Fin de cinema

Gallo, Ozon, Reichardt, Schnabel, Hellman, Kechiche, Coppola, etc, Screening at Venice

2010-07-30T06:50:00.003-05:00

The complete line-up of the 67th Venice Film Festival was announced yesterday, with twenty-two films competing for the the Golden Lion, the festival's highest honor which was awarded to Samuel Maoz's Lebanon last year. Not paying attention to films in production has its benefits; quite a few of the filmmakers presenting their works this year came as a pleasant surprise. Among those surprises: Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff which re-teams the director with her Wendy & Lucy star Michelle Williams; a brand new film written, directed, starring, composed and edited (naturally) by Vincent Gallo called Promises Written in Water; Pablo Larraín's follow-up to Tony Manero, Post mortem; Abdellatif Kechiche's Vénus noire [Black Venus], his first film since La graine et le mulet [The Secret of the Grain] which won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 fest; Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood; and Road to Nowhere, the first feature-length film from Monte Hellman in twenty-one years (following, uh, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3) which stars two former "It" girls Shannyn Sossamon and Dominique Swain. Gallo will also be presenting a short entitled The Agent as part of the Horizons sidebar, which–like Promises–stars Sylvester Stallone's son Sage. Other high profile filmmakers in competition: Sofia Coppola with Somewhere; Julian Schnabel with Miral; François Ozon with Potiche; Tom Tykwer with Drei [Three]; Tsui Hark with Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame; Takashi Miike with 13 Assassins; Darren Aronofsky with Black Swan; and Álex de la Iglesia with Balada triste de trompeta [A Sad Trumpet Ballad]. Four Italian films will be screening in competition, and unfortunately the national titles have proven to be the weakest entries in recent history. The sore thumb of the lot appears to be Barney's Version, whose fine cast feels overshadowed by the fact that the last film outing from the director, Richard J. Lewis, was a direct-to-video sequel to the buddy-cop-and-dog classic K-9 (starring, uh, Jim Belushi). Tran Anh Hung and Darren Aronofsky are the only past Golden Lion winners in competition, for Cyclo in 1995 and The Wrestler in 2008 respectively. The competition line-up can be found below. The festival runs from 1-11 September.

- 13 Assassins, d. Takashi Miike, Japan
- Attenberg, d. Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece, w. Yorgos Lanthimos
- Balada triste de trompeta [A Sad Trumpet Ballad], d. Álex de la Iglesia (Dance with the Devil), Spain/France, w. Carmen Maura, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Antonio de la Torre
- Barney's Version, d. Richard J. Lewis, Canada/Italy, w. Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver
- Black Swan, d. Darren Aronofsky, USA, w. Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Bruce Greenwood, Scott Speedman
- Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame, d. Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China), China/Hong Kong, w. Andy Lau, Carina Lau, Li Bingbing, Tony Leung Ka-Fai
- Drei [Three], d. Tom Tykwer, Germany, w. Devid Striesow
- Happy Few, d. Antony Cordier (Douches froides), France, w. Marina Foïs, Élodie Bouchez, Roschdy Zem, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Jean-François Stévenin
- Meek's Cutoff, d. Kelly Reichardt, USA, w. Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson
- Miral, d. Julian Schnabel, France/Israel/UK/Italy/USA, w. Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Siddig, Stella Schnabel
- Noi credevamo, d. Mario Martone (L'odore del sengue), Italy/France, w. Luigi Lo Cascio, Toni Servillo
- Norwegian Wood, d. Tran Anh Hung, Japan, w. Rinko Kikuchi
- La passione, d. Carlo Mazzacurati (La lingua del santo), Italy, w. Stefania Sandrelli
- La pecora nera, d. Ascanio Celestini, Italy, w. Maya Sansa
- Post mortem, d. Pablo Larraín, Chile/Mexico/Germany
- Potiche, d. François Ozon, France/Belgium, w. Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godrèche, Jérémie Renier
- Promises Written in Water, d. Vincent Gallo, USA, w. Gallo
- Road to Nowhere, d. Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), USA, w. Shannyn Sossamon, Dominique Swain, John Diehl, Fabio Testi
- Silent Souls, d. Aleksei Fedorchenko (First on the Moon), Russia
- La solitudine dei numeri primi [The Solitude of Prime Numbers], d. Saverio Costanzo (In Memory of Me), Italy/France/Germany, w. Filippo Timi, Isabella Rossellini
- Somewhere, d. Sofia Coppola, USA, w. Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Benicio del Toro, Michelle Monaghan, Benicio Del Toro
- Vénus noire [Black Venus], d. Abdellatif Kechiche, France/Italy/Belgium, w. Olivier Gourmet

Out of competition, you'll find directorial efforts from both the Affleck brothers. The elder will follow his well-received (but, still, not that good) Gone Baby Gone with The Town, a crime thriller about a Boston-area gang of thieves. Casey's directorial debut is I'm Still Here, a documentary that received a lot of press last year which follows Joaquin Phoenix's retirement from acting to pursue a career as a rapper. In addition to 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike's Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City will premiere, likely as part of the festival's midnight screenings, which will open with Robert Rodriguez's star-and-"star"-studded Machete. Julie Taymor's return to Shakespeare, The Tempest, will close this portion. Below you'll find a selection of the films playing out of competition.

- 1960, d. Gabriele Salvatores (I'm Not Scared), Italy
- The Child's Eye 3D, d. Oxide Pang, Danny Pang, Hong Kong/China
- I'm Still Here, d. Casey Affleck, USA, w. Joaquin Phoenix
- The Last Movie, d. Dennis Hopper, USA, w. Hopper, Tomas Milian, Samuel Fuller, Sylvia Miles, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Henry Jaglom, John Phillip Law, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn, Toni Basil
- Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, d. Andrew Lau, Hong Kong/China, w. Donnie Yen, Shu Qi
- A Letter to Elia, d. Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones, USA
- Lope, d. Andrucha Waddington (House of Sand), Spain/Brazil, w. Leonor Watling, Pilar López de Ayala, Sonia Braga, Luis Tosar
- Machete, d. Robert Rodriguez, USA, w. Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Rose McGowan, Tom Savini
- Passione, d. John Turturro, Italy
- Přežít svůj život [Surviving Life], d. Jan Švankmajer, Czech Republic/Slovakia
- Raavanan, d. Mani Ratnam, India, w. Aishwarya Rai
- Reign of Assassins, d. John Woo, Su Chao-Bin, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan, w. Michelle Yeoh, Kelly Lin
- Shock Labyrinth 3D, d. Takashi Shimizu (Ju-on), Japan
- Showtime, d. Stanley Kwan (Lan yu), China, w. Carina Lau, Tony Leung Ka-Fai
- Sorelle mai, d. Marco Bellocchio, Italy
- The Tempest, d. Julie Taymor, USA, w. Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou, David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alfred Molina, Alan Cumming, Ben Whishaw
- That Girl in Yellow Boots, d. Anurag Kashyap (Dev.D), India
- The Town, d. Ben Affleck, USA, w. Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively
- Vallanzasca - Gli angeli del male, d. Michele Placido (Romanzo criminale), Italy/France, w. Kim Rossi Stuart, Filippo Timi, Moritz Bleibtreu, Paz Vega
- Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City, d. Takashi Miike, Japan

The Horizons portion of this year's selection will open with La belle endormie [Sleeping Beauty], another fairy tale adaptation from Catherine Breillat following last year's Barbe Bleue; like its predecessor, La belle endormie was produced by Arte Télévision and employs a cast of unknowns. Hong Sang-soo's Oki's Movie will close the section; Oki's Movie is Hong Sang-soo's second film to premiere in 2010 following Ha Ha Ha, which was awarded the Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in May. Not a whole lot of information was available about the rest of the films (some of them shorts), but I listed below the films from directors I knew. And following that is a selection of the films screening as part of the Venice Days, one of the festival's autonomous sidebars.

Horizons

- The Agent, d. Vincent Gallo, USA, w. Sage Stallone, Gallo
- La belle endormie [Sleeping Beauty], d. Catherine Breillat, France
- Better Life, d. Isaac Julien, UK/China, w. Maggie Cheung
- Cold Fish, d. Sion Sono, Japan
- Guest, d. José Luis Guerin, Spain
- The Leopard, d. Isaac Julien, UK/Italy
- A Loft, d. Ken Jacobs, USA
- News from Nowhere, d. Paul Morrissey, USA
- Oki's Movie, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
- Painéis de São Vicente de Fora, Visão Poética, d. Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, w. Ricardo Trêpa
- Red Earth, d. Clara Law, Hong Kong/China

Venice Days

- L'amour buio, d. Antonio Capuano (Luna rossa), Italy, w. Valeria Golino
- Le bruit des glaçons [The Clink of Ice], d. Bertrand Blier (Beau-père), France, w. Jean Duhardin, Albert Dupontel
- Cirkus Columbia, d. Danis Tanović (No Man's Land), Bosnia & Herzegovina/France/UK/Slovenia/Germany/Belgium/Serbia, w. Miki Manojlović, Mira Furlan
- Hitler à Hollywood [Hitler in Hollywood], d. Frédéric Sojcher, w. Maria de Medeiros, Micheline Presle
- Incendies, d. Denis Villeneuve (Polytechnique), Canada/France, w. Lubna Azabal
- Noir océan, d. Marion Hänsel (The Quarry), w. Adrien Joliver
- La vida de los peces, d. Matías Bize (En la cama), Chile, w. Santiago Cabrera, Blanca Lewin

New Films from Bruce LaBruce, Isild Le Besco and Christophe Honoré at Locarno Film Festival

2010-07-16T00:29:00.004-05:00

The official line-up for the 63rd annual Locarno Film Festival was announced yesterday, including new films from Bruce LaBruce, Christophe Honoré, Isild Le Besco, Aaron Katz and Denis Côté screening in competition. Katz's Cold Weather, which IFC picked up for US distribution after its premiere at SXSW, is the lone American film competing for the Golden Leopard this year. French porn star François Sagat looks to be the unexpected star of competition line-up, appearing as the lead in both LaBruce's LA Zombie and Honoré's Homme au bain [Man in Bath], the latter co-starring Honoré's muse as of late, Chiara Mastroianni. LA Zombie, a porn-ier counterpart to LaBruce's earlier Otto; or Up with Dead People, screened in Berlin earlier this year and stars a handful of gay porn stars, as well as Tony Ward (who memorably played the object of desire in LaBruce's Hustler White in 1996), pin-up boy Trevor Wayne, rapper Deadlee and Project Runaway finalist Santino Rice (hello, St Louis). In addition to presenting Bas-fonds, her latest project as a director, actress Isild Le Besco can be seen in front of the camera in Benoît Jacquot's Au fond des bois [Deep in the Woods], which marks the sixth collaboration with Jacquot. Au fond des bois also stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart of Alexis Dos Santos' Glue and will be the opening film in the Piazza Grande section.

Other films in the International Competition: Pia Marais' Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], with Jeanne Balibar in the title role; Morgen, the feature debut of Marian Crişan, whose short Megatron won the Palme d'Or in the courts-métrages section at Cannes in 2008; Pietro, the latest from Italian director Daniele Gaglianone (I cento passi); and Curling, from Canadian director Denis Côté who won the Directing Prize at Locarno in 2008 for Elle veut le chaos [All That She Wants]. Elle veut le chaos is available to stream (in certain territories) on MUBI.

Also in the Piazza Grande section: the Duplass' brothers Cyrus, currently in theatres across the US right now; the second directorial outing from respected editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir (The Celebration, julien donkey-boy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), entitled Kóngavegur [King's Road] which stars Daniel Brühl and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson; L'avocat [The Counsel], from director Cédric Anger–who co-wrote Xavier Beauvois' Le petit lieutenant and Selon Matthieu and Werner Schroeter's Deux–starring Benoît Magimel, Gilbert Melki, Aïssa Maïga, Eric Caravaca and Barbet Schroeder; Quentin Dupieux's killer-tire film Rubber, which premiered during the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes this year; also from Cannes, Aktan Arym Kubat's The Light Thief, which played in the Quinzaine des Réalisatuers; and restored prints of Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be and Francesco Rosi's Uomini contro [Many Wars Ago].

In the Cinema of the Present portion: Memory Lane, the "feature" debut of Mikhaël Hers, whose previous three films (Montparnasse, Primrose Hill and Charell) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival over the past few eyars and all clock-in around an hour-long; Ivory Tower, from first-time director Adam Traynor which marks the acting debut of musician Peaches; and Norberto apenas tarde [Norberto's Deadline], the directorial debut of actor Daniel Hendler, best known as Argentinean filmmaker Daniel Burman's cinematic persona.

And Out of Competition, a number of shorts from notable directors will be playing:

- Get Out of the Car - Thom Anderson (Los Angeles Plays Itself)
- Hell Roaring Creek - Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass)
- Low Cost (Claude Jutra) - Lionel Baier (Garçon stupide)
- Avant les mots - Joachim Lafosse (Nue propriété)
- Return to the Dogs - Lodge Kerrigan (Clean, Shaven)
- Where the Boys Are - Betrand Bonello (Tiresia)
- Pig Iron - James Benning (RR)
- Les lignes ennemies - Denis Côté
- Rosalinda - Matías Piñeiro (Todos mienten)
- Chef d'oeuvre? - Luc Moullet (A Girl Is a Gun)
- Toujours moins - Luc Moullet
- O somma luce - Jean-Marie Straub
- Corneille-Brecht - Jean-Marie Straub
- Joachim Gatti - Jean-Marie Straub
- Europa, 27 Octobre - Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

I don't know exactly how Kerrigan's Return to the Dogs relates to his experimental Grace Slick feature Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs) which played in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May. And finally, there will be a special retrospective of director Ernst Lubitsch at the festival this year, as well as a new, restored print of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's little-seen Ich will doch nur, daß ihr mich liebt [I Only Want You to Love Me], which was made for German television. The 63rd Festival del film Locarno runs from 4-14 August. The full list of films in competition is below:

- Bas-fonds, d. Isild Le Besco, France
- Beli, beli svet [White White World], d. Oleg Novković, Serbia/Sweden/Germany
- Beyond the Steppes, d. Vanja d'Alcantara, Belgium/Poland
- Cold Weather, d. Aaron Katz, USA
- Curling, d. Denis Côté, Canada
- Homme au bain [Man at Bath], d. Christophe Honoré, France
- Im Alter von Ellen [At Ellen's Age], d. Pia Marais, Germany
- Karamay, d. Xu Xin, China
- LA Zombie, d. Bruce LaBruce, Germany/Canada/USA
- Luz nas Trevas, a Volta do Bandido da Luz Vermelha, d. Helena Ignez, Ícaro Martins, Brazil
- Morgen, d. Marian Crişan, Romania/France/Hungary
- Periferic, d. Bogdan George Apetri, Romania/Austria
- La petite chambre, d. Stéphanie Chuat, Véronique Reymond
- Pietro, d. Daniele Gaglianone, Italy
- Saç, d. Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, Turkey/Greece
- Songs of Love and Hate, d. Katalin Gödrös, Switzerland
- Winter Vacation, d. Li Hongqi, China
- Womb, d. Benedek Fliegauf, Germany/Hungary/France

Try Harder

2010-06-22T08:02:00.002-05:00

I’ve been pretty out-of-the-loop as to which films the kids are talkin’ about these days… but for whatever reason, one film has awkwardly wedged its way into several conversations with an alarming frequency in my social life. The film in question: The Human Centipede. Unfortunately for me, The Human Centipede happens to be one of maybe four 2010 cinema releases I’ve actually seen, thanks to a misguided recommendation (thanks, Mike!). From these conversations, I’ve gathered that most people haven’t actually wasted the hour-and-a-half I have but likely viewed the trailer or read Roger Ebert’s zero-star review of it. Yet every time I give my look of disgust at its mention, I notice the faces of the people I’m talking to morph into a look of depraved elation. “You’ve seen it?? Is it totally gross?”

Maybe I’ve officially grown out of the phase when one enjoys grotesque films, but I don’t understand how anyone–whether you’ve grown out of that phase or not–derived any amusement from The Human Centipede. If you know the premise, you’ve pretty much seen the film. The simple idea of the human centipede is enough to either nauseate or perversely excite you, and watching the film will do little to change those sensations… unless of course you were expecting anything more. The Human Centipede is an artless film, which isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it is nothing more than a simple disgusting thought turned into a humorless ninety-minute test of one’s patience. Subtext, allegory, motive and tension are all woefully absent, but so is the sort of bloodlust and iniquity that The Human Centipede’s target audience would expect.

I doubt my disgust in The Human Centipede will sway anyone in either direction. The most I can hope for, I suppose, is that the sorry individuals who will make the same mistake I did will share my sentiments and demand more from their trash cinema.

For the love of Jurassic Park III

2010-06-10T17:51:00.004-05:00

Jurassic Park III
2001
USA
Dir: Joe Johnston

When it comes to Hollywood movie franchises, there always seems to be bizarre patterns of success involved. For anything starring Jason Statham, the second incarnation always stands above the others (I know this to be true of The Transporter, but I’ve heard from various, reputable folks that this is also true of Crank). For a number of the trashy horror chronicles, the Jason Statham rule also proves true (see Final Destination or Rob Zombie’s Halloween… also, outside of the horror genre, the X-Men films), but conversely there’s also the 1 and 3 rule, which applies to two of Wes Craven’s series: the original Nightmare on Elm Streets and Screams (you can argue against Scream 3 being good, certainly, but it’s hard to say it isn’t at least somewhat of an improvement over the 2nd). After indulging for the first time in the third of its series, I would contest that the Jurassic Park series (I’d say trilogy, but I’ve heard another one is in the works) falls into the 1-3 rule, though I know neither of its sequels are held in particularly high regard.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park will always be a notoriously memorable viewing experience for me or, in other words, one that marked a special turning point in my youth. The summer movie season of 1997 will be remembered best as the summer where I first recall truly loathing films of any sort, though it seems hard now to imagine that I was ever “easy to please.” The epic disappointment of The Lost World in May was quickly followed by the colossal disgust of Batman & Robin. Hollywood, for the first time I can remember, has failed this thirteen-year-old with their embarrassing sequels to films I had thoroughly enjoyed during my childhood. Needless to say (perhaps), I decided against seeing Jurassic Park III at 17, already fully jaded, expectedly angsty and unjustifiably haughty; I do know a few of my friends got really stoned and laughed their way through it, but I think I was even “too cool” to get high at that age.

The decision to watch Jurassic Park III nine years later proved to be a fortuitous one. I don’t think that sober, snotty seventeen-year-old would have been half as amused by its ridiculousness (or by the great Téa Leoni!) as this twenty-six-year-old admirer of the low-low-brow was. Like the hilarious and peculiar consistency in which Nicolas Cage has been playing characters with money troubles, Sam Neill returns to the series as Dr. Alan Grant after skipping out on The Lost World and gets tricked into returning to the dinosaur-infested island by a couple of zeroes and a dollar sign (well, as he points out at some point in the film, it’s a neighboring island from the one in the first film, one that’s become overtaken by wild dinosaurs). He’s tricked by a bumbling pair of loons–played by William H. Macy and Téa Leoni (whose hair was clearly styled by the world’s most dedicated Chynna Phillips fan)–whose son (Trevor Morgan) has gone missing on the island after a hang-gliding disaster with the teacher who fucks Reese Witherspoon in Election, who I believe is supposed to be Leoni’s new husband but looks convincingly enough like the town pederast. That the guy from Election shows up, not to mention Laura Dern in a thankless cameo, makes sense when you see Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor’s names appear in the end credits as co-writers. Unlike a lot of other writer-for-hire jobs, Payne and Taylor’s involvement isn’t mysterious or lost in translation, as their contribution can be seen entirely in Macy and Leoni’s characters, who appear to have been magically transported from a very different movie about goofy, bickering exes who inevitably fall back in love with each other. (In a perfect world, Dern would have reprised her role as Ruth Stoops instead of Dr. Ellie Sattler and been cosmically transported into Jurassic Park III).

All of the big dinosaur attacks, once Neill lands on the island with his protégé Alessandro Nivola and the Macy/Leoni odd couple, resemble little of what happens in the first two films, as new director Joe Johnston (the man responsible for such gems as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, The Pagemaster, Jumanji and most recently The Wolfman) shows more of an affinity for the Turok video games than the filmmaker he’d worked under for years. As is always the case for sequels, the stakes are higher, which here translates as the black guy getting offed earlier than he usually would (it takes a little longer for Michael Jeter to bite it). Of course, Macy and Leoni’s far-fetched-in-the-real-world but sure-to-be-true-in-the-movie-land notion that their child is still alive proves true, and of course, the kid is magnetically drawn to the otherwise misanthropic Dr. Grant… and thankfully isn’t half as irritating as the two writer’s contrivances that pass as Richard Attenborough’s grandchildren in the first film (the children of neurotic parents always turn out a lot saner than usual in movies, don’t they?).

At just ninety minutes, Jurassic Park III’s climax smells like the trenchant cocktail of screenplay revisions and budget-cuts, but that’s hardly a setback. Jurassic Park III provides more entertainment than it ever should have; placing a bunch of respectable actors in the broken back half of a jet that’s being tossed around and smashed by a dinosaur has never been a bad idea in my mind, and when those actors happen to be a desperate Sam Neill, a hot Alessandro Nivola, a mustache-donning William H. Macy and Téa Leoni (no adjective needed), I’m sold.

All three Jurassic Park films are available on DVD from Universal everywhere; Blu-rays have yet to come out for any of them.

Suave

2010-06-10T05:09:00.004-05:00

Over the past few weeks, two actors I hold quite dear to my heart passed away: Dennis Hopper and Rue McClanahan. Obviously, this isn’t news to anyone, but as I was amid a death in my own family, I wasn’t able to post anything until now. Though she appeared in over 20 films, McClanahan will always be remembered best for the small screen, as that tarty firecracker Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls. A Southern belle with a charming vanity and a healthy appetite for men, Blanche gave McClanahan the opportunity to put all of her talents to their fullest effect, after previously playing recurring characters on Maude (also with Bea Arthur) and, yes, Mama’s Family. Though less recognized than her television work, McClanahan’s film career consisted of several great oddities, including playing a biology teacher in Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, Gina Gershon’s mother in a film adaptation of Jim Thompson’s short story This World, Then the Fireworks directed by Michael Oblowitz and Mervyn Nelson’s little-seen, Boys in the Band-esque Some of My Best Friends Are from 1971, which co-starred Candy Darling, Sylvia Sims, Gil Gerard, Dick O’Neill and gay porn star Calvin Culver (Score, Ginger, Boys in the Sand). My favorite little obituary for Rue was written by Michael K. at Dlisted who said, “Thank you for playing a character that showed me it’s okay to be a big ass slut with a bitchy tongue as long as you do it while wearing pastel florals.” He also posted a quote from the last remaining Golden Girl Betty White the same day.

Where does one start with Dennis Hopper? I guess everyone can choose how they’ll remember him best, and I have a feeling a lot of the people I know will be channeling his memory through his performance as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. From his screen debut in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, Hopper’s appearances onscreen were consistently unpredictable, working steadily for six decades. His outings as a director were a lot more intermittent. After achieving a cult hit with Easy Rider, his follow-up The Last Movie–which placed Hopper opposite a wild cast that included Tomas Milian, Samuel Fuller, Sylvia Miles, Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Henry Jaglom, John Phillip Law, Michelle Phillips, Dean Stockwell, Russ Tamblyn and Toni Basil–is still relatively unknown to this day. Hopper had his name taken off the film Catchfire in 1990 after Vestron Pictures decided to cut his three-hour version; the film, which starred Jodie Foster and a lot of other famous actors, was later released with the title Backtrack, twenty-minutes longer but still an hour short of Hopper’s intended version. His other directing credits include Out of the Blue, the neo-noir The Hot Spot with Don Johnshon, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Connelly, the police drama Colors and the terrible Chasers with Tom Berenger and Erika Eleniak. I could probably spend a lot more time talking about some of his great performances throughout the years, but that could take a really long time. Some of the highlights, in my eyes: in a loincloth beside Taylor Mead in Andy Warhol’s close-to-unwatchable Tarzan and Jane Revisited… Sort of; running naked through a train in Henry Jaglom’s Tracks; playing “Tom Ripley” in Wim Wenders’ The American Friend [Der amerikanische Freund]; on incredible amounts of drugs as a photojournalist in Apocalypse Now; playing a police lieutenant in Tobe Hooper’s weird-as-fuck sequel to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; making a cameo as Grace Jones’ lover in Alex Cox’s Straight to Hell; giving Christopher Walken a history lesson on Sicily in True Romance; planting bombs on buses in Speed; bringing the reptilian villain King Koopa to life in the film version of the Super Mario Bros. video game; raving about the future of video as it pertains to cinema in Abel Ferrara’s The Blackout; bringing about the only moments of joy to George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead; and lending advice to Ben Kingsley about his affair with Penélope Cruz before perishing at wife Debbie Harry's side in Isabel Coixet’s Elegy. So, Dennis and Rue, as Frank Booth would say, here's to your fucks.

Notable Filmography

Rebel Without a Cause, 1955, d. Nicholas Ray
Giant, 1956, d. George Stevens
Night Tide, 1961, d. Curtis Harrington
The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys, 1964, d. Andy Warhol
Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of, 1964, d. Andy Warhol
The Trip, 1967, d. Roger Corman
Cool Hand Luke, 1967, d. Stuart Rosenberg
Hang ‘Em High, 1968, d. Ted Post
Head, 1968, d. Bob Rafelson
Easy Rider, 1969
True Grit, 1969, d. Henry Hathaway
The Last Movie, 1971
The Other Side of the Wind, 1972, d. Orson Welles
Mad Dog Morgan, 1976, d. Philippe Mora
Tracks, 1977, d. Henry Jaglom
Der amerikanische Freund [The American Friend], 1977, d. Wim Wenders
Les apprentis sorciers [The Sorcerer’s Apprentice], 1977, d. Edgardo Cozarinsky
Apocalypse Now, 1979, d. Francis Ford Coppola
Out of the Blue, 1980
Reborn, 1981, d. Bigas Luna
Human Highway, 1982, d. Dean Stockwell, Neil Young
Rumble Fish, 1983, d. Francis Ford Coppola
The Osterman Weekend, 1983, d. Sam Peckinpah
O.C. and Stiggs, 1985, d. Robert Altman
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, 1986, d. Tobe Hooper
River’s Edge, 1986, d. Tim Hunter
Blue Velvet, 1986, d. David Lynch
Hoosiers, 1986, d. David Anspaugh
Running Out of Luck, 1987, d. Julien Temple
Black Widow, 1987, d. Bob Rafelson
Straight to Hell, 1987, d. Alex Cox
The Pick-Up Artist, 1987, d. James Toback
Colors, 1988
Chattahoochee, 1989, d. Mick Jackson
Catchfire, 1990
The Hot Spot, 1990
Superstar: The Life & Times of Andy Warhol, 1990, d. Chuck Workman
Paris Trout, 1991, d. Stephen Gyllenhaal
The Indian Runner, 1991, d. Sean Penn
The Heart of Justice, 1992, d. Bruno Barreto
Super Mario Bros., 1993, d. Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton, Roland Joffé, Dean Semler
Red Rock West, 1993, d. John Dahl
True Romance, 1993, d. Tony Scott
Chasers, 1994
Speed, 1994, d. Jan de Bont
Witch Hunt, 1994, d. Paul Schrader
Waterworld, 1995, d. Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Costner
Carried Away, 1996, d. Bruno Barreto
Samson and Delilah, 1996, d. Nicolas Roeg
Space Truckers, 1996, d. Stuart Gordon
Basquiat, 1996, d. Julian Schnabel
The Blackout, 1997, d. Abel Ferrara
Who Is Henry Jaglom?, 1997, d. Henry Alex Rubin, Jeremy Workman
Jesus’ Son, 1999, d. Alison Maclean
Leo, 2002, d. Mehdi Norowzian
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, 2003, d. Kenneth Bowser
Tell Them Who You Are, 2004, d. Mark Wexler
Land of the Dead, 2005, d. George A. Romero
Sketches of Frank Gehry, 2005, d. Sydney Pollack
Inside Deep Throat, 2005, d. Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato
Chelsea on the Rocks, 2008, d. Abel Ferrara
Elegy, 2008, d. Isabel Coixet
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!, 2008, d. Mark Hartley
The Brothers Warner, 2008, d. Cass Warner
Palermo Shooting, 2008, d. Wim Wenders

Down... on the Ground

2010-06-01T22:03:00.005-05:00

This post was intended to analyze the similarities and differences between Up in the Air, Fish Tank and An Education, but unfortunately it proved to be a rather uninteresting exercise in surface observations and difficult prose. So I scrapped the idea, but salvaged the only thing worth taking from it: my disdain for Up in the Air. So apologies for the jumpiness and inconclusive arguments, but I thought it might be of some interest regardless. For those who haven't seen the films, I wouldn't recommend reading as this is infested with “spoilers.”

As we’re nearing the half-way point in 2010, I took a look back at what few ’09 releases I actually saw, and one trend really stood out: marital and parental escapism. In three of the notable award contenders of 2009—Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank and Lone Scherfig’s An Education—the very same third act revelation appears as the protagonists make an uninvited visit to the homes of their respective lovers, discovering that their romantic flames are not only frauds, but frauds with spouses and children.

For Up in the Air’s Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man whose views of romance are mirrored (of course) by his on-the-go career which keeps him in transit for the majority of his time, a hotel bar encounter with a woman like Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) leads to the most ideal of no-strings-attached affairs. Alex is a woman, seemingly, like Ryan: professional, mature, horny and uninterested in anything related to our traditional notions of maintaining a romantic relationship with someone. Through several different scenarios where Ryan is forced to interact with people whose notions of relationship stability greatly differ from his own, he undergoes a change of heart and falls for Alex in a way he’s likely never felt for anyone else.

In an attempt to compare/contrast An Education and Fish Tank, I hit a dead end, as they’re almost too similar. Both feature teenage girls as protagonists, their older love interests (Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Fassbender) are deceptively charming and both films happen to be directed by women. The only thing truly dividing them from a narrative perspective is their place in time and the issue of class. An Education’s Jenny (Carey Mulligan) comes from a typical middle class English family in the early 1960s, while Fish Tank’s Mia (Katie Jarvis) lives in the outskirts with her young, hot, single mother (Kierston Wareing) and little sister (Rebecca Griffiths). Their differences in quality, which is a steep one, can best be chalked up to the flatness and dryness of Scherfig’s images against the vividness and vibrancy of Arnold’s.

With surprising consistency, Jenny, Mia and Ryan’s worlds are all crushed through uninvited visits to their respective lovers’ homes. It was, after all, too good to be true for each of them, but the lessons aren’t all the same. For Up in the Air, Alex’s “other life” becomes just one of the film’s infuriatingly heavy-handed views of the traditional family structure. Alex is not only villainized through the revelation but all of the refreshing qualities that Ryan found in her morph into the traits of an unhappy wife and mother acting out. While it seemed relatively clear that Ryan’s young co-worker/traveling companion Natalie Keener’s (Anna Kendrick) function in the film was to give (false) validation to Ryan’s beliefs, Natalie’s purpose changes when the film places its scarlet letter upon Alex, as she starts to work as a defense for the screenwriters (and novelist, I suppose, though I haven’t read the book) in showing us that all women aren’t cruel, manipulative, heart-stomping adulteresses. It’s hard to determine whether the simple, vile justification of Alex’s away-from-home behavior or the nauseating placement of the interview footage of the real people laid off from their jobs where they all emphasize the importance of family is what ultimately destroys Up in the Air, but both elements certainly succeed in ridiculing the protagonist… or maybe we should have never trusted a filmmaker who tried to garner sympathy for a character who crushes other people’s lives as a trade.

All three films are available on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. Up in the Air and An Education are available on Blu-ray and DVD in the US, and Fish Tank will be released by Criterion later in the year.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Takes the Palme d'Or

2010-05-23T13:04:00.004-05:00

Tim Burton and the jury awarded Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives the Palme d'Or at Cannes today, marking the first Palme d'Or for the director and for Thailand. Weerasethakul won the Jury Prize in 2004 for Tropical Malady (which still feels like a giant oversight by Quentin Tarantino and his jury that year, who gave the Palme d'Or to Fahrenheit 9/11) and the Un Certain Regard Award in 2002 for Blissfully Yours. You can watch A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, the director's fantastic 17-minute short which he expanded into the feature, on MUBI. In his fourth outing as a feature director, Mathieu Amalric took home the Best Director prize for Tournée [On Tour]. In a rare tie, Javier Bardem and Elio Germano were named the Best Actors for Biutiful and La nostra vita [Our Life] respectively, and Juliette Binoche won her first Best Actress prize at Cannes this year for Abbas Kiarostami's Copie conforme [Certified Copy]. Rounding out the rest of the awards: Lee Chang-dong won Best Screenplay for Poetry, Xavier Beauvois' Des hommes et des dieux [Of Gods and Men] was awarded the Grand Prix and Michael Rowe's Año bisiesto [Leap Year] won the Caméra d'Or (for best first film). Full awards below:

Palme d'Or: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Spain/United Kingdom
Grand prix: Des hommes et des dieux [Of Gods and Men], d. Xavier Beauvois, France

Prix du jury: Un homme qui crie [A Screaming Man], d. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, France/Chad
Prix de la mise en scène [Best Director]: Mathieu Amalric - Tournée [On Tour]
Prix d'interprétation féminine [Best Actress]: Juliette Binoche - Copie conforme [Certified Copy]
Prix d'interprétation masculine [Best Actor]: (tie) Javier Bardem - Biutiful; Elio Germano - La nosta vita [Our Life]
Prix du scénario [Best Screenplay]: Lee Chang-dong - Poetry
Caméra d'Or: Año bisiesto [Leap Year], d. Michael Rowe, Mexico

Cannes: Un Certain Regard, FIPRESCI, Queer Palm, Semaine de la Critique, Acquisitions...

2010-05-23T02:15:00.006-05:00

Some early prizes at the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival were given out today, in the Un Certain Regard sidebar (which was presided over by Claire Denis), as well as the FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique) awards, the Grand Prix of the Semaine de la Critique, the Art Cinema Award and Short Film Prizes of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs... et plus.

Un Certain Regard Award: HaHaHa, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
- Jury Prize: Octubre [October], d. Daniel Vega, Diego Vega, Peru/Venezuela/Spain
- Un Certain Regard Award for Best Actress: Adela Sanchez, Eva Bianco, Victoria Raposo, Los labios [The Lips]

FIPRESCI Awards
- Competition: Tournée [On Tour], d. Mathieu Amalric, France
- Un Certain Regard: Pál Adrienn [Adrienn Pál], d. Ágnes Kocsis, Hungary/Austria/France/Netherlands
- Quinzaine des Réalisateurs: Todos vós sodes capitáns [You Are All Captains], d. Oliver Luxe, Spain/Morocco

Queer Palm: Kaboom, d. Gregg Araki, USA/France
Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique: Armadillo, d. Janus Metz, Denmark
Art Cinema Award (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs): Pieds nus sur les limaces [Lily Sometimes], d. Fabienne Berthaud, France
Prix SFR (short films, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs): Căutare [Quest], d. Ionuţ Piţurescu, Romania; Mary Last Seen, d. Sean Durkin, USA

As expected, IFC Films snatched up the most films this year. Araki's Kaboom, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires], Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier [La princesse de Montpensier], Jorge Michel Grau's We Are What We Are [Somos lo que hay] and Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy [Copie conforme] have all been picked up by the studio since the start of the festival. Prior to that, they had already struck a deal for Olivier Assayas' Carlos, along with The Sundance Channel (they're owned by the same company); The Sundance Channel will air the 333-minute-long version later this year, followed by a theatrical release from IFC of a shorter, three-hour-long cut.

The other US distributor that typically returns from Cannes with several films added to their roster, Sony Pictures Classics, has been more conservative than usual in their purchases thusfar (possibly due to the reportedly weak line-up this year), taking only Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods and Men [Des hommes et des dieux] and Mike Leigh's Another Year. They had already secured Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Stephen Frears' Tamara Drewe, both playing out of competition. The only other US purchase at the festival so far came from Magnolia's genre arm, Magnet Releasing, who picked up Quentin Dupieux's horror/comedy Rubber. Rubber, which screened during the Semaine de la Critique, stars Roxane Mesquida and Stephen Spinella (Milk, Love! Valour! Compassion!). The official closing ceremony of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival will begin in just a few hours.

The 2010 Cannes Film Festival in Posters, Round 2

2010-05-21T02:48:00.012-05:00

Here are 34 more posters for films playing at this year's Cannes Film Festival. All are new titles, aside from Somos lo que hay [We Are What We Are] as I found a different, larger poster for it. From the competition, we have La princesse de Montpensier, Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (thanks ouiouioui!) and Hors-la-loi (which leaves only Another Year, Fair Game, Chongqing Blues, Route Irish and My Joy un-represented in that section). From the Cannes Classics section: La 315ème section, Psycho, The Leopard, Boudu Saved from Drowning, Tristana, La compagne de Ciceron, Le grand amour, The Tin Drum, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The African Queen, Au petit bonheur and La bataille du rail. The rest: O Estranho Caso de Angélica, Bedevilled (which might be the cover sheet of a press booklet), Benda Bilili!, Chatroom (easily the worst reviewed film at the festival so far), Aurora, Le quattro volte, Octubre, Sandcastle, Picco, Simon Werner a disparu..., La casa muda, Unter dir die Stadt, The Wanderer, Udaan, Los labios, Marţi, după Crăciun and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. There may be one more update when the festival closes.

Être Queer à Cannes

2010-05-19T09:49:00.004-05:00

Following in the traditions of both the Berlinale and Venice International Film Festival, the very first Queer Palm will be handed out at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Though in its first year, the award isn't yet an "official" prize... but it will be given to any film screening across the panels (the Official selection, Un Certain Regard, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique). The Teddy Award in Berlin has been around since 1987, formed by German filmmakers Wieland Speck and Manfred Salzgeber; the first Teddy's were given to Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire [La ley del deseo] in the feature category and Gus Van Sant's Five Ways to Kill Yourself and My New Friend in the shorts section. The Queer Lion of the Venice Film Festival has only been around for three years, with the first prize going to Edward Radtke's The Speed of Life in 2007; Tom Ford's A Single Man won last year. "Fathered" by directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Crustacés et coquillages), the Queer Palm will be announced at a ceremony on the 22nd. For more information, here's an interview with the organizer, Franck Finance-Madureira, with English subtitles. Ducastel and Martineau won a Teddy Jury Award in 2000 for The Adventures of Félix [Drôle de Félix].

Unfortunately, the official Queer Palm site doesn't mention which titles are eligible for the award, but with three notable queer cinéastes presenting their latest films this year, I'd imagine they'll have their pick of Gregg Araki's Kaboom! (which played out of competition at a midnight screening), Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires] (which has gotten a lot of great feedback and was just acquired by IFC Films) and (possibly) Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which hasn't screened yet and may not be as queer as, say, Tropical Malady). I suppose there's a possibility in Cam Archer's Shit Year (like Weerasethakul's, it may lack the queerness of the director's previous Wild Tigers I Have Known), but gauging a film's queerness is a challenge (for those reading synopses and reviews just as much, I'd imagine, as those who've actually seen the films).

Looking at the Semaine de la Critique line-up today, I just now noticed that another (queer) short directed by James Franco, The Clerk's Tale, will be closing the Court-Métrange section of the Semaine (along with a short directed by Kirsten Dunst called Bastard, with Juno Temple, Brian Geraghty, Lukas Haas, Lee Thompson Young and L.M. Kit Carson). A little over a year after acting in a Gus Van Sant film (Milk, of course), Franco seems to be carrying on the queer cinema torch. Another short he directed called Feast of Stephen, about a teenage boy's black-and-white fantasies, took home the Teddy for Short Film earlier this year; Franco also played that homo Allen Ginsberg in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, also part of the 2010 Berlinale. If no other Queer Palm information surfaces in the next few days, you'll hear back from me when the jury hands out their prize. Until then, check out the charming, smutty interview BUTT magazine conducted with Dolan back in April.

Criterion in August

2010-05-15T11:49:00.002-05:00

Criterion's newly announced titles for August range from "well, finally" to "thanks, but..." The most obvious "finally" is a three-film set of Josef von Sternberg silents–Underworld, The Last Command and The Docks of New York–which had been speculated to be on their way for years. Still under the "finally" category is Maurice Pialat's L'enfance nue. After Criterion released Pialat's amazing À nos amours in 2006, we might have expected a number of the director's other films to surface, but so far only a crummy disc of Loulou and an out-of-print one for Van Gogh are the only other Pialat's on home video in the US (Masters of Cinema in the UK have been putting out most of his oeuvre on DVD over the past couple years). While I wouldn't necessarily throw Terry Zwigoff's Crumb or his first film, a documentary called Louie Bluie, into the "no thanks" category, as long as these releases don't lead to Criterion putting out any of his fiction features. And, well, as there's only one other title left (on the main line), you can guess my feelings toward Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus [Orfeu Negro], which will get a remastered reissue DVD release as well as a Blu-ray on the 17th. The Eclipse set will be the First Films of Akira Kurosawa–Sanshiro Sugata, Sanshiro Sugata 2, The Most Beautiful and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail–all four of which were first issued last December in the AK 100 box set. Aside from Black Orpheus, Crumb will be the only other Blu-ray release in August. I have a non-Criterion DVD update coming up soon.

The 2010 Cannes Film Festival in Posters, Round 1

2010-05-11T23:04:00.008-05:00

With the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival beginning shortly, I decided to unveil the posters for the films playing (in all the sections) that I've come across so far. Though I didn't find a poster for it, Ken Loach's Route Irish, a film dealing with the British's involvement in Iraq, was added to the competition line-up, making the grand total of films in competition nineteen; ten of which (Biutiful, Burnt by the Sun 2, Copie conforme, The Housemaid, Des hommes et des dieux, Outrage, Poetry, Un homme qui crie, La nostra vita and Tournée) I did find posters for. In total, there's 26 in this round (I had more before realizing they were just cover sheets for the press booklets), including a collage of posters for Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid and Xavier Dolan's Les amours imaginaires. The rest: Abel, Alting bliver godt igen, Blue Valentine, Carancho, Copacabana, Draquila - L'Italia che trema, Illégal, L'autre monde, Año bisiesto, Life, Above All, Petit tailleur, Rubber, Film socialisme, Somos lo que hay and Wall Street 2.

Luther Price's Meat Screening in NYC

2010-05-06T18:19:00.003-05:00

For those of you in the Big Apple, my friend Bradford Nordeen is presenting a video screening of queer experimental filmmaker Luther Price's super-8 Meat at Louis V E.S.P. in Brooklyn tomorrow night at 8pm (the screening starts at 9). I certainly encourage you to go if you're in the area. Here's a description of Meat from Canyon Cinema:

"Meat is viscerally consuming in its sterile, antiseptic and static giving over of the flesh. Poked, prodded, pinched and disgraced, the humiliated body is sacrificed and the metamorphosis begins ... the fly becomes the shit ... the maggot becomes the bone ... the bone becomes the food ... the food becomes shit and the body becomes the wound ... the institution becomes teeth ... throat and stomach."

Le joli mai

2010-05-01T04:32:00.005-05:00

Yeah, yeah... I know I've pulled the post-a-photo-of-Grace-Jones-as-Mayday-on-May-1st business before, but when you've found something that works, stick with it (as my father always said). Now that the weather has improved, my mental well-being has ventured out of the red, and I'll be returning full-ish time to the blog. What you can expect from me this month: reviews of Kentucker Audley's two latest films, Holy Land and Open Five, which both premiered last month; the early stages of a new regular feature on the blog; more DVD updates (Mulholland Drive is supposedly making its way to Blu-ray this fall by the way); a rather messy criticism of Up in the Air, which started as an unsuccessful side-by-side-by-side comparison of that piece of shit, another overpraised turkey (An Education) and Andrea Arnold's magnificent Fish Tank (portions of the latter films still show up, but it really didn't work as a whole); likely some links to writings about the films screening at Cannes (as I won't be in attendance); the Cannes poster update (which is looking grim so far, but it usually isn't until halfway through the festival that the posters start showing their faces); many unnecessary references to Liz Lemon; an appreciation post for Téa Leoni; some press for a good friend's NYC show coming up; a belated 2009 music post; some of this; and hopefully plenty of other (quasi-)exciting things. Getting back into "the swing of things" is more difficult than I had imagined, but the (non-breeding-related) post-partum depression is slowly vanishing...

Rise Above

2010-04-26T02:58:00.006-05:00

La fille du RER / The Girl on the Train
2009
France
Dir: André Téchiné

When Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy came out, many people found it to be a rather telling portrait of the economic crash of 2008, though many others noted that the film was made (and even premiered) before that had happened. What was fascinating though about the label placed upon it was that the film concerned a woman in her mid-20s, played by Michelle Williams, while the media focused on those individuals who were being laid off from jobs they’d had for years. André Téchiné’s latest film, The Girl on the Train, is one of the first films to really address this age group, the students who graduated at a time when the work field was grim to say the least, with that in mind… though what’s most appealing about the film is that it never directly approaches the subject.

Twentysomething Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) is a charming, naïve young woman who lives with her mother Louise (Catherine Deneuve) and spends most of her afternoons rollerblading through Paris. The first moment we see Louise, she’s sitting in front of a computer, looking online for jobs to which her daughter could apply. The scene comes across as rather benign, trivial moment within the film. Louise nags her daughter about finding a job, Jeanne agrees with her while trying to change the subject, Louise adds that the particular job she’s found is working for someone she used to know and offers to revise Jeanne’s résumé. At first, the scene appears to exist in order to establish the relationship between the mother and daughter, who otherwise carry on like the best of friends, but it also establishes a generational gap and places context for the film’s driving act, midway through the film.

For a filmmaker approaching 70, Téchiné has a rather astounding grasp of what it means to be young in this economy. Jeanne lives comfortably with her mother and finds distraction with her iPod and rollerblades, while still harboring a hint of shame about her unemployment, as she lies to Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), the boy who fancies her, about working at the job for which she interviewed and (evidently) didn’t get. The other significant youth in the film is the grandson of Samuel Bleistein (Michel Blanc), the lawyer whose secretarial position Jeanne applied for. Nathan’s (Jérémy Quaegebeur) situation is a bit different. He’s 13, approaching his bar mitzvah and consistently bossed around by his quarrelling, liberal parents (Ronit Elkabetz and Mathieu Demy) even though they happen to think their actions are in sync with their son’s wishes. Despite the age difference between Jeanne and Nathan, he’s the only one who seems to understand her situation, or at least the only one willing to lend an ear without imposing judgment upon her, another example of the miscommunications between generation.

On a purely superficial level, Téchiné cinematically captures personal exchanges via the Internet in a totally magnificent, compelling way. One of the biggest hurdles filmmakers have had to tackle in recent years is how to make an online conversation visually stimulating, and it’s an obstacle at which most have failed. Favoring online video chat over phone calls, Jeanne and Franck communicate with one another as most kids would, and without a word spoken, Téchiné manages to make their exchanges as dynamic, sexy and engaging as if they were talking back and forth in person. He even adds a surprising touch with Jeanne and Franck’s first sexual experience together happening through the video chat, which could be chalked up to avoiding the interference from Jeanne’s mother or Franck’s roommate or the comfort Jeanne feels through the impersonal medium, avoiding the likely awkwardness of first having sex with someone (or both, naturally).

Jeanne’s situation, the one that only Nathan is able to understand, is not the pangs of being young but specifically the film’s central act in which Jeanne lies to the police claiming to have been a victim of an anti-Semitic attack. Jeanne isn’t Jewish, but she’s living in a world (the film world, that is; I’m not sure whether this is true in the real one or not) where anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise. Her recognition of this fact is probably brought upon through Bleistein, a Jew who’s gained media attention for defending the victims in court. Téchiné spends a great deal of time building up to Jeanne’s act, diving the film into two chapters, “Les circonstances” (Circumstances) and “Les consequences” (Consequences). No single moment, even the apparent one, gives explanation to why Jeanne did what she did. It’s best understood as a product of realities of her life (obviously) and her struggle not to disappear. Jeanne’s entire relationship with Franck provides the biggest clue to this. On most levels, Franck doesn’t seem like the sort of guy Jeanne would normally be attracted to. He’s rough, streetwise and has a family history of crime… not to mention that Louise seems to disapprove of him (which may be one of his appeals, I’m not sure). What Jeanne finds appealing in Franck is the attention he gives her; he appears dedicated and loyal to her, even if he’s rather shady and manipulative otherwise.

Jeanne never really gives a reason for what she did, and it’s very possible that she isn’t even aware of it in the first place. She doesn’t appear to be a racist toward Jews or the North Africans she claimed attacked her. She seems oblivious to a lot of things, including her own motives. The choice of casting Dequenne as Jeanne doesn’t seem to be an accident. Jeanne shares quite a few similarities with the title character in Rosetta, the role Dequenne is famous for. Both young women feel the weight of the economy crushing them, and both have unorthodox (and morally grey) ways of surviving through it. While Rosetta’s situation is one of singularity, Jeanne’s however is a sentiment that’s, unfortunately, considerably widespread.

La fille du RER will hit DVD from Strand Releasing in the US on 18 May; it is already on DVD in Canada (from Mongrel Media) and France (from UGC Vidéo) and will be released theatrically in the UK in June.

A final pre-fest update for Cannes 2010

2010-04-23T15:42:00.003-05:00

In addition to Olivier Assayas' Carlos (I think they've dropped the Jackal in the title), seven more films have been added to the Cannes roster. In competition, Wang Xiaoshuai's (Beijing Bicycle, Shanghai Dreams) Chongqing Blues and Kornél Mundruczó's (Delta, Johanna) Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project will bring the count to eighteen films competing for the Palme d'Or. Pablo Trapero's (Rolling Family, Lion's Den) Carancho and Jia Zhang-ke's (Still Life, The World) I Wish I Knew will be screening in the Un Certain Regard section. Andrei Ujică's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Lucy Walker's Countdown to Zero and an omnibus film from Brazil entitled 5xFavela will be shown out of competition.

I realized that I forgot to mention the rest of the jury members that will be (hopefully) pushing Tim Burton in the right direction. They are actors Kate Beckinsale, Benicio del Toro and Giovanna Mezzogiorno; directors Victor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive), Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) and Emmanuel Carrère (La moustache); and Alberto Barbera, director of the National Museum of Cinema. Claire Denis will head the jury of the Un Certain Regard section.

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs / Semaine Internationale de la Critique

2010-04-20T05:01:00.004-05:00

The line-ups for both the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight) and Semaine Internationale de la Critique (International Critics' Week) for Cannes this year. Both schedules are dominated by first-time filmmakers and, perhaps not surprisingly, slim on American features. Of the two American films playing during the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Cam Archer's follow-up to his lovely Wild Tigers I Have Known, entitled Shit Year, will screen. The film stars Ellen Barkin, Melora Walters, Luke Grimes and Theresa Randle. Christoffer Boe, who won the Caméra d'Or in 2003 for his (lousy) Reconstruction, has his latest, Everything Will Be Fine [Alting bliver godt igen], screening during the Quinzaine. Another short directed by actor Louis Garrel, Petit tailleur, will also be showing during the Quinzaine; his first outing as a director, a short called Mes copains, played in 2008. Frederick Wiseman's latest, Boxing Gym, will premiere at the Quinzaine as a "special screening." The feature film line-ups are below:

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

- Algeria, d. Marina Méliande, Felipe Braganca, Brazil
- All Good Children, d. Alicia Duffy, UK
- Alting bliver godt igen [Everything Will Be Fine], d. Christoffer Boe (Reconstruction, Allegro), Denmark/Sweden/France, w. Paprika Steen
- Año bisiesto, d. Michael Rowe, Mexico
- Benda Bilili!, d. Renaud Barret, Florent de la Tullaye, France
- La casa muda [The Silent House], d. Gustavo Hernandez, Uruguay
- Cleveland vs. Wall Street, d. Jean-Stéphane Bron, Switzerland/France
- Des filles en noir, d. Jean-Paul Civeyrac (À travers le forêt), France
- Illégal, d. Olivier Masset-Depasse (Cages), Belgium/Luxembourg/France
- The Light Thief, d. Aktan Arym Kubat (Beshkempir), Kyrgyzstan
- Little Baby Jesus of Flandr, d. Gust Vandenberghe, Belgium
- La mirada invisible [The Invisible Eye], d. Diego Lerman (Tan de repente), Argentina/France/Spain
- Picco, d. Philip Koch, Germany
- Pieds nus sur les limaces [Lily Sometimes], d. Fabienne Berthaud (Frankie), France
- Le quattro volte, d. Michelangelo Frammartino (Il dono), Italy/Germany/Switzerland
- Shit Year, d. Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known), USA, w. Ellen Barkin, Melora Walters, Luke Grimes, Theresa Randle
- Somos lo que hay [We Are What We Are], d. Jorge Michel Grau, Mexico
- Tiger Factory, d. Woo Ming Jin, Malaysia
- Todos vós sodes capitáns, d. Oliver Laxe, Spain
- Two Gates of Sheep, d. Alistair Banks Griffin, USA
- Un poison violent, d. Katell Quillevéré, France
- The Wanderer, d. Avishai Sivan, Israel

Special Screenings

- Boxing Gym, d. Frederick Wiseman, USA
- Stones in Exile, d. Stephen Kijak, UK

Semaine Internationale de la Critique

- Armadillo, d. Janus Metz, Denmark
- Bedevilled, d. Jang Cheol So, South Korea
- Belle épine, d. Rebecca Zlotowski, France, w. Léa Seydoux, Johan Libereau
- Bi, dung so! [Bi, Don't Be Afraid!], d. Phan Dang Di, Vietnam/France/Germany
- The Myth of the American Sleepover, d. David Robert Mitchell, USA
- Sandcastle, d. Boo Junfeng, Singapore
- Sound of Noise, d. Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, Sweden/France

Special Screenings

- Le nom des gens [The Names of Love], d. Michel Leclerc, France, w. Jacques Gamblin, Sara Forestier
- Copacabana, d. Marc Fitoussi, France, w. Isabelle Huppert, Lolita Chammah
- Rubber, d. Quentin Dupieux, w. Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Roxane Mesquida

Olivier Assayas' Carlos Will Be at Cannes

2010-04-20T03:41:00.003-05:00

While it wasn't included in the competition selection, it was announced the other day that Olivier Assayas' latest, Carlos the Jackal, will play at Cannes after all. The film, about Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, will be released in two formats: as a television mini-series and as a two-ish hour long feature. The mini-series is set to air in the US on The Sundance Channel at some point this year, and the shorter version will be released theatrically by IFC Films. The line-ups for both the Semaine Internationale de la Critique and the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs should be unveiled soon.

DVD Coming Attractions, Part 2

2010-04-18T06:34:00.000-05:00

Instead of sorting through what I'd already mentioned on the DVD updates, I've made it (hopefully) a little easier by dividing the notable releases by week. Some of the highlights include a Blu-ray release of Paul Verhoeven's masterpiece Showgirls in a "15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition," a surprise DVD release of Manoel de Oliveira's Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl [Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira] from Cinema Guild in September and a number of European titles from Olive Films Opus for late 2010 and early 2011. I may be doing the same thing for Region 2 titles later this week.

20 April

DVD Only
- 200 Motels, 1971, d. Tony Palmer, Frank Zappa, Tony Palmer Films/MVD
- 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums], 2008, d. Claire Denis, Cinema Guild
- The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela, 2008, d. Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, here! Films
- Cloud 9 [Wolke 9], 2008, d. Andreas Dresen, Music Box Films
- Ex Drummer, 2007, d. Koen Mortier, Palisades Tartan
- The Horse Boy, 2009, d. Michel O. Scott, Zeitgeist
- Knife Edge, 2010, d. Anthony Hickox, E1, w. Joan Plowright, Hugh Bonneville, Natalie Press, Jamie Harris
- Mammoth, 2009, d. Lukas Moodysson, IFC Films
- Uncertainty, 2008, d. Scott McGehee, David Siegel, IFC Films

DVD and Blu-ray
- Crazy Heart, 2009, d. Scott Cooper, Fox
- Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], 2008, d. Olivier Assayas, Criterion
- Vivre sa vie, 1962, d. Jean-Luc Godard, Criterion
- The Young Victoria, 2009, d. Jean-Marc Vallée, Sony

Blu-ray
- The Basketball Diaries, 1995, d. Scott Kalvert, Palm Pictures
- Battleship Potemkin, 1925, d. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Kino
- Fist of Legend, 1994, d. Gordon Chan, Yuen Woo-ping, Dragon Dynasty

27 April

DVD
- The Barbara Stanwyck Collection, Universal
- The Descent: Part 2, 2009, d. Jon Harris, Lionsgate
- Dialogues of the Exiled [Diálogos de exiliados], 1975, d. Raoul Ruiz, Cinemateca/Facets
- Dinah East, 1970, d. Gene Nash, VCI
- The End of Poverty?, 2008, d. Philippe Diaz, Cinema Libre
- The Fugitive Kind, 1959, d. Sidney Lumet, Criterion
- How to Live in the German Federal Republic [Leben - BRD], 1990, d. Harun Farocki, Facets
- Milton Glaser: To Inform & Delight, 2009, d. Wendy Keys, Arthouse Films
- Possible Films, Volume 2: New Short Films by Hal Hartley, d. Hal Hartley, Possible Films/Microcinema
- Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, 1994, d. Jill Godmilow, Facets
- Surviving Desire, 1991, d. Hal Hartley, Possible Films/Microcinema
- The Unquiet Death of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1974, d. Alan Moorman, Facets
- The Voyeur [L'uomo che guarda], 1994, d. Tinto Brass, Cult Epics
- William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, 2009, d. Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler, Arthouse Films

DVD and Blu-ray
- District 13 Ultimatum [Banlieue 13 - Ultimatum], 2009, d. Patrick Alessandrin, Magnet Releasing/Magnolia
- Five Minutes of Heaven, 2009, d. Oliver Hirschbiegel, IFC Films
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, 2009, d. Terry Gilliam, Sony
- Ride with the Devil (Director's Cut), 1999, d. Ang Lee, Criterion

Blu-ray
- Dune, 1984, d. David Lynch, Universal
- Elizabeth, 1998, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal
- Out of Africa, 1985, d. Sydney Pollack, Universal
- Tombstone, 1993, d. George P. Cosmatos, Touchstone
- Traffic, 2000, d. Steven Soderbergh, Universal

4 May

DVD
- 9 to 5: Days in Porn, 2008, d. Jens Hoffman, Strand Releasing
- California Dreamin' [California Dreamin' (Nesfârşit)], 2007, d. Cristian Nemescu, IFC Films
- The Lost Coast, 2008, d. Gabriel Fleming, Breaking Glass Pictures
- The Muse, 1999, d. Albert Brooks, Universal
- Paper Covers Rock, 2008, d. Joe Maggio, IFC Films
- Suburbia, 1984, d. Penelope Spheeris, Shout! Factory
- Tokyo Sonata, 2008, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, here! Films

DVD and Blu-ray
- Chelsea on the Rocks, 2008, d. Abel Ferrara, Empire Pictures/Hannover House
- Doctor Zhivago, 1965, d. David Lean, Warner
- Dogora [Dogora: Ouvrons les yeux], 2004, d. Patrice Leconte, Severin
- Rock 'n' Roll High School, 1979, d. Allan Arkush, Joe Dante, Jerry Zucker, Shout! Factory
- Tetro, 2009, d. Francis Ford Coppola, Lionsgate

Blu-ray
- Seven Swords, 2005, d. Tsui Hark, Dragon Dynasty

11 May

DVD
- Daria: The Complete Series, 1997-2001, Paramount
- One Deadly Summer [L'été meurtrier], 1983, d. Jean Becker, Bayview Films, w. Isabelle Adjani

DVD and Blu-ray
- Céline: Through the Eyes of the World, 2010, d. Stéphane Laporte, Sony
- Legend of the Tsunami Warrior [aka Queens of Langkasuka], 2008, d. Nonzee Nimibutr, Magnet Releasing/Magnolia

Blu-ray
- The Edge, 1997, d. Lee Tamahori, Fox
- The Karate Kid, 1984, d. John G. Avildsen, Sony
- M, 1931, d. Fritz Lang, Criterion
- The Magnificent Seven Collection, 1960-1972, d. John Sturges, Burt Kennedy, Paul Wendkos, George McCowan, MGM
- The Man in the Iron Mask, 1998, d. Randall Wallace, MGM

18 May

DVD
- Defamation, 2009, d. Yoav Shamir, First Run
- The Disappeared, 2008, d. Johnny Kevorkian, IFC Films
- The Girl on the Train [La fille du RER], 2009, d. André Téchiné, Strand Releasing
- Oshima's Outlaw Sixties, d. Nagisa Oshima, Eclipse/Criterion
- Poliwood, 2009, d. Barry Levinson, Screen Media Films
- Sunrise/Sunset, 2008, d. Vitali Mansky, Alive Mind

DVD and Blu-ray
- Walkabout, 1971, d. Nicolas Roeg, Criterion

Blu-ray
- 9 Songs, 2004, d. Michael Winterbottom, Palisades Tartan
- Carlito's Way, 1993, d. Brian De Palma, Universal

25 May

DVD
- All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, 2010, d. Tim Rutili, Indiepix
- Bottom Land, 1992, d. Ed Radtke, Facets
- Call Me Madame [Appelez-moi Madame], 1986, d. Françoise Romand, Microcinema
- In Desert and Wilderness [W pustyni i w puszczy], 2001, d. Gavin Hood, MGE/Facets
- Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, 2006, d. Mary Jordan, Arthouse Films
- Kamikaze Hearts, 1986, d. Juliet Bashore, Facets
- No Orchids for Miss Blandish, 1948, d. St. John Legh Clowes, VCI
- Obscene, 2007, d. Daniel O'Connor, Neil Ortenberg, Arthouse Films
- Phyllis and Harold, 2008, d. Cindy Kleine, Breaking Glass Pictures
- Real End of the Great War [Prawdziwy koniec wielkiej wojny], 1957, d. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Polart/Facets
- True Blood: Season 2, 2009, HBO
- Voyager [Homo Faber], 1991, d. Volker Schlöndorff, Scorpion Releasing
- What's Underground About Marshmallows?, 1996, d. Jill Godmilow, Facets
- The World of Buckminster Fuller, 1974, d. Baylis Glascock, Robert Snyder, Mystic Fire/Microcinema
- Yesterday Girl [Abschied von gestern - (Anita G.)], 1966, d. Alexander Kluge, Facets

DVD and Blu-ray
- By Brakhage, An Anthology, Volume 2, d. Stan Brakhage, Criterion
- City of the Living Dead [Paura nella città dei morti viventi], 1980, d. Lucio Fulci, Blue Underground
- The Messenger, 2009, d. Oren Moverman, Oscilloscope
- Pep Squad, 1998, d. Steve Balderson, Troma
- The Road, 2009, d. John Hillcoat, Sony
- Stagecoach, 1939, d. John Ford, Criterion

Blu-ray
- By Brakhage, An Anthology, Volume 1, d. Stan Brakhage, Criterion
- Class of Nuke 'Em High, 1986, d. Richard W. Haines, Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz, Troma
- Spartacus, 1960, d. Stanley Kubrick, Universal

1 June

DVD
- Tony Manero, 2008, d. Pablo Larraín, Kino Lorber

DVD and Blu-ray
- The Red Baron [Der rote Baron], 2008, d. Nikolai Müllerschön, Monterey Video
- The Sun, 2005, d. Aleksandr Sokurov, Kino Lorber

Blu-ray
- Absolute Power, 1997, d. Clint Eastwood, Warner
- Heartbreak Ridge, 1986, d. Clint Eastwood, Warner
- The Man With No Name Trilogy, 1964-1966, d. Sergio Leone, MGM
- The Rookie, 1990, d. Clint Eastwood, Warner

8 June

DVD
- Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 7, 2009, HBO
- Patterns Trilogy and Other Short Films by Jamie Travis, 2003-2006, d. Jamie Travis, Kimstim/Kino Lorber
- Shinjuku Incident, 2009, d. Yee Tung-Shing, Sony
- Stonewall - 25th Anniversary [Before Stonewall / After Stonewall], 1984/1999, d. Robert Rosenberg, John Scagliotti, Greta Schiller, First Run
- Word Is Out, 1977, d. Rob Epstein, Milestone Video/Oscilloscope

DVD and Blu-ray
- 180° South, 2010, d. Chris Malloy, Magnolia
- Shutter Island, 2010, d. Martin Scorsese, Paramount

Blu-ray
- Happy Together, 1997, d. Wong Kar-wai, Kino Lorber

15 June

DVD
- Antarctica, 2008, d. Yari Hochner, here! Films
- The Blind Menace, 1960, d. Kazuo Mori, AnimEigo
- Born Into Shit [Po hlavě do prdele], 2006, d. Marcel Bystroň, Seminal Films
- Burma VJ, 2008, d. Anders Østergaard, Oscilloscope
- Collapse, 2009, d. Chris Smith, Vitagraph Films
- Happy Tears, 2009, d. Mitchell Lichtenstein, Lionsgate
- Horror Hospital, 1973, d. Anthony Balch, Dark Sky Films
- Sex Positive, 2008, d. Daryl Wein, here! Films
- Unthinkable, 2010, d. Gregor Jordan, Sony, w. Michael Sheen, Samuel L. Jackson, Brandon Routh, Carrie-Anne Moss

DVD and Blu-ray
- Mary and Max, 2009, d. Adam Elliot, IFC Films
- Mystery Train, 1989, d. Jim Jarmusch, Criterion

Blu-ray
- Flash Gordon, 1980, d. Mike Hodges, Universal
- Showgirls, 1995, d. Paul Verhoeven, MGM
- The Stepfather, 1987, d. Joseph Ruben, Shout! Factory

22 June

DVD
- Bluebeard [Barbe Bleue], 2009, d. Catherine Breillat, Strand Releasing
- Le combat dans l'île, 1962, d. Alain Cavalier, Zeitgeist
- Invisible Adversaries [Unsichtbare Gegner], 1977, d. Valie Export, Facets
- The Maid [La nana], 2009, d. Sebastián Silva, Oscilloscope
- Night Train to Munich, 1940, d. Carol Reed, Criterion
- Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave [Gelegenheitsarbeit einer Sklavin], 1973, d. Alexander Kluge, Facets
- Raging Sun, Raging Sky [Rabioso sol, rabioso cielo], 2009, d. Julián Hernández, TLA Releasing
- Soundless Wind Chime, 2009, d. Wing Kit Hung, TLA Releasing

DVD and Blu-ray
- Close-Up, 1990, d. Abbas Kiarostami, Criterion
- Death Race 2000, 1975, d. Paul Bartel, Shout! Factory
- Red Desert [Il deserto rosso], 1964, d. Michelangelo Antonioni, Criterion
- A Star Is Born, 1954, d. George Cukor, Warner

20 June

DVD
- Alice Neel, 2007, d. Andrew Neel, Arthouse Films
- Bass Ackwards, 2010, d. Linas Phillips, New Video
- Burning Paradise, 1994, d. Ringo Lam, Discotek Media
- Evening Primrose, 1966, d. Paul Bogart, Koch Vision
- First Love [Erste Liebe], 1970, d. Maximilian Schell, VCI, w. Dominique Sanda
- It Came from Kuchar, 2009, d. Jennifer M. Kroot, Indiepix
- Lorna, the Exorcist [Les possédées du diable], 1974, d. Jesús Franco, Mondo Macabro
- New York Confidential, 1955, d. Russell Rouse, VCI, w. Anne Bancroft
- Next: A Primer on Urban Painting, 2005, d. Pablo Aravena, Arthouse Films
- Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect, 2008, d. Markus Heidingsfelder, Min Tesch, Arthouse Films
- Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, 1969, d. Chang Cheh, Dragon Dynasty
- Say Hello to Yesterday, 1971, d. Alvin Rakoff, Scorpion Releasing
- A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory, 2007, d. Esther Robinson, Arthouse Films

DVD and Blu-ray
- The Eclipse, 2009, d. Conor McPherson, Magnolia
- Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick], 2008, d. Jan Troell, Criterion
- The Warlords, 2007, d. Peter Chan, Wai Man Yip, Magnet Releasing/Magnolia
- The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], 2009, d. Michael Haneke, Sony

Blu-ray
- The Leopard [Il gattopardo], 1963, d. Luchino Visconti, Criterion
- Versus, 2000, d. Ryuhei Kitamura, Tokyo Shock

6 July

DVD
- Pornography: A Thriller, 2009, d. David Kittredge, Wolfe Video

DVD and Blu-ray
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Män som hatar kvinnor], 2009, d. Niels Arden Oplev, Music Box Films
- Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928, d. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton, Kino Lorber

Blu-ray
- Love and Other Disasters, 2006, d. Alek Keshishian, Image

13 July

DVD
- God's Offices [Les bureaux de Dieu], 2008, d. Claire Simon, Synkronized USA, w. Nathalie Baye, Béatrice Dalle, Isabelle Carré, Lolita Chammah, Nicole Garcia
- My Year Without Sex, 2009, d. Sarah Watt, Strand Releasing
- The Only Son, 1936, d. Yasujiro Ozu, Criterion
- Saving Marriage, 2006, d. John Henning, Mike Roth, here! Films
- There Was a Father, 1942, d. Yasujiro Ozu, Criterion

DVD and Blu-ray
- A Single Man, 2009, d. Tom Ford, Sony

Blu-ray
- In Bruges, 2008, d. Martin McDonagh, Universal

20 July

DVD
- The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, 2009, d. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith, First Run
- Nollywood Babylon, 2008, d. Ben Addelman, Samir Mallal, Kino Lorber
- A Town Called Panic [Panique au village], 2009, d. Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Zeitgeist

DVD and Blu-ray
- Black Narcissus, 1947, d. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Criterion
- The Red Shoes, 1948, d. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Criterion
- The Secret of the Grain [La graine et le mulet], 2007, d. Abdel Kechiche, Criterion

27 July

DVD
- Altamont Now, 2008, d. Joshua Brown, Factory 25
- Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed [Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: Ratlos], 1968, d. Alexander Kluge, Facets
- The Guernica Tree [L'arbre de Guernica], 1975, d. Fernando Arrabal, Cult Epics
- Loos Ornamental, 2008, d. Heinz Emigholz, Filmgalerie 451/Facets
- Memory of Water [La memoria del agua], 1994, d. Héctor Fáver
- Presenting Sacha Guitry, 1936-1938, d. Sacha Guitry, Eclipse/Criterion
- Viva Castro!, 1994, d. Boris Frumin, Facets

DVD and Blu-ray
- Accidents Happen, 2009, d. Andrew Lancaster, Image, w. Geena Davis

August

DVD
- Humanoids from the Deep, 1980, d. Barbara Peters, Jimmy T. Murakami, Shout! Factory
- Sweetgrass, 2009, d. Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Cinema Guild, 3 August

DVD and Blu-ray
- Piranha, 1978, d. Joe Dante, Shout! Factory
- Lost: Season 6, 2010, Touchstone
- Lost: The Complete Series, 2004-2010, Touchstone

Blu-ray
- Deep Blue Sea, 1999, d. Renny Harlin, Warner

September and On

DVD
- Amer, 2009, d. Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani, Oliver Films Opus, 29 March 2011
- A Boyfriend for My Wife [Un novio para mi mujer], 2008, d. Juan Taratuto, Olive Films Opus, 39 March 2011
- Brotherhood [Broderskab], 2009, d. Nicolo Donato, Olive Films Opus, 28 December
- Dancing Across Borders, 2009, d. Anne Bass, First Run, 21 September
- Destricted, 2006, d. Marina Abramović, Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, Richard Prince, Sam Taylor Wood, Revolver, 7 September
- Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl [Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loira], 2009, d. Manoel de Oliveira, Cinema Guild, 21 September
- The Girl [Flickan], 2009, d. Fredrik Edfeldt, Olive Films Opus, 30 November
- Letters to Father Jacob [Postia pappi Jaakobille], 2009, d. Klaus Härö, Olive Films Opus, 22 February 2011
- The Temptation of St. Tony [Püha Tõnu kiusamine], 2009, d. Veiko Õunpuu, Olive Films Opus, 25 January 2011
- Women Without Men, 2009, d. Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari, Indiepix, 9 November

Blu-ray
- Beauty and the Beast, 1991, d. Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, Disney, 5 October
- Ben-Hur, 1959, d. William Wyler, Warner, 16 November
- Forbidden Planet, 1956, d. Fred M. Wilcox, Warner, 7 September
- The Goonies, 1985, d. Richard Donner, Warner, 2 November
- The Maltese Falcon, 1941, d. John Huston, Warner, 5 October
- Mars Attacks!, 1996, d. Tim Burton, Warner, 7 September
- Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935, d. Frank Lloyd, Warner, 16 November
- Three Kings, 1999, d. David O. Russell, Warner, 12 October
- THX 1138, 1971, d. George Lucas, Warner, 7 September
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948, d. John Huston, Warner, 5 October

DVD Coming Attractions, Part 1

2010-04-18T04:32:00.004-05:00

Like Warner and Universal before them, MGM has jumped onto the DVD-R bandwagon, with over thirty titles to be available by the end of the month. They started rolling out films in December, with titles such as Carol Reed's Trapeze (which received a proper DVD release from MGM in the UK), Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love with Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh, Kyle Maclachlan, Piper Laurie and Alfre Woodard, Robert Wise's Two for the Seesaw with Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine and Sidney Lumet's The Group with Candice Bergen. Since then, Gavin Millar's Dreamchild with Ian Holm, Lumt's Garbo Talks with Anne Bancroft, Morgan J. Freeman's Hurricane Streets, Hal Ashby's The Landlord with Beau Bridges and Lee Grant, Lumet's The Offence with Sean Connery and Ken Russell's Valentino with Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolf Valentino have been added. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron [Człowiek z żelaza], the sequel to his Man of Marble [Człowiek z marmuru] which both star Jerzy Radziwiłowicz and Kystyna Janda, will be available on the 20th. Other titles available for pre-order, though without a date, include François Truffaut's La chambre verte, re-titled The Vanishing Fiancée, which like Man of Iron (which won the Palme d'Or in 1981) and Valentino (mid-range Russell), is more deserving of a proper DVD release.

After a big month in March, the Warner Archive hasn't added anything terribly noteworthy to their collection. However, browsing through Netflix's Instant Watching titles, I noticed a handful of films still unavailable on DVD in the US: Raoul Walsh's Saskatchewan, Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Joseph Losey's The Go-Between, Bigas Luna's Chambermaid on the Titanic [La femme de chambre du Titanic] and Margarethe von Trotta's The Promise [Versprechen].

Criterion in July

2010-04-16T09:53:00.003-05:00

Criterion announced their July titles yesterday. Bowing on the 20th, restored versions of two Powell/Pressburger classics, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, will make their way onto DVD and Blu-ray (and with fantastic artwork as well). A two-disc set of two early works by Yasujiro Ozu, including the films The Only Son and There Was a Father, is set for the 13th. The latest in Criterion's partnership with IFC Films is actor-turned-director Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain [La graine et le mulet], which will be out on DVD and Blu-ray on the 27th. And finally, a quartet of films from Sacha Guitry–Désiré, The Pearls of the Crown [Les perles de la couronne], Quadrille and The Story of a Cheat [Le roman d'un tricheur]–in an Eclipse box set will finish out the month on the 27th. I'll have a big DVD round-up in the next few days.

Cannes Line-Up 2010

2010-04-15T05:13:00.004-05:00

The films have been announced, and while my suspicions yesterday were premature, I suppose the absence of Béla Tarr's latest is the only real surprise (granted it was going to be hard to surprise me as I wasn't following what was expected to be showing this year). In the Competition line-up, Mike Leigh and Abbas Kiarostami are the only former Palme d'Or winners, but many other previous award recipients, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nikita Mikhalkov, Bertrand Tavernier and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, will be presenting their films. New films from Jean-Luc Godard, Manoel de Oliveira, Lodge Kerrigan, Hong Sang-soo, Radu Muntean, Cristi Puiu and one of last year's big winners Xavier Dolan will be shown in the Un Certain Regard section, and the latest from Woody Allen, Stephen Frears, Oliver Stone and Gregg Araki will also be shown out of competition. The line-ups are below.

Another Year, d. Mike Leigh, UK, w. Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton
Biutiful, d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA, w. Javier Bardem, Blanca Portillo
Burnt by the Sun 2, d. Nikita Mikhalkov, Russia
Copie conforme [Certified Copy], d. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France/Italy, w. Juliette Binoche
Des hommes et des dieux [Of Gods and Men], d. Xavier Beauvois (Le petit lieutenant), France, w. Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Roschdy Zem
Fair Game, d. Doug Liman, USA, w. Naomi Watts, Sean Penn
Hors-la-loi [Outside the Law] d. Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory), France/Algeria/Belgium, w. Jamel Debbouze, Roschy Zem, Sami Bouajila
Housemaid, d. Im Sang-soo (The President's Last Bang), South Korea
La nostra vita, d. Daniele Luchetti (My Brother Is an Only Child), Italy, w. Raoul Bova, Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio
Outrage, d. Takeshi Kitano, Japan, w. Kitano, Jun Kunimura
Poetry, d. Lee Chang-dong (Oasis), South Korea
La princesse de Montpensier, d. Bertrand Tavernier, France/Germany, w. Gaspard Ulliel, Lambert Wilson
Tournée, d. Mathieu Amalric, France, w. Amalric, Damien Odoul
Un homme qui crie [A Screaming Man], d. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Abouna), Chad
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand
You. My Joy, d. Sergei Loznitsa (Revue), Ukraine

Un Certain Regard

Les amours imaginaires [Heartbeats], d. Xavier Dolan, Canada, w. Dolan
Aurora, d. Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu), Romania, w. Puiu
Blue Valentine, d. Derek Cianfrance, USA, w. Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams
Chatroom, d. Hideo Nakata (Dark Water), UK
Chongqing Blues, d. Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle), China
O Estranho Caso de Angélica [The Strange Case of Angelica], d. Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal
Film socialisme, d. Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France, w. Patti Smith
Life Above All, d. Oliver Schmitz (Paris je t'aime)
Los labios, d. Ivan Fund, Santiago Loza, Argentina
Ha Ha Ha, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
Marţi, după Crăciun [Tuesday, After Christmas], d. Radu Muntean (Boogie), Romania, w. Dragos Bucur
Octubre, d. Daniel Vega
Pál Andrienn [Adrienn Pál], d. Ágnes Kocsis (Fresh Air), Hungary/Netherlands/France/Austria, w. Éva Gábor
R U There, d. David Verbeek (Shanghai Trance), Taiwan
Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs), d. Lodge Kerrigan, USA
Simon Werner a disparu..., d. Fabrice Gobert
Udaan, d. Vikramaditya Motwane, India
Unter dir die Stadt [The City Below], d. Christoph Hochhäusler (I Am Guilty), Germany

Out of Competition

Tamara Drewe, d. Stephen Frears, UK
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, d. Oliver Stone, USA, w. Michael Douglas, Shia LaBoeuf, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, Charlie Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Frank Langella, Vanessa Ferlito
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, d. Woody Allen, USA/Spain, w. Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins

Midnight

L'autre monde [Blackhole], d. Gilles Marchand (Who Killed Bambi?), France, w. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Melvil Poupaud
Kaboom, d. Gregg Araki, USA/France, w. James Duval, Roxane Mesquida, Kelly Lynch

Special Screenings

Abel, d. Diego Luna, Mexico
Chantrapas, d. Otar Iosseliani
Draquila - l'italia che trema, d. Sabina Guzzanti, Italy
Inside Job, d. Charles Ferguson
Nostalgia de la luz [Nostalgia for the Light], d. Patricio Guzmán, France
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, d. Sophie Fiennes (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema), Netherlands

Their Hearts Have Gone On

2010-04-15T04:59:00.002-05:00

Today, the 15th of April, marks the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. With the Titanic sank 1500 people and the hopes and dreams of many, but through such tragedy, a single man came forward some eighty five years later to bring the ship’s sweeping grandeur to the silver screen. By coincidence, I happened to have given the epic glory of James Cameron’s vision another go last week, and it was just as exciting and loathsome as I remembered. Little did anyone know as news spread of the ship being swallowed up by the ocean that such a catastrophe would become the divine inspiration for Mr. Cameron to take his critical eye to class struggle and prejudice. If I learned anything from having to listen to Cameron speak at awards shows, it’s that the man says whatever pops in his head. And most of what pops in his head is dumb. James Cameron, the awkward acceptance speech giver, is exactly the same as James Cameron, the ignorant, dense screenwriter. Because he lacks that filter between the mind and the mouth, Titanic is littered with cringe-inducing lines of dialogue (“that Anna-steez-ya chick,” “Something Picasso? He won’t amount to a thing”), lame stereotypes (remember that Jack did a lot of his artwork in Paris because French girls are very willing to take off their clothes), laughably treacherous characters (like that asshole who planted the diamond on Jack as the ship starts to sink) and one of the shallowest head-first analyses of class… ever. The terrible dialogue (not to mention the character of Bill Paxton’s fat, hairy assistant) can never really be overlooked (the same can be said for the piss-poor performances from most of the otherwise fine actors… and I won’t even get into all that’s wrong with Billy Zane), but the earnestness of Cameron’s futile attempts to say anything intelligent about class really places Titanic into prime camp territory.

However, as both Titanic and Avatar’s box office receipts confirm, Mr. Cameron is a director of size (I joked to my friend that the ship made for a humorous, if dead-ended metaphor for Cameron), and that he operates at such a phenomenal, effective scale when dealing with all things “big” makes Titanic an absolutely bewildering film. I almost felt a bit silly getting consumed by the panic of Titanic’s second half, even as Jack and Rose illogically stagger through the bitterly cold North Atlantic waters flooding in the lower levels of the ship, but that’s because Cameron has no middle ground. He may have failed to elicit convincing performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet or to effectively develop their characters or relationships beyond the surface level, but when he gets to the sinking of the ship (also known as his A-game), I’ll be damned if I didn’t start to care for a pair of bland lovers who’d been irritating me for the previous hour and a half. It’s funny how Emanuele Crialese’s Golden Door [Nuovomondo] takes all of Titanic’s weaknesses, of which there are many, and turns them into something lovely and affecting without tarnishing any of what Titanic does well. When Rose joins Jack in the lower quarters to dance with the poor folk, I immediately thought of a comparable, superior sequence in Golden Door, but I suppose the fact that the ship in Golden Door reaches its American destination makes a close side-by-side comparison with Titanic unfair. “Subtle,” as we all know, is not a word James Cameron could ever define for us, and while that might be a condemnation for others, it is just the opposite in this case. I wonder if anyone takes any gratitude in knowing that those 1500 people didn’t perish in vain… for their memory will always be captured in James Cameron’s amazingly confounding art. Cue those flutes. Cue Céline Dion.

Cannes Demain

2010-04-14T22:39:00.002-05:00

The official line-up of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival will be announced in France tomorrow afternoon, or at the crack of dawn in the States. I haven't really been keeping up on who's got films in the can right now, but according to The Guardian, the latest from both Mike Leigh (Another Year) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Biutiful) have been confirmed to play at the festival, though it wasn't specified as to which section they'll be screening in. Leigh and González Iñárritu have both won Best Director prizes for Naked and Babel respectively; Leigh also won the Palme d'Or in 1996 for Secrets & Lies... so it sounds likely that both of their films will end up in competition. The good news about the new González Iñárritu film is that he's finally dumped screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who is more than likely the one to blame for the tedious interconnected narrative devices of Amores perros, 21 Grams and Babel. Other directors with films "ready to go" or close to include Abbas Kiarostami, Terrence Malick, Stephen Frears, Jean-Luc Godard, Hong Sang-soo, Julian Schnabel, François Ozon (who really seems to be churning them out lately), Woody Allen (who has always been churning 'em out), Cristi Puiu, Oliver Stone (meh) and of course Béla Tarr (who claims The Turin Horse will be his final film). As you may have read, Tim Burton will be the jury president this year, which is scary for many reasons, so we'll just hope the rest of the jury is lined with insolent artistes. We'll see what will replace genital mutilation, POV ejaculation, hip hop dancing teens and Nazi killing as the emerging trends of this year's gala. The 63rd annual festival will be underway on 12 May with Ridley Scott's Robin Hood kicking things off.

Auf Wiedersehen, Werner Schroeter

2010-04-13T19:34:00.004-05:00

German filmmaker Werner Schroeter, one of the significant queer cinéastes from Germany in the 1970s, died yesterday, just a week after turning 65. Though relatively unknown in the United States, Schroeter began making films in the late-1960s, often collaborations with another important (though still little known in the US) queer filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim. In 1980, his film Palermo or Wolfsburg [Palermo oder Wolfsburg], currently (as of February 2010) the only film of his available on DVD in the US, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Schroeter also appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore [Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte] as the cinematographer and had a brief role in Fassbinder's television mini-series Welt am Draht [World on Wires]. Since then, Schroeter worked consistently in both Germany and France. His films include the lavish, multilingual musical Der Rosenkönig [The King of Roses], a film adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's novel Malina (scripted by Elfriede Jelinek) with Isabelle Huppert and Mathieu Carrière, the documentary Love's Debris [Abfallprodukte der Liebe / Poussières d'amour] in which Huppert and Carole Bouquet interview some of the director's favorite opera singers and Deux, also with Huppert. His last film Nuit de chien, which stars Pascal Greggory, Bruno Todeschini, Amira Casar, Jean-François Stévenin and Bulle Ogier among others, screened at both the 2008 Toronto and Venice Film Festivals.

Bientôt

2010-03-25T18:54:00.001-05:00

I shall be returning to regularly scheduled updates soon. Again, sorry for the absence.

For the invisible man who can sing in a visible voice

2010-03-18T17:49:00.005-05:00

March has been a sad month for music lovers, with Alex Chilton, lead singer of Big Star, dying of a heart attack yesterday and Mark Linkous, the mastermind behind Sparklehorse, taking his life over a week ago. Big Star was one of the great American rock bands of the 1970s, headed by Chilton and the tragic, late Chris Bell. While commercial success eluded the group in their heyday, their influence could be heard on countless American rock bands from the mid-1980s on, from R.E.M. to Primal Scream. Chilton's musical legacy was immortalized twice for subsequent generations by Paul Westerberg and his The Replacements' brilliant anthem to the singer, titled simply "Alex Chilton," and Ivo Watts-Russell's 4AD "supergroup" This Mortal Coil, who covered "Kangaroo" (with vocals by Cindytalk lead singer Gordon Sharp) and "Holocaust" (sung by Howard Devoto of The Buzzcocks) on the album It'll End in Tears. A Big Star tribute album was released in 2006, which featured covers by Wilco, The Afghan Whigs, The Posies and Teenage Fanclub. Chilton and Big Star's music started appearing in a number of Gen X films like Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming and Empire Records and more recently in both Adventureland and Thumbsucker.

Mark Linkous was the brains behind Sparklehorse, one of the great, lesser known bands to come out of the mid-90s. Sparklehorse reached its greatest success in 2001 with the album It's a Wonderful Life, which featured guest vocalists PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and Nina Persson of The Cardigans. In 2009, Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse collaborated together on a project entitled Dark Night of the Soul, which was to be accompanied with a photo booklet from David Lynch. The vocalists on the album included Iggy Pop, Persson, Julian Casablancas, Lynch, Frank Black, The Flaming Lips, James Mercer of The Shins, Suzanne Vega and the late Vic Chesnutt. Despite legal troubles with the release, Dark Night of the Soul was available streaming on NPR's website, and it rumored to have an official release sometime this year. A number of musicians have been offering requiems for Linkous, including Steven Drozd, Steve Albini and Patti Smith.

Leopards, Deserts and Trains: Criterion in June

2010-03-16T17:19:00.004-05:00

Criterion announced their June titles yesterday, with a DVD and Blu-ray of Michelangelo Antonioni's first color feature Red Desert [Il deserto rosso], starring a brunette Monica Vitti, among the releases. Red Desert, easily one of my favorite films, will hit shelves on the 22nd. Luchino Visconti's lavish historical epic The Leopard [Il gattopardo], which stars Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Pierre Clémenti among others, will hit Blu-ray on the same date. Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, one of the two "episodic" Jarmusch films I like, is bowing on DVD and Blu-ray on the 15th. Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up is set for the 8th; the DVD only release includes Kiarostami's The Traveler from 1974. Strangely the release doesn't include Nanni Moretti's short doc Il giorno della prima di Close Up, which was featured on both the UK and French editions. It is however available on Cinema 16's European Shorts collection. The other two DVD releases are Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] on the 15th and Carol Reed's 1940 thriller Night Train to Munich on the 22nd. Correction: (Thanks Blake) Everlasting Moments and Close-Up will also be Blu-ray releases (they weren't listed yesterday).

On the horizon from Criterion, I've been told two more Ozu films are coming. Also, they mentioned in the February newsletter that Andrea Arnold would soon be included in the Collection later this year, which must be in reference to Fish Tank through their partnership with IFC Films. It'd be great to see the two shorts Arnold made before her Oscar-winning Wasp (Dog and Milk) on their release.

bfd 2010

2010-03-07T17:09:00.003-06:00

Christ. The Independent Spirit Awards proved to be just as useless as the Oscars usually are. So, as tonight's going to suck, why not just pour yourself too many cocktails (or have someone do it for you) and find people that can make fun of Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman's face with you? I'll hopefully be doing the same.

...Two Months (and a few days) Later

2010-03-04T11:32:00.005-06:00

Inspired by a recent conversation with my oldest friend Dan, I’ve been positively motivated to write what I wanted to but couldn’t, for several reasons, put together for the posting of my list of The Decade List of 100. Tying ideas together successfully has always been the weakest facet of my writing, so the prospect of sifting through ten years of cinema, especially from the perspective of someone who entered those years at the age of 15, felt like an insurmountable task. It still, to some extent, seems outside the realm of possibility, but at least now I can attempt to explain or defend some of what was going through my head while arranging the list at hand.

Before I had a chance to come up with a better name for it, “The Decade List” stuck, serendipitously masking any questionable adjective one might have used to modify “Films of the ‘00s.” Neither “best” nor “favorite” felt like the correct modifier, as I tried to objectively assess the films I chose without completely abandoning some of the personal attachments I’ve developed with them over the years (or, in some cases, over much smaller of a time frame). That 43 of the films were at least partially financed by the French film industry certainly points to one of the personal biases I didn’t try to look past. That only 3 were documentaries shows another, one I’m not exactly proud of. The double (and triple and quadruple) appearances of 17 directors might suggest I didn’t put that auteur inclination aside either, but it isn’t exactly true, as omitting Clean, The Boss of It All, Time of the Wolf, Anatomy of Hell and Last Days was a lot easier than eliminating films whose directors only made a single appearance on the final list.

Though I never properly introduced the project (as I didn’t have a clear idea of where it was headed upon conception), I did establish a single rule for inclusion: the film had to make its international premiere after December 31, 1999 and before January 1, 2010. Considering the nature of the project, that rule might have sounded redundant, but it needed to be clearly stated, as it cancelled out films such as Claire Denis’ Beau travail, Nagisa Oshima’s Taboo, Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher and Laurent Cantet’s Human Resources, all of which officially premiered in ’99 but hit the U.S. within the acceptable window.

It’s hard to decide which of the two grave sins of omission (not defending the list as a whole or not defending the film I chose as my #1) is worse, but I like to think the reason I had nothing to write about Dogville was the best vindication for its placement. No other film I watched for the sake of making this list screamed out, “this is it,” the way Dogville did. The sensation isn’t something I can successfully articulate nor defend in any intellectual manner. That I happened to chose a film that was appearing with some frequency on top of others’ similar lists made the task even more difficult. Do I really have anything new to say about a film that’s been written about as extensively as Dogville, and even if I did make a check-list of all the things it does right, would that come close to defining that seemingly inexplicable feeling I got while watching it?

What I will say, however, was that no other film made me re-examine and eventually adjust my once rigidly negative feelings toward its filmmaker the way Dogville did. Whether a harsh reaction to the emotions von Trier conjured inside of me with Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves and The Idiots or the inability to determine why he was doing so, my hatred for the director vanished midway through watching Dogville for the first time, and by the time the saxophone comes in on “Young Americans,” I was singing a much different song about von Trier. While I still think his motives in Dancer in the Dark are tough to define, Dogville and its world of invisible physical boundaries revealed the man behind the curtain and provided me with a special kind of elation (the sort that comes best from misanthropy).

With regard to Michael Haneke, a filmmaker who seems to be falling out of favor with a lot of people I know (or read), I feel no qualms about having him as the most featured filmmaker on the 100. While I do generally like Time of the Wolf, I think Code Unknown, The Piano Teacher, Caché and The White Ribbon represent the upper tier of his work over the past decade. However, Dan asked me if The Piano Teacher really is better than Caché, and likely, it isn’t, especially when considering Haneke’s oeuvre as a whole and his cinematic obsessions. While I acknowledge that, in terms of Haneke’s career, Caché will likely stand out as his “masterpiece,” The Piano Teacher marked my first experience with Haneke on the big screen and still remains one of my finer theatrical experiences, even though it was still fantastic to see Caché on opening night with an even larger audience. This particular bias is probably more common with albums than films as I can’t think of any other films on the list that would fall under this distinction.

The “well, it was my first time” bias wasn’t the only that was at work when organizing the films. For the majority of the year, I spent more time bestowing praise upon Sébastien Lifshitz, the one filmmaker I knew most people weren’t familiar with, than most of the other directors represented. So on some level, I think I felt it my duty to include either Wild Side or Come Undone in my top 10 instead of judging either of the films against all the rest. A close friend of mine, who also shared my enthusiasm for Lifshitz, sent me an e-mail recently saying he’d rewatched Wild Side and been surprised to have found it to be more ornamental than he’d remembered. As I read that, I knew exactly what he meant and perhaps even thought something along those lines when watching it again in December. In looking at the ten films that follow Wild Side on the list, I recognize now that all ten are better films. Had I not spent so much time absorbing as much cinema as I could over the past decade, I would have preferred naming just the ten best films of the Aughts: ten years, ten films and (likely) ten filmmakers. With that in mind, spot number 10 becomes nearly as important as spot number 1, signifying not the tenth best film you saw so much as the one film you wanted to be sure you didn’t leave off the list. So when dealing with a list of 100, both spots 10 and 100 fall prey to that idea.

If I thought really hard about it, I could probably come up with predilections for about half, in addition to factors working against about a fourth of them. As I don’t care to do so, I’ll simply point out the ones that came to mind first. Time certainly didn’t work in the favor of In the Mood for Love, allowing its director to commit a giant fuck up with My Blueberry Nights, which wouldn’t have been as damning if it didn’t share the thematic and stylistic traits that defined the rest of his works. And while the same could be said for Michael Haneke and his Funny Games remake, he at least had the chance to redeem himself (in my eyes) with The White Ribbon. Time didn’t seem to work in the favor of Mulholland Drive in the ranking either, as it had nine years to lose some of its luster from being analyzed/decrypted to death and failing to retain the magic of seeing it for the first time in its subsequent viewings. Time did work in the favor of There Will Be Blood, however, and the fact that I only watched it twice with my opinion of it growing exponentially the more I thought about it.

A couple of people seemed surprised to see not only how high I’d ranked Sex Is Comedy but that I’d placed it above the rest of Catherine Breillat’s other films. For reasons I’m not exactly sure, several films got knocked down in the rankings for containing scenes or moments I couldn’t defend intellectually or artistically. For Fat Girl, I couldn’t justify Breillat’s need to violently murder two of her characters. For Inside, I couldn’t see the explanation of why Béatrice Dalle was terrorizing Allyson Paradis as anything but a lame cop-out. For Mysterious Skin, I kept hearing that awful line Joseph Gordon-Levitt screams in the middle of the film. For Trouble Every Day, I’m still not even sure. None of Breillat’s other films really came to life the way Sex Is Comedy did on repeat viewings. Of course, I had always regarded Sex Is Comedy as a lesser film in Breillat’s canon, so finding out that I was wrong placed it in favor of discovering that I wasn’t truly satisfied with one of Fat Girl’s consequential elements.

In reviewing the annual Best Of lists I’ve written for this blog, I’ve called some truly worthless films (like The Boys and Girls Guide to Getting Down—Christ, drugs must have been involved) the best of their given year, as well as films that ultimately weren’t anything special (like Pan’s Labyrinth and 2046). With that said, I’ll probably recognize at least one or two of these films as being shitty after some time passes, even though I spent a lot more time on this than any of annual run-downs.

I suppose the sort of defense for my ’00 list that would make the most sense (much more so than overanalyzing my own prejudices and miscalculations) would be one where I explored the commonalities between the films I ranked highest or what I looked for when ordering them (I won’t pretend to make some sort of hyperbolic umbrella statement about the decade in cinema). Malheureusement, I can only come up with some really facile descriptors like “bold” and “obstinate” to connect the films, and those will do about as much justice to the films as forcing some loose, interlocking theme would. I made the list because I thought I would enjoy doing so, and I did… some of the time. Ultimately though the whole thing was simply a way for me to hopefully introduce films and/or filmmakers to others—the exact reason I started a blog, only in project form. If I happened to succeed on that level, then the self-inflicted exhaustion and frustration was (probably) worth it.

Because I was asked... some Oscar predictions

2010-03-04T07:17:00.004-06:00

I was asked to participate in an Oscar Competition, hosted by VoucherCodes.co.uk, and while the Academy Awards have been a sore subject with me this year, I've made some predictions, all of which are mostly speculative. For past two years, I've actually managed to see every nominated film in the major categories (excluding foreign and documentary, as they weren't as easy to come by). This year, I've seen maybe half of the nominees, most of which have underwhelmed me (to say the least). As the competition doesn't require me to predict all of the nominees, I've only selected predictions in the categories where I thought I had a clear enough idea of who might be taking home the gold (and I'm purposefully staying away from that scary Best Actress category). These are not the people or films I think should win, mind you. For those in the UK, be sure to check out VoucherCodes.co.uk's deals on amazon.co.uk and lovefilm.com (like Netflix, only in the UK). So here goes...

Picture: Avatar
Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore, Avatar
Animated Feature: Up
Song: "The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart
Documentary: The Cove
Sound Editing: Avatar
Sound Mixing: Avatar
Visual Effects: Avatar

I might fill in the blanks by Sunday. We'll see.

Spoke to Soon; More from the Warner Archive

2010-03-04T03:07:00.004-06:00

The day after I mentioned a number of new films coming to the Warner Archive, The New York Post revealed even more titles becoming available on 16 March (thanks, Eric). Funny enough, all of the titles I give a shit about seem to be the ones the writer doesn't as they're all listed near the end. The ones I didn't mention yesterday include Lina Wertmüller's Night Full of Rain [La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia] with Candice Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini; István Szabó's Meeting Venus with Glenn Close and Niels Arestrup; James Ivory's Surviving Picasso with Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone and Julianne Moore; Art Napoleon's Too Much, Too Soon with Dorothy Malone and Errol Flynn; and Dino Risi's The Priest's Wife [La moglie del prete] with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Arizona Dream, Rabbit, Run, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later and Saint Joan will also be available on the 16th.

Warner Archive, TCM Vault, Online Streaming and the Usual DVD Update

2010-03-03T04:42:00.006-06:00

While the official DVD/Blu-ray release update is pretty mehhh, there are some more exciting things home viewing related happening below.

- The Disappeared, 2008, d. Johnny Kevorkian, IFC Films, 18 May
- PoliWood, 2009, d. Barry Levinson, Screen Media, 18 May
- Prodigal Sons, 2008, d. Kimberly Reed, First Run, 18 May
- Formosa Betrayed, 2009, d. Adam Kane, Screen Media, 25 May
- Blind Menace, 1960, d. Kazuo Mori, AnimEigo, 8 June
- Bass Ackwards, 2010, d. Linas Phillips, New Video, 29 June
- Burning Paradise, 1994, d. Ringo Lam, Discotek Media, 29 June
- Loose Screws, 1985, d. Rafal Zielinski, Severin, 29 June
- Lorna, the Exorcist [Les possédées du diable], 1974, d. Jesús Franco, Mondo Macabro, 29 June
- Naked Obsession [Spiando Marina], 1992, d. Sergio Martino, MYA, 29 June
- Uppercut Man [Qualcuno pagherà?], 1987, d. Sergio Martino, MYA, 29 June
- Brotherhood [Broderskab], 2009, d. Nicolo Donato, Olive Films Opus, 1 September

Blu-ray

- Absolute Power, 1997, d. Clint Eastwood, Warner, 1 June
- Heartbreak Ridge, 1986, d. Clint Eastwood, Warner, 1 June
- The Stepfather, 1987, d. Joseph Ruben, Shout! Factory, 15 June
- A Star Is Born, 1954, d. George Cukor, Warner, 22 June
- Uncle Sam, 1997, d. William Lustig, Blue Underground, 29 June

Below you'll find a list of some of the 2010 additions to the Warner Archive Collection. Sure, most of the releases have been trash, but on the upside, as of March it looks as if they've improved their cover artwork. Also, there look to be a number of exciting titles on the horizon, including Emir Kusturica's Arizona Dream (which probably deserves a non-DVD-R release), Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later and Otto Preminger's Saint Joan which marked the film debut of Jean Seberg in the role of Joan of Arc. I'll let you know when these titles have been made available for purchase. Those, along with a few others, are below the already-released titles.

- American Anthem, 1986, d. Albert Magnoli
- An American Dream, 1966, d. Robert Gist, w. Janet Leigh
- Angel Dusted, 1981, d. Dick Lowry, w. Jean Stapleton, Arthur Hill
- The Bad Seed, 1985, d. Paul Wendkos, w. Lynn Redgrave, David Carradine
- Blood & Orchids, 1986, d. Jerry Thorpe, w. Kris Kristofferson, Jane Alexander, Sean Young
- Bloodbrothers, 1978, d. Robert Mulligan, w. Richard Gere, Paul Sorvino
- La boheme, 1926, d. King Vidor
- Dying Room Only, 1973, d. Philip Leacock, w. Cloris Leachman, Ned Beatty, Dabney Coleman
- Fighter Squadron, 1948, d. Raoul Walsh
- Force of Arms, 1951, d. Michael Curtiz, w. William Holden
- Green Fire, 1954, d. Andrew Marton, w. Grace Kelly
- If Looks Could Kill, 1991, d. William Dear, w. Richard Grieco, Roger Rees, Linda Hunt, Gabrielle Anwar, Roger Daltrey
- It's a Wonderful World, 1939, d. W.S. Van Dyke, w. Claudette Colbert, James Stewart
- The Jazz Singer, 1952, d. Michael Curtiz, w. Danny Thomas, Peggy Lee
- A Killer in the Family, 1983, d. Richard T. Heffron, w. Robert Mitchum, James Spader, Eric Stoltz, Catherine Mary Stewart
- Kismet, 1944, d. William Dieterle, w. Marlene Dietrich
- Mara Maru, 1952, d. Gordon Douglas, w. Errol Flynn
- The Pagan, 1929, d. W.S. Van Dyke
- The Possessed, 1977, d. Jerry Thorpe, w. Harrison Ford, Diana Scarwid
- Rampage, 1963, d. Phil Karlson, w. Robert Mitchum, Sabu
- Special Bulletin, 1983, d. Edward Zwick
- Sphinx, 1981, d. Franklin J. Schaffner, w. Lesley-Anne Down, Frank Langella, Maurice Ronet, John Gielgud, John Rhys-Davies
- White Shadows in the South Seas, 1928, d. W.S. Van Dyke
- Wild Oranges, 1924, d. King Vidor

On the Horizon

- Arizona Dream, 1993, d. Emir Kusturica, w. Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, Faye Dunaway, Lili Taylor, Vincent Gallo, Paulina Porizkova
- The Awakening, 1980, d. Mike Newell, w. Charlton Heston, Susannah York
- Just Tell Me What You Want, 1980, d. Sidney Lumet, w. Ali MacGraw, Myrna Loy, Alan King, Peter Weller
- A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later [Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà], 1986, d. Claude Lelouch, w. Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant
- The Merry Widow, 1925, d. Erich von Stroheim
- Rabbit, Run, 1970, d. Jack Smight, w. James Caan, Carrie Snodgress
- Saint Joan, 1957, d. Otto Preminger, w. Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, John Gielgud

I haven't seen any new additions to the Universal Vault, but TCM will be releasing three films through Universal, all starring Cary Grant, in March.

- Devil and the Deep, 1932, d. Marion Gering, w. Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, Cary Grant
- The Eagle and the Hawk, 1933, d. Stuart Walker, w. Cary Grant, Carole Lombard
- The Last Outpost, 1935, d. Charles Barton, Louis J. Gasnier, w. Cary Grant

At tlavideo.com, Frameline has released (and will be releasing) a few of their documentaries on DVD-Rs, including Elio Gemini's documentary about Kenneth Anger, entitled Anger Me. The other titles cover other facets of queer history. There are also a number of shorts from Frameline available to stream at TLA. There are more films available through Frameline's website as well.

- Anger Me, 2006, d. Elio Gemini, 6 April, w. Kenneth Anger
- Citizen Nawi, 2007, d. Nissim Mossek, 6 April
- The Fall of '55, 2006, d. Seth Randal
- Hope Along the Wind: The Life of Harry Hay, 2002, d. Eric Slade
- Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, 2005, d. Victor Silverman, Susan Stryker

And finally, head over to The Auteurs for a great-looking selection of short films available to stream for free as part of the Hors Pistes festival, presented by the Centre Pompidou.

César Awards 2010

2010-02-27T19:12:00.004-06:00

Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (predictably) swept the Césars today, taking home nine awards including Meilleur film (Best Film), Réalisateur (Director) and Scénario original (Original Screenplay). Its heartthrob star Tahar Rahim, already quite the celebrity in France despite appearing in just one film, won two awards for Meilleur acteur (Best Actor) and Meilleur espoir masculin (Best Male Newcomer). Emmanuelle Devos, who starred in Audiard's last two films (and is easily one of the finest actresses in the business), won the Supporting Actress prize for Xavier Giannoli's À l'origine. Radu Mihăileanu's Le concert was the only other film to win in more than one category (for Music and Sound Design). Clint Eastwood was (again predictably) the winner in the Film étranger (Foreign Film) category for Gran Torino. The big winners are below; the full list of winners is here (in French); the nominees can be found here.

Meilleur film [Best Film]: Un prophète [A Prophet], d. Jacques Audiard
Meilleur réalisateur [Best Director]: Jacques Audiard, Un prophète
Meilleur premier film [Best First Film]: Les beaux gosses [The French Kissers], d. Riad Sattouf
Meilleur film étranger [Best Foreign Film]: Gran Torino, d. Clint Eastwood, USA
Meilleur film documentaire [Best Documentary]: L'enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot [Henri-George Clouzot's Inferno], d. Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
Meilleur acteur [Best Actor]: Tahar Rahim, Un prophète
Meilleure actrice [Best Actress]: Isabelle Adjani, La journée de la jupe [Skirt Day]
Meilleur acteur dans un second rôle [Supporting Actor]: Niels Arestrup, Un prophète
Meilleure actrice dans un second rôle [Supporting Actress]: Emmanuelle Devos, À l'origine [In the Beginning]
Meilleur espoir masculin [Best Male Newcomer]: Tahar Rahim, Un prophète
Meilleur espoir féminin [Best Female Newcomer]: Mélanie Thierry, Le dernier pour la route [One for the Road]
Meilleur scénario original [Original Screenplay]: Un prophète - Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Nicolas Peufaillit
Meilleur scénario adaptation [Adapted Screenplay]: Mademoiselle Chambon - Stéphane Brizé, Florence Vignon
Meilleure photographie [Best Cinematography]: Stéphane Fontaine, Un prophète

DVD Release Update, 25 February

2010-02-25T19:00:00.004-06:00

Included in this DVD update are Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard from Strand, a bunch of Robin Hood films from Sony, Tony Manero from Kino Lorber, Alain Cavalier's Le combat dans l'île from Zeitgeist and Jean Becker's One Deadly Summer [L'été meurtrier] with Isabelle Adjani from a studio I've never heard of called Bayview Films.

- Legend of Witches, 1969, d. Malcolm Leigh, VCI, 27 April
- Malice in Wonderland, 2009, d. Simon Fellows, Magnolia, 27 April, w. Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Nathaniel Parker
- 9 to 5: Days in Porn, 2008, d. Jens Hoffman, Strand Releasing, 4 May, w. Sasha Grey
- The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, 1946, d. Henry Levin, George Sherman, Sony, 11 May
- Legend of the Tsunami Warrior [aka Queens of Langkasuka], 2008, d. Nonzee Nimibutr, Magnet/Magnolia, also on Blu-ray, 11 May
- One Deadly Summer [L'été meurtrier], 1983, d. Jean Becker, Bayview Films, 11 May
- The Prince of Thieves, 1948, d. Howard Bretherton, Sony, 11 May
- Rogues of Sherwood Forest, 1950, d. Gordon Douglas, Sony, 11 May
- Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960, d. Terence Fisher, Sony, 11 May
- Tidal Wave, 2009, d. Yun Je-gyun, Magnet/Magnolia, also on Blu-ray, 11 May
- Iscariot, 2008, d. Miko Lazic, Brink DVD, 18 May, w. Gustaf Skarsgård, Michael Nyqvist
- North Face [Nordwand], 2008, d. Philipp Stölzl, Music Box Films, 18 May, w. Benno Fürmann
- Southern Gothic, 2007, d. Mark Young, IFC Films, 18 May
- Tony Manero, 2008, d. Pablo Larraín, Kino Lorber, 18 May
- Toe to Toe, 2009, d. Emily Abt, Strand Releasing, 8 June
- Antarctica, 2008, d. Yair Hochner, Here! Films, 15 June
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume 7, 2009, d. Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis, Warner, 15 June
- Sex Positive, 2008, d. Daryl Wein, Here! Films, 15 June
- Bluebeard [Barbe bleue], 2009, d. Catherine Breillat, Strand Releasing, 22 June
- Le combat dans l'île, 1962, d. Alain Cavalier, Zeitgeist, 22 June, w. Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant
- Raging Sun, Raging Sky [Rabioso sol, rabioso cielo], 2009, d. Julián Hernández, TLA Releasing, 22 June
- Say Hello to Yesterday, 1971, d. Alvin Rakoff, Scorpion Releasing, 28 June, w. Jean Simmons, Leonard Whiting

Also on the Blu-ray front are individual releases of some of the Mel Brooks titles included in the box set released last year: High Anxiety, History of the World: Part 1 and Robin Hood: Men in Tights on 11 May. Individual releases of Batman Returns, Batman Forever and (cough) Batman & Robin will also be available from Warner on 4 May.

- Apollo 13, 1995, d. Ron Howard, Universal, 13 April
- Elizabeth, 1998, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal, 27 April
- Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007, d. Shekhar Kapur, Universal, 27 April
- Flashbacks of a Fool, 2008, d. Baillie Walsh, Anchor Bay, 25 May
- Spartacus, 1960, d. Stanley Kubrick, Universal, 25 May

White Material, Making Plans for Lena and Rompecabezas at IFC

2010-02-23T23:20:00.004-06:00

Though I didn't find any official announcements of such, it looks as if Claire Denis' White Material and Christophe Honoré's Making Plans for Lena [Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser] have landed at IFC Films. BAMcinématek is presenting a three-day spotlight on IFC Films beginning 19 March, and both films are on the line-up along with Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains, Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Johnnie To's Vengeance and Tales from the Golden Age. For those in NYC, both Honoré and star Chiara Mastroianni will be present for a Q&A following the 20 March screening of Making Plans for Lena; this will be the fourth Honoré film that IFC has released following Dans Paris, Les chansons d'amour and La belle personne. More information here. In addition to the films above, IFC did officially announce their acquisition of Puzzle [Rompecabezas], the directorial debut of Natalie Smirnoff who previously worked as an assistant director on Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga and The Holy Girl and casting director on The Headless Woman. Starring the amazing María Onetto, Puzzle was the sole Latin American film in competition at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

Well, Kathryn Bigelow Is Hotter Than James Cameron...

2010-02-21T15:26:00.003-06:00

While The Hurt Locker isn't exactly my favorite film of last year, it's the perfect "I'm okay with _____ winning so long as ______ and _______ doesn't." I think that's pretty much how most people are with the Oscar nominees this year. Kathryn Bigelow's war drama took home six BAFTAs today (for those not acronym savvy, it's the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards), setting it as the likely frontrunner for the Best Picture race at the Oscars. Andrea Arnold's wonderful Fish Tank won the prize for Outstanding British Film. The major awards are below; the nominees are here; and the full list of awards are here.

Film: The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow
British Film: Fish Tank, d. Andrea Arnold
Film Not in the English Language: Un prophète [A Prophet], d. Jacques Audiard, France
Animated Film: Up, d. Pete Docter, Bob Peterson
Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Leading Actor: Colin Firth, A Single Man
Leading Actress: Carey Mulligan, An Education
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer: Duncan Jones, director, Moon

CriterionForum's Poll of the Best Films of the Aughts

2010-02-21T09:49:00.000-06:00

Last July, I posted the results of CriterionForum's user poll of the best films of the 1990s, which placed Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man at the top of the rankings. Last month, they caught up with the 00's, and predictably, it went neck and neck between Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (like so many others). We'll see how things line up in five or so years. Michael Haneke had the most showings on the list, with four of his films representing; he also has claim to the only official 2009 film to make the list as well. Speaking of '00 lists, I had promised a defense/explanation/overview of my own Decade List a while back. I've begun and abandoned it at least three times, and while I have two people barking up my tree in regard to this (you know who you are, and I do thank you), I thought I'd see if that was still of any interest. I would like to complete it, and I'm probably better suited to do so after spending nearly two months away from it. Let me know. The results of the CriterionForum poll are below.

01. In the Mood for Love, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/France
02. Mulholland Drive, d. David Lynch, France/USA
03. Yi yi, d. Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan
04. The Royal Tenenbaums, d. Wes Anderson, USA
05. Punch-Drunk Love, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
06. Werckmeister Harmonies [Werckmeister harmóniák], d. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, Hungary/Italy/Germany/France
07. The New World, d. Terrence Malick, USA
08. There Will Be Blood, d. Paul Thomas Anderson, USA
09. Zodiac, d. David Fincher, USA
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, d. Michel Gondry, USA

11. Spirited Away, d. Hayao Miyazaki, Japan
12. Goodbye, Dragon Inn, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan
13. Caché, d. Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany/Italy
14. Dogville, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland/UK/France/Germany/Netherlands
15. INLAND EMPIRE, d. David Lynch, USA/Poland/France
16. Talk to Her [Hable con ella], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
17. No Country for Old Men, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA
18. Elephant, d. Gus Van Sant, USA
19. Memories of Murder, d. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea
20. The Intruder [L'intrus], d. Claire Denis, France

21. Platform, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong/Japan/France
22. Children of Men, d. Alfonso Cuarón, UK/USA/Spain
23. The Son [Le fils], d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France
24. Before Sunset, d. Richard Linklater, USA
25. Y tu mamá también, d. Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico
26. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, d. Andrew Dominik, USA/Canada
27. Memento, d. Christopher Nolan, USA
28. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile], d. Cristian Mungiu, Romania
29. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, d. Steven Spielberg, USA
30. Grizzly Man, d. Werner Herzog, USA
30. Still Walking, d. Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan

32. 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums], d. Claire Denis, France/Germany
33. A Christmas Tale [Un conte de Noël], d. Arnaud Desplechin, France
34. Syndromes and a Century, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Austria
35. Tropical Malady, d. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy
36. The World, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Japan/France
37. A History of Violence, d. David Cronenberg, USA/Germany
37. The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy
39. Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], d. Olivier Assayas, France
40. The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], d. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain

41. What Time Is It There?, d. Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France
42. Russian Ark, d. Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/Germany
43. Nobody Knows, d. Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan
44. You the Living [Du levande], d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark/Norway/Japan
45. La ciénaga, d. Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Spain
46. Millennium Mambo, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France
46. The Piano Teacher [La pianiste], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/France
48. Friday Night [Vendredi soir], d. Claire Denis, France
48. The Gleaners & I [Les glaneurs et la glaneuse], d. Agnès Varda, France
50. Lost in Translation, d. Sofia Coppola, USA/Japan
50. Three Times, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France

52. 2046, d. Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/China/France/Germany
53. Let the Right One In [Låt den rätte komma in], d. Tomas Alfredson, Sweden
54. Miami Vice, d. Michael Mann, USA/Germany
55. The Return, d. Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia
56. The Squid and the Whale, d. Noah Baumbach, USA
57. Lilya 4-ever [Lilja 4-ever], d. Lukas Moodysson, Sweden/Denmark
58. 25th Hour, d. Spike Lee, USA
59. Bad Education [La mala educación], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
60. Amélie [Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain], d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France
60. Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea

62. Adaptation., d. Spike Jonze, USA
63. Code Unknown [Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages], d. Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Romania
64. The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu [Moartea domnului Lăzărescu], d. Cristi Puiu, Romania
65. L'enfant, d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France
66. The Man Who Wasn't There, d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, USA/UK
67. In the City of Sylvia [En la ciudad de Sylvia], d. José Luis Guerín, Spain/France
68. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, d. Wes Anderson, USA
69. Antichrist, d. Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland
69. Birth, d. Jonathan Glazer, USA/Germany

71. WALL•E, d. Andrew Stanton, USA
72. The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow, USA
73. Still Life, d. Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong
73. Who's Camus Anyway?, d. Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Japan
75. Margot at the Wedding, d. Noah Baumbach, USA
76. Woman Is the Future of Man, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea/France
77. Synecdoche, New York, d. Charlie Kaufman, USA
78. demonlover, d. Olivier Assayas, France
79. Kill Bill (Volumes 1 and 2), d. Quentin Tarantino
79. The Man Without a Past [Mies vailla menneisyyttä], d. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/Germany/France

81. Eureka, d. Shinji Aoyama, Japan/France
82. I'm Not There, d. Todd Haynes, USA/Germany
83. Linda Linda Linda, d. Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan
84. Paranoid Park, d. Gus Van Sant, France/USA
85. George Washington, d. David Gordon Green, USA
86. Morvern Callar, d. Lynne Ramsay, UK
87. Ghost World, d. Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany
88. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada [Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada], d. Tommy Lee Jones, USA/France
88. Woman on the Beach, d. Hong Sang-soo, South Korea
90. All the Real Girls, d. David Gordon Green, USA

91. Mysterious Skin, d. Gregg Araki, USA/Netherlands
91. Wendy and Lucy, d. Kelly Reichardt, USA
93. Tokyo Sonata, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan/Netherlands/Hong Kong
94. Pan's Labyrinth [El laberinto del Fauno], d. Guillermo del Toro, Mexico/Spain/USA
95. Brand Upon the Brain!, d. Guy Maddin, Canada/USA
95. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [Le scaphandre et le papillon], d. Julian Schnabel, France/USA
95. Songs from the Second Floor [Sånger från andra våningen], d. Roy Andersson, Sweden/Norway/Denmark
98. Café Lumière, d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan/Taiwan
98. Innocence, d. Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Belgium/France/UK
98. Pulse, d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan

Surpringly (or maybe it isn't), only five of the 100 aren't yet on DVD in the US. Though naturally, The White Ribbon and Still Walking are on their way; and Lilya 4-ever, while not for purchase, is available to rent through Netflix, leaving Eureka and In the City of Sylvia as the remaining two.

The 3rd Annual Saint Louis Qfest

2010-02-21T06:46:00.006-06:00

One of the things I have been working on these past two months in assisting in putting together the local gay and lesbian film festival, otherwise known as Qfest which is now in its third year. Qfest picked up where the Saint Louis International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival left off when it ended in 1999. This year's program will feature eleven features (8 features, 3 docs) and four shorts, one of which, Heartland Transplant, was directed by my friend Cody Stokes and played at this year's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The festival runs from 28-31 March at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre.

While I haven't seen all of the films screening this year, I can safely recommend three of the ones I have watched. Leo's Room [El cuarto de Leo], the feature debut from Enrique Buchichio, is a compelling, often quite beautiful portrait of two former primary school classmates, who run into one another in their mid-twenties. Leo (Martín Rodríguez), dumped by his "beard," cruises online chat rooms for men; Caro (Cecilia Cósero) spends most of her day in bed, downing anti-depressants. While it doesn't break a whole lot of new ground, Leo's Room does have a number of rich, expressive moments that set it apart from your average coming-out/coming-of-age tale. Leo's Room is part of the 2010 Global Lens Collection.

Haim Tabakman's exceptional Eyes Wide Open, which premiered at Cannes last year in the Un Certain Regard section, follows a taboo love/lust affair between two Orthodox Jews (Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Danker) in Jerusalem. Ella Lemhagen's Patrik, Age 1.5 [Patrik 1,5] takes a farcical premise (a gay couple looking to adopt a baby get stuck with a fifteen-year-old homophobe due to a clerical error) and gives it dramatic weight, aided by two outstanding performances from Gustaf Skarsgård (Stellan's son, Eric from True Blood's brother) and Torkel Petersson (Old Men in New Cars) as the daddies-to-be. Tickets for all the films are now available; check the Cinema Saint Louis website for more information. Hopefully, if you're in the area, I'll see you there. I'll also be posting longer reviews of the three films mentioned above (and maybe a few of the others) closer to the festival date.

Things That Happen When You're Away

2010-02-20T19:31:00.004-06:00

For the past two months or so, I've taken myself off the radar, cinema-wise, focusing on... well, nothing in particular. This week I've been trying to catch up on all the film/media news I've been missing/ignoring, and Christ, a lot has happened. Here are some of the highlights. Thanks to Jordany, Jason H, Blake and all the sources I culled the material from.

1. New Yorker Films comes back to life after closing its doors a year ago. Does that mean Céline and Julie will hit DVD this year?

2. Michael Haneke scraps the "old age" project he was set to shoot with Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

3. Though rumors had been circulating for a while, I guess the untimely death of you-know-who has shifted Amy Heckerling's focus from a Clueless sequel onto a vampire film (hmm), which will reteam her with Alicia Silverstone.

4. Carlos Reygadas announced his next film, something of an auto-biopic, entitled Post Tenebras Lux. I also overlooked the omnibus film he took part in, Revolución, which commemorated the centennial of the Mexican Revolution. Revolución screened at Berlin last week; the other directors who took part in the film are Mariana Chenillo (Cinco días sin Nora), Fernando Eimbcke (Lake Tahoe), Amat Escalante (Los bastardos), Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo García (Mother and Child), Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo (Voy a explotar), Rodrigo Plá (La zona) and Patricia Riggen (La misma luna).

5. Penélope Cruz was tipped as starring in Lars von Trier's upcoming Melancholia, but the rumor was later denied. Too bad she's opting for the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

6. Speaking of Lars von Trier and rumors, there was a lot of hoopla over von Trier making a Five Obsctructions-esque dare to Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro to remake Taxi Driver. But that apparently wasn't exactly true either.

7. Mariah Carey wore this outfit.

8. Beautiful, weird mystery and intrigue surround the release of these video teasers, by apparently a well-known pop star. "Christina Aguilera? Kylie Minogue? Little Boots? Röyskopp?" I was asked. "Goldfrapp? Sally Shapiro?" I replied. More speculation here.

9. Three truly exceptional albums hit record stores (or, really, iTunes and the like). And one I'm still confounded about (listen to it here).

10. Lucrecia Martel saw all three of her films on Cinema Tropical's list of the 10 best Latin American films of the decade. I can't say I'm surprised.

In DVD news, Tony Palmer and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels will make its overdue debut on DVD via Palmer through MVD. The release date? April 20, naturally. I was browsing Breaking Glass Pictures' Facebook page and was more than pleased to see that they've picked up the DVD rights to Gabriel Fleming's The Lost Coast, a haunting, outstanding film about four friends over Halloween night in San Francisco. The Lost Coast was previously available as a DVD-R on Amazon; it's still available to watch on Hulu (with commercial breaks) as well as streaming on Netflix (sans commercials). Breaking Glass will release it on 4 May, and it comes highly recommended.

I should also be attending the 7th annual True False Film Festival (which also slipped my mind). It begins on Thursday, and as I live two hours away I figure I may as well. Let me know if I should pay specific attention to anything screening there, as I haven't given the line-up a close examination yet. Another great documentary festival, Big Sky, announced their awards the other day, which you can find here. My good friend Stewart Copeland's new film Let Your Feet Do the Talkin' made its world premiere at Big Sky as well.

Awards at Berlin, 2010

2010-02-20T17:07:00.005-06:00

The awards for the 60th Berlin International Film Festival were delivered this afternoon (Sunday in Germany), with the most-talked about award going to Roman Polanski, who claimed a Silver Bear award for Best Director for The Ghost Writer. Like Polanski's Academy Award win, this seems incredibly suspect, something of a lifetime achievement meets "Sorry for all your legal troubles" accolade. I'll still end up watching it, though my faith in his abilities isn't strong these days (I am, however, one of the few who likes Death and the Maiden; however, both Jim Beluschi and Kim Cattrall make it hard to get too amped about this one). The Golden Bear went to Turkish director and playwright Semih Kaplanoğlu's Bal [Honey], the third part of a trilogy entitled Yusuf Üçlemesi, or Yusef's Trilogy, which began with Süt [Milk] and Yumurta [Egg]. Claudia Llosa's La teta asustada [The Milk of Sorrow], now up for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, was last year's top winner. The awards are listed below, including the main jury prizes, as well as those of the Ecumenical Jury, FIPRESCI and the Teddy Jury (given to queer films):

Golden Bear: Bal [Honey], d. Semih Kaplanoğlu, Turkey/Germany
Silver Bear, Jury Grand Prix: Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier [If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle], d. Florin Şerban, Romania
Silver Bear, Best Director: Roman Pokanski, The Ghost Writer
Silver Bear, Best Actress: Shinobu Terajima, Caterpillar
Silver Bear, Best Actor: (tie) Grigori Dobrygin, Sergei Puskepalis, How I Ended This Summer
Silver Bear, Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Pavel Kostomarov, cinematographer, How I Ended This Summer
Silver Bear, Screenplay: Wang Quan'an, Na Jin, Apart Together
Alfred Bauer Prize (given to a work of particular innovation): Eu când vreau să fluier, fluier [If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle], d. Florin Şerban
Best First Feature: Sebbe, d. Babak Najafi, Sweden

FIPRESCI Prizes

- Competition: En familie [A Family], d. Pernille Fischer Christensen, Denmark
- Panorama: Parade, d. Isao Yukisada, Japan
- Forum: El vuelco del cangrejo [Crab Trap], d. Oscar Ruiz Navia, Colombia/France

Prizes of the Ecumenical Jury

- Competition: Bal [Honey], d. Semih Kaplanoğlu
- Panorama: Kawasakiho růže [Kawasaki's Rose], d. Jan Hřebejk, Czech Republic
- Forum: Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza), d. Nicolas Wadimoff, Switzerland/Quatar

Teddy Awards

- Best Feature Film: The Kids Are All Right, d. Lisa Cholodenko, USA
- Best Documentary: La bocca del lupo [The Mouth of the Wolf], d. Pietro Marcello, Italy
- Best Short Film: The Feast of Stephen, d. James Franco, USA
- Jury Award: Open, d. Jake Yuzna, USA

The 2010 Rendez-vous with French Cinema

2010-02-18T20:55:00.004-06:00

The 15th annual Rendez-vous with French Cinema, presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and UniFrance, was announced recently, though the line-up isn't much to get excited over. Rendez-vous with French Cinema usually highlights the previous year's Gallic offerings that hadn't already premiered at the New York Film Festival. Last year's series screened the new films from Claire Denis, Agnès Godard, Claude Chabrol, Costa-Gavras, André Téchiné and Benoît Jacquot. While there are some big(-ish) names represented this year like François Ozon, Michel Gondry, Christophe Honoré and Claude Miller, the line-up as a whole doesn't read as "thrilling" by any stretch (keep in mind I haven't actually seen any of the films yet). On the bright side, Alain Guiraudie's Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape] will make its US premiere at the festival (and, really, I am quite anxious to see the new Ozon and a couple of the others).

Jules Dassin's The Law [La loi], a French/Italian co-production from 1959 with Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri and Yves Montand, is the only feature more than a year old that screens this year. Recently remastered in a new 35mm print, The Law will make the rounds theatrically and on DVD later this year from Oscilloscope Pictures. Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of the Cannes Film Festival, will also bring a collection of newly restored shorts from the Lumière brothers. The selection of short films will include a film called The Girls, the directorial debut of actress Anna Mouglalis. Of the 2009 features, four currently have US distribution (with Lorber Films announcing their acquisition of L'armée du crime earlier today). The complete line-up is below, but click here for short synopses, screening dates and online ticketing.

- À l'origine [In the Beginning], d. Xavier Giannoli, w. François Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos, Gérard Depardieu
- L'affaire Farewell [Farewell], d. Christian Carion, w. Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Alexandra Maria Lara, Fred Ward, Willem Dafoe, Diane Kruger, Benno Fürmann
- L'armée du crime [The Army of Crime], d. Robert Guédiguian, Lorber Films, w. Simon Abkarian, Virginie Ledoyen, Robinson Stévenin, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Yann Trégouët, Adrien Jolivet
- Les beaux gosses [The French Kissers], d. Riad Sattouf, w. Noémie Lvovsky, Valeria Golino, Irène Jacob, Emmanuelle Devos, Marjane Satrapi, Christophe Vandevelde
- Le bel âge [Restless / L'insurgée], d. Laurent Perreau, w. Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Eric Caravaca
- L'épine dans le cœur [The Thorn in the Heart], d. Michel Gondry, Oscilloscope Pictures
- La famille Wolberg [The Wolberg Family], d. Axelle Ropert, w. Serge Bozon
- Le hérisson [The Hedgehog], d. Mona Achache, w. Josiane Balasko
- Huit fois debout [8 Times Up], d. Xabi Molia, w. Julie Gayet, Denis Podalydès, Frédéric Bocquet
- Je suis heureux que ma mère soit vivante [I'm Glad That My Mother Is Alive], d. Claude Miller, Nathan Miller
- La loi [The Law], d. Jules Dassin, Oscilloscope Pictures, w. Gina Lollobrigida, Yves Montand, Marcello Mastroianni, Melina Mercouri, Pierre Brasseur
- Mademoiselle Chambon, d. Stéphane Brizé, w. Vincent Lindon, Sandrine Kiberlain
- Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser [Making Plans for Lena], d. Christophe Honoré, w. Chiarra Mastroianni, Marina Foïs, Jean-Marc Barr, Louis Garrel, Julien Honoré
- OSS 117: Rio de répond plus [OSS 117: Lost in Rio], d. Michel Hazanavicius, w. Jean Dujardin, Louise Monot, Rüdiger Vogler
- Rapt, d. Lucas Belvaux, w. Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, Alex Descas
- Le refuge [The Refuge], d. François Ozon, Strand Releasing, w. Isabelle Carré, Melvil Poupaud
- Les regrets, d. Cédric Kahn, w. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Yvan Attal
- Le roi de l'évasion [The King of Escape], d. Alain Guiraudie, w. Ludovic Berthillot, Hafsia Herzi
- Welcome, d. Philippe Lioret, Film Movement, w. Vincent Lindon

Berlinale in Posters, 2010, Part 2

2010-02-17T17:49:00.019-06:00

And now for the world premieres (or close enough) from the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. It is absolutely within the realm of possibility that one or two of these aren't even showing in Berlin this year and bowed at Sundance or will premiere at SXSW. All the posters/films started running together after a while. While I would have preferred to stick to official posters, some of these are ugly market one-sheets, some look to be the covers of press booklets and others might just be wallpapers for your desktop. The standards weren't high. Unfortunately, I came out empty-handed with the new films from Angela Schanelec, Anahí Berneri and Rosa von Praunheim. But here are the rest; I hope you enjoy.