Matt Tynauer’s doc Valentino: The Last Emperor (see our Toronto coverage here) has been scheduled for a NY premiere at Film Forum since December, but now indieWIRE is reporting that the film will have a further theatrical rollout via Magnolia’s Truly Indie asissted self-distribution model.
This is interesting timing, because in the context of a conversation about self-distribution the other day, somebody asked me if Truly Indie was still running, and I couldn’t remember the last film I knew for sure that they helped to release. When the Valentino news broke, I went on Truly Indie’s website, and saw that they have been involved recently with the release of films I’ve either covered (Boogie Man) or at least heard of (Lake City, starring Sissy Spacek). It’s interesting that some of these releases would make news and others wouldn’t — I don’t know what it means, exactly, but it’s interesting.
A sampling of the many special film events happening around the city this week:
Tonight Anthology Film Archives will host the premiere of Flaherty NYC, a new monthly series of works taken from the lineup of the Flaherty Film Seminar held earlier this summer. Tonight’s program focuses on a number of shorts by Oliver Husain, including Q, which is described as “a fantasy of globalization set in a multicultural consumer space that fulfills its shoppers’ and viewers’ every desire and need.”More info here.
Jody Lambert’s Of All the Things, a documentary about his songwriter/performer father Dennis Lambert and his unlikely “comeback” concert in the Philippines, screens at Stranger Than Fiction at the IFC Center tomorrow night. Father and son will be at the screening for a Q & A; the following night, Dennis Lambert will perform a showcase at Joe’s Pub. More info at the Stranger Than Fiction Facebook page.
The Hamptons Film Festival begins on Wednesday, and it’s opening and closing with two gems that I first saw in Toronto. The opening night film is Valentino: The Last Emperor, Matt Tynauer’sseverely underrated doc on the the designer, his long-time business partner/boyfriend, and The End of Couture As We Know It. The closing night film is Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, which I’ve now seen twice and still can’t quite figure out how to write about. I might try for round three this weekend. It’s depressing as hell, but I think it might be my favorite American film of the year. See the trailer above.
A film about the world’s greatest living couturier would have to work overtime in order to not be beautiful, but Matt Tyrnauer’s Valentino: The Last Emperor manages to find a certain poetics behind the eye candy. Where Unzipped––to my mind the last great fashion documentary––was heavily invested in a kind of designer-as-tortured artist schematics that inevitably could only resolve themselves, competition doc-style, in a final runway show, Valentino is both a more surface-oriented portrait of a man and a deeper examination of the changing politics of the luxury industry.
The 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival begins today, and Kevin Kelly and I will be there for the next ten days reporting back. What follows is not exactly an iron-clad preview of our Toronto coverage––in addition to some of the films below, I’m definitely planning to see new works by Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Jonathan Demme and Richard Linklater, and would of course recommend that anyone on the ground see some of my favorites from past festivals, including Medicine for Melancholy and A Christmas Tale. This is more of a list of predictions of what everyone else is going to be talking about, while I’m pushing my glasses up my nose and rushing to to the next screening of the a South Korean movie about drunken lonliness. Enjoy! If you have your own predictions for what will catch fire in Ontario, let us know in the comments.
Obviously, anything with “porno” in the title has a certain automatic contingent (hello, Google searchers! Sorry to disappoint!) But then, so does anything with the credit “written and directed by Kevin Smith.” And then there’s the leading man. Some perspective: Smith’s last three films have grossed an average of $26 million each; the last three films starring Seth Rogen have grossed an average of $117 million each. With Jay and Silent Bob finally retired (we think/hope), and Rogen in tow for the usual, MPAA-baiting Smithism, Porno could––however ironically––become what Jersey Girl was supposed to be: the tipping point that expands the Smith fan base beyond the longtime Clerks faithful.
Crowdpleasers make me itch. But then, to borrow a line from David Fincher, I’m an asshole. Assuming you are not, you might be interested to know that Slumdog Millionaire shows all the symptoms of becoming The Next Juno. Like Juno, Slumdog premiered in a TBA slot at Telluride, where reaction from all but our own Kevin Buist was enthusiastic, evenhyperbolically so. Also ike Juno, it’s a music-fueled piece of pop art in which young love results from unlikely circumstances. And, thanks to Warner Brothers’ loss of faith in this tier of the distribution market, it’s now being distributed by Fox Searchlight––just like Juno. If looking for The Next Juno is now part of our jobs, at least Searchlight is taking all the arduous work out of it.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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