Recent Link Round-Up

New writing from November 2014 to April 2015

For RogerEbert.Com, a report on the 6th Annual Turner Class Movie Film Festival

A new essay on historical thinking, "Race and The American Movie"

For Filmmaker Magazine, Thom Andersen's The Thoughts That Once We Had.

2014 Best Of Writing
-Top 10 for The Film Stage
-Submission to the Village Voice Poll
-Capsules of The Grand Budapest Hotel and Two Days, One Night for In Review Online
-Episodes of The Cinephiliacs with Keith Uhlich, counting down #10-6 and #5-1.

Wrote capsules for The Film Stage's Top 50 of the Decade on Certified Copy, Mysteries of Libson, Cosmopolis, and Moonrise Kingdom.

On L'Avventura and Clouds of Sils Maria

Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason and Ornette: Made in America

On Criterion's Box Set of the Documentaries of Les Blank

Jean Renoir's A Day in The Country

Lucercia Martel's La Cienaga

Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

On Godard's Every Man For Himself and Truffaut's The Soft Skin

Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse

Reviews of new films: Paul Schrader's Dying of the Light, Gina Telaroli's Here's To The Future!, and Paul Harril's Something, Anything.

Episodes of The Cinephiliacs: Mike D'Angelo on Buffalo '66, Tina Hassania on You've Got Mail, Matías Piñeiro on Duelle, Doug Dillaman on My Neighbor Totoro, Kris Tapley on JFK, Jan-Christopher Horak on Her Sister's Secret, Calum Marsh on The Last Days of Disco, and Kiva Reardon on Leave Her To Heaven.

Capsules from Letterboxd:
Contemporary: Run All Night, Jupiter Ascending, A Most Violent Year, The Congress, Beloved Sisters, Eden, Nightcrawler
Works from India: The Cloud-Capped Star, Gangs of Wasseypur, Jewel Thief, Awaara, 
Expressive Esoterica: Gone in 60 Seconds, The Avenging Eagle, Junior Bonner, Now I'll Tell, The Son's Return, Bed Time, Mr. Majestyk, 
Bullshit: Shame

Link Round Up: "Painless and Perfect"

Another near the end of year massive link round-up, covering everything I wrote (sans the book) since September.

I made my debut in Sight & Sound Magazine in November with a piece on Steven Soderbergh's TV series The Knick, which may not be the best series to grace the non-theatrical medium, but damn it—Soderbergh proves all my stray observations about how just because it's television doesn't mean aesthetics should come second. 

In lieu of New York Film Festival, Los Angeles provides us with the bigger, perhaps a bit more eclectic AFI Festival. Since most of the major titles were already at Cannes, I wrote about Joel Potrykus's recession-bro comedy Buzzard, the modestly quirky coming-of-age meanderer Tu Dors Nicole, the latest WTF from Takashi Miike Over Your Dead Body, and JP Snaidecki's The Iron Ministry. Plus I spoke about Lav Diaz's From What Is Before on a recent podcast.

Another recent film festival visit—New Orleans! I graciously served as a juror for the Louisiana Shorts section of the 25th Annual New Orleans Film Festival, and also wrote about the wonderful experience at RogerEbert.Com. 

Wrote about some movie called Interstellar. You may have heard of it. And also this other thing called Gone Girl.

Also wrote about two other new movies of relative merit: Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip (which is of great proportion) and Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (which deserves at least some consideration).

In the canonical masterpiece territory, on John Ford's My Darling Clementine, and finding a postwar poet of cinema.

And on The Cinephiliacs, New Orleans local Angela Catalano on starring a popup cinema and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Alex Ross Perry on his idiosyncratic approach to independent cinema and Husbands and Wives, and Kim Morgan on Marilyn Monroe and Something Wild. 

And on Letterboxd...
Hitchcock: Suspicion, Foreign Correspondent, Vertigo
Expressive Esoterica: Dark Passage (Daves), Cure (K. Kurosawa), The Blue Gardenia (Lang), Chicago Calling (Reinhardt), Notes on the Circus (Mekas), Whirlpool (Preminger)
Far Side of Paradise: Papillon (Schafner), The Country Girl (Seaton), Baby Doll (Kazan)
Contemporary Stuff: Abuse of Weakness (Brelliat)
Marxism: Class Relations (Straub/Huillet)

Experiment This! A Preview of Migrating Forms 2012

           For those in New York, tonight begins one of the city’s smaller film festivals, but also one of its best, full of cinematic delights. Now in its fourth year, the Migrating Forms festival is broad in scope, grabbing from all over the globe and often choosing the most unique works of experimental cinema one can think of. It also has some really amazing and extremely rare retrospective screenings as well. It runs ten days, from tonight and next Sunday, down at Anthology Film Archives. Tickets are $10 for individual screenings, but they offer a number of deals (three films for $20). Here are five must sees for those planning to attend:

1. Fritz Lang’s Indian Epics

People either remember Fritz Lang for his amazing silent and early sound films (Metropolis, M) or his intense American noirs (The Big Heat, Scarlett Street), but near the end of his career, Lang went on to make two epic scale films about the clash between East and West. The Tiger of Eschanpur and The Indian Tomb play in 35mm, making this one of the few chances you’ll be able to see these in their perfect form. (Sunday, May 13^th at 7pm and 9pm).