Adrian Martin, who’s got a fantastic piece in Keyframe today on Raúl Ruiz‘s Night Across the Street, has tweeted a link to Jorge Mourinha‘s “good, useful account in English about the dreadful crisis threatening the Portuguese Cinemateca.” That it is. Mourinha explains that “the institution has been suffering from the economic recession and the general austerity measures mandated by the current neo-liberal, center-right government.” What’s more, these cuts “have all but shut down the state subsidy aids to film production disbursed through the Institute of Film and Audiovisual (ICA), even though Portuguese cinema is one of the best calling cards the country has worldwide, thanks to the international acclaim of Miguel Gomes, João Pedro Rodrigues, Pedro Costa or Manoel de Oliveira.” I know we’ve mentioned this before, but Cinemateca is vital not just to Portuguese film culture, but all of it, and if you haven’t yet, you might consider signing that petition of support. [Update: Jorge Mourinha has tweeted word that the Cinemateca will be receiving a shot of special funding that’ll see it through to December. So: Crisis delayed, but not necessarily averted. Yet.]
We keep coming back, too, to the 1967 omnibus film Far From Vietnam, currently screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and it probably should have had an entry all its own. Nonetheless, two new pieces need flagging, the first by the New Yorker‘s Richard Brody, who argues that the “two sequences of the most manifestly personal import and aesthetic design are those by Godard and Resnais.” And secondly, Michael Atkinson, whose piece on the film in the New York Times we mentioned the other day, returns to it at Sundance Now, writing that its re-emergence is “cause to consider a vast many things—most obviously the yawning chasm of sociopolitical difference between the late ‘60s, when movies mattered enough as cultural statements to cause brawls and vandalism and protests, and today, when the Internet makes protesting both easier and much less significant…. But for our far geekier purposes, genre-film-wise, the tetchier problems are posed by the omnibus as a species of film form, a privileged and troublesome aesthetic mutant that presents a unique set of delivery-system problems and conundrums. Simply, everybody loves omnibus films but no one really enjoys them.”
The latest clip from Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac features Uma Thurman
“He’s best remembered as the director of offbeat, transgressive noir-tinged dramas like Laura (1944) and The Man With the Golden Arm (1955),” writes Time Out’s Tom Huddleston. “But in 1957 Otto Preminger made a film more strange and shockingly modern than either. A frothy, sun-kissed comic satire which just happens to deal with such jolly subjects as incest, depression, self-loathing, adultery and suicide, Bonjour Tristesse completely defies categorization.” The re-release in the UK is also being celebrated by the Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw (5/5) and the Independent‘s Anthony Quinn (4/5).
“A natural-born mimic, ham, tease, hard worker, stoic follower and out-of-reach babe, Ginger Rogers has proven one of the most difficult to define of all the 1930s Hollywood stars.” So begins another marvelous piece from Dan Callahan at the Chiseler.
Today’s fall previews come from Flavorwire, Indiewire, and Newcity Film.
In the works. Louder Than Bombs, “Joachim Trier’s first English-language feature, starring Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne, and Jesse Eisenberg, has been postponed just a month before shooting due to financial difficulties,” reports Jorn Rossing Jensen for Screen Daily.
Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man has been restored and is now set for a re-release
Vincent Cassel is not only replacing Philip Seymour Hoffman in Daniel Espinosa’s Child 44 (with a screenplay by Richard Price and a cast that includes Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Gary Oldman, and Paddy Considine) but he’s also stepping in for Oscar Isaac in Ariel Kleinman’s Partisan. The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth has details.
FilmBuff has announced that it’ll be digitally releasing Gabe Klinger’s Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, set to premiere in Venice on Monday. Nigel M. Smith reports for Indiewire.
Updated entries. Satyajit Ray and Wong Kar-wai. And of course, we’ll continue to be all over the ongoing Venice and Telluride festivals for as long as it takes.
As for films in theaters closer to home, Critics Round Up‘s got fresh entries on Brian De Palma’s Passion, Penny Lane‘s Our Nixon, and many more. And for more browsing, do see the Film Doctor.
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