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Peter Tscherkassky’s Outer Space (1999)

I’m wondering if anyone has any superior horror films or recent discoveries they’d recommend?

I still think Romero’s last zombie movie, Diary of the Dead, is a fantastic genre piece with impressive stylistic qualities (first person camerawork, documentary footage of Katrina) and incisive social commentary, as is typical for the series.

Last year, I watched a lot of the Hammer titles I had never seen, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) was probably the most complex and emotionally resonating, with a very evocative sense of the Gothic.

Two years ago, I was blown away …

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Sita Sings the Blues and Azur and Asmar

DVD review, Film review


Sita Sings the Blues


Azur and Asmar

As a fan of animation, I’ve embraced the digital era, but my enthusiasm for mainstream three-dimensional CGI has been waning for some time. It seems like computer animated films (shorts as well as features) can increasingly be divided into two groups: those that explore the potential of the medium, and those that settle for a more commercially established, “photorealistic” (but artificially pristine) synthetic verisimilitude, offering one toy story after another. Given this trend, it’s exciting to see digital animators returning to the roots of visual design–graphic art, illustration, and painting–to create films that …

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The Film Desk

Commentary

Count me impressed. I was just scanning the PDF of the Nuart Theatre’s fall/winter Movie Guide and was amazed to see the announcement of new 35mm prints of Charlie Chaplin’s phenomenal Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970). Looking closer, I discovered that both are being distributed by a new company called The Film Desk. Clicking onto its website, I’ve learned that its inaugural release was none other than a Philippe Garrel movie–J’entends plus la guitare (1991)–with more on the way.

Poking around on the web, I’ve gleaned that the company is the personal project …

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AFI FEST 2008 Line-up

Special event

With its 2008 line-up unveiled yesterday, AFI FEST has become the preeminent film festival for world cinema in Los Angeles. This is a dramatic improvement over past years, when the Palm Springs or Los Angeles festivals seemed destined to carry the torch for movies common to the critical dialogue from major festivals around the world. In addition to titles I’ve already highlighted, a brief glance at the 2008 schedule promises a lot of noteworthy films, including:

• Two films by Jia Zhang-ke, 24 City and the short Cry Me a River, plus a new film by his cinematographer, …

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Akira Kurosawa: Film Artist

Special event


Ran: Ichimonji Hidetora

There are currently two fantastic art exhibitions in Los Angeles that cinephiles won’t want to miss, both offered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I’ve already written about “Frédéric Back: A Life’s Drawings” in Hollywood (through November 1st). The second is “Akira Kurosawa: Film Artist” in Beverly Hills (through December 14th). The Kurosawa exhibition comes on the tenth anniversary of his death and includes two galleries, one devoted to posters and photographs from his productions, the other to “more than 100 of Kurosawa’s original pre-production drawings and paintings, art supplies, calligraphy materials, annotated …

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Touch of Evil (1958)

DVD review

I have long championed the critical recording by James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum on Criterion’s The Complete Mr. Arkadin as being one of the most pleasurable and informative DVD commentaries of recent years, and their new tag team recording on Universal’s 50th anniversary edition of Touch of Evil (released today) is a worthy followup. By and large, Naremore follows the content of his Touch of Evil chapter in his excellent book, The Magic World of Orson Welles, broaching such topics as the Civil Rights era, Welles’ formalism, moral ambiguity, and the use of fair lady/dark lady stereotypes, while Rosenbaum …

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