HIROKAZU KORE-EDA’S STILL WALKING
By Damon Smith

A connoisseur of longing and remembrance who brings great sensitivity to each of his reflective fables, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda should be better known in the States, as his films extend the tradition of world-class artists like Naruse and Ozu. Enthralled with the operation of memory and the impact of grief on the lives of everyday people, Kore-eda has created a body of work that’s as rich with feeling as it is modest in tone. In Maborosi (1995), Kore-eda told the story of a quietly devastated young widow struggling to move on after her husband commits suicide. He then departed from this film’s elegant compositions and moody, color-saturated production design to draw on the observational techniques he’d developed earlier in his career as a documentary filmmaker. After Life (1998), built around interviews he conducted with hundreds of participants, visits an institutional purgatory where the recently deceased are asked to choose a single recollection to relive for eternity as a film. Distance (2001) and Nobody Knows (2004) are both loosely based on high-profile news items: the emotional aftermath of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin-poisoning tragedy and the heartrending story of three school-age children who survived for 200 days in an apartment after being abandoned by their mother. Even Hana (2006), an Edo period piece, has none of the usual trappings of the jidai geki genre, instead emphasizing the gentle, domestic rituals of a reluctant samurai-turned-village teacher who elects not to avenge the murder of his father. Throughout these films, Kore-eda studiously avoids the pitfalls of cynicism and sentimentality, exploring the private worlds of vulnerable, emotionally complex people with extraordinary grace and subtlety.

If Kore-eda is deeply attuned to the mystery of memory and the inner lives of those grappling with loss, he is also attentive to the subtle rhythms of family life, which he captures in an unobtrusive, naturalistic style. His latest feature, Still Walking, surveys a low-key family gathering at the home of proud, retired doctor Kyohei (Yoshio Harada) and his wife Toshiko (Kirin Kiki), who have assembled their relations to honor their eldest son, a drowning victim, on the occasion … Read the rest

ROYAL FLUSH FEST ANNOUNCES LINE UP

The Royal Flush Festival, formerly known as the Evil City Film Fest, announces its lineup of independent films, music videos, live music performances, and underground art openings taking place October 15th-18th at Anthology Film Archives and other venues throughout New York.

Royal Flush Festival’s film component will open with Merle Becker’s ode to American rock poster art, American Artifact, on Thursday, Oct. 15, that will include a Q&A with the director along with artist Tara McPhereson. The centerpiece film will be Royal Flush Festival alum Daryl Wein with his narrative feature comedy, Breaking Upwards, on Saturday, Oct. 17. The festival will also feature “Evil City Horror Films” including Pig Hunt and God of Vampires and will conclude with Dean Bajramovic‘s Gangster Exchange on Sunday, Oct. 18.

Unique art events will also take place each day including the American Artifact Underground Rock Poster Show at Showroom NYC following the film’s screening on Thursday, Oct. 15th, the outdoor Automorphosis Art Car Show and the Antagonist Art Show at Mindy Wyatt Gallery, both on Saturday, Oct. 17th, as well as appearances by legendary New York City activist and street artist, Ron English, and many others.

To learn more about the fest, click here.… Read the rest

SPIKE LEE’S FILM ABOUT STEW’S PASSING STRANGE

By Scott Macaulay

Back in 2005 Matt Ross selected STEW for our “25 New Faces” list. STEW is the multi-media art duo consisting of theater artists Stew and Heidi Rodewald, and they had just staged their show Passing Strange at the Public Theater and attended the Sundance Producer’s Lab. Four years later a film version of Passing Strange opens at the IFC Center, directed by Spike Lee. Check it out this weekend and meet Stew and Heidi, who will be appearing in person at the shows. Here’s the trailer:

… Read the rest

MUSIC VIDEO’S DEFLATIONARY DEATH SPIRAL

By Scott Macaulay

I remember being involved in a music video in the 1980s. At the time I was programming director at New York’s The Kitchen and we would rent out the space to video shoots to help pay the rent. The space got rented out to a big video with a budget in the mid-six-figures. They took both floors, built for a few days, shot for a few days, and envelopes of petty cash were handed out like candy. A few years later my partner and I produced a couple of music videos and wondered how we’d pull it off on only $100,000.

Now, music video budgets have shrunken even further just as have the budgets of indie films. Here’s Estevan Oriol, who has directed pieces for D12, Cypress Hill, and Blink 182, among others, decrying the deflationary effects of music video’s new guard.

… Read the rest

WERNER HERZOG’S MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE TRAILER

By Scott Macaulay

Werner Herzog has not just his Bad Lieutenant rethink at Toronto but also his David Lynch-executive produced psychological crime drama My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Strip out the title cards and the formulaic voiceover and there is some vintage Herzog in this trailer.

… Read the rest

“HUSBANDS”

By Jason Guerrasio

If you never saw Husbands during its brief release in 1970 through Columbia (mostly misunderstood by critics, audiences and even the studio that released it) or bought it on VHS, you’ve probably only heard of it through discussions people have of John Cassavetes’ work or books written on the actor/director.

If you’ve read about the film, like I have, you’re probably excited for this release, as for the first time, Husbands is being released close to how Cassavetes wanted it to be seen. It is one of my favorite chapters in Ray Carney’s seminal book on Cassavetes’ life and work, Cassavetes on Cassavetes (Faber and Faber). In the book Cassavetes describes Husbands as the “…craziest, most painful project that I’ve ever been involved in.”

At the time Cassavetes began thinking about making Husbands it sounds like it was motivated by money. He was still in post on Faces and had huge debts to pay off so he decided to make a film that would be extremely attractive to a studio. He asked his famous friends Lee Marvin and Anthony Quinn to play opposite him in a story about three guys who mourn the loss of their best friend by going on a alcohol fueled trip around the world. Unfortunately, when the three men met to work out the story and characters Marvin and Quinn did not get along, putting Cassavetes back to square one. Having always wanted to work with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, both highly touted at the time, he approached them for the roles and though he didn’t have money or a studio for the film yet, showing them Faces sold the actors that they wanted to make a film with Cassavetes. This would be the start of a long collaboration for the two actors in Cassavetes films as Falk would star later in A Woman Under The Influence and Big Trouble and Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night.

Finding money through an Italian financier (there was only enough money for Cassavetes to shoot in New York and London, so the … Read the rest

MICHAEL MOORE PREMIERES CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY TRAILER

By Scott Macaulay

Timely? Too late? Successfully satirical or else defeated by the same complexities that have befuddled the lawmakers themselves? We’ll see what happens when Moore takes his Everyman Avenger persona into the dizzying world of derivatives and credit default swaps.

Embedded video from CNN Video… Read the rest

JEREMIAH ZAGAR’S IN A DREAM ON HBO 2 TONIGHT

By Scott Macaulay

In our Spring, 2009 issue, Lauren Wissot interviewed In a Dream director Jeremiah Zagar as well as his longtime producer Jeremy Yaches and their executive producers Pamela Tanner Boll and Geralyn White Dreyfous. The feature, which is a fascinating look at artistic obsession and its effects on an entire Philadelphia family, receives its broadcast premiere on HBO2 tonight at 8pm with further screenings as detailed on this schedule:

Wednesday, 8/19 @ 8pm – HBO2 East
Wednesday, 8/19 @ 11pm – HBO2 West
Monday, 8/24 @ 6:30pm – HBO2 East
Monday, 824 @ 9:30pm – HBO2 West
Friday, 8/28 @ 1:30am – HBO2 East
Friday, 8/28 @ 4:30am – HBO2 West

The film is also available On Demand until September 14.

Here is a brief excerpt of Wissot’s interview:

Filmmaker: I know that Jeremiah is a big fan of Errol Morris, and that definitely comes through in In a Dream. Are there other films or books or works of art that have guided or inspired you as you have worked out the themes and forms of your films?

Jeremy: Tarnation is actually a really huge influence on this film. The first trailer that we made was tremendously influenced by Tarnation.

Jeremiah: We have a long list of influences. Errol Morris and Werner Herzog — we love what they do with documentary form. We love the idea of making the real surreal. Also, Lynn Ramsey — she is an enormous influence. She composes shots in a way that I think nobody else in the world does. But Jeremy and I have been working together for almost 13 years, and all we used to do was sit and watch movies. I mean, it’s incalculable how many influences we have…. You want to hear a really funny story? So the first movie I ever saw that made me want to make movies was The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen. It was an inspiration for one of our shorts. So we went to London to show the film, and we were watching another movie, and it was so bad we

… Read the rest

ROGER EBERT ON THE DEATH PANELS

By Scott Macaulay

Peter Bowen at FilmInFocus pointed me towards this striking Roger Ebert piece entitled “Death Panels: A Most Excellent Phrase.” Weighing in on the current health reform debate from the perspective of a man who has endured several life-threatening illnesses and operations in recent years, Ebert illustrates his article with images and film clips from a movie that shows us what a real death panel would actually be like.

From Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc:

… Read the rest

LUCRECIA MARTEL, “THE HEADLESS WOMAN”

By Nick Dawson

MARÍA ONETTO IN DIRECTOR LUCRECIA MARTEL’S THE HEADLESS WOMAN. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING.

Over the course of the past decade, Lucrecia Martel has established herself as one of the most gifted and original filmmakers around. The Argentine auteur was born in Salta, a city in the northwest of Argentina, in 1966, and spent her teenage years capturing much of her family’s daily life on film. In 1986, she studied Communication Science and had stints at two film schools, Avellaneda Experimental, studying animation, and the National Experimentation Filmmaking School in Buenos Aires. However because she never finished her film studies (one of those schools shut down due to lack of funds), she ultimately completed her cinematic education on her own and considers herself to be self-taught. In the late 80s and early 90s, she made a string of short films, starting with the animations El 56 (1988) and Piso 24 (1989), and culminating in the award-winning live action Rey Muerto (1995). Martel subsequently made documentaries and children’s programs for Argentinian television, and in 2001 she got her breakthrough with her feature debut, La Ciénaga, an unsettling, off-kilter portrait of a family’s summer slumming it at their crummy country home. The film premiered at Sundance, won the Alfred Bauer Award at Berlin, and received rave reviews wherever it played. Martel’s 2004 follow-up, The Holy Girl, about the sexual and religious passions of two Argentinian teenage girls, premiered at Cannes and consolidated Martel’s reputation as one of the finest emerging talents in world cinema.

Martel’s third feature as writer-director, The Headless Woman, sees her return once again to her native Salta, where her previous two movies have also been set. The film’s protagonist is Verónica (María Onetto), a glamorous middle-aged dentist whose comfortable, untroubled existence is disrupted when she runs over something in the road. She initially thinks she just hit a dog, but over time she grows convinced that it was actually a person. Inspired by nightmares Martel herself had of having killed someone, The Headless Woman has a strange dreamlike quality, existing in a world that feels both … Read the rest