Link Round-Up: NYFFing It Up

These people are having way more fun than most of my first dates do.

The New York Film Film Festival ends this weekend, but my coverage is only about halfway complete, starting with this piece (my first) for Reverse Shot on the latest Romanian comedy, Corneliu Porumboiu's When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism. It's a strange little work that tries to articulate a number of concerns related to art and theory, and I hope the piece (made palatable by Reverse Shot's tremendous editor, Michael Koresky) is worth your time, especially if you've seen it.

On podcast duties, there are two for you - first up, how about some experimental cinema? Views From the Avant-Garde featured over 200 films this year, and somehow fellow Columbia alum and now OSU PhD candidate James Hansen joined me to work through films by Luther Price, Nathaniel Dorsky, Jodie Mack, Stephanie Barber, and a few more. Back in something a little more mainstream (though not by much), Boston's darling Monica Castillo talks about the latest from the Coens, Tsai Ming-Liang, Phillipe Garrell, and Joanna Hogg from the festival.

To Be (Cont'd) continues this month with a discussion on Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt between Bill Ryan and Keith Uhlich. Ryan gets the ball rolling here.

On Letterboxd: Russian Ark, Il Grido, The Rapture, Written on the Wind, Trent's Last Case, and Paid To Love.

September Screening Log

Color coded via Dan Sallitt's method (Current or upcoming releases not included). Click on the titles to writing when applicable. (A smaller list that usual, mainly because New York Film Festival means I didn’t screen that many repertory titles as usual; and I’m a bit behind in writing about each as well for the same reason).

1.    The Rapture (Tolkin, USA, 1991)
2.    Hahaha (Hong, South Korea, 2010)
3.    Pulse (Kurosawa, Japan, 2001)
4.    I No Longer Hear the Guitar (Garrel, France, 1991)
5.    Written on the Wind (Sirk, USA, 1956)
6.    A Girl In Every Port (Hawks, USA, 1928)
7.    The River (Renoir, France/India, 1951)
8.    Twixt (Coppola, USA, 2011)
9.    Il Grido (Antonioni, Italy, 1957)
10. “The Chinese Fan” The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies (Edwin, USA, 1914)

Also Notable (No order besides color categorization): Russian Ark (Sukurov, Russia, 2002), Never Fear (Lupino, USA, 1949), The Cradle Snatchers (Hawks, USA, 1927), The Spoilers (Enright, USA, 1942), Upstream (Ford, USA, 1928), Trent’s Last Case (Hawks, USA, 1928), The White Shadow (Cutts, United Kingdom, 1924), Autumn Sonata (Bergman, Sweden, 1978), Fig Leaves (Hawks, USA, 1926), Paid To Love (Hawks, USA, 1927).

Rewatches: Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, Japan, 1954), M (Lang, Germany, 1931), The Big Sleep (Hawks, USA, 1946).

My Cinephiliac Moments

            “I think it’s a fun picture,” said Alfred Hitchcock of his film Psycho (#35), which is how I feel about the release of UK-based film journal Sight & Sounds decennial list of the “Greatest Films of All Time.” Some people are furious about it. Some people are dismissing it. I fall slightly in the middle. Oh yes this or that or whichever isn’t on the list, but it’s a list, and like Hitchcock thought of his film, it’s fun, and it’ll be fun to see a new generation of cinephiles discover Vertigo (and of course write think pieces about how it’s overrated).

            Sight & Sound “forgot” to mail me a ballot this year, though I’ve written sketches in the past of how my list may parse, and don’t see why I should just print that out again, because honestly there’s too much I still haven’t seen (six films from the 2012 list – Shoah , Journey to Italy, Panther Panchali, Gertrud, Historie(s) Du Cinema, and Ugestsu Monogatari), and what’s the point of “another” list? That list is great, and everyone should see those films.

            Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about a blog post written by Girish Shambu about “the cinephiliac moment” (I’ve been reading Shambu’s blog for a while, but I found this one through some accidental Google searching related to a certain podcast). Shambu interprets from Christian Keathley’s Cinephilia and History, Or The Wind in the Trees that the cinephiliac moment being the moment in which cinema takes over, and tantalizes you. Shambu writes:

“The important thing to remember is that these are not moments carefully designed to exert great dramatic effect—not that there’s anything wrong with those—but instead they are fleeting "privileged" moments writ small that we find ourselves strongly attracted to, perhaps even disproportionately so given their scale and possible (lack of) intention.”

            I don’t know if my cinephiliac moments follow exactly Shambu’s reasoning – some of them after all are quite big moments in the films they came from, and certainly they aren’t “accidentals” as he states it. But these moments unlock my deepest moments of cinephilia, the point in which I realize why I keep going to the movies. I started at five, and then it soon became twenty five, and then narrowed it down to eleven. They are presented in no order.

Add your own in the comments, or link me to your piece and I’ll include a link here.

Screening Log: Time Travel Edition

            Oh dear, how far behind are we here? I don’t want to defend my lack of screening logs (we’re now three weeks behind), but as you may have noticed, it’s been a big couple weeks for LabuzaMovies, and now with a whole new project getting launched, I may have fallen off the boat for a bit. But we’re back, baby!

-Limelight, 1952. Directed by Charlie Chaplin. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Steel Helmet, 1951. Directed by Sam Fuller. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Life of Oharu, 1952. Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-The Earrings of Madame De…, 1953. Directed by Max Ophüls. 35mm projection at Museum of Modern Art.

-Born on the Fourth of July, 1989. Directed by Oliver Stone. DVD.

-Margaret (Extended Edition), 2011. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan. DVD Projection at Landmark Sunshine.

-Daises, 1966. Directed by Věra Chytilová .35mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-The Battle of Algiers, 1966. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-One from the Heart, 1982. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 35mm projection at Museum of the Moving Image.

-Rear Window, 1954. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 35mm projection at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

-Play Misty for Me, 1971. Directed by Clint Eastwood. 35mm projection at Film Forum

-The Sugarland Express, 1974. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 35mm projection at Film Forum.

-The Clock, 2011. Directed by Christian Marclay. Digital Projection at Lincoln Center.