24-Feb-2012
Posted by : Bobby
Judging from the opening press conference of the Belgrade International Film Festival (FEST) you would never think they were celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. This is a very honorable plateau for a film festival to reach as not many in the world can boast histories beyond 40 or 50 years. But everything is low-key in Belgrade, no big deal. So in the opening presser festival artistic director Borislav Andjelic and festival selector Ivan Karl simply announced an exhibit commemorating the history of FEST that will be accompanied by a monograph published on that same history. I would expect more — perhaps a panel discussion or a retrospective film panorama — but maybe I’m too much of a sentimentalist.
The exhibit features some 60 large format photographs that document special guests at FEST over the years as well as a written summarization of the historical narrative of the festival, which amounts to nothing more than a recounting of guests in attendance and artistic directors and selectors over the years. However, that guest list is impressive. Everyone from Coppola to Deneuve to Karina to Tarkovsky made an appearance at one point or another. In its heyday FEST attracted the biggest and brightest stars in the world, a practice which continues to the present day (as I reported last year, Ralph Fiennes was the guest of honor), though on a slightly smaller scale.
15-Feb-2012
Posted by : Bobby
The Berlinale Forum had a number of special screenings in addition to its line-up of boundary-pushing cinema of mixed forms. There were classics by the Japanese director Kawashima Yuzo, Cambodian cinema of the 60s, and two films by Shirley Clarke among other assorted treasures. I was able to catch Clarke’s The Connection (1961) at the Arsenal Cinema, the screening site of the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art.
Clarke’s complex film is highly theatrical, radically reflexive, and also a documentary-like spoof. The length of the film takes place in the run-down apartment of a drug addict named Leach (Warren Finnerty) where his junkie friends, including a jazz band, hang out all day doing nothing in paradigmatic slackeresque fashion. They are waiting for their connection to arrive with their fix of heroin. While they do, a documentary filmmaker captures their routine in an effort to reveal the truth about their living situation. As the film plays it becomes apparent that the documentarian doesn’t really know what he wants and he slowly slides into an acceptance of their drugged way of life, including sampling heroin for the first time and reducing himself to both subject and filmmaker.
14-Feb-2012
Posted by : Bobby
One film above all was on my agenda for the Berlinale from its first announcement, and that film was a restoration of Eisenstein’s October. This was my must-have ticket, and I got it. October was playing as part of the retrospective “The Red Dream Factory” which was a review of rarely-seen co-productions between Germany and the Soviet Union in the 20s and 30s. I only wish I would have been able to see much more of this retrospective as I’m sure there were plenty of unearthed gems to behold.
October screened as a special gala at the Friedrichstadt-Palast which is an impressive setting, to say the least. Probably the grandest in which I’ve ever watched a film. Adding to the regal feel of the palatial setting was musical accompaniment by the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra. They played very well, though the director Frank Strobel didn’t often look at the images as he was conducting, which threw the timing of certain sound effects and musical cues on more than one occasion. The musical performance was moving all the same, just not as crisp as it could have been.
13-Feb-2012
Posted by : Bobby
This year marks my first trip to one of the ‘big 3′ festivals (also representing my first trip to Berlin). First reaction: it’s even bigger than I expected. As a renegade, independent film critic, my frame of reference is as an outsider to the Berlinale ‘in-crowd’. I have no press pass, no online reservations, and no connections. Let the journey begin.
It became immediately apparent to me that I prefer smaller festivals. What is one to think of a festival where most everything you would want to see is sold out in advance? Where those films that are not sold out, one still has to wait in line an hour or more for a chance to buy tickets? It’s a bit depressing. That’s less of a festival to me than an immense industry, and I don’t like my film-going experiences to feel industrialized. Furthermore, I appreciate a feeling of intimacy in film festivals. Personal intimacy, where one can meet and interact with other film lovers as well as film-makers; spatial intimacy, where one can access all screening venues and events without traveling times of 30 minutes or more. But there you have it. This is the Berlinale, for better or worse. I’m absolutely afraid to see Cannes.
31-Dec-2011
Posted by : Bobby
Ameena Matthews in "The Interrupters"
My best film experiences of 2011 (in no particular order):
19-Nov-2011
Posted by : Bobby
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum’s website functions as a clearinghouse of sorts for almost everything he has ever written, right on down to his first published critical work for a high school newspaper as a teenager in the 1950s. So the immediate thing one often misses is his thoughts on current issues — though his reprints usually come with a few paragraphs worth of contemporary reflection. Of course, Rosenbaum has retired as a full-time critic, so one can read his employment of online resources as a pensioner’s pastime.
20-Aug-2011
Posted by : Bobby
As any other self-respecting cinephile should, I hold The Criterion Collection in the highest regard. I can think of no other institution that has instilled such a widespread introduction to international cinema with such consistent quality and grace. Quite simply, for the home video generation The Criterion Collection is our Cinematheque Francaise.
Arguably the greatest features of The Criterion Collection (if one discounts the films themselves) are the in-depth essays that accompany each release. These essays, written by some of the greatest critics on the cinema, constitute a brilliant canon of film history. The day will surely come when they are all collected in an edited volume but until then we have the website for accessing a majority of these archived pieces. Therefore the Criterion website is a wonderful resource for those looking into this film history and a place where one can enjoy some of the greatest writing on film that the internet has to offer.
07-Aug-2011
Posted by : Bobby
Stranger Than Paradise
There is a great deal of similarity between the cinema of Jim Jarmusch and that of Quentin Tarantino — so much that it often appears the two directors are conversing with each other through their work. Tarantino owes a lot to the films of Jarmusch. What follows is a brief outline of the web of references that link the two directors.
Stranger Than Paradise was one of the first of the new wave of American indie films, which paved the way for Tarantino and the Sundance generation at the beginning of the 1990s. In this film Jarmusch utilizes an episodic structure with title cards announcing the different segments. This is a structure he repeats in a number of his later films including Mystery Train and Ghost Dog. Tarantino has been using title cards and an episodic structure in most all of his films. Jarmusch begins using pop music on his soundtrack that has an effect not dissimilar to the way Tarantino uses pop music on his soundtracks. Both employ them for thematic and structuring aims: “I Put a Spell on You” comments on the alluring Eva (Eszter Balint) in Stranger Than Paradise; “Bang Bang” narrates the entire plot of Kill Bill.
09-May-2011
Posted by : Bobby
Just finished the script for Django Unchained. It’s good. Not great, but good. Has a chance to be great though depending on the execution. Maybe a few too many characters and not enough overall character development, but the final act is worth it. The scope and grandeur of the vision should be worth it.
Overall Tarantino does a pretty impressive job of bringing the Old South to life. You feel like you’re there. He’s created a world, more vivid than World War II-era France. You feel like you discover things you never knew existed (whether they did or not, it certainly feels like they could have, or should have). I can only imagine how it will look and feel in vibrant, colorful moving pictures. Has a chance to be pretty powerful in that respect.
Judging from the opening press conference of the Belgrade International Film Festival (FEST) you would never think they were celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. This is a very honorable plateau for a film festival to reach as not many in the world can boast histories beyond 40 or 50 years. But everything is low-key in Belgrade, no big deal. So in the opening presser festival artistic director Borislav Andjelic and festival selector Ivan Karl simply announced an exhibit commemorating the history of FEST that will be accompanied by a monograph published on that same history. I would expect more — perhaps a panel discussion or a retrospective film panorama — but maybe I’m too much of a sentimentalist.
