October 2006
"Don't worry, honey, it's all fake."
By Alison Willmore on 10/31/2006
On the parent network tonight, it's a Janus Films Halloween: "Häxan," "M" and "Knife in the Water." More Halloween goodness: At Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Dennis Cozzalio rounds up his "not-at-all-scientifically compiled line-up of 13 Underrated, Ignored or Forgotten Horror Movies, in alphabetical order." The folks at Not Coming to a Theater Near You just closed out the third year of their awe-inspiringly ambitious 31 Days of Horror feature with "Neverending Nightmares: A Retrospective of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street." Empire magazine presents their 25 Biggest Movie Scares. Entertainment Weekly has photos... MORE »
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"It's not like I'm hanging out in a cave": Binoche, Burton and other interviews.
By Alison Willmore on 10/31/2006
Juliette Binoche talks to Esther Addley in the Guardian:She has just finished a film called Orsay, with the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, which was fully improvised. "Before a shot you don't know where the camera is going to shoot and you don't know where you are supposed to be in the room. There's no mark, and you don't have the dialogue written." That kind of challenge is "now such a need for me as an actress. It becomes so much more [about] making movies out of trust and not out of fear. Because you have to trust that it's... MORE »
The return of Lynch, Soderbergh and Li.
By Alison Willmore on 10/31/2006
Was it really only a month ago that we came crawling out of a rainy Sunday 9am screening of "Inland Empire" and stood, blinking, outside of Lincoln Center with other frazzled writers, trying to sort out whatever the fuck it was we'd just seen? And now David Lynch's DV opus returns to New York, where, according to Anthony Kaufman, it will premiere at the (hey!) IFC Center on December 6, and presumably make its way around the country from there. According to the Guardian, Steven Soderbergh, who announced his plan to make a Che Guevara biopic ages ago, will... MORE »
Odds: Monday - The inescapable Borat, Bollywood, Bowie.
By Alison Willmore on 10/30/2006
In the biz: Borys Kit at the Hollywood Reporter writes that "Universal Pictures has won the intense bidding war for 'Bruno,' Sacha Baron Cohen's follow-up movie to 'Borat.'" Universal's shelling out a lot of cash on the basis of a film that's by no means a safe bet — Baron Cohen's Bruno character is also a lot less endearing than Borat, but ah, well. We wish him only the best. Also at the Hollywood Reporter, Gregg Goldstein notes that ThinkFilm has picked up doc "The Hip Hop Project," which premiered at Tribeca earlier this year. Via Coming Soon, "the... MORE »
Horrific.
By Alison Willmore on 10/30/2006
Every year at this time, film journalists thoughts turn to talk of the state of the horror film. We've run out of things to say on the subject. Last weekend, "Saw III" opened to $34.3 million at the box office — we know nothing about the film, but prefer to think of it as a series of sketches in which people jump into industrial-sized blenders, over and over again, for 80 minutes. We're just weary of what Rebecca Winters Keegan proclaimed "The Splat Pack" in Time last week, though it's also possible they're getting tired of themselves. On the... MORE »
IFC News: Farmiga, Sagdiyev, Romano.
By Alison Willmore on 10/30/2006
This week on IFC News: We're pleased and privileged to have Michael Atkinson joining the site as our DVD columnist. This week he takes on Debra Granik's "Down to the Bone," the film that made Vera Farmiga...well, "famous" is still a little generous. He also covers Francesco Rosi's "Hands Over the City." Matt Singer interviews Borat Sagdiyev (video! fancy!). Dan Persons writes about "95 Miles to Go" and the rise of "pack-yer-camcorder" celeb-centric documentary making:I saw distributors, motivated by star names and low, low budgets, snapping up 90-minute draughts of real-life esoterica better fit for the bonus features of a... MORE »
The week's critic wrangle: "Babel," "DoaP," Herzog.
By Alison Willmore on 10/27/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "Babel": Swelling with importance or self-importance, Alejandro González Iñárritu's "Babel" arrives in theaters and divides the critics. Reoccurring thoughts: "Babel" is like "Crash," but better. The Japanese storyline is the most compelling. The connection of the Japanese storyline to the other two is a little thin. When you try to lay out the film's larger meaning, it's either elusive or a little silly. One of the fondest of the film is Slate's Dana Stevens, who writes that "Babel has great expectations for itself: It wants to be a movie about big ideas and big emotions at the same... MORE »
"Babel."
By Alison Willmore on 10/26/2006
You can't fault "Babel" for its ambition — the far-reaching film ties together storylines in Morocco, Mexico and Japan to reassure us that we are all united in our human misery. Here's what you can fault it for: grievous self-seriousness and self-importance, and the squandering of some of the year's finer performances. We're tempted to lay the blame at the feet of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who's collaborated with director Alejandro González Iñárritu on three films now, and whose fondness for interlocking storylines may demand an intervention. In "Amores Perros," the first and best of the three, the trinity of... MORE »
"Cocaine Cowboys."
By Alison Willmore on 10/26/2006
Arriving in theaters to rescue those lolling in the depths of a well-meaning documentary funk is Billy Corben's "Cocaine Cowboys," which tells a sordid and shamefully entertaining history of the heights of the Miami cocaine wars. Sure, the lucrative business of trafficking Columbian coke through South Florida in the 80s led to plenty of bloodshed, but the people interviewed in the film tend to look back on the era with a combination of ghoulish survivor's appreciation and disbelieving nostalgia. Half have been in and out (or just in) jail since then; the other half ruefully acknowledge that the money... MORE »
Some fluff and corporate whoring.
By Alison Willmore on 10/24/2006
The 50 Years of Janus Films box set comes out today — we feel dirty and corporate writing this, but it may actually come in handy to someone: The IFC store has 50 or so to sell, priced at $600, which is as far as we can tell the lowest price on the web. So if you're looking for that perfect something to impressively and "accidentally" strew across your coffee table when guests are over and to rest your microwaveable burrito on while watching "CSI: Miami" reruns the rest of the time, that would be the place to get... MORE »
Gothams, Pusan and snuff films.
By Alison Willmore on 10/24/2006
This, with a few additions, would have been our "Odds" post last night if we hadn't rushed off to see "Babel," which in retrospect we probably could have lived without. Gotham Award nominees! The Best Picture list include "Half Nelson" and "Old Joy," as well as, laughably, "The Departed," "Marie Antoinette" and "Little Children." What does the "I" in IFP stand for again? If this is the trend, then it's going to be another year in which the Indie Spirit Awards and the Oscars are near-identical. Via CRI, "[s]peaking at the Rome Film Festival, Hollywood star Nicole Kidman said... MORE »
A problem like "Marie."
By Alison Willmore on 10/23/2006
In the Newark Star-Ledger, Charles Taylor wonders what it is about Sofia Coppola that so torments some critics. The argument being made against Coppola and "Marie Antoinette" -- that the film is Coppola's apologia for rich, empty-headed luxury; that it has no historical or political sense; that it has, God help us, no ideas -- is elitism masquerading as populism. "Marie Antoinette," which scores the doomed queen's story to post-punk bands like Gang of Four and New Order, removes the story from the realm of stultified costume epics, all those stiff, worthy pictures that parents and teachers -- and,... MORE »
AMPAS goes foreign.
By Alison Willmore on 10/23/2006
The most intriguing bit about the long list for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar lurks at the bottom:In addition to the above, Finland submitted Aki Kaurismaki’s “Lights in the Dusk,†which the director subsequently indicated he wanted to withdraw from the competition. Foreign Language committee chair Mark Johnson has initiated a dialogue with Kaurismaki in an effort to persuade him to reverse that decision.Not that Kaurismaki could possibly win this endlessly frustrating award, but do we wonder what led to that decision. Nothing surprising on this list that hasn't already been announced. Both the Chinese and Hong Kong entrees... MORE »
IFC News: Goldthwait, Maddin and John Cena.
By Alison Willmore on 10/23/2006
This week on IFC News: Aaron Hillis interviews a rather depressed-sounding Bobcat Goldthwait:Years down the road, what would you like to be known best for? I would love someday if I was lucky enough to keep making movies and people say, "He was in 'Police Academy?' What were those movies?" I know that if I drop dead, my obituary photo is going to be me in a police uniform. But I'd be really happy if I was also known as someone who made movies. I don't really want to act, and I think fortunately, Hollywood has spoken and nobody... MORE »
The week's critic wrangle: "Marie," "Running," "Requiem" and "51 Birch Street."
By Alison Willmore on 10/20/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "Marie Antoinette": It seems silly to label this film divisive — we liked it quite a bit, but we imagined responses to it would fall somewhere on a sliding scale of "Indifferent <-------> Enchanted." Then again, Sofia Coppola seems to inspire all the derision a girl auteur could ask for. On the yea side, we have: A recovering Roger Ebert, who writes "Every criticism I have read of this film would alter is fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film." A.O. Scott at the New York Times, who calls... MORE »
"Sleeping Dogs Lie."
By Alison Willmore on 10/19/2006
[Reposted in slightly altered form from here.] Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait's second directorial effort "Sleeping Dogs Lie" is sort of a social experiment — like, what if you tried to make a fairly straightforward romantic comedy fueled by a truly over-the-top premise? We're talking more ridiculous than having to get your gay best friend to pretend he's your fiancé so that you can make your ex jealous at his wedding. More ridiculous than pretending the guy you had a crush on is your fiancé after he ends up in a coma. More ridiculous than...well, romantic comedies are already fucked up, when... MORE »
Odds: Thursday - Logy.
By Alison Willmore on 10/19/2006
We're running a bit of a fever at the moment and probably shouldn't be trying to write anything. Fortunately, nothing much is going on today. A few quick links: The Guardian reports that Sacha Baron Cohen is in talks to star alongside Johnny Depp and the just-added Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton's upcoming adaptation of "Sweeney Todd." Carter will play the pie-making Mrs. Lovett (natch), Baron Cohen's rumored to be up to play rival barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, a role which would offer him yet another chance to flaunt an outsized accent. Speaking of Mr. Baron Cohen, Gina... MORE »
"51 Birch Street."
By Alison Willmore on 10/17/2006
[Reposted in slightly expanded form from here.] The personal essay has become the inescapable stuff of literate journalism (and personal anecdotes have crept into everything else, including film reviews), but the personal documentary remains a strange and delicate thing, a form still being traced out gingerly by the few who attempt it. Putting one's own life in front of the camera is never as straightforward a thing as setting it into print. Documentarian Doug Block didn't set out to make a film about his parents, he set out to film them as a commemoration and stumbled onto a narrative... MORE »
Odds: Tuesday - The 80s, Miyazaki the younger, FoxFaith.
By Alison Willmore on 10/17/2006
Need a job? (Yeah, yeah, you've seen it already.) Other randomness: Larry Carroll and Shawn Adler at MTV have a fairly thorough list of upcoming film remakes of 80s shows — we considered putting together a list like this before, but were a breathless combination of too ashamed and too lazy. Thanks, MTV. Charles Solomon at the New York Times talks to poor Goro Miyazaki, son of Hayao and director of the latest Ghibli film, "Gedo Senki (Tales From Earthsea)," which has turned out to be both a box office hit in Japan and a disappointment to some of... MORE »
Getting the joke.
By Alison Willmore on 10/17/2006
"Borat" (and check out that awesomely hideous new website) has prompted some interesting writing on the nature of Sacha Baron Cohen's particularly transgressive form of comedy — all with the somewhat smug caveat of "we know this is brilliant and subversive and laugh at it for the right reasons, but will the rest of America?" Carina Chocano at the LA Times observes:This, I think, is where the genius and horror of Borat's explorations really lie: The joke is not on the U.S. or Kazakhstan or even the fake Kazakhstan of Cohen's imagination. The joke is on petrified, inward-looking nationalism... MORE »
Stone, Scorsese, "Silence."
By Alison Willmore on 10/17/2006
According to BBC News, Oliver Stone's next film will be partly based on former CIA officer Gary Berntsen's book "Jawbreaker," which alleges that the US had a chance to capture Osama bin Laden in 2000 and instead pulled back. "[T]he film-maker told Variety magazine that the new movie would be 'compelling drama, not a polemic.' " Via the Guardian, "Martin Scorsese has hinted that his current film, The Departed, may be the last Hollywood blockbuster he ever works on as a director." We can't be bothered to search for this, but we're almost positive he said the same damn... MORE »
For our next trick...
By Alison Willmore on 10/16/2006
...may we present the new IFC News site? We've been working on a redesign of the site for months (as part of a general IFC.com redesign) and we're awfully pleased with the relaunch. Up on the shiny new site we have our collected New York Film Festival reviews here. We have a great interview of Terry Gilliam by Aaron Hillis:Since I've been in America, suddenly it hit me. I think I'm going to have to sue George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the illegal, unauthorized remake of "Brazil," the reality version.Also, a video of "Terror From Tokyo," a... MORE »
NYFF: Done!
By Alison Willmore on 10/11/2006
And that's a wrap — we'd once again like to thank our parents, without whom we would have never been born, and anyone still reading this damn thing. We'll be out tomorrow at a company meeting and back Friday Monday with more standard offerings. All of our NYFF reviews, along with Matt's, will be up in one place come Monday-ish, when the IFC website unveils its new redesign. MORE »
NYFF: "Pan's Labyrinth."
By Alison Willmore on 10/11/2006
We can't think of any easy context for Guillermo del Toro's so very excellent "Pan's Labyrinth" beyond his own 2001 film "The Devil's Backbone," which, while good, now seems like it was just practice for what was to come. In "Pan's Labyrinth," unapologetic dark fantasy butts up against an even darker historical setting — the story is told from the point of view of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl for whom fairytales are still very real and at least as vivid as day-to-day life. They provide an escape she may not fully appreciate from her alarming environs. It's... MORE »
NYFF: "The Host."
By Alison Willmore on 10/11/2006
Yeah, it's pretty damn good. (We're on our last festival legs here — our next review may not even be in complete sentences: Movie good! Acting so-so. Hey look, mise en scène.) But we're a bit concerned that Bong Joon-ho's "The Host" has been burdened with enough breathless praise off the festival circuit that it's going to disappoint some: it is first and foremost a monster movie, after all, and an enthusiastically shabby one that's not pushy with its startlingly dark political and social subtext. If "Gojira" offered a nation's trauma and terror of nuclear testing made (reptilian) flesh, "The... MORE »
NYFF: "Climates."
By Alison Willmore on 10/10/2006
Visually, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Climates" is bravura filmmaking — the shots are exquisitely composed, and the takes are long enough to take full advantage of the fact, lingering on faces, on curves of body parts, on late afternoon sunlight falling just so. Underlying all this is an indifferent 60s-ish arthouse drama about a relationship's implosion and aftermath. Ceylan's work openly invokes Tarkovsky and Antonioni, but he doesn't have the emotional heft to hold such images on screen. Scenes like the one in which main character Isa (played by Ceylan himself) rapes/seduces an old flame on the floor of her... MORE »
NYFF: "Triad Election."
By Alison Willmore on 10/10/2006
Johnny To's "Election" was a nimble examination of the Hong Kong triads post-changeover that neatly punctured the myths of loyalty and brotherhood in organized crime; the New York Film Festival seems to believe you don't need to have seen it to appreciate its sequel, the better if more bombastic "Triad Election," and they're probably right (the two films will be released in some way by Tartan next year — God knows what they're going to do about the titles). "Triad Election" focuses on Jimmy (the ever-dapper Louis Koo), a minor character in the first film who's grown into a... MORE »
NYFF: "Falling."
By Alison Willmore on 10/09/2006
We were pleasantly surprised by Barbara Albert's "Falling," which uses a rickety excuse of a story (the funeral of a beloved high school teacher summoning back five friends who haven't seen each other for years) to frame a portrait of women at a certain age — a set-up so front-loaded for sentimental disaster it's likely to send most fleeing in the opposite direction. Which is too bad, because while "Falling" has its creaky moments (mostly dealing with the friends' failed politics and faded protest days), it also bristles with unresolved and unfeigned emotion. Albert, whose last film was the... MORE »
NYFF: "Private Fears In Public Places."
By Alison Willmore on 10/06/2006
Alain Resnais' "Private Fears in Public Places" is, like his 1993 film "Smoking/No Smoking," an adaptation of a play written by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, which explains why its six characters act so oddly prurient about sex and so oddly excited about tea-drinking. It's hard to say if it would have been a less tiresome film if set in London; as is, the setting restrictions necessitated by a play combine with the constant snow (it even manages to invade scene transitions) and the initial pan over a slightly obvious model of the city to give the impression that the film... MORE »
Two quick NYFF things, and darling Armond.
By Alison Willmore on 10/06/2006
New York offers five shorts from the New York Film Festival for your online viewing pleasure. We haven't actually come across any of them at the screenings we've attended, so we have no further insights to offer you. At the New York Times, Manohla Dargis administers a mild smack-down to the festival programmers:It’s great that “Syndromes and a Century,†which has yet to find an American distributor, is on the menu this year; too bad that the entire program isn’t similarly adventurous. It has always been the case that some good films, like Jia Zhang-ke’s “Dong†and Tsai Ming-Liang’s... MORE »
The week's critic wrangle: Some Scorsese guy, "Little Children," "Shortbus."
By Alison Willmore on 10/06/2006
Filed under: Critic wrangle+ "The Departed": We had a suspicion Martin Scorsese's latest wasn't going to be so great — no reason, except that perhaps it seemed a too good to be true. Scorsese returning to crime and criminals; Scorsese remaking "Infernal Affairs"; Scorsese doing Boston! Well, looks like we were wrong, thank gods. At LA Weekly, Scott Foundas calls "The Departed" "the best thing [Scorsese]'s done in ages," and while noting that he "wouldn’t rush to call the movie one of Scorsese's best," also concludes rather nicely that Indeed, the very vibrancy of this movie is tied to its familiarity, to... MORE »
This week on IFC News: JCM, alt endings.
By Alison Willmore on 10/05/2006
New this week on IFC News: Dan Persons talks to John Cameron Mitchell about "Shortbus":You've included the credit, "Story developed with the cast." Was it always in your plan that the actors would be involved in the creation of the story? It started with the form: How can I use sex in a new way? Okay, the actors will be nervous; why not do what I've always dreamed of as an actor, which is to create a script through improv? Everyone wants to work with Mike Leigh, everyone loves Robert Altman — actors flock to them because they give... MORE »
Goodbye, Village Voice, goodbye.
By Alison Willmore on 10/05/2006
We'd heard talk of this a few days ago, and now it's being confirmed on Gawker and on blogs like Anthony Kaufman's: Village Voice critic Michael Atkinson was canned a few days ago, and now film editor Dennis Lim has been fired as well. J. Hoberman is the last man standing at what was once one of the great bastions of uncompromising film criticism and coverage, as well as the place several of our favorite critics got their start. There's a lot of burbling media gossip below the surface here it's not our place to go into — but... MORE »
NYFF: "Inland Empire."
By Alison Willmore on 10/04/2006
Welcome to the David Lynch remix project. Where to even begin? With "Inland Empire," Lynch surveys his own domain, the unmistakable, weird auteurist landscape he's carved out for himself, and in which he then proceeds to frolic (and yes, he totally frolics) for three hours with a unapologetic shrug and kick of the heels to anyone less than well-versed in his work. For those who aren't, "Inland Empire" is a giddy joy, a swirl of actors from Lynch-works past (Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Grace Zabriskie, Naomi Watts as the voice of a rabbit), as well as... MORE »
NYFF: "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen."
By Alison Willmore on 10/04/2006
The immediate thrill of Zacharias Kunuk's two films, 2001's "The Fast Runner" and this year's "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen" (which he co-directed with Norman Cohn), is anthropological. For most of us, the world they depict is an exquisitely alien one of unbroken white vistas and pervasive, almost corporeal cold in which the idea eking out any existence, much less the culturally rich and happy one of "Journals," is hard to fathom. Kunuk knows this, and a good portion of the film is dedicated to taking in the otherwise unchronicled rhythms of traditional Inuit life. "Journal" is in fact... MORE »
NYFF: "Volver."
By Alison Willmore on 10/03/2006
Can we finally dispense with the popular proclamation that Pedro Almodóvar is the great director of women? The almost entirely female slew of characters in "Volver" are gorgeously photographed (Penélope Cruz has never look better) — the camera's loving, lust-free gaze lingers on their ankles, plunging necklines and possibly prosthetic rears. They are vulnerable but resourceful, they are fierce and loving in their friendships and familial relationships, they greet each other with an amplified buss on each cheek, and their sweeping, unarticulated sisterhood hovers beyond the detection of men, who in the film exist only to admire from afar... MORE »
NYFF: "Syndromes and a Century."
By Alison Willmore on 10/02/2006
It doesn't seem fair to fit words to Apichatpong Weerasethakul's heady "Syndromes and a Century," which stops short of the fever dream logic of his 2004 "Tropical Malady," but still dwells in a preternatural world outside any traditional narrative context. The film is inspired by Weerasethakul's parents, both doctors, and the childhood he spent in a hospital environment. Like "Tropical Malady," it's split into to two parts that have no direct causal bearing on each other — the first half takes place at a languid rural hospital and follows the female Dr. Toey, while the second restarts the story... MORE »
NYFF: "Paprika."
By Alison Willmore on 10/02/2006
While Satoshi Kon's "Paprika" couldn't be called the film with the most emotional depth at the festival (or of Kon's career), it's probably the most deliriously pop fun. It peeks into the lives of a research division developing the DC Mini, an invention that lets you access and enter another person's dreams, and a convenient excuse for fabulous sequences of phantasmagoric imagery. When three of the still-in-development devices are stolen, the scientists investigate the matter themselves, hoping to protect their project (which is controversial and not yet approved by the government). The lab is run by the elf-like Dr.... MORE »
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