 |
|
Now
in its third year, DOC
NYC is an omnibus fest: Its 115
shorts and features mark an effort
to create a populist documentary summit that plays strongly to specific
constituencies within the ever-expanding culture that non-fiction
filmmaking has become. Steve Dollar reports from the fest on The
Central Park Five,
in which Ken
Burns (in
league with daughter Sarah and David McMahon, her husband and longtime
Burns associate) prowls Errol
Morris/ Werner
Herzog
turf to explore how five teenaged black and Hispanic boys spent a
collective 33 ½ years in jail, falsely convicted in the
infamous 1989
Central Park Jogger case. Also, radical activist-turned FBI snitch doc Informant,
Shepard
& Dark,
and Only
the Young.
Read
more >> |
|
|
In
This Dispatch:
- What's
New: Dark Horse, 2 Days in New York, and more.
- What
We're Watching: The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, The Forgiveness of
Blood (Criterion), We Can't Go Home Again.
- Explore:
Film of the Week: Burning Hot Summer.
|
|
|
We've
asked it before:
Is Welcome
to the
Dollhouse
auteur Todd
Solondz a
misanthrope, or a humanist whose characters just happen to engage in
ugly, perverse, cruel behavior? The NY Time's A.O.
Scott answers: "He surveys the
human geography of his native
suburbia with what looks like unbridled disgust but is actually an
unquenchable and steadfast love. Dark
Horse may be his warmest,
most generous movie, but it also casts
a beam of empathy backward, illuminating the baffled, benighted, icky
souls who have populated Mr. Solondz’s universe from the
start."
Another look by J.
Hoberman for Tablet Mag: "With
its lovingly detailed caricatures,
fondness for extreme scenarios, and snarky nerd’s-eye view of
ordinary
misery, cinema Solondz is a successor to the underground comix of the
1970s." |
|
|
|
Julie
Delpy is back in the role crafted 2007's 2
Days in Paris
with this "matchless New York romantic comedy with language full of
smarts and crudeness...a hilarious 48-hour portrait of an atypical
modern family." ( Caitlin
Colford, Paste Magazine). SF
Gate's Mick
LaSalle praises, "Delpy shows
real skill in her ability to take
things to the edge, while keeping the actions clear and the comic beats
crisp and clean...If Delpy's first film announced that she was someone
capable of directing a movie, her second announces that her greatest
talent might really be as a comedy director, a seriously good
one." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What
was I expecting from this Balkans movie? Something in the way of the
infamous A Serbian Film: lots of transgression and sex, adding up to
mostly slick/sick exploitation. There is a lot of transgression and sex
in The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, the Serbian film from
writer/director Mladen Djordjevic, but by the finale of this amazing
movie, it has risen so far above mere exploitation that I think the
word will no longer cross your mind. Read more >> |
|
|
|
|
Soon
after eschewing socialism in the early ‘90s, Albania was one
of the
first countries to re-form a representative government. However, many
Albanians returned to an older form of self-governance: the Kanun.
A set of moral laws dating back at least to the fifteenth century, the
Kanun is essentially a ratification of common courtesies and basic
principles, transcending political or religious affiliation.
Read more >> |
|
|
|
|
One
of the more anticipated sidebar items is the immaculate restoration of
Nicholas Ray's 1976 "student film" We Can't Go Home Again, the product
of five years of labor. Eight years after essentially collapsing on the
set of 1963's 55 Days at Peking and long after having exhausted studio
goodwill with his drug use and erratic reliability, Ray wound up
teaching for a spell at upstate New York's Harpur College. Over the
years, Ray had a lot of wild ideas the studios wouldn't let him
indulge... Read
more >> |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
DVD
of the Week: Burning Hot Summer.
French auteur Philippe
Garrel's work has always been a
tough sell. He began in experimental cinema in the '60s, personally
processing his first short, and only gradually worked his way towards
narrative. His American "breakthrough"—2005's Regular
Lovers,
four decades into his career—is a nearly three-hour,
black-and-white, Academy-ratio portrait of May '68's discontented
survivors.
Read
more >>
|
|
|
|
|
Blood
Feuds
Podcasts!
|
|
