Saturday, October 6, 2012

The Weekly Reader: October 7

Last year, I was at the centerpiece event of the NYFF (for a small but devoted group of film fans, anyway): Views From The Avant-Garde, an extraordinary collection of films from both respected masters and emerging practitioners of avant-garde filmmaking. It's on again this week, and Tony Pipolo previews the program for Artforum.

Filmmaker Luther Price is somebody whose work I've never been exposed to, but has a program in the festival; Aaron Cutler and Mariana Shellard interview him for IDIOM magazine, with astonishing stills, frank descriptions of sexual content, and repeated abuse of the ellipsis.

For the precious few who got to see it, and the smaller set within there that didn't fall asleep, Ben Rivers' film TWO YEARS AT SEA was a major highlight of the 2012 NZFF. It opens in New York soon, hence Dennis Lim profiling him for the New York Times.

TWO YEARS AT SEA - TRAILER from Ben Rivers on Vimeo.

Not so much from the sublime to the ridiculous, as both the sublime and ridiculous are represented here: Drafthouse Films has two of the most disparate films possible, MIAMI CONNECTION and WAKE IN FRIGHT, amongst its upcoming releases. Eric Kohn at IndieWire gets the story behind their acquisitions. MIAMI CONNECTION's resurrection at Fantastic Fest is photo-documented by Andrew Todd at Flicks, while fans of WAKE IN FRIGHT are directed to Nicolas Rapold's profile of the film for the New York Times.

There's no guarantee what Fantastic Fest films will get to these shores (a year later, and there's neither hide nor hair of such 2011 festival highlights as BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI, and EXTRATERRESTRIAL in New Zealand), but RIchard Whittaker's wrapup of which films have received distribution might help point you towards some films to anticipate. Or dig deep with Twitch's super-wrapup.

Anthology Film Archives has announced this year's William Lustig Presents series, which for genre freaks is essential reading; even if you can't be there, this is a checklist of great, unusual, and/or unforgettable genre films you'll need to track down.

On the eve of V/H/S's American release, Brightest Young Things interviews Ti West.

Daniel Kasman goes deep and long with Brian DePalma. Beware of spoilers for PASSION, his new movie (as well as for LOVE CRIME, the film it remakes), but a careful eye can skim and still get a lot of great content.

If you haven't been paying attention to the recent tedious spate of "death of film" articles, you're lucky. If you have, Oliver Lyttelton's sarcastic rejoinder in the form of a historical timeline of "death of cinema" pronouncements is a welcome respite.

Dr. Film casts a jaundiced eye on the Lawrence of Arabia digital remastering.

Rian Johnson has created an in-theatre commentary for his film LOOPER. Use responsibly.

A couple weeks old but file under "new-to-me": Stephen Toblowsky raves about his experience filming SNEAKERS.

Brian Camp makes a compelling, lengthy argument for 1967 being action's greatest year, citing films like YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, POINT BLANK, and SAMURAI REBELLION.

Five lessons from Chantal Akerman, courtesy of Fandor.

In preparation for Halloween, Stacie Ponder at Final Girl has outlined her viewing, and is adding daily viewing diaries.

And finally: Mark Tinta probably gives way more consideration to TAKEN 2 than it deserves; a blog well worth scanning, his, as is any that uses an EXORCIST 3 image in its title graphic. Meanwhile, a handy flowchart to determine where you have been taken.

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