We begin in New York, where MoMA’s Robert Altman retrospective is running through January 17. “When it came out,” writes the New Yorker‘s David Denby, The Player (1992) “was regarded as a scorching attack on greedy and unimaginative Hollywood: in the film, the industry’s shining past surrounds the executives at the studio and shames many of them. Twenty years later, the huge profits from big-Hollywood movies—digital fantasies based on comic books and video games—have washed away that shame. The executives in The Player have stories pitched to them constantly by writers, and then they say yes or no. They don’t consult the marketing division on what will sell in Bangkok and in Bangalore. The thing that Altman may not have anticipated was that one would be able to look back at the world of The Player with something almost like nostalgia.”
Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema 2014 opens today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through Monday. Brian Tallerico for RogerEbert.com: “Highlights of this year’s program include the latest from Corneliu Porumboiu, director of Police, Adjective and 12:08 East of Bucharest, two of the most important films of the current Romanian New Wave.” The Second Game “is described as a ‘reflection on a relationship with the past.’ Other highlights include Andrei Gruzsnicki’s Quod Erat Demonstradum, Stere Gulea’s I’m an Old Communist Hag, Valentin Hotea’s Roxanne, Maya Vitkova’s Viktoria and Cristian Jurgiu’s The Japanese Dog, the Romanian selection for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 2014.”
The L writes up more repertory screenings in the City.
Los Angeles. Louis CK, Paul Thomas Anderson and Robert Downey Jr. will be hosting Cinefamily’s retrospective Truth and Soul, Inc. The Films of Robert Downey Sr (a prince) from tomorrow through Monday:
On Sunday, the Filmforum presents Andy Warhol‘s Empire (1964) from noon to 7:30 pm.
Austin. The inaugural Other Worlds Austin festival, “dedicated to the presentation of science-fiction filmmaking,” opens today and runs through Saturday. The Chronicle‘s Richard Whittaker talks with filmmakers Zack Imbrogno (Apt 3D) and Jacob Forman and Tom Hammock (The Well).
Also in the Chronicle, Anne S. Lewis talks with Rodrigo Reyes, whose documentary Purgatorio screens on Wednesday.
London. The BFI’s Maggie Smith season is on through January and Michael Coveney highlights ten of her best performances.
And the BBC reports that the exhibition Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon will open at the National Gallery on July 2.
Paris. La Cinémathèque française’s John Ford retrospective, 103 films in all, is now on through February 23.
Vienna. American Cinema Restored: A Tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation runs at the Austrian Film Museum from today through January 8.
And the exhibition Tony Conrad. Two Degrees of Separation is on view at Kunsthalle Wien through March 8.
Milan. “Cold Cinema. Films, Videos and Works 1960-1999—a solo exhibition of works by Gianfranco Baruchello curated by Alessandro Rabottini—brings together, for the first time and in a systematic way, a broad selection of experimental films and videos that the artist started producing in the early 1960s.” At the Triennale di Milano from Wednesday through February 22.
Brussels. The DISSENT ! series will feature a talk with Eric Baudelaire following a screening of Letters to Max tomorrow and an evening with Eyal Weizman, architect, professor of spatial and visual cultures and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, on Monday.
Let’s have one more shot of Robert Downey, Sr. (a prince), who, by the way, is Adam Schartoff‘s guest on Filmwax Radio (76’45”).
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