It is both much too big and way too small to describe Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s gorgeously allusive “The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire” as a biopic. The impulse behind the film — to re-write this remarkable woman back into the French and Caribbean cultural histories that have long neglected her in favor of her famous politician husband, Aimé Césaire — is standard-issue biopic fuel. But Hunt-Ehrlich complicates and prevaricates on that impulse in increasingly provocative and hypnotic ways, delivering a woozily metatextual essay that lives inside the mystery of Césaire’s tiny but influential corpus of work, rather than trying to solve it.
“Here we are, making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered,” says Zita Hanrot, boldly breaking the fourth wall. She plays Suzanne — a beautiful woman in red lipstick, smoking and swaying to swing records playing on the gramophone — but she also plays a riff on herself,...
“Here we are, making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered,” says Zita Hanrot, boldly breaking the fourth wall. She plays Suzanne — a beautiful woman in red lipstick, smoking and swaying to swing records playing on the gramophone — but she also plays a riff on herself,...
- 1/31/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
The image of Frida Kahlo, the prominent Mexican painter of the early 20 century, is one of the most replicated and commercialized of any artist in the history of the world. From T-shirts to houseware, merchandise of all sorts emblazoned with her face has turned Kahlo into a kitschy, mainstream, decontextualized emblem for Mexican identity. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of her works are self-portraits. Onscreen, the Salma Hayek-starring Hollywood biopic from director Julie Taymor and Paul Leduc’s 1983’s Mexican-production “Frida Still Life” attempted to decipher the tehuana-clad iconoclast via scripted portrayals.
With all that cultural and media baggage on her shoulders, Carla Gutiérrez dares to construct a documentary using a unique approach to such an imposing subject. An editor taking on directorial duties for the first time, Gutierrez is no stranger to assembling nonfiction portraits of major figures, having cut titles like “Rgb” and “Chavela”. Told mostly in Spanish,...
With all that cultural and media baggage on her shoulders, Carla Gutiérrez dares to construct a documentary using a unique approach to such an imposing subject. An editor taking on directorial duties for the first time, Gutierrez is no stranger to assembling nonfiction portraits of major figures, having cut titles like “Rgb” and “Chavela”. Told mostly in Spanish,...
- 1/20/2024
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Variety Film + TV
My guess is that Frida Kahlo would have loathed “Immersive Frida Kahlo,” the kind of touring exhibit that professes to honor the canvas while bathing it in digital-tech kitsch. And, having seen Carla Gutiérrez’s riveting documentary Frida, I’m certain the artist would have announced her disdain with a laugh and a healthy dose of juicy invective. If you want to immerse yourself in Frida Kahlo, here is the real thing.
Taking the helm for the first time, editor Gutiérrez (Rbg, Julia) pushes past the dime-a-dozen “icon” label to face the artist on her own terms, drawing upon Kahlo’s illustrated diaries and letters. The film’s archival riches also include an extraordinary selection of photographs and footage, and the transcripts of interviews with people close to Kahlo by biographer Hayden Herrera, whose 1983 book was the basis of the Julie Taymor biopic starring Salma Hayek.
Whatever that 2002 movie’s strengths and weaknesses,...
Taking the helm for the first time, editor Gutiérrez (Rbg, Julia) pushes past the dime-a-dozen “icon” label to face the artist on her own terms, drawing upon Kahlo’s illustrated diaries and letters. The film’s archival riches also include an extraordinary selection of photographs and footage, and the transcripts of interviews with people close to Kahlo by biographer Hayden Herrera, whose 1983 book was the basis of the Julie Taymor biopic starring Salma Hayek.
Whatever that 2002 movie’s strengths and weaknesses,...
- 1/19/2024
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
M. Raihan Halim’s “La Luna” will close the 53rd edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam, which has also revealed the lineup of its Tiger competition section, a platform for up-and-coming filmmakers, and Big Screen Competition, a program for more established talent.
“La Luna,” which has its European premiere at the festival, is a comedy about a conservative Malaysian village shaken by the arrival of a lingerie store.
Among the Tiger competition films is British director Justin Anderson’s “Swimming Home,” starring Mackenzie Davis, Christopher Abbott and Ariane Labed. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel, it centers on Joe and Isabel, whose marriage is dying when Kitti, a naked stranger found floating in the pool at their holiday villa, is invited to stay. Kitti collects and eats poisonous plants, and Nina their teenage daughter is enthralled by her. The film, which is being sold by Bankside Films, is described as...
“La Luna,” which has its European premiere at the festival, is a comedy about a conservative Malaysian village shaken by the arrival of a lingerie store.
Among the Tiger competition films is British director Justin Anderson’s “Swimming Home,” starring Mackenzie Davis, Christopher Abbott and Ariane Labed. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel, it centers on Joe and Isabel, whose marriage is dying when Kitti, a naked stranger found floating in the pool at their holiday villa, is invited to stay. Kitti collects and eats poisonous plants, and Nina their teenage daughter is enthralled by her. The film, which is being sold by Bankside Films, is described as...
- 12/18/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Natasha Lyonne's leading roles are pretty unconventional female characters. They have a rugged androgyny that comes naturally to the actress, but it's not just Lyonne that gives them a sort of gender-transcendent quality. These characters break out of the traditional archetypes that most actresses are restricted by. In fact, they more closely resemble classic male characters — like Martin Sheen's Benjamin Willard in "Apocalypse Now."
Willard's descent into madness is memorable because it happens inwardly. We've seen women devolve into hysteria in cinematic masterpieces like "A Woman Under the Influence," but rarely do we take a female character's passivity to indicate introspection. Lyonne hoped to break out of this trope when she took the creative reigns on projects like "Russian Doll" and Rian Johnson's new series "Poker Face."
Even when women are protagonists, they are often "defined by an outer life," Lyonne pointed out in an interview with Time.
Willard's descent into madness is memorable because it happens inwardly. We've seen women devolve into hysteria in cinematic masterpieces like "A Woman Under the Influence," but rarely do we take a female character's passivity to indicate introspection. Lyonne hoped to break out of this trope when she took the creative reigns on projects like "Russian Doll" and Rian Johnson's new series "Poker Face."
Even when women are protagonists, they are often "defined by an outer life," Lyonne pointed out in an interview with Time.
- 2/1/2023
- by Shae Sennett
- Slash Film
In the early ’90s, Francis Ford Coppola predicted the future: “Suddenly, one day some little fat girl in Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart,” he said, “and make a beautiful film with her father’s little camcorder, and for once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed, forever, and it will really become an art form.”
He was on the right track, but the revolution of lo-fi camerawork actually came from a couple of bored Danes. Just a few years after Coppola’s proclamation, directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg joined a few of their cohorts in scribbling out 10 rules to inform their work going forward.
The Dogme 95 Manifesto was a call-to-arms for filmmakers eager to escape the confines of commercial production and transform cinema into a fully creative endeavor. That involved a stripping away of artifice on virtually every level of production. Shot with cheap camcorders...
He was on the right track, but the revolution of lo-fi camerawork actually came from a couple of bored Danes. Just a few years after Coppola’s proclamation, directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg joined a few of their cohorts in scribbling out 10 rules to inform their work going forward.
The Dogme 95 Manifesto was a call-to-arms for filmmakers eager to escape the confines of commercial production and transform cinema into a fully creative endeavor. That involved a stripping away of artifice on virtually every level of production. Shot with cheap camcorders...
- 8/19/2022
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
One of the last roles for legendary actor Marlon Brando involved holding the breast of young actress Natasha Lyonne in the horror-comedy parody Scary Movie 2. Sadly, the scene never made it into the final cut.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly’s video series “Role Call,” Lyonne said Brando dropped out of the project, allegedly because of illness. But before he did, he filmed a scene with her, and she retained a video copy of that memorable meeting.
The scene in question came at the start of the sequel, a scene parodying The Exorcist. Lyonne played a Linda Blair-esque young girl who was possessed, with two priests (played in the film by James Woods and Andy Richter) attempting to exorcise the demon. Brando was originaly in Woods’ role before dropping out.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him,...
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly’s video series “Role Call,” Lyonne said Brando dropped out of the project, allegedly because of illness. But before he did, he filmed a scene with her, and she retained a video copy of that memorable meeting.
The scene in question came at the start of the sequel, a scene parodying The Exorcist. Lyonne played a Linda Blair-esque young girl who was possessed, with two priests (played in the film by James Woods and Andy Richter) attempting to exorcise the demon. Brando was originaly in Woods’ role before dropping out.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him,...
- 4/24/2022
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
In an alternate, perhaps better, universe, a version of 2001’s “Scary Movie 2” exists that depicts silver-screen icon Marlon Brando in a cameo role, playing opposite Natasha Lyonne’s demon-possessed character. In the unreleased scene, which the “Russian Doll” star credited as making her think that “showbiz is all right,” Brando’s character performs an exorcism while clutching her boob.
Let’s backtrack: The second installment of the horror spoof franchise features a cold open of Lyonne paying a humorous homage to the role Linda Blair originated in 1973’s “The Exorcist.” She acts opposite longtime Conan O’Brien writer Andy Richter and James Woods (“Ghosts of Mississippi”), who portray the priests trying to exorcize her.
Well, initially, Woods’ role was supposed to be played by Brando, who eventually dropped out of filming as a result of health issues.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon...
Let’s backtrack: The second installment of the horror spoof franchise features a cold open of Lyonne paying a humorous homage to the role Linda Blair originated in 1973’s “The Exorcist.” She acts opposite longtime Conan O’Brien writer Andy Richter and James Woods (“Ghosts of Mississippi”), who portray the priests trying to exorcize her.
Well, initially, Woods’ role was supposed to be played by Brando, who eventually dropped out of filming as a result of health issues.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon...
- 4/23/2022
- by Natalie Oganesyan
- The Wrap
The opening of “Scary Movie 2” memorably features Natasha Lyonne in a parody of “The Exorcist.” The comedian appears as a demon-possessed woman who gets a visit from two priests, played by James Wood and Andy Richter. Lyonne reminded fans in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly that Marlon Brando was originally cast in Wood’s cameo and shot some scenes before dropping out of “Scary Movie 2” due to health reasons. Brando’s scene was never released.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him, but luckily for me — is doing this ‘Exorcist’ opening teaser,” Lyonne said. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really. I mean, why would he do that?”
Recalling Brando’s short time on set, Lyonne said he was “very chatty” and had an earpiece in order to assist in his line readings.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him, but luckily for me — is doing this ‘Exorcist’ opening teaser,” Lyonne said. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really. I mean, why would he do that?”
Recalling Brando’s short time on set, Lyonne said he was “very chatty” and had an earpiece in order to assist in his line readings.
- 4/22/2022
- by Zack Sharf
- Variety Film + TV
Oscar-winner Marlon Brando was originally set to star in “Scary Movie 2” shortly before his death in 2004.
And while Brando certainly could have been a contender for big laughs in the role, co-star Natasha Lyonne recalled an awkward yet “A-ok” experience with the screen legend.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him, but luckily for me — is doing this ‘Exorcist’ opening teaser,” Lyonne told Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really.”
Brando played a priest alongside Andy Richter who tries to get rid of a demon possessing Lyonne’s character in an “Exorcist” spoof for the 2001 parody film. At one point, Brando’s character flirts with the demonic entity, and they hump one another. Brando only filmed a few scenes before dropping out of “Scary Movie 2” due to health concerns.
“He had...
And while Brando certainly could have been a contender for big laughs in the role, co-star Natasha Lyonne recalled an awkward yet “A-ok” experience with the screen legend.
“I have a VHS copy of the dailies that I got because Marlon Brando’s final role — sadly for him, but luckily for me — is doing this ‘Exorcist’ opening teaser,” Lyonne told Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t know what he was thinking, really.”
Brando played a priest alongside Andy Richter who tries to get rid of a demon possessing Lyonne’s character in an “Exorcist” spoof for the 2001 parody film. At one point, Brando’s character flirts with the demonic entity, and they hump one another. Brando only filmed a few scenes before dropping out of “Scary Movie 2” due to health concerns.
“He had...
- 4/22/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
British post-punk pioneers Bauhaus return with their first new song in over a decade, “Drink the New Wine.”
Recorded during lockdown, Bauhaus used the Surrealists’ “exquisite corpse” method to create the song, with each member coming up with a section without seeing what the other’s had done. The band set up some additional rules: Each member was given only one minute to fill, and only eight tracks to lay down whatever instrumentals and vocals they wanted; the band also allotted themselves a shared 60 seconds to create a composite at the end.
Recorded during lockdown, Bauhaus used the Surrealists’ “exquisite corpse” method to create the song, with each member coming up with a section without seeing what the other’s had done. The band set up some additional rules: Each member was given only one minute to fill, and only eight tracks to lay down whatever instrumentals and vocals they wanted; the band also allotted themselves a shared 60 seconds to create a composite at the end.
- 3/23/2022
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Alejandro Jodorowsky sees filmmaking as an art, not a business. He expands on this in the very title of his latest film: Psychomagic, A Healing Art. The film is a personal documentation of Jodorowsky’s theory of trauma therapy, called Psychomagic, in action. We can trust Jodorowsky when he calls action, though beware when he calls cut as his wife, artist Pascale Montandon, who has been his cinematographer on all his films, may keep the cameras rolling. Performance art is an effective placebo to confront psychic suffering and film does it in real time, breaking the wall between reality and performance. Those are real tears on the screen.
A son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, the “father of the midnight movie” was born in 1929 in Chile. His father was a staunch Stalinist who ran a dry-goods store called Casa Ukrania. His mother made him wear his hair long as part of a...
A son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, the “father of the midnight movie” was born in 1929 in Chile. His father was a staunch Stalinist who ran a dry-goods store called Casa Ukrania. His mother made him wear his hair long as part of a...
- 9/24/2020
- by Chris Longo
- Den of Geek
After the Mekons released their first album in eight years in 2019, the long-running cowpunk outfit make a quick return with their surprise new LP Exquisite, which the band wrote and recorded while in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The album — “recorded in splendid physical isolation on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets and other ancient technologies in Aptos, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York and Devon in April and May 2020,” the Mekons noted — will arrive exclusively on their Mekorpse Bandcamp on June 19th, or Juneteenth; on that day, Bandcamp...
The album — “recorded in splendid physical isolation on mobile phones, broken cassette recorders, clay tablets and other ancient technologies in Aptos, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York and Devon in April and May 2020,” the Mekons noted — will arrive exclusively on their Mekorpse Bandcamp on June 19th, or Juneteenth; on that day, Bandcamp...
- 6/18/2020
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Sara Driver's Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993) is showing October and November on Mubi in the United States.SleepwalkIn Sara Driver’s too small yet varied filmography, her two fiction features, both poetic fantasies—Sleepwalk (1986) and When Pigs Fly (1993)—are bracketed by two other longer films, the 48-minute You Are Not I and the 78-minute documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2017). Sleepwalk stars Suzanne Fletcher, who also played the schizophrenic sister in You Are Not I; Boom For Real portrays both a highly interactive community and an eclectic artist inside it, which might also describe When Pigs Fly, a comedy inspired by Topper about a jazz pianist (Alfred Molina) living in an east coast port town populated by barflies and ghosts. Moreover, the community in Boom is basically Lower East Side Manhattan and more specifically the Bowery, the setting of Sleepwalk, as well as...
- 10/27/2019
- MUBI
Two decades before her turn as the gruff-voiced, sardonic Nadia on the existential dramedy “Russian Doll,” a teenage Natasha Lyonne played DJ, the
chirpy narrator in Woody Allen’s 1996 whimsical romantic-comedy musical “Everyone Says I Love You.” Lyonne’s name first appeared in Variety on Dec. 2, 1996, in a review of the Allen film.
In the next few years she went on to star in a number of raunchy teen comedies, including “American Pie,” “But I’m a Cheerleader” and “Scary Movie 2.”
She recently wrapped up her role as Nicky Nichols (aka Junkie Philosopher) on the final season of “Orange Is the New Black.”
“Russian Doll,” which she stars in and co-created alongside Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, has 13 Emmy nominations and is set for a second season.
When you look back at teenage Natasha Lyonne in “Everyone Says I Love You,” what do you see that’s changed?
I was attending Yeshiva.
chirpy narrator in Woody Allen’s 1996 whimsical romantic-comedy musical “Everyone Says I Love You.” Lyonne’s name first appeared in Variety on Dec. 2, 1996, in a review of the Allen film.
In the next few years she went on to star in a number of raunchy teen comedies, including “American Pie,” “But I’m a Cheerleader” and “Scary Movie 2.”
She recently wrapped up her role as Nicky Nichols (aka Junkie Philosopher) on the final season of “Orange Is the New Black.”
“Russian Doll,” which she stars in and co-created alongside Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland, has 13 Emmy nominations and is set for a second season.
When you look back at teenage Natasha Lyonne in “Everyone Says I Love You,” what do you see that’s changed?
I was attending Yeshiva.
- 8/16/2019
- by Dano Nissen
- Variety Film + TV
Madrid — In 1925, Luis Buñuel, son of one of the richest men in the Spanish region of Aragón, went to Paris to make films with Salvador Dalí. The results were two surrealist shorts, 1929’s “Un Chien Andalou,” his passport to membership of André Breton’s surrealists, and “L’Age d’Or,” banned by the Paris police.
The movies are galvanized by the joie de vivre of the young directors, but as much Dalí in their daring as Buñuel.
By 1933, however, when Buñuel returned from shooting he 29-minute documentary “Las Hurdes” (aka “Land Without Bread”) filmed in a region of Western Spain, one of the world’s greatest film directors has found his own creative voice, an explosive mix of surrealism and social critique.
Salvador Simó’s “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles,” sold by Latido, lead-produced by Manuel Cristobal and acquired for North America by New York’s Gkids, the...
The movies are galvanized by the joie de vivre of the young directors, but as much Dalí in their daring as Buñuel.
By 1933, however, when Buñuel returned from shooting he 29-minute documentary “Las Hurdes” (aka “Land Without Bread”) filmed in a region of Western Spain, one of the world’s greatest film directors has found his own creative voice, an explosive mix of surrealism and social critique.
Salvador Simó’s “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles,” sold by Latido, lead-produced by Manuel Cristobal and acquired for North America by New York’s Gkids, the...
- 2/22/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Josh Appignanesi's Female Human Animal (2018) is showing in November and December, 2018 in most countries.Substituting the sub- of “subconscious” with the sur- of “surrealism,” Josh Appignanesi’s new genre-bending documentary is a meditative exploration of psychic visuality. Shot on video, the film follows novelist Chloe Aridjis, as she curates a retrospective at Tate Liverpool on Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), a little known British surrealist who spent most of her life in Mexico. In the beginning of the film, the observative camera lingers on Chloe’s professional encounters with a comforting impartiality. But later the camera becomes a tool of intimation, as her infatuation with a mysterious man spirals down to the most abstract base of human desire. The presence of the camera provides in turn a grasp of reality and a descent into a dream-like state. Female Human Animal...
- 11/28/2018
- MUBI
Even in the endlessly eccentric annals of independent animation — where the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” took flight and Ralph Bakshi tripped out amid jive-talking rabbits and X-rated cats — “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles” is an oddity: a feature-length cartoon about the making of a 27-minute documentary. Frankly, it was a brilliant choice on the part of director Salvador Simo to use such an expressionistic medium to examine how surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel bent reality to his own ends in the making of 1933 documentary “Las Hurdes” (aka “Land Without Bread”).
Of course, animation later proved fertile ground for Buñuel’s friend — and fellow surrealist — Salvador Dalí (who designed “Destino” for Disney), seeing as the hand-drawn form is uniquely suited to what André Breton described as the surrealists’ aim: “to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.” As many have observed about the medium,...
Of course, animation later proved fertile ground for Buñuel’s friend — and fellow surrealist — Salvador Dalí (who designed “Destino” for Disney), seeing as the hand-drawn form is uniquely suited to what André Breton described as the surrealists’ aim: “to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality.” As many have observed about the medium,...
- 10/24/2018
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Editor’s note: The following is an exclusive excerpt from “’Castles of Subversion’ Continued: From the Roman Noir and Surrealism to Jean Rollin” by Virginie Sélavy. This essay is featured in “Lost Girls: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollins,” which is available now. To celebrate the book’s release, curator and editor Samm Deighan will be on hand to introduce a special screening of Rollin’s 1971 film “The Shiver of the Vampires” at the Brooklyn Horror Festival on October 14.
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
Usually deserted or abandoned, often in ruins or in a state of decay, sometimes captured just before demolition, always bearing the melancholy traces of human presence, locations are key to Jean Rollin’s cinema and often were the starting points for his films. Three in particular recur throughout his work: the famous Dieppe beach (specifically Pourville-sur-Mer), the cemetery, and the castle. The latter two are typical Gothic locations and an...
- 9/25/2017
- by Indiewire Staff
- Indiewire
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1932) is playing July 5 - August 4, 2017 on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Cocteau's Poets.“…images born of cinema with the cosmogony of a poet.”—Henri Langlois on The Blood of a PoetThe films of Jean Cocteau have distinguished themselves among early twentieth-century cinema at large. This is due, arguably, to Cocteau’s works existing best as experiences rather than as proper films, and to their openness to interpretation. This is especially true of Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet, made in 1930 but not shown publicly until 1932, and one which has inspired as many critical interpretations since the filmmaker’s death in 1963 as Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Bergman’s Persona. Like those works, The Blood of a Poet...
- 7/6/2017
- MUBI
Cate Blanchett and Julian Rosefeldt talk Manifesto animals and more inside the Crosby Street Hotel Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Through the words of Yvonne Rainer, Louis Aragon, Olga Rozanova, Guy Debord, Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia, Lebbeus Woods and others in Julian Rosefeldt's film Manifesto, a chameleonic Cate Blanchett in 14 roles, speaks lines of truth and dare to us giving them all new context in contemporary situations.
Cate Blanchett: "Julian and I were both in New York and we sat down and he had come up with sort of about fifty characters, about fifty, sixty different scenarios." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The role of the Manifesto animals as being "another way of portraying humanity", how the changing of the settings each day "was a...
Through the words of Yvonne Rainer, Louis Aragon, Olga Rozanova, Guy Debord, Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia, Lebbeus Woods and others in Julian Rosefeldt's film Manifesto, a chameleonic Cate Blanchett in 14 roles, speaks lines of truth and dare to us giving them all new context in contemporary situations.
Cate Blanchett: "Julian and I were both in New York and we sat down and he had come up with sort of about fifty characters, about fifty, sixty different scenarios." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The role of the Manifesto animals as being "another way of portraying humanity", how the changing of the settings each day "was a...
- 4/28/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Exclusive: Deals have gone to multiple territories including Italy and Australia.
Following on from the North American deal announced with FilmRise yesterday, The Match Factory’s Cate Blanchett film Manifesto has racked up multiple other sales.
The film, directed by Julian Rosefeldt and feted in Sundance last month, has now sold to fifteen territories.
Manifesto premiered in Sundance last month. I Wonder Pictures has come on board for Italy and Madman for Australia and New Zealand, Cis and Baltics is with A-One and Front Row has the Middle East. The Match Factory expects to finalise deals with further territories, including UK, South Korea, Brazil and Scandinavia, in the next couple of days.
The film questions the role of the artist in society today. Manifesto draws on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, Dogma 95 and other artist groups, and the musings of individual artists, architects, dancers and filmmakers.
Manifesto also draws...
Following on from the North American deal announced with FilmRise yesterday, The Match Factory’s Cate Blanchett film Manifesto has racked up multiple other sales.
The film, directed by Julian Rosefeldt and feted in Sundance last month, has now sold to fifteen territories.
Manifesto premiered in Sundance last month. I Wonder Pictures has come on board for Italy and Madman for Australia and New Zealand, Cis and Baltics is with A-One and Front Row has the Middle East. The Match Factory expects to finalise deals with further territories, including UK, South Korea, Brazil and Scandinavia, in the next couple of days.
The film questions the role of the artist in society today. Manifesto draws on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, Dogma 95 and other artist groups, and the musings of individual artists, architects, dancers and filmmakers.
Manifesto also draws...
- 2/11/2017
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) is playing January 2 - 31, 2017 in the United Kingdom.“My story is not really connected. I just made it up in an instant.”—Mysterious Object at Noon “Too much like a game. You should at least have a script.”—Mysterious Object at NoonOnce upon a time, dot dot dot. As beginnings go, the silent cinema-style intertitle that opens Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s debut feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, is especially apposite. In terms of both action and theme, the ellipsis is everything: its promise of adventure structures our suspension of disbelief into the very premise of the film. Go with this, it suggests. Or come. The fiction into which it accelerates us is simultaneously one that has already happened and one we have yet to hear. Mixed tenses, and tensions, abound: we fluctuate,...
- 1/5/2017
- MUBI
Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto star Cate Blanchett is on Broadway in The Present, directed by John Crowley Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In 2014, Cate Blanchett starred with Isabelle Huppert in Andrew Upton's adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids (Les Bonnes) at Lincoln Center. Now in New York, Blanchett appears live on stage at the Barrymore Theatre, opposite Richard Roxburgh in The Present, Upton's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Platonov, and on screens in Julian Rosefeldt’s enthralling Manifesto at the Park Avenue Armory.
Cate Blanchett as CEO in Manifesto combines the ideas of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Wyndham Lewis and Barnett Newman
The words of Yvonne Rainer, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Olga Rozanova, Adrian Piper and Elaine Sturtevant flow alongside those of Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia,...
In 2014, Cate Blanchett starred with Isabelle Huppert in Andrew Upton's adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids (Les Bonnes) at Lincoln Center. Now in New York, Blanchett appears live on stage at the Barrymore Theatre, opposite Richard Roxburgh in The Present, Upton's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Platonov, and on screens in Julian Rosefeldt’s enthralling Manifesto at the Park Avenue Armory.
Cate Blanchett as CEO in Manifesto combines the ideas of Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Wyndham Lewis and Barnett Newman
The words of Yvonne Rainer, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Olga Rozanova, Adrian Piper and Elaine Sturtevant flow alongside those of Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia,...
- 12/28/2016
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
There’s an old acting exercise wherein an actor plays the same text ten different ways — as petulant child, scolding parent, scorned lover, and evil maniac — stretching the actor and revealing undiscovered nuances in the text. Cate Blanchett’s 13 performances in “Manifesto,” an immersive video installation by the artist Julian Rosefeldt currently making its American premiere at Park Avenue Armory, is the closest a film performance may ever come to capturing the spirit of live theater.
The film will screen as a 90-minute experimental feature at the Sundance Film Festival next month, but starts its life in New York in a very different form.
Read More: ‘Manifesto’ First Look: Cate Blanchett Channels Lars Von Trier and Jim Jarmusch In Sundance Premiere
Like an actor in rehearsal, Blanchett is playful and inventive, surprising her scene partners and even herself. At their best — and Blanchett is at hers here — actors are vessels through which creativity flows uninhibited.
The film will screen as a 90-minute experimental feature at the Sundance Film Festival next month, but starts its life in New York in a very different form.
Read More: ‘Manifesto’ First Look: Cate Blanchett Channels Lars Von Trier and Jim Jarmusch In Sundance Premiere
Like an actor in rehearsal, Blanchett is playful and inventive, surprising her scene partners and even herself. At their best — and Blanchett is at hers here — actors are vessels through which creativity flows uninhibited.
- 12/15/2016
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Daniel Bird: “What is your opinion of Walerian Borowczyk’s work?”Andrzej Żuławski: “Borowczyk? Oh, he lost himself, I think, it’s a pity because he was quite a talent.” One radical filmmaker laments another radical. With one sentence, Żuławski encapsulates the conventional arc of Borowczyk, or as he calls himself in Mr. and Mrs. Kabal's Theatre (1967), Boro’s career. He was a great animator working with Jan Lenica in Poland and, when moving to France, Chris Marker[1]. His shorts influenced Jan Švankmajer, Terry Gilliam, and the Quay Brothers, and were praised by critics like Amos Vogel and Raymond Durgnat. With his first two live-action feature-films, Goto, Island of Love (1968) and Blanche (1971), critics hailed Boro as part of the major league—an auteur. He’s the next Bresson! He’s the next Buñuel! Then he made Immoral Tales (1974), a blemish in his body of work at this point in his career.
- 4/1/2015
- by Tanner Tafelski
- MUBI
By Mireille Latil-Le-Dantec. Originally published in Cinématographe, no. 35, February 1978 in an issue with a Chaplin dossier.
Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.
The Chaplinesque Quest
The overbearing weight of interpretative studies devoted to Chaplin makes any pretension to some "fresh look" at a universe already studied from every angle seem absurd from the outset. At least, on the occasion of the homages currently being made in theaters to the little man who would become so big, a few fragmentary re-viewings more modestly allow for the rediscovery of the thematic unity of this body of work and the inanity of any artificial divide between the "excellent" Charlie films and the "mediocre" Chaplin films – a divide corresponding, of course, to the event which his art was not supposed to have survived: the appearance of those talkies that – in the excellent company of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, René Clair and many others – he...
Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.
The Chaplinesque Quest
The overbearing weight of interpretative studies devoted to Chaplin makes any pretension to some "fresh look" at a universe already studied from every angle seem absurd from the outset. At least, on the occasion of the homages currently being made in theaters to the little man who would become so big, a few fragmentary re-viewings more modestly allow for the rediscovery of the thematic unity of this body of work and the inanity of any artificial divide between the "excellent" Charlie films and the "mediocre" Chaplin films – a divide corresponding, of course, to the event which his art was not supposed to have survived: the appearance of those talkies that – in the excellent company of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, René Clair and many others – he...
- 7/22/2014
- by Ted Fendt
- MUBI
Maria Lassnig MoMA PS1 Through May 25, 2014
"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Protagoras, quoted in Plato's Theaetetus
"Both the motor and sensory homunculi usually appear as a small man superimposed over the top of the precentral or postcentral gyrus, for motor and sensory, respectively. The homunculus is oriented with feet medial and shoulders lateral on top of both the precentral and the postcentral gyrus (for both motor and sensory). The man's head is depicted upside down in relation to the rest of the body such that the forehead is closest to the shoulders. The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals. The motor homunculus is very similar to the sensory homunculus, but differs in several ways.
"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." Protagoras, quoted in Plato's Theaetetus
"Both the motor and sensory homunculi usually appear as a small man superimposed over the top of the precentral or postcentral gyrus, for motor and sensory, respectively. The homunculus is oriented with feet medial and shoulders lateral on top of both the precentral and the postcentral gyrus (for both motor and sensory). The man's head is depicted upside down in relation to the rest of the body such that the forehead is closest to the shoulders. The lips, hands, feet and sex organs have more sensory neurons than other parts of the body, so the homunculus has correspondingly large lips, hands, feet, and genitals. The motor homunculus is very similar to the sensory homunculus, but differs in several ways.
- 4/2/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Was the surrealist ambition to revolutionise consciousness a natural fit with revolutionary politics? The relationship between art and politics has historically been problematic: witness the sterile, unsubtle style of Soviet Socialist Realism. Surrealism’s degree of individualism is arguably more extreme than that of other literary and artistic movements, however, as it focused on exploring the workings of the artist’s mind. Surrealism also pioneered techniques such as automatic writing which restricted the artist’s conscious control over his creation. This passive, inward-looking aspect of surrealism made it apparently incompatible with political commitment. Surrealist leader André Breton nonetheless claimed that his movement’s concern with the liberation of consciousness was a perfect fit with communism’s aim to liberate the people.
In Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2004), Johanna Malt explores how far Breton’s political ambitions for surrealism were realistic. Where these ambitions were misled,...
In Obscure Objects of Desire: Surrealism, Fetishism, and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2004), Johanna Malt explores how far Breton’s political ambitions for surrealism were realistic. Where these ambitions were misled,...
- 1/7/2013
- by Alison Frank
- The Moving Arts Journal
With all the buzz around world premieres and gala events happening at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s easy to forget there is also a pretty stellar shorts program in the mix. Consisting of work spanning all genres, the format is a great way to experience new, upcoming talent as well as to check up on a couple familiar faces too. The following is a collection of capsule reviews and scores for each short in their respective screening blocks.
—Programme 1
Bardo Light – 10 minutes
What do you get when you mix the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the ancient metallurgical science of alchemy, and the namesake of inventor Philo Farnsworth? The answer is Connor Gaston‘s short film Bardo Light—titled for the bright glow none of us can avoid at the end of our lives.
Told via the police interrogation of the younger Farnsworth (Shaan Rahman) after his adopted...
—Programme 1
Bardo Light – 10 minutes
What do you get when you mix the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the ancient metallurgical science of alchemy, and the namesake of inventor Philo Farnsworth? The answer is Connor Gaston‘s short film Bardo Light—titled for the bright glow none of us can avoid at the end of our lives.
Told via the police interrogation of the younger Farnsworth (Shaan Rahman) after his adopted...
- 9/7/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Salvador Dalí is seen as the embodiment of the movement but it doesn't make him a great artist. Buñuel's films are truly radical
In Salvador Dalí's portrait of Luis Buñuel, the film-maker has a powerful, pugnacious face. He is clearly an authoritative character, someone to be reckoned with.
Today, it is interesting to ask which of them was the true artist. Perhaps Dalí's admiring portrait is a clue.
These friends who met as students made two hilarious, outrageous avant-garde films together, Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or. They were part of the surrealist movement led by André Breton in Paris between the world wars, and the sequence in Un Chien Andalou when a cloud crossing the moon is intercut with a razor slicing through an eyeball has become perhaps the most infamous of all surrealist dream images.
In the 1930s, these brilliant collaborators grew apart. In his memoir My Last Sigh,...
In Salvador Dalí's portrait of Luis Buñuel, the film-maker has a powerful, pugnacious face. He is clearly an authoritative character, someone to be reckoned with.
Today, it is interesting to ask which of them was the true artist. Perhaps Dalí's admiring portrait is a clue.
These friends who met as students made two hilarious, outrageous avant-garde films together, Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or. They were part of the surrealist movement led by André Breton in Paris between the world wars, and the sequence in Un Chien Andalou when a cloud crossing the moon is intercut with a razor slicing through an eyeball has become perhaps the most infamous of all surrealist dream images.
In the 1930s, these brilliant collaborators grew apart. In his memoir My Last Sigh,...
- 3/27/2012
- by Jonathan Jones
- The Guardian - Film News
Second #3901, 65:01
1. Jeffrey: “I’m seeing something that was always hidden.”
2. J. G. Ballard, from Concrete Island, 1974:
When he reached the embankment and searched for the message he had scrawled on the white flank of the caisson, he found that all the letters had been obliterated.
3. André Breton, from “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924:
Under the pretense of civilization an progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy . . . It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer . . . has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud. On the basis of these discoveries a current of opinion is finally forming by means of which the human explorer will be able to carry his investigations much further,...
1. Jeffrey: “I’m seeing something that was always hidden.”
2. J. G. Ballard, from Concrete Island, 1974:
When he reached the embankment and searched for the message he had scrawled on the white flank of the caisson, he found that all the letters had been obliterated.
3. André Breton, from “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924:
Under the pretense of civilization an progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy . . . It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which we pretended not to be concerned with any longer . . . has been brought back to light. For this we must give thanks to the discoveries of Sigmund Freud. On the basis of these discoveries a current of opinion is finally forming by means of which the human explorer will be able to carry his investigations much further,...
- 2/27/2012
- by Nicholas Rombes
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
I’ve finally made it to the grand master of the bravura sequence, or, more specifically, of the ending bravura sequence, King Vidor.
It isn’t surprising that a producer as knowledgeable as Selznick often ran to the services of the two major champions of “slice of cake” cinema and strong sequences, Hitchcock (Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case) and Vidor (Bird of Paradise, Duel in the Sun, Light’s Diamond Jubilee, even Ruby Gentry), who, without a doubt, made the best films for Selznick.
Love Never Dies, Wild Oranges, Hallelujah, Our Daily Bread, Comrade X, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and their terrific denouements once made me write that Vidor was a director of film endings. No doubt I was exaggerating, but it isn’t for nothing that he hesitated for a long time between several different endings for The Crowd. I was also exaggerating because...
It isn’t surprising that a producer as knowledgeable as Selznick often ran to the services of the two major champions of “slice of cake” cinema and strong sequences, Hitchcock (Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case) and Vidor (Bird of Paradise, Duel in the Sun, Light’s Diamond Jubilee, even Ruby Gentry), who, without a doubt, made the best films for Selznick.
Love Never Dies, Wild Oranges, Hallelujah, Our Daily Bread, Comrade X, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and their terrific denouements once made me write that Vidor was a director of film endings. No doubt I was exaggerating, but it isn’t for nothing that he hesitated for a long time between several different endings for The Crowd. I was also exaggerating because...
- 12/12/2011
- MUBI
The peerless inventiveness of the hive mind has at last hit on a sequel to planking
You know how it is. You had a few drinks last night. You can't quite remember how the evening ended. Now you're worried you, or someone you love, may have been Batmanning. Open your eyes. What do you see? It it the bottom of your bedroom door, upside down? Yes? Oh dear. You have been Batmanning. But don't panic: it's what all the groovy young kids are doing these days.
The peerless inventiveness of the hivemind has at last hit on a sequel to planking, the health-and-safety-bothering trend where people posted photographs of themselves lying flat out in a dangerous or improbable public place.
Horizontality is so last year. Now the thing to do is to suspend yourself upside down with your toes hooked over the edge of a door, wall or piece of piping.
You know how it is. You had a few drinks last night. You can't quite remember how the evening ended. Now you're worried you, or someone you love, may have been Batmanning. Open your eyes. What do you see? It it the bottom of your bedroom door, upside down? Yes? Oh dear. You have been Batmanning. But don't panic: it's what all the groovy young kids are doing these days.
The peerless inventiveness of the hivemind has at last hit on a sequel to planking, the health-and-safety-bothering trend where people posted photographs of themselves lying flat out in a dangerous or improbable public place.
Horizontality is so last year. Now the thing to do is to suspend yourself upside down with your toes hooked over the edge of a door, wall or piece of piping.
- 9/11/2011
- by Sam Leith
- The Guardian - Film News
Charismatic nightclub owner and subversive film director
In the years after the second world war, St-Germain-des-Prés, on the left bank of Paris, was a melting pot of intellectual and artistic life. One of the favourite hangouts for the existential and beatnik crowds was the basement nightclub La Rose Rouge in the Rue de Rennes. It was there that Juliette Gréco made her cabaret debut, and Les Frères Jacques performed their mixture of song, humour, dance and mime. Among the audiences were André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian and Miles Davis. Presiding over them all was the club's charismatic owner, Nikos Papatakis, who has died aged 92. He was also renowned for his distinctive contribution to the world of film.
Known as Nico to his friends, Papatakis, a self-styled subversive, was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Greek parents. Aged 17, he joined Haile Selassie's army to fight against the...
In the years after the second world war, St-Germain-des-Prés, on the left bank of Paris, was a melting pot of intellectual and artistic life. One of the favourite hangouts for the existential and beatnik crowds was the basement nightclub La Rose Rouge in the Rue de Rennes. It was there that Juliette Gréco made her cabaret debut, and Les Frères Jacques performed their mixture of song, humour, dance and mime. Among the audiences were André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Prévert, Boris Vian and Miles Davis. Presiding over them all was the club's charismatic owner, Nikos Papatakis, who has died aged 92. He was also renowned for his distinctive contribution to the world of film.
Known as Nico to his friends, Papatakis, a self-styled subversive, was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Greek parents. Aged 17, he joined Haile Selassie's army to fight against the...
- 3/9/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
I've only just now stumbled across the news that the "cinéaste provocateur," as Libération calls him, "friend of Genet, husband of Anouk Aimée, companion to Nico, cabaret owner and Cassavetes producer" Nikos Papatakis died on December 17 at the age of 92. Born in in Addis Ababa to a Greek father and an Abyssinian mother, he "was a soldier in Ethiopia before being forced into exile for having sided with the Emperor Haile Selassie. He fled first to Lebanon and Greece. In 1939, he moved to Paris," where he studied acting and circulated among the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, Jacques Prévert, Robert Desnos and Jean Vilar.
- 12/27/2010
- MUBI
Fw Murnau, 1922
Sex and death, those two great mainstays of the horror genre, have rarely been as poetically evoked as in Fw Murnau's silent masterpiece. If Nosferatu wasn't quite the first vampire movie, it was the first adaptation of Dracula, albeit an unofficial one; Bram Stoker's estate sued the producers and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed.
Fortunately for the history of cinema it was an order that could not be enforced in Germany. The film follows the story of Dracula closely, though names have been changed. The Dracula character, Graf Orlok, was played by Max Schreck as a hideous walking corpse with a bald head, pointy teeth and long fingernails; Jonathan Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, Mina Harker is Ellen, Renfield is Knock and Van Helsing becomes Professor Bulwer.
As Hutter travels to Carpathia to meet Orlok for the first time, his crossing of the...
Sex and death, those two great mainstays of the horror genre, have rarely been as poetically evoked as in Fw Murnau's silent masterpiece. If Nosferatu wasn't quite the first vampire movie, it was the first adaptation of Dracula, albeit an unofficial one; Bram Stoker's estate sued the producers and all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed.
Fortunately for the history of cinema it was an order that could not be enforced in Germany. The film follows the story of Dracula closely, though names have been changed. The Dracula character, Graf Orlok, was played by Max Schreck as a hideous walking corpse with a bald head, pointy teeth and long fingernails; Jonathan Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, Mina Harker is Ellen, Renfield is Knock and Van Helsing becomes Professor Bulwer.
As Hutter travels to Carpathia to meet Orlok for the first time, his crossing of the...
- 10/22/2010
- by Anne Billson
- The Guardian - Film News
I recently had the pleasure of seeing a Polanski film in utter innocence. As the result of a rare set of circumstances, I found myself in the wrong cinema in front of a film which had a very restricted title sequence, so that I knew the title of the film from the beginning, but didn’t learn the director’s name until the end. I had of course heard that Polanski had a new film out, but not feeling particularly interested in the film’s political theme, I had forgotten about it. After the shock of realising that I was in the wrong cinema, I assumed that the film I was about to see was most likely a product of Hollywood: I was sitting in a multiplex with a relatively large audience, after all. The film’s European title, “The Ghost,” gives much less away than the American title, “The Ghost Writer,...
- 5/10/2010
- by Alison Frank
- The Moving Arts Journal
By R. Emmet Sweeney
A pratfall can be a work of art, a study in disruptive motion, a klutz's ballet. This choreography of humiliation is perhaps the least garlanded act in contemporary film, as no Oscars will ever be won for kicks to the groin or tumbles down the stairs, regardless of their originality. Only in retrospect have the golden slapstick silents gained credibility and the brilliant purveyors of today's guffaws are suffering the same critical fate (although the hurt, it must be said, is not felt in their checkbooks). So here is my list of the top five pratfalls of 2008, some of the strongest and strangest feats from an otherwise lackluster year. Some are from masters of the form (Will Ferrell, Anna Faris), while others seamlessly blend the side-splitting spill into their respective and respectable narratives (Robert Downey Jr., Mathieu Amalric, Pixar). All show a clumsy physical grace (as...
A pratfall can be a work of art, a study in disruptive motion, a klutz's ballet. This choreography of humiliation is perhaps the least garlanded act in contemporary film, as no Oscars will ever be won for kicks to the groin or tumbles down the stairs, regardless of their originality. Only in retrospect have the golden slapstick silents gained credibility and the brilliant purveyors of today's guffaws are suffering the same critical fate (although the hurt, it must be said, is not felt in their checkbooks). So here is my list of the top five pratfalls of 2008, some of the strongest and strangest feats from an otherwise lackluster year. Some are from masters of the form (Will Ferrell, Anna Faris), while others seamlessly blend the side-splitting spill into their respective and respectable narratives (Robert Downey Jr., Mathieu Amalric, Pixar). All show a clumsy physical grace (as...
- 12/30/2008
- by R. Emmet Sweeney
- ifc.com
On January 17, 1938, the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme opened at the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. The event, organized by André Breton and Paul Eluard, was a major moment in the 20th century art as key works by Salvador Dali (pictured to the left), Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray were presented to the public for the first time. The evidence of these works as well as this unique moment was captured by photographer Denise Bellon, whose beautiful black and white photography has become synonymous with these works. ...
- 9/2/2008
- by Rodney Perkins
- Screen Anarchy
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