Ghostbusters, New York & Self-Involvement

This post was originally published in July 2008, in accordance with the New York and Self-Involvement blogathons. Ghostbusters was recently released on Blu-ray in honor of the 25th anniversary of the film’s premiere.

When I heard that the New York in the Movies Blogathon and the Self-Involvement Blogathon were happening around the same time, I [...]

TWO LOVERS on DVD

T
his review was originally published in February. Two Lovers is out on DVD this week.
Rarely has movie love been handled with both the dreamy indulgence and the cynicism that James Grey pulls off in Two Lovers. It’s a pity that the film, which premiered nine months ago at Cannes and is now rolling out on [...]

LOW AND BEHOLD at Anthology Film Archives

Zack Godshall’s Low and Behold, which has been somewhat missing in action since premiering at Sundance 2007, screens tonight at Anthology Film Archives in New York before coming to DVD via Carnivalesque in November. Starring eventual Alexander the Last dreamboat Barlow Jacobs, who also co-wrote and produced, it’s a drama/documentary hybrid feature set in just-post-Katrina [...]

KAMP KATRINA on DVD

David Redmon and Ashley Sabin are releasing their second feature, Kamp Katrina, on DVD today via their Carnivalesque Films imprint. I wrote about the film nearly two years ago when it screened in New York, and described the film’s exploitation of the odd beauty of low grade imagery, a stylistic trope which the directors have [...]

PUBLIC ENEMIES Review

Virtually since the production of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies was announced, various parties have expressed concern that the video fetishism of Collateral and Miami Vice would make a less than appropriate presentation format for a glammy gangster piece set in the 1930s. If *only* Public Enemies looked more like Miami Vice — if only Mann [...]

Werner Herzog’s Diaries Excerpted Online

In Coppola’s house on Broadway. Outside the wind is howling, whipping the laurel bushes. The sailboats in the bay are lying almost flat, the waves sharp-contoured and restless. The Alcatraz Light is flashing signals, in broad daylight. None of my friends is here. It is hard to buckle down to work, to shoulder this heavy [...]

LAFF 2009: PASSENGER SIDE, Michael Jackson and nostalgia

Maybe it’s not fair for me to begin the review of a festival film with a lengthy digression on nostalgia and the death of Michael Jackson, but somehow all of these things seem to point in the same direction (and not geographically speaking, despite the connection to Westwood). So please, bear with me:
The Associated Press [...]

THE HURT LOCKER & Kathryn Bigelow’s Girl Problem

This piece was originally published in March during the AFI Dallas Film Festival. The Hurt Locker opens in select theaters today.
When I was finishing my BFA in the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 00s, Kathryn Bigelow was the school’s most famous filmmaker alum, despite the fact that she matriculated [...]

Michael Jackson Dies

This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Michael Jackson, according to all major media outlets, has died.
Earlier today, David Poland wrote a post titled Death is the Ultimate Disinfectant, in which he noted that most of those memorializing Farrah Fawcett (whose death was announced earlier today) have conveniently chosen to forget “more [...]

OCTOBER COUNTRY Review

October Country, Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri’s debut documentary feature describing a year in the lives of four generations of Moshers living in a depressed upstate New York suburb, is a rare work of impressionistic nonfiction. Its patchwork of visual detail often reminded me of the photographs of Gregory Crewdson (whose work you might have [...]

New Label Factory 25 to release FROWNLAND

Matt Grady, formerly of Plexifilm, is launching a film and music distribution label called Factory 25, which has bought world rights (barring France) to Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland. According to a just-dropped press release, Factory 25 “will concentrate on releasing films theatrically, digitally and on DVD, as well as in conceptualized limited edition DVD/Vinyl combination packages.” [...]

Farrah Fawcett dies of cancer, age 62

After a long, highly-publicized battle, Farrah Fawcett has succumbed to cancer at the age of 62. Though unquestionably better known for her tabloid-fodder love life and five-decade-spanning career in TV, Fawcett’s filmography includes a remarkable number of camp and cult classics. See clips of her work in Logan’s Run, Myra Breckinridge and Stanley Donen’s Saturn [...]

LAFF 2009: The Break-ups

I’ve seen five films in three days at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and every single one is, at least partially, about the break-up of a romantic relationship. Three of these films are in the Narrative Competition: Harmony & Me, Hollywood, je t’aime, and Wah Do Dem. It would be an interesting exercise to try [...]

SilverDocs: Film Criticism and The Fear

On Friday evening at SilverDocs, I attended a panel on film criticism moderated by Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post, and featuring contributions from critics David Edelstein, Lisa Schwarzbaum and Amy Taubin, and filmmaker/documentary programmer Thom Powers. In his opening remarks, Kennicott positioned the panel as a referendum of sorts on “Wanted: Documentary Critics”, [...]

CONVENTION at SilverDocs

On a panel discussion before its world premiere screening at SilverDocs last night, AJ Schnack used the phrase “Robert Altman-esque” to describe the construction of his new film, Convention. This is accurate as a reference to the stylistic tropes we classically think of when we think of Altman — shot by nine filmmaker/camerapersons, Convention tracks [...]