Today marks the last day of my Fall calendar film program. Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get working on the next one. My goal is to find 50 titles that provide repertory programming, community and academic outreach, festival favorites, cult oddities, challenging cinema, quality docs, along with enough arthouse money-makers and crowd-pleasers to keep the whole damn thing alive. The ideal mix honors the past, is grounded in the present, and has an eye for the future. Like a good friend, it needs to have the temerity to confront you with uncomfortable truths, take you to new places, introduce you to new talents, provide a window to other cultures, feed the mind, feed the soul, provide catharsis, tears, laughter, and a wide variety of surprises.  A few directors come to mind who try to do all those things in one film, but this at risk of making you nauseous. (I’m looking at you Takashi Miike!) What follows are some of my top-picks (so far) as I consider titles to include in my Spring calendar. READ MORE

The 49th New York Film Festival begins this Friday, September 30th, with a main slate of 27 features and an abundance of sidebar and retrospective screenings, including a massive survey of Nikkatsu Films. All of my favorite entries so far share an obsessively detailed sense of place, locations that subsume central characters and emerge as active agents of memory, myth and fate. Dreileben, a group of three features made for German television, is set near the Thuringian Forest, folkloric heart of German culture, and former home to Wagner, Schiller, Bach and Goethe. Ancient fables are invoked as templates for the tragic circlings of the unlucky few who come in contact with a man-made monster.  The Turin Horse utilizes a perpetually wind-thwacked dust bowl as a bluntly metaphorical vision of the barren, anxious souls of its poverty-stricken leads, while Two Years at Sea follows the hermit and former merchant seaman, Jake Williams, as he goes his silent bearded way in the beatific and lonely Caingorm Mountains of Scotland.

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In case you missed it, the Telluride Film Festival had its 38th bash last Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5. It included the latest films by Aki Kaurismäki, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Béla Tarr, David Cronenberg, and many more. But the reason I still love Telluride is not because it delivers the newest works from so many talented directors, but because they also focus on the past (showing silent films, archive prints, and various repertory titles), along with some unexpected programming courtesy of guest directors who are given Carte blanche to select anything they like, no matter how esoteric that might be. (This year the guest director was Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist Caetano Veloso, who has worked on soundtracks for Michelangelo Antonioni and Pedro Almodóvar). Telluride also eschews the competitive awards-system that drives so many other festivals and has managed to sidestep being mobbed by industry professionals, brand-obsessed sponsors, or party-obsessed socialites. In sum, Telluride has managed to still be that rare festival that bends over backwards to bring obscure 35mm movies while simultaneously providing viewers with cinematic experiences that challenge them to broaden their horizons rather than simply pandering to market whims or popular taste. And, yes, I say that despite the fact that this year its tribute star was George Clooney.  READ MORE

If you’re suffering from the summer blockbuster blues, there’s no greater pick-me-up than the New York Asian Film Festival, an invigorating potpourri of the finest in creative Eastern bloodletting. It marks its tenth decadent year with 45 features from nine different countries, unspooling at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from July 1st – 14th. 11 of those films are co-presented with Japan Cuts, the NYAFF’s more studious (if no less ambitious) five-year-old sister festival, held at Japan Society from July 7th – 22nd. Including the 21 other titles in Japan Cuts, there are 66 Asian movies hitting screens in July, most of which will never receive distribution in the United States (although many will be obtainable at Asian DVD retailers).

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Last Mother’s Day I wrote a piece titled Modern Movie-Going Punishments. It got a big response. Clearly, a lot of people have had to deal with negative experiences when going out to see movies on the big screen. Readers also added to the list of rude behaviors, two of which we felt obliged to add to the illustrations on that past post to make ‘em official (these being the sick person who doesn’t think twice about spreading germs, and people who yawn loudly throughout the film). Many who chimed in said that the list was a reminder of why they no longer go to movie theaters. It now seems fitting to use Father’s Day for the long overdue counter-point offering you a long list of why you should still go to movie theaters. As with last time, my heart-felt thanks to my good friend John Adams for providing all the illustrations that accompany the list below.  READ MORE

I’m in the process of assembling a spreadsheet of films that I’d like to bring to my fall calendar program. As an exhibitor, I wish I could give all (or, at least, most or many) of these films a home. But as the market place keeps shrinking the theatrical windows, and as V.O.D. becomes more rampant, the harsh reality is that a balance has to be struck between viable money-makers and smaller niche titles that are very interesting and compelling but lack high-profile visibility, this despite being top-shelf items. In the former category are titles such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In the latter category are movies like Marwencol or Bill Cunningham New York. I never need to see advance screeners for films in the former category as, for the most part, it’s pretty obvious what the big hitters are. In the latter category, however, it’s essential to watch the preview screeners sent to me by distributors because I really need to know if the material stands a chance of connecting with the audience in our area despite a low profile. Or, at very least, whether it resonates so strongly with me that I’m willing to champion it personally in the hopes that I might, despite long odds, find it an audience. Here’s what I’ve got queued up for the coming week. READ MORE

For the Migrating Forms festival, now in its third year at Anthology Film Archives, a moving image is a moving image. Whether it’s a supercut on YouTube or a gallery installation, programmers Nellie Killian and Kevin McGarry have their antenna up for playful, provocative work regardless of origin. This edition, concluded on Sunday night, presented films and videos from 49 artists from 15 countries, along with 12 retrospective screenings and one-off events. It’s impossible to reduce this multiplicity of material (culled from museums and film festivals and viral videos), into a unified theme, but it’s this very impossibility that gives Migrating Forms its vibrancy and its mission.

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I’ve been watching the coverage of Cannes with a lot of interest—and my mouth is positively watering for The Artist, the popular new silent film by Michel Hazanavicius.  I haven’t seen it yet, and this blog isn’t even really about it—but rather about the curious double-standards that the film critical community has when it comes to French films.

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If you weren’t able to attend the 64th Annual Cannes Film Festival this year you can still enjoy a little taste of the French Rivera at MUBI.com this week. MUBI has partnered with La Semaine de la Critique (Critics’ Week) in association with Fundación MAPFRE FC4+1 and is playing host to a small retrospective of select films from the festival’s history. These films are free to watch online for the first 1,000 viewers until June 30 and runs through December 2011.

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