ART OF THE REAL, JARMUSCH RETROSPECTIVE at Lincoln Center

[Chris Knipp]

I'm just going to see DEAD MAN there today. None of the other Jarmusch films, but I've seen them all, including his new one, LAST LOVERS ON EARTH. It will be released at Lincoln Center at the end of this series I think. I didn't have that opinion about music vs. Tarantino. Maybe so, but Tarantino is more mainstream and speaks to a wider audience I'd think. Dead Man is my favorite Jarmusch film. It's puzzling how he even did it. It seems different from his others and it's hard to explain how he came to make it. I don't usualy write about retrospectives. How can one sum up the achievemtn of a living filmmaker whose work has been so distinctive yet so varied? An impossible task.

Take a glance at the Art of the Real titles and those I reviewed. It's a mixed bag. Variations in quality are great, and there are some that fit their theme and some that don't. RED HOLLYWOOD is one I probably should have seen, since it's 17 years old. I didn't see that there was much difference in the digital remaster, and it's pretty much a conventional documentary, even if some regard it as provocative.

In a couple days I'm returning to California and my coverage of Film Society of Lincoln Center events will be suspended for some time. The SFIFF, the San Francisco big film festival, will be coming, though. Lots of new titles from that, though many ill also be recycled from the past year's international festival circuit as usual. Here, it's Tribeca time, but I don't attend Tribeca -- I've already been here over a month.

Von Trier's NYMPHOMANIAC, VOLUME 1: I missed several opportunities to see it in press screenings here in NYC, but it has opened here today. I now see that possibly the DEAN MAN press screening was moved from ten a.m. to one-thirty to permit people perhaps to see the first Lincoln Center showing of NYMPHOMANIAC at 11 a.m. Maybe. Because press screenings got overbooked so there are still writers who haven't seen it.