The Auteurs

Grindhouse is back, at least in Los Angeles and Chicago. Cinefamily is screening 70s-era exploitation double features every Friday in February, a series co-presented by Temple of Schlock: "These films weren't all just mustaches and hot pants - they were also, intentionally or accidentally, artistic outlets for aspiring film students, movie-loving outsiders, and all manner of dreamers. Sharing our point of view is the new DVD label Cultra Video, whose mission is to restore and release these long-forgotten exploitation gems with an emphasis on their artistic value, trashy good times or not." Read More

Updated through 2/9.

The last round of awards to be presented during this year's just-wrapped International Film Festival Rotterdam were announced Saturday night. The IFFR 2010 Audience Award goes to Álvaro Pastor and Antonio Naharro's Yo, también, the Dioraphte Award "for the Hubert Bals Fund film held in highest regard" to Hawa Essuman's Soul Boy, produced by Tom Tykwer.

2010's three winners of the VPRO Tiger Awards, given to debut or second features by new directors, are Paz Fábrega's Agua fría de mar, Pedro González-Rubio's Alamar and Anocha Suwichakornpong's Mundane History (I posted first impressions of those last two here; meantime, indieWIRE reports that Film Movement has picked up Alamar for distribution in the US). The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) has presented its Rotterdam award to Ben Russell's Let Each One Go Where He May and the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) has selected Whang Cheol-Mean's Moscow. There are other awards, too, of course, and if you're a completist, you'll find all the announcements here. Read More

Related Films

Eros plus massacre

Dir Yoshishige Yoshida

1969 Japan

Day for Night

Dir François Truffaut

1973 France

A Brighter Summer Day

Dir Edward Yang

1991 Taiwan

Winter wears on, and again, most of the more interesting openings of the week are local, beginning, almost inevitably, New York. Read More

Related Films

Eyes Wide Open

Dir Haim Tabakman

2009 Israel

Red Riding: 1974

Dir Julian Jarrold

2009 United Kingdom

From Paris with Love

Dir Pierre Morel

2010 France

Dear John

Dir Lasse Hallström

United States

Frozen

Dir Adam Green

2009 United States

Red Riding: 1980

Dir James Marsh

2009 United Kingdom

Just a very quick Daily roundup from within the Rotterdam maelstrom. First and foremost, a new issue of Bright Lights Film Journal is up - but hold on, as editor Gary Morris explains, there's more: "Yes, we've joined the contemporary makeover craze, redesigning, restructuring, and recoding every single page of Bright Lights. We've also merged our popular blog, Bright Lights After Dark, with the site." As for Issue 67, "It's one of our biggest standalones, with lots of new writers joining the BL stalwarts in one of our most exciting issues." Read More

Related Films

Ajami

Dir Scandar COPTI & Yaron SHANI

2009 Israel

Ran

Dir Akira Kurosawa

1985 Japan

Yelena and Nikolay Renard's camera does not move once in Mama. There are no cuts within scenes. Not a single word is spoken. A man, absurdly obese, heads home, stopping once by a statue of a doe nuzzling a baby deer—to eat. At home, Mama waits, furious. Son arrives, she bathes and feeds him, making sure to rise, reach over and angrily tap a few grains of salt onto each bite of hard-boiled egg just before he shoves it in his mouth. The wide angle compositions, the duration and silence may conjure associative flashes back to Eastern European animation of the 60s and 70s or to Roy Andersson, only without the perfect palette gloss or overt humor. It's probably overreaching to suggest that, as a grotesque embodiment of maternal instincts gone awry, this man may stand in for a people nostalgic for state pampering. Regardless, this Russian feature, made for all of 8000 dollars, offers 71 minutes of oddly pleasurable discomfort—nowhere near as dark or challenging as, say, the work of Boris Mikhailov, but heading in that direction and stopping short, just this side of the truly dangerous.

  Read More

Related Films

Mama

Dir Nikolay Renard & Yelena Renard

2010 Russia

To the Sea

Dir Pedro González-Rubio

2009 Mexico

Vital Signs

Dir Sophie Deraspe

2009 Canada

Mundane History

Dir Anocha Suwichakornpong

2009 Thailand

So the awards were presented at Sundance last night, and as Eugene Hernandez writes in his full report at indieWIRE, "Debra Granik's Winter's Bone led the US Dramatic Competition, taking both the grand jury prize and a special jury prize for screenwriting, while suspected player Blue Valentine was entirely shut out of the winners.... In the US Documentary Competition, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Restrepo led the winners, taking the grand jury prize." We've got a roundup on Restrepo here, and there's just enough time before heading off to Rotterdam to take a quick look at what the critics have been saying about Winter's Bone, whose next stop on the circuit is the Forum at the Berlinale. Read More

Related Films

Winter’s Bone

Dir Debra Granik

2009 United States

Restrepo

Dir Sebastian Junger & Tim Hetherington

2009 United States

Love Letters is the issue of Criticine that Alexis Tioseco was working on when he and Nika Bohinc were murdered last September. "One thing we knew, even on that first day of grief, was that Love Letters had to be completed," write Ben Slater and May Adadol Ingawanij. "As an editorial concept, it was such a pure distillation of all that Alexis had been doing up to that point in regards to his writing on Southeast Asian cinema. The bringing to light, the articulating of qualities overlooked, the explication of context - the understanding." The completed work is a profound tribute from a loving community. Read More

Related Films

Rapture

Dir Iván Zulueta

1980 Spain

Late Autumn

Dir Yasujiro Ozu

1960 Japan

Love Exposure

Dir Sion Sono

2008 Japan

Nothing too thrilling opening nationwide this week, so let's go local first and then overseas before running down the multiplex fare. Read More

Related Films

Visual Acoustics

Dir Eric Bricker

United States

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Dir Max Ophuls

1948 United States

Breathless

Dir Yang Ik-Joon

2008 South Korea

"The 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) opened last night with the world premiere of South Korean director Park Chan-ok's Paju," reports Geoffrey Macnab for Screen. "The first Korean film to open the festival, Paju received a mixed response from the Rotterdam audience. A slow burning character drama with a complex narrative structure, it was not an obvious crowd pleaser although it was praised by some for its artistry." Read More

Related Films

Paju

Dir Park Chan-ok

2009 South Korea

Symbol

Dir Hitoshi Matsumoto

2009 Japan

Tonight, "the Sundance Film Festival dispatches eight filmmakers with their films from Park City to eight cities across the country to screen and discuss direct-from-Festival films with audiences." We've got roundups on three of those films, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl (playing at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco), John Wells's The Company Men (Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts) and Adrian Grenier's Teenage Paparazzo (Downtown Independent in Los Angeles). Let's see what we've got so far on the other five: Jay and Mark Duplass' Cyrus (Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor), Benny and Josh Safdie's Daddy Longlegs (BAM in Brooklyn), Philip Seymour Hoffman's Jack Goes Boating (Music Box Theatre in Chicago), Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's The Extra Man (Belcourt Theatre in Nashville) and Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways (Sundance Cinemas in Madison, Wisconsin). Read More

Related Films

Cyrus

Dir Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass

2010 United States

Daddy Longlegs

Dir Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie

2009 United States

Jack Goes Boating

Dir Philip Seymour Hoffman

2009 United States

The Extra Man

Dir Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini

2009 United States

The Runaways

Dir Floria Sigismondi

2009 United States

Howl

Dir Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman

2009 United States

"It can sometimes feel like Toronto is Michael Snow's city, and the rest of us are merely living in it," writes Jason Anderson for Artforum. "And like so many artists who find themselves enshrined in their own time, the ever-industrious eighty-one-year-old has remained better known to the hometown crowd for popular public pieces than for the unrulier work that he continues to make. The fact that most of the seven projected works in Recent Snow - his first exhibition at the Power Plant since The Michael Snow Project - have never before been publicly screened in Toronto may come as a surprise." Snow speaks tonight at the Brigantine Room at Harbourfront Centre; his La Région centrale screens tomorrow evening at the Art Gallery of Ontario's Jackman Hall; and Recent Snow: Projected Works by Michael Snow is on view through March 7 at the Power Plant. Read More

Related Films

La région centrale

Dir Michael Snow

1971 Canada

Pitfall

Dir André De Toth

1948 United States

Still Bill

Dir Damani Baker & Alex Vlack

2009 United States

Among the films premiering at Sundance before heading to the Berlin in a couple of weeks are four dramatic narratives in the Berlinale Competition lineup. Two are actually competing: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl (and here's that roundup) and Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. And two aren't: Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right and Nicole Holofcener's Please Give. Read More

Related Films

The Killer Inside Me

Dir Michael Winterbottom

2009 United States

The Kids Are All Right

Dir Lisa Cholodenko

2009 United States

Please Give

Dir Nicole Holofcener

2009 United States

"In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Roberto Rossellini made three films that helped to lay the foundations of modern cinema: Rome Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1948)," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times. "It's almost impossible to underestimate the importance of these movies, both for the impact that their startling realism had on the audiences and filmmakers of the time and for the influence they continue to exert on directors." Criterion's "three-disc Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy uses photochemical and digital techniques to reclaim these masterworks... Wisely, there has been no attempt to make these films look pristine. Many flaws are still apparent (as they probably were in the original release prints), and the graininess of the image has been maintained. This is all very much in the spirit of Rossellini, who felt that technical perfection was a minor virtue compared to the warmth and spontaneity that could be captured once technique was thrown away." Read More

Related Films

Rome Open City

Dir Roberto Rossellini

1945 Italy

Paisan

Dir Roberto Rossellini

1946 Italy

Germany Year Zero

Dir Roberto Rossellini

1948 Germany

Updated through 2/9.

"From the 'truth is stranger than fiction' file comes this documentary about three New York artists (Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman, and Schulman's brother Nev) who learn that the Michigan family they've been corresponding with may not be who they say they are," begins Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Catfish unfolds more or less as it happens, day-by-day and scene-by-scene - all linked together by Google Maps animation and YouTube clips and GPS instructions and IM exchanges and other reminders that we're living in a world at once more connected and more disconnected than ever.... Catfish is absolutely riveting." Read More

Related Films

Catfish

Dir Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman

2009 United States

Updated through 1/27.

"In two days, two documentaries about paparazzi have screened at Sundance," writes Karina Longworth in Voice Film. "One, Smash His Camera, was directed by Leon Gast, who won an Oscar for When We Were Kings. The other, Teenage Paparazzo, was directed by Adrian Grenier, who has been nominated for two Teen Choice awards for his work as the star of Entourage.... Both films are flawed, a bit too in love with their subjects, intermittently insightful, consistently entertaining. Neither fully accomplishes it alone, but together the two films document the changing face of celebrity, an evolution in what the public wants from their stars, and why." Read More

Related Films

Smash His Camera

Dir Leon Gast

2009 United States

Teenage Paparazzo

Dir Adrian Grenier

2009 United States

La Dolce vita

Dir Federico Fellini

1960 Italy