 |
|
Now an avuncular 82, Alejandro Jodorowsky still has the air of a sly wizard about him—even over an Internet phone connection across the ocean in Deauville, France, where he was vacationing this week. This, after all, is the guy who once claimed: "Most directors make films with their eyes. I make films with my cojones." Not even age can wither that kind of spirit, as the Chilean émigré remains just as provocative in thought now as when he played the macho shaman in his classic cult movies, recently released on Blu-Ray: El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973), and Santa Sangre. In this interview Jodorowsky discusses everything from LSD-tripping in Mexico, his upcoming feature, and his twitter following. Read more >>
|
|
|
In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Public Speaking, The Great Dictator, and more.
- In the City of Sylvia, Anton Chekhov's The Duel.
|
|
|
Martin Scorcese highlights the life of the famously ascerbic American writer Fran Lebowitz in the HBO doc Public Speaking. Writes Edward Copeland at Eddie on Film, "And her words, her wonderfully, wry words are what make this film so special and entertaining. If you happen to be eating while you watch it, you could almost call it My Dinner with Fran as Lebowitz floats freely from one topic to another but mostly the writer sticks to subjects closest to her heart: writing, the arts, culture and New York. " |
|
|
|
Criterion re-releases Chaplin's controversial classic, The Great Dicator today, inspiring a video tribute from critic Richard Brody at The New Yorker. "The film is very funny, but at the same time it is, in the guise of fiction, the greatest documentary about the persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime, at least until the making of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah". He cites the film's tendency to have characters look the camera directly in the eye, as if to say, "This is not a fiction, this is really happening."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
In the City of Sylvia stars Xavier Lafitte as a nameless young man who wanders through a Strasbourg summer with a notebook and a perpetually glazed look on his face. He sits in cafés and sketches, but really he's trying to get girls to contemplate his glossy hair and wispy mustache, though it's unclear if even he's aware of his obvious motivation. Later, he spends a lot of time following a poor young woman ( Pilar Lopez de Ayala) he thinks might be Sylvie, a potential soulmate he met a few years ago and has been trying to find ever since. Sylvia is an intensely lovable movie about a less than impressive dreamer who seems to think that because he's having a reverie, it's OK to act badly. His walks, despite their dubious motivation, give director Jose Luis Guerin a great excuse to slowly travel through the home of the European Parliament and legislative capital of the EU. Read more >>
|
|
|
| |
Once you get past their accents, this cast struck me as doing the best job I have yet seen of Irish, Brits and Scots playing Chekhov's Russians. Each actor manages to capture, via languid gesture and subtle intonation, that peculiar combination of bored entitlement and barely perceptible unease that likely attends a time in which enormous political/social/economic change is developing. And Kosashvili's direction keeps the camera keenly attuned to this: Nothing is hammered home, but it's all there. Read more >> |
|
| |
|
|
