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Erin Donovan helps us prepare for Mother's Day with a guide to all the multifaceted kinds of moms depicted in film (including Ellen Burstyn's Alice, above), grouped for your pleasure by the most common archetypes. (Our moms would be proud for being so organized.) And of course, as this is an overview, surely (or Shirley), you will want to suggest a few more of your own in the comments, too. Mom's away! Read article >>
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: I'm Not There, Teeth and a lot more.
- What We're Watching: Hollywood Dreams, Pied Piper and Alain Delon.
- Explore: Isild Le Besco.
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Todd Haynes' unique dramatization of the life and music of Bob Dylan as a series of shifting personae, each performed by a different actor (including the late Heath Ledger, and Cate Blanchett) —poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock and roll, martyr born-again Christian was "the movie of the year," raved J Hoberman. Adds Sean Axmaker: "Faced with an artist defined more by his lyrics than his life story, Haynes delivers a song-cycle of a movie: vivid, exaggerated, contradictory impressions of a man who confounds a culture still looking to define him." (Personally, we think David Cross as Alan Ginsberg is the film's best casting.) |
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This black comedy about a young woman with, uh, a unique bodily feature caused quite a stir at Sundance. While it's decidedly not for all tastes, director Mitchell Lichtenstein "has taken an outrageous concept and realized it with his own blend of campy humor, splatter gore, and emotional realism," writes Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay. "Props to lead actress Jess Weixler too." It's "campy, shameless and sophisticated...gutsy and original, and it makes Juno look positively tame by comparison," writes Carina Chocano in the LA Times. |
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If you're already a fan of the films of Henry Jaglom, you'll need no further encouragement to see his latest arrival on DVD. If not, or if you're lukewarm, or know nothing of this fellow's rather "special" oeuvre, then Hollywood Dreams is probably as good a place as any to begin. Unlike some of his earlier work— Eating, Babyfever, Going Shopping (which deal with pretty much exactly what their titles suggest), or other films like Someone to Love, Déjà Vu and Always, in which love and relationships are front and center (whatever else they're about, Jaglom's movies are all always about love and relationships)--his latest is perfectly conceived and calibrated to demonstrate his "take" on the film's title... Read review here >> |
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According to her own commentary on this new DVD, Czech filmmaker Pavla Fleischer decided to make The Pied Piper of Hutzovina after taking a drunken car ride around Prague in 2004 with Eugene Hütz—the frontman of gypsy punk/hip-hop, New York-based band Gogol Bordello. Apparently she was so smitten by his boisterous but lively personality (not to mention his incredible sense of fashion), that making a film about him was the only excuse she could come up with to draw his attention and make him spend some time with her, hoping that he shared the same romantic interest towards her as she did for him... read review >> |
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French star Alain Delon, who rose to international prominence on the coattails of great films such as Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) and Rocco and His Brothers, followed by The Leopard and L'Eclisse, was never much noted for his acting ability. Though he was a perfectly competent actor--sometimes much more than that--no matter what acting roles he or his directors or producers chose (he finally took over all three reins himself), nothing ever began to eclipse Delon's true ace in the hole: his amazing, downright staggering beauty. Most movie buffs will have seen Delon in one of more of the films mentioned above. Now, Lionsgate has brought together a package of five of his lesser-known films, very well transferred to DVD, under the title of The Alain Delon Collection--with that pretty face plastered in close-up on the box.... read review >>
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Writing in Premiere, Aaron Hillis calls Charly, the second feature written and directed by the young French actress Isild Le Besco, "enigmatic, homegrown and actually minimal... My only advice here is to keep your opinions to yourself until you've sat with this humble treat a couple days; it's a grower." James Van Maanen talks with Le Besco about Charly's characters as aspects of herself and about the film she'll be shooting in September. Read article >> |
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