Naranjo is indeed a new name relative to the fillmmakers Johann mentions in the post that preceded the above quote. But I want to point out to readers that Naranjo is not a new name to you. One may say you've championed his work in this forums before, a testament of your dedicated, detailed coverage of festivals and new releases.We thank you.Originally Posted by Chris Knipp
That is true. But he is going to be more of an emerging name now internationally. People at the P&I screenings at Lincoln Center remember his I'm Gonna Explode and liked it, generally, but many are more impressed by Miss Bala. Some were saying the other day we'd like to see his first feature, the 2004 Malachance, made in LA, which I didn't know about till recently. I have been championing him at least since I'm Gonna Explode. He is an AFI graduate, which I've never mentioned.
The cinematographer Ed Lachman talked to me a couple of times about Miss Bala and how it was shot. He loves it and has watched it twice here now. It was given a repeat showing so more people could see it, because the first was in one of the new small theaters across the street.
Alice Rohrwacher, of Corpo Celeste, who is Italian (despite the German name) is a completely new name, and the quality of her film was I think surprising to most.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-01-2011 at 07:13 AM.
Jaafar Panahi: This Is Not a Film (2011)
For a film about nothing that is not a film, this is pretty lively, and also pretty significant as a protest against the mullahs' repression of one of Iran's leading filmmakers made, with the help of a colleague, by the filmmaker himself while under house arrest at his apartment in Tehran. This is said to have been smuggled out of the country on a USB thumb drive in a loaf of bread to be shown at the Cannes festival in May.
David Cronenberg: A Dangerous Method (2011)
A ceremonial festival gala film. Christopher Hampton's adaptation of his play adaptation of a book about Jung, Freud, and a Russian Jewish woman with daddy issues who somehow crystallized the two men's issues.
Sean Durkin: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
A talented newcomer has written and directed a classy horror film, a psychological thriller about a young women who escapes from a cult in the Catskills to the chilly world of her sister and her bourgeois, mercenary husband in Connecticut and in her shattered state, drifts back and forth from present to memories of her experience. The excellent cast is headed by another gifted newbie, Elizabeth Olson.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne: The Kid with the Bike (2011)
As I noted in the earlier review in my May Paris Movie Report, in The Kid with a Bike/Le gamin au vélo the Dardenne brothers are "on strong familiar ground," "depicting a troubled boy struggling to get attention from his derelict, immature dad and tempted to a life of crime by an older boy who exploits him." And the Dardennes' discovery, 13-year-old Thomas Doret, who plays Cyril, the 11-year-old reject, is "excellent, if quite uncharming and uncute." But what I ought to have noted was not only the incredible drive Doret has but the emotional wallop the film packs. I was more deeply moved this time, viewing the film again at the New York Film Festival -- and struck by the humanistic power of the occasional bursts of classical music, a rare gesture for the Dardennes.
Co-winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes, with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (also a NYFF 2011 selection).
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-06-2011 at 11:04 PM.
Steve McQueen: Shame (2011)
Colder and less engaging than the riveting McQueen debut Hunger, (NYFF 2008) but still this shows the Turner Prize-winning British artist McQueen is Scorsese to Michael Fassbender's DeNiro. Despite my quibbles, this is powerful filmmaking. Carey Mulligan is also excellent as Manhattan sex addict Brandon's unhappy sister.
Wim Wenders: Pina (2011)
Wenders' appropriately austere, stylized documentary celebrates the German dance master Pina Bausch, whose surreal style was an international influence. She died in 2009, suddenly after a cancer diagnosis, having collaborated on this film.
Nadav Lapid: Policeman (2011)
A structurally weak but provocatively themed Israeli first film about an macho antiterrorist police unit accustomed to killing Palestinians that is called upon to smash a band of young bourgeois Jewish revolutionaries who kidnap some billionaires at a wedding.
Simon Curtis: My Week with Marilyn (2011)
Adapted memoir of the recollection of Colin Clark, son of famous art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, who had a mini affair with Marilyn Monroe during the 1957 shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) at Pinewood Studios. Michelle Williams as Marilyn, Eddie Redmayne as Clark, a host of good English actors and authentic production values enliven this entertaining nostalgia piece. It may draw some attention at Oscar time.
World premiere at the NYFF October 9, 2011, opening in US theaters November 4.
Pedro Almodóvar: The Skin I Live In (2011)
From a 1995 French noir novel, the story of a sadomasochisic relationship between a plastic surgeon and his sex-changed victim/patient/lover, bringing back Antionio Banderas after 21 years, with Elena Anaya and Jan Cornet. B-horror made unspeakable beautiful and thematically (but not so emotionally) rich, my favorite since Talk to Me. One of the NYFF's gala presentations along with A Dangerous Method.
The other "events" of the main slate are Carnage, the opening night gala film; My Week With Marilyn, the Centerpiece; and Alesxander Payne's The Descendants, the Closing Night film.
Joseph Cedar: Footnote (2011)
This drama about academic rivalries among Talmudic scholars and between a father and son might seem a brisk change of pace after Cedar's Silve Bear winning Lebanon war drama Beaufort (2007). But there's repressed violence and great suspense here too. Weak ending. But still a most interesting and original film. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at Cannes.
MUBI's 'NOTEBOOK'
MUBI provides an aggregator site on the NYFF that summarizes some critical responses to the main slate and some of the sidebars. Their opening paragraph is below. Click here for the pages.
But there are awards season items that are not at the NYFF -- MONDYBALL, for example, and TREE OF LIFE, and TAKE SHELTER, to name a few recent and past 2011 releases.THE AGENDA-SETTING NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Anyone looking for a sneak peek at the year-end best-of-2011 top tens, and even to some degree the upcoming awards season, would best start with the New York Film Festival, whose lineup distills and extracts the best of Berlin, Cannes and Venice. Besides tracking what the critics have been saying about the main slate, we’ve also been posting our own reviews and interviews from the Views from the Avant-Garde program and the Nikkatsu Centennial retrospective. It’s all here.
Mia Hansen-Love: Goodbye, First Love (2011)
Two passionate young lovers separate when he is 19 and she is 15, and they are not reunited again till eight years later. Hansen-Lřve's rather autobiographical third film isn't as complex as her wonderful The Father of My Children, the film based on the life and aftermath of the suicide of Hubert Balsam, but it is nonetheless a beautiful, admirably unsentimental film that further confirms her status as one of today's best young French filmmakers.
Ruben Östlund: Play (2011)
A realistic and" formally interesting but overlong" (Leslie Felperin) recreation of an actual series of incidents in which black youths in Göteborg (Gothenberg), Sweden in their early teens victimized white boys using racial stereotypes to menace their victims without force and deprive them of their cell phones and other valuables, all the while enjoying the "play" of making their victims uneasy and scared.
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