Mad Hatter, and now Barnabas Collins, the reluctant vampire hero of the beloved TV soap opera “Dark Shadows” (ABC, 1966-71), lavishly revisited, although not […] Read more – ‘Dark Shadows [Artinfo]’.
- Revisiting “Celine and Julie Go Boating” [Artinfo]
- There are movies that (just as there are people who) take such pleasure in themselves that you can’t help but admire them. It’s contagious — they are enchanting precisely they so openly revel in their movie-ness. “Casablanca” may be the best-known, but the supreme example is surely Jacques Rivette’s 1974 “Celine and Julie Go Boating.” […] Read more – ‘Revisiting “Celine and Julie Go Boating” [Artinfo]’.
- Talking Smack About Junk: “The Connection” [NYRBlog]
- Re-released in a lovingly restored print on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, Shirley Clarke’s debut film The Connection is an excavated relic of an earlier New York. The movie adapts an off-Broadway blockbuster—Jack Gelber’s “jazz play” of the same name—and concerns a filmmaker’s foredoomed attempt to document a gaggle of heroin addicts while they […] Read more – ‘Talking Smack About Junk: “The Connection” [NYRBlog]’.
- The All-Too Affable Ballad of “Bernie”
- One of the most amiable and least predictable of American directors, Austin-based indie Richard Linklater follows his deft period reconstruction “Me and Orson Welles” and animated Philip K. Dick yarn “A Scanner Darkly” with an exercise in regional humor. “Bernie” is a true-life Texas tall-tale about a murderous funeral director and the little town of Carthage […] Read more – ‘The All-Too Affable Ballad of “Bernie”’.
- A Charismatic Chameleon: On Luis Buñuel [The Nation]
- With regard to longevity and productivity, not to mention talent, the only peers of the great Spanish director Luis Buñuel (1900–83) are his contemporaries Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock. The old Surrealist was, however, a far slyer fox. Read more… Read more – ‘A Charismatic Chameleon: On Luis Buñuel [The Nation]’.
- The Devil, Probably
- “The Devil, Probably,” one of the great Robert Bresson’s greatest, and least-seen, movies gets a week-long run (April 20-26) in the midst of BAMcinématek’s Bresson retrospective — resplendent in a new 35mm print and hailed by no less an authority than Richard Hell as “the most punk movie ever made.” Read more… Read more – ‘The Devil, Probably’.
- The Organizer: Description of a Struggle
- An unverifiable, if heartfelt, assertion: For the quarter century between 1945 and 1970 (or from Rome Open City to Fellini Satyricon), the world’s greatest popular cinema was produced in Italy—a realm of glamorous superstars, sensational comedians, and great genre flicks. A half dozen maestros were backed by a remarkably deep bench, including writer-director Mario Monicelli […] Read more – ‘The Organizer: Description of a Struggle’.
- Gordon Gekko may be a problem for Mitt Romney [Los Angeles Times]
- “It’s thrilling left-wing trash,” Village Voice critic David Edelstein ended his review of Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” “and it’s more or less disposable.” Thrilling (at times), left-wing (I guess), trash (not entirely), the movie Oliver Stone began shooting in lower Manhattan 25 years ago this month has proved anything but disposable. Read more… Read more – ‘Gordon Gekko may be a problem for Mitt Romney [Los Angeles Times]’.
- Larraín’s “Post Mortem”: Exhuming the Chile of 1973
- One of the most alarming “memory” films of recent years, Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s 2008 “Tony Manero” pondered the activities of a murderous madman living under martial law and obsessively impersonating the protagonist of “Saturday Night Fever.” Larraín’s follow-up, “Post Mortem,” is another dark, deadpan comedy that’s more overtly political and scarcely less disturbing. Read […] Read more – ‘Larraín’s “Post Mortem”: Exhuming the Chile of 1973’.
- On the Three Stooges and “The Three Stooges” [Tablet]
- Some people think Ebenezer Scrooge is— Well, he’s not. But guess who is … All Three Stooges! —Adam Sandler, “The Chanukkah Song” (1996) Personally, I’ve yet to meet anyone who mistook Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge for a Jew, but I get Adam Sandler’s point. Read more… Read more – ‘On the Three Stooges and “The Three Stooges” [Tablet]’.
- On Guy Madden’s “Keyhole” [Artinfo]
- A seething, phantasmagorical imbroglio even by Guy Maddin’s standards, “Keyhole” has something to do with a ’30s gangster (Jason Patric) whose mind is in an advanced state of disintegration. That the character is called Ulysses and is trying to find his way back home — or at least back to his bedroom — would seem […] Read more – ‘On Guy Madden’s “Keyhole” [Artinfo]’.
- On “Damsels in Distress” [Artinfo]
- Given that “Damsels in Distress” is the first Whit Stillman feature in the 14 years since “The Last Days of Disco” reveled in Studio 54 nostalgia, it’s almost impossible not to wish this essentially amiable project well. Intermittently witty and never exactly tiresome… Read more Read more – ‘On “Damsels in Distress” [Artinfo]’.
- On “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League” [Artforum]
- Part of our time? Herewith “some ruins and monuments of the thirties” that Murray Kempton’s book overlooked: “The Radical Camera,” a survey of the work of New York’s Photo League, a socially minded artists’ collective that was born in the New Deal and expired during the Cold War, explores two not unrelated historical artifacts. Read […] Read more – ‘On “The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League” [Artforum]’.
- Artificial Paradises
- Wafting into Dumbo’s reRun Gastropub Theater tonight for a week-long run, 29- year-old Mexican director Yulene Olaizola’s second feature “Paraisos Artificiales” [Artificial Paradises] is an exemplary situation documentary that employs one professional actor, Luisa Pardo, and a single location, Playa Jicacal, a jungle beach (apparently off season) in Veracruz, as the basis for an 83-minute […] Read more – ‘Artificial Paradises’.
- On Terence Davies [NYRBlog]
- A nation must have its culture heroes, and current wisdom among Anglo-American movie critics and programmers has advanced Terence Davies, to the position of Britain’s greatest living filmmaker. Read more… Read more – ‘On Terence Davies [NYRBlog]’.
- Jerry Lewis at 86
- Clown prince of arrested development, maestro of coercive sentimentality: Is there a needier, more agonizingly ambitious figure in American popular culture than Jerry Lewis? The man doesn’t just want to make you laugh until you choke on your cookies and milk flows through your nose; he wants you to appreciate that he’s the greatest humanitarian […] Read more – ‘Jerry Lewis at 86’.
- On Abel Ferrara [New York magazine]
- Abel Ferrara, the cine scuzz-meister who set the bar for urban depravity with King of New York, then vaulted over it with the original Bad Lieutenant, is back home. 4:44 Last Day on Earth, opening Friday, is the End of the World on Delancey Street: In a loft above the Williamsburg Bridge, Willem Dafoe and […] Read more – ‘On Abel Ferrara [New York magazine]’.
- Aleksei German Among the Long Shadows [Film Comment 1999]
- “It is interesting, even funny—or weird, perhaps—to imagine people sitting in an American cinema watching my movie.” So the Russian filmmaker Aleksei German mused when he first visited New York a dozen years ago for the local premiere of his once-shelved and now-revered Soviet “ nostalgia” film, My Friend Ivan Lapshin. Read more… Read more – ‘Aleksei German Among the Long Shadows [Film Comment 1999]’.
- On “The Kid on a Bike”
- Although they seldom show a church or have a character call on Jesus, the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are the worker-priests of European art cinema. Twice presented the Palm d’or at Cannes (for “Rosetta” in 1999 and “L’enfant” in 2005), the Belgian duo have perfected a sort of spiritually-infused social realism. Read more… Read more – ‘On “The Kid on a Bike”’.
- Prize Fighters: Footnote pits a Talmudic scholar against his academic son
- Footnote, the absurdist tragedy by New York-born, Israeli-raised Joseph Cedar, is a movie of such cosmic inconsequence that hyperbole is inevitable. So here goes: If immersing oneself in the history of the Jews is the essence of the Jewish condition, Footnote is the most Jewish movie since The Jazz Singer. Read more… Read more – ‘Prize Fighters: Footnote pits a Talmudic scholar against his academic son’.
- Food, Politics and Sex, Brought to a Boil
- “HYSTERICAL EXCESS: DISCOVERING ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI” is the film programmer’s equivalent of a banner headline. It’s not exactly misleading, but the subject of this BAMcinématek retrospective is definitely displeased. “ ‘Hysterical’ is a word I abhor,” Mr. Zulawski (zhoo-WOFF-skee) said when reached by telephone in Warsaw. Read more… Read more – ‘Food, Politics and Sex, Brought to a Boil’.
- A Place of Our Deepest Desires
- The jacket of Geoff Dyer’s “Zona” describes it as “A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room.” It is also a hall of mirrors in which the author watches himself watching (and remembers himself remembering) a movie that, according to his impressively detailed description, ends with a character looking at us, looking […] Read more – ‘A Place of Our Deepest Desires’.
- Ready for Release: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film
- This is Not a Film certainly is one–but, as Samuel Beckett or Abbot and Costello might say–Watt is Knott? Read more… Read more – ‘Ready for Release: Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film’.
- Hugo and the magic of film trickery
- Is there a phrase more hackneyed than “the magic of the movies”? From the moment of their invention at the end of the 19th century, motion pictures have been perceived as simultaneously hyper natural and supernatural. Read more… Read more – ‘Hugo and the magic of film trickery’.
- Perspective: Holocaust films and the Oscars
- In the 52 years since Shelley Winters won a supporting actress Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank, there have been 20 nominated features — including foreign-language and documentary films — that treated the Holocaust from the perspective of its victims. Only two have gone home unrewarded. Read more… Read more – ‘Perspective: Holocaust films and the Oscars’.
- A New Obama Cinema
- A lone lean figure strides purposefully through a dark tunnel, maybe a highway underpass. There’s no fear. A familiar husky voice whispers that “it’s half time—both teams are in their locker rooms, discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half.” One needn’t be a genius like Karl Rove to catch […] Read more – ‘A New Obama Cinema’.
- Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Haywire’ thinks as it fights
- No one watches a movie in a vacuum. You don’t check your real-world baggage at the door — something for which any good critic must account. Several days before catching the new Steven Soderbergh action thriller “Haywire,” I learned that Soderbergh had made the movie on the rebound, fired from “Moneyball” on the eve of […] Read more – ‘Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Haywire’ thinks as it fights’.
- No Man Is An Island: Aleksander Andriyevsky’s Robinzon Kruzo
- WAS ONCE, LONG LONG TIME AGO, great big Cold War joke—Russian claim to have invented lightbulb, radio transmitter, and even TV set. Also, to have developed feature-length 3-D movies shown without special glasses—which, in fact, they did! Read more… Read more – ‘No Man Is An Island: Aleksander Andriyevsky’s Robinzon Kruzo’.
- Godzilla: Poetry After the A-Bomb
- From the scary thuds and mysterious roars that accompany the no-frills titles to the bizarrely poignant final image of the monster, alone at the bottom of the ocean, Ishiro Honda’s 1954 Godzilla is all business and pure dream… Read more – ‘Godzilla: Poetry After the A-Bomb’.
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- Film After Film
- The advent of new digital technology has displaced the medium of photographic film—and, perhaps, the reality on which it once depended. With locations, sets and cameras now optional, the history of motion pictures has become the history of animation.
This sea change in filmmaking spanned the 2000 American presidential election and the trauma of 9/11, events that reshaped world politics and left an indelible imprint on the emerging aesthetic of the new century’s cinema. A rupture opened up in the evolution of film, presaging, as Susan Sontag forlornly predicted a few years earlier, the death of cinephilia, or at least cinephilia as we know it.
Film After Film expands on an Artforum article by Hoberman before moving on to a chronicle of the Bush years in cinema (featuring reviews from Hoberman’s final decade at the Village Voice). The book concludes with considerations of the twenty-one central movies of the twenty-first century, which include works by Lars von Trier and Jia Zhangke as well as the hi-tech spectacles WALL-E and Avatar.
