Luca Guadagnino joins supreme stylist Paolo Sorrentino (“L’amico di famiglia”) and Matteo Garrone (“Gomorrah”) in the renewal of Italian Cinema. Guadagnino’s exquisite melodrama “I Am Love” (“Io Sono l’Amor”) wow’s from its retro credit sequence to its last gothic coda. The ambitious melodrama recalls Visconti in its stately sumptuous design, Antonioni in its angst filled tracking shots and use of architecture as a “character”. Cinephiles will delight in its references to Michael Powell, Hitchcock, Ophuls and Sirk.In a credit sequence reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden age, steep angled shots of snowy Milan play against John Adams’s nervous score. Kitchen staff, liveried…
Author: Robin Menken
If François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” launched The Nouvelle Vague, “Breathless” was the salvo over the bow that was heard around the world. (Chabrol’s “Le Beau Serge” (1958) was little known outside of France.)Critics of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma, turned filmmakers, reconstructed Hollywood genre films through the lens of Italian neo-realism. Their young casts, jazzy black and white hand-held location shots (in natural light), experimental editing, voice over narrative style, mixed in Godard’s case with slogans and visual cultural quotes imbedded in the image, redefined Cinema for their generation. Hollywood’s young quake, culminating in the golden age of Hollywood…
Jorge W. Atalla’s Kidnapping, (Sequestro) which won both the Best Director and Best Documentary and received a lengthy standing ovation on opening night will be developed as a narrative feature. Exec producer Frederico Lapenda will produce the action adaptation from a script by co-producer Christian Gudegast.Jorge Wolney Atalla’s in your face documentary “Kidnapping” (“Sequestro”) chronicles the crisis of extortion kidnappings in Brazil. Atalla spent four years filming victims, victim’s families, and the officers of Sao Paulo’s Divisão Anti-Sequestro (DAS) a special Anti-Kidnapping Division formed in 2001 when the epidemic of kidnappings became untenable. Victims from six to eighty, and every…
While less side-splittingly funny that the giddy, demented “OSS 117, Nest Of Spies”, fans will find plenty to laugh at in the second installment of this French homage to spy films of the 60’s and 70’s.Director Michel Hazanavicius’s films are based on the French series of 117 pulp novels published by “Fleuve Noir Espionnage” from 1949 to 1992 (before James Bond!) The adventures of Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, an American-French colonel who worked for the OSS, was so popular that after author Jean Bruce died his wife Josette Bruce and their children wrote another 167 titles. Six prior films…
Director Leslie Zemeckis (wife of Robert Zemeckis) puts us up front and center in an homage to the vanished institution of stage Burlesque. Burlesque which burgeoned in the mid-1800s, along with it’s big sister Vaudeville, shared some of the stars of Vaudeville, flourished during the depression, and ultimately died due to radio and movies.The film briefly touches on Margie Hart’s act, which led to Mayor La Guardia’s 1937 decision to close New York’s burlesque houses. Herbert Minsky labeled Burlesque an American art while civic and religious leaders across the county pushed politicians to close the “vice” places. The film charts…
Swiss actor-filmmaker Ruedi Gerber’s inspiring tribute to modern dance pioneer Anna Halprin portrays the visionary dancer who’s still making an impact into her 90’s. Gerber brackets his fascinating archival footage with Halprin’s autobiographical solo performance at the Joyce Theatre. Watching the rambunctious 86 year-old Anna Halprin acts and dance across stage is riveting. She danced since a child, in love with movement. An image of young Anna’s clowning on her bike is narrated, “Riding my bicycle, feeling like a bird flying…I am an ecstatic bird flying.” Tyro dancer Halprin’s comic Chaplin-moves in James Broughton’s “Golden Positive” introduces us to the…
Ji-woon Kim’s “The Good The Bad And The Weird”, the most expensive film ever filmed in South Korea, is a relentless, brilliantly entertaining pastiche of great Westerns.Kim’s visual language is inventive and enticing. From the opening credit sequence (raptors chasing the cast names) through epic opening and closing action sequences, stylist Kim uses every trick in the playbook to delight, excite and thrill. Quoting Leone, Spielberg in his prime, George Miller and the Shaw Brothers, Kim owns the screen. Skipping the grand themes of Westerns (freedom versus the encroachment of society) Kim relies on the trio of lead performances to…
The third annual Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival (LABRFF 2010) celebrates the 15th Anniversary of the New Brazilian Cinema, the most important period of Brazilian film product since Cinema Novo brought Brazilian films to the world audience in the 1960’s. LABRFF will be held at the Landmark Theatre from April 27 to May 2The Opening Night Film Heitor Dhalia’s “A Drift” (À Deriva), starring Vincent Cassel and Camilla Belle, earned a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival -Un Certain Regard in 2009 for its emotionally rich tale of a fourteen-year old girl’s coming of age revelations spending summer vacation…
Visual Communications (VC), the nation’s premier Asian Pacific American media arts center will present 170 outstanding films in the 2010 edition of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF). The largest festival of Asian films in the United States, LAAPFF celebrates Asian Pacific Heritage Month with a diverse slate of films and videos by Asian Pacific American and Asian international directors from 20 countries. The opening night film, Arvin Chen’s rom-com “Au Revoir Tapei” (a Berlin Film Fest hit) plays April 29, 2010 at the DGA (7PM). Produced by Wim Wenders and LAAPFF alum In-Ah Lee (The Grace Lee…
Nina Paley’s beautifully-animated “Sita Sings The Blues” mixes a feminist retelling of parts of the “The Ramayana”, with the true life tale of her intercontinental break up to fascinating effect.Her postmodern flash animation psychedelic images, based in part on the classic Gujarat style of drawings is endlessly seductive, especially when she adds the swing styling of Annette Hanshaw. Watching buxom Sita croon (in Hanshaw’s voice) to her hunky blue skinned Rama is too silly.The lovers spoon in an abstract geometrical forest surrounded by Hindu monsters, which come apart like Mr. Potato Head, all gorgeously colored in Paley’s trippy bright palette.…