A dispatch from the New York Film Festival on the latest from Kelly Reichardt, Oliver Laxe, Eloy Enciso Cachafeiro, and Pietro Marcello.
Dashing or menacing, depending on the role, Rutger Hauer was a one-of-a-kind screen presence.
Rest in Peace, Al Nalbandian; Merging of Hollywood and China; Nnedi Okorafor on whitewashing; Decline of the Western; Kristen Stewart on bisexuality.
A tribute to the one and only Leonard Cohen.
The latest on Blu-ray and DVD including two Criterion Altman releases, Imperium, Anthropoid, Bad Moms, and more!
A report on the Museum of the Moving Image's Salute to Warren Beatty.
A celebration of actor Warren Oates in anticipation of an upcoming retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC.
Sheila writes: Happy New Year! In the wake of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," I came across a video put together by violinist Taylor Davis, where she plays the famous themes from John Williams' original score, both "light" and "dark." Arranged, orchestrated and performed by Davis, it's a fun and rousing celebration of the possibilities inherent in that music. Have a look!
Roger Ebert's 2003 book, "The Great Movies," is on sale as an e-book for $1.99 through May 24th.
A guide to the latest on Blu-ray and DVD, including "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya," "St. Vincent," and four fantastic Criterion releases.
Roger Ebert's essay on film in the 1978 edition of the Britannica publication, "The Great Ideas Today."
A piece by contributor Matt Fagerholm that connects "Prairie Home Companion," "Synecdoche, New York," and "Life Itself" in the sweet by and by.
I love the Dark Knight Trilogy for one simple reason: it gave me the permission that I didn't know I was looking for to dislike all the rest of the Superhero movies. The high point of my dislike came in the highly ambitious "The Avengers" of this past summer. Don't get the wrong idea: as far as superhero movies go, it is one of the best, or at least it is one of the biggest. But something was wrong. It suffers from the same thing that the whole genre has suffered from. First and foremost, we are watching a bunch of costumed adults pretending that they're children in an expensive suburban Daycare. Second, the genre has otherwise exhausted itself to the point of exciting ritual. Third, the movies in the Dark Knight trilogy are solid and smart entertainment (though not without their flaws).
For some reason I have the notion that the guy with the camera, getting the low-angle shots of Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) against that American flag that stretches across the Parthenon from sea to shining sea, is the cinematographer Paul Lohmann. Is that right?
I didn't know it at the time, but 35 years ago the course of my life was set into motion. It began, no doubt, the previous summer with Roman Polanski's "Chinatown," followed the next June by Robert Altman's "Nashville." If those two movies -- seen at the impressionable ages of 16 and 17 -- don't thoroughly transform your world, then I don't know what would. I'd always loved the arts, but from that moment on I knew for certain that movies were the art form of the century -- my century -- because never before could such vibrant, kinetic masterpieces have been born. They made me feel fortunate to have come into the world just at the moment in human history when, at long last, such miracles became possible.
View image The House Next Door.
Now that Matt Zoller Seitz has announced that he's moving on, back to Dallas from Brooklyn and into full-time filmmaking, I thought I'd take a quick glance over the shoulder at some of the writing he's done at his home, The House Next Door, since he opened the place January 1, 2006. Of course, he's done a lot of other writing -- for The Dallas Observer, The Newark Star-Ledger (the Sopranos' hometown paper), the New York Press and the New York Times among other outlets -- but he became a habit with me through the House.
Matt has been a generous proprietor (sometimes perhaps too generous, but that's hardly a grievous fault). Today the House Next Door masthead lists more than 40 contributors -- novices and vets alike -- including the invaluable editor-cum-landlord Keith Uhlich.
At the same time that I'm excited for Matt (who, by the way, I've never met face-to-face), I'm not going to pretend I'm not bummed. This is how I deal with the grief part: Let's celebrate MSZ for all he's done in (and for) the blogosphere. Consider this a very short clip reel. As the lights go down on one phase of Matt's career, and the curtain opens on another, sit back and immerse yourself...
Oh, and sorry about that headline, guys. (That's as in Zoller-, not polter-.)
Open House (first House Next Door post, January 1, 2006): My grandfather, a self-educated German-American farmer from Olathe, Kansas, believed that no journey, however seemingly circuitous or self-destructive, was ever truly unnecessary, or even avoidable. Sometimes we just have to continue along a particular path for inexplicable, personal reasons, disregarding warnings of friends and family and perhaps our own internal voices, until we arrive at our destination, whatever it may be. This type of journey, my grandfather said, was the equivalent of "driving around the block backward to get to the house next door."
Great Movies
