January 2012
1 post
WatchIn this lecture delivered at the Courtisane film festival, Adrian Martin gets at the cinematic quality of key sequences in films such as Fassbinder’s Martha and Costa’s O Sangue. Not only are his analyses edifying, but the boundless enthusiasm with which he delivers them is a joy to behold.
December 2011
3 posts
The Cinema of Attractions
Interior New York Subway part one (Billy Bitzer, 1905)
Serene Velocity (excerpt) (Ernie Gehr, 1970)
22 capsule reviews from the past year by Ignatiy... →
November 2011
2 posts
“James Benning’s ‘remake’ of John Cassavetes’s Faces (1968) will see its world premiere at the Film Museum in Vienna on November 19. In its notes on the series James Benning: New Work, the Museum calls his Faces an ‘unexpected venture into the world of ‘found footage’ filmmaking.’ As Benning explains, albeit in German at the Museum’s...
October 2011
4 posts
WatchLondon (Patrick Keiller, 1994)
Tonight I managed to catch a screening of Robinson in Ruins - the final film in Patrick Keiller’s ‘cultural geography’ trilogy. The film is more resolutely political than the previous two works yet it retains their overall form: a discursive approach in which the voice-over and images often achieve a dialectical relationship. The film recapitulates...
WatchMy Heart Swims in Blood (John Gianvito, 2011; work in progress)
Read more about this film and the other segments from the yet to be completed collaborative film Far from Afghanistan here.
September 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Dave Kehr, interviewed →
August 2011
1 post
If Godard’s sport-as-metaphor is tennis, then Abel Ferrara’s is boxing. (cf. Dangerous Game)
July 2011
1 post
“…Sometimes you have to destroy narrative in order to save it.
Hou asks...”
– David Bordwell
June 2011
1 post
“…People who sweep the streets read poetry! And of course there are people...”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum (From “Panel three:critical voices: style, substance and scope - the art of film writing”. Via Mr. Vishnevetsky)
May 2011
2 posts
WatchEmployees leaving the factory (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
April 2011
2 posts
Modern Cinema →
By Denis Levy
March 2011
1 post
January 2011
2 posts
November 2010
1 post
The Rhetoric of Defamation →
September 2010
1 post
“There is not a good documentary without a story, and there is not a good story...”
– Manny Farber. From the article Between Two Worlds, published on July 12, 1943.
August 2010
4 posts
“Get Out of the Car could be characterized as a nostalgic film. It is a...”
– Thom Anderson. From Get Out of the Car: A Commentary
First Name: Carmen (1983)
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Film Socialisme (2010)
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Exasperating and exhilarating, Film Socialisme shows no flagging of its maker’s vision. “He’s a poet who thinks he’s a philosopher,” a...
Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews Jon Jost's Bell Diamond →
July 2010
4 posts
To Those Who Follow in Our Wake →
via Landscape Suicide.
“Men: Oxford shirts in muted colors (tucked in, with an unbuttoned collar), jeans...”
– Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, on Eugene Green’s “sartorial fetish[ism]” in Correspondances (2007).
The Details: "Les rendez-vous d'Anna" (Akerman,... →
This is illustrative of the approach for looking at films which I find most instructive.
June 2010
6 posts
American Psychosis →
Via Cinemasparagus.
Tag Gallagher →
Offscreen.com::Volume 14, Issue 4 →
A tribute to Antonioni.
The Cross →
David Bordwell on, among other things, the dying art of staging - in Hollywood and elsewhere i.e. the rest of the filmic world.
The Bees In Your Beargut →
Wundkanal →
May 2010
1 post
April 2010
2 posts
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky →
is probably my favourite film critic. This is the writing of which he is most proud.
L’Eclisse (1962)
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Damnation (1988)
March 2010
1 post
WatchFilmmaker Ramin Bahrani anthropomorphizes a plastic bag and sends it on a quixotic journey. The bag happens to be voiced by Werner Herzog but honestly that’s not really the draw here; The short film stands on its own regardless of the assist from the famous director.
Anyway on a somewhat related note, here’s five films that I’ve seen recently which I thought were pretty great:
...
January 2010
2 posts
WatchOne of about a million posts I had envisaged for this blog was an acknowledgement of a form of video art I had never seen before - the video essay, specifically as a vehicle for film criticism. The first of these I had watched were by Matt Zoller Seitz, a filmmaker and critic who founded the House Next Door Online.
Fortuitously, he’s done my work for me and written “an appreciation of...
Observations on film art →
November 2009
5 posts
Candy Clark →
