Is "Images" Worth Repeating?
I decided to ask Lou and John. Their answer was unequivocal.
2020-06-12 22:41:11 +0000 UTC View Post
msicism posts
Images (Robert Altman, 1972)
Wow, it's easy to forget what a long shadow Ingmar Bergman cast over the arthouse directors of the 70s. From its focus on fractured female subjectivity right down to its Vilmos Zsigmond cinematography, whose faded browns and greens resemble the early color work of Bergman and Tarkovsky, directors who b...
2020-06-12 22:21:26 +0000 UTC View PostSubmitted for Your Approval, #4: oh my homeland (Stephanie Barber, 2019)
Currently featured at the online Screening Room at the Baltimore Museum of Art, along with several other Barber films and numerous other artists' works, oh my homeland (stylized in all lowercase, like most of Barber's recent titles) is a kind of found cinematic object. As Barber herself explai...
2020-06-12 21:59:35 +0000 UTC View PostSubmitted for Your Approval, #3: Alfred (Esther Urlus, 2020)
Upon having a look at Esther Urlus' latest film, my friend Darren Hughes asked me why her work isn't programmed more regularly in North American experimental film showcases. I'm not exactly sure. I first discovered her work while reviewing a group of avant-garde shorts for the Nashville Film Festival over ten years ago, and have made it a point to keep tabs on her output ever since. If I had to...
2020-06-12 19:01:32 +0000 UTC View PostSubmitted for Your Approval, #2: Movie That Invites Pausing (Ken Jacobs, 2020)
On the one hand, Movie That Invites Pausing covers familiar territory for Ken Jacobs. His work with pulsating forms, and in particular the complex play of flatness and depth generated with his Eternalism video system, resembles relatively recent works such as Krypton is Doomed (2005) ...
2020-06-12 06:30:42 +0000 UTC View PostSubmitted for Your Approval, #1: Patrick (Luke Fowler, 2020)
Scottish filmmaker Luke Fowler is an unusual figure in experimental film: not exactly a documentarian, not precisely a maker of essay films, and yet someone whose complex works certainly partake of those genres. He explores a very particular mien, which is intellectual history, having made films dealing with figures as diverse as R.D. Laing, E.P. Thompson, Margaret Tait, Paul Cézanne, and rece...
2020-06-12 05:51:25 +0000 UTC View PostAir Conditioner (Fradique, 2020)
To my knowledge, this is the first film I have ever seen from the nation of Angola. 34-year-old Fradique (real name: Mário Bastos) studied in the U.S. and has made several shorts, and spent several years making a feature-length documentary, Independence, about Angola's titular struggle. A...
2020-06-11 21:58:49 +0000 UTC View PostThe Final Word [on / from] Twitter
So yeah, just for the record, Twitter did not receive any complaints about my most recent account. I did not do anything offensive, or violate any rules of conduct. Rather, they simply found it. And since they decided the last time that I was permanently banned (for, if you'll recall, calling ...
2020-06-11 21:34:07 +0000 UTC View PostEeb Allay Ooo! (Prateek Vats, 2019)
I wanted to jot down a few quick words about this film before it completely evaporated from my memory, because it's actually not bad, and will be the only film I will end up watching from the We Are One Film Festival, an event so poorly timed it almost seems like a throwaway joke in a Pynchon novel. Is...
2020-06-02 07:16:49 +0000 UTC View PostA Word About the Month of June
I try to keep this space generally restricted to film, with the occasional whiny excuse for why I have failed to write about film for a particular span of time.
There are a lot of reasons why I don't particularly feel like expounding on the current social unrest in the United States. For one thin...
2020-06-01 05:04:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Infiltrators (Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, 2019)
I have mixed feelings about this documentary, partly because the film is about such a crucial, timely subject without itself being particularly timely. The Infiltrators highlights the very important work of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a team of college-aged activists who have worked...
2020-05-30 21:31:18 +0000 UTC View PostBlood and Fire
The best films give us flawed, complicated protagonists, people whose responses to problems are knotty and unpredictable. Like those of us existing in the real world, rich, well-rounded characters should be composed of conflicting drives and impulses, and part of the narrative tension in a film involve...
2020-05-29 22:31:01 +0000 UTC View PostWhat Should I Watch Next?
I just finished getting my Summer course online and ready to go, and I need something to wash the taste of Ema out of my mouth. (Review forthcoming.) What would you go with, if you were a paunchy bespectacled Houstonian under quarantine?
2020-05-29 21:00:59 +0000 UTC View PostOne 'Medium,' One Underdone
Medium (Edgardo Cozarinsky, 2020)
So many documentaries about the arts tend to feel like medicine. They are so intent on telling you just how serious and important their subject matter really is, either because they are afraid you won't take heed otherwise, or (more likely) so th...
2020-05-25 21:16:13 +0000 UTC View PostDAU. Natasha (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel, 2020)
The first film to be released from the gargantuan DAU project (five others are now available), Natasha resembles what we typically think of an an art film, at least on its surface. That's to say, it is mostly comprehensible as a standalone work of art, and it succeeds in conveying a s...
2020-05-25 20:56:30 +0000 UTC View PostOberhausen (Part III)
ABOVE: Uber housing, Pittsburgh, PA
So this is the last batch of short films I watched as part of Oberhausen 66. This may be a tedious exercise for my handful of readers, but I wanted to do it as an aide memoire, since it's always the case that I eventually forget about several of the fi...
2020-05-22 19:36:45 +0000 UTC View PostOberhaus-Party (Part Two)
TV's Ken Ober (1957-2009)
Here is a second heaping helping of my reviews from Oberhausen 66. Overall, I wasn't quite as taken with these films. But I did discover a potentially interesting new filmmaker.
...
Oberhausin' (Part One)
The latest big-name event to drop its payload online is the 66th edition of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, an annual mixed bag of experimental debuts, distributor showcases, international calling cards, and undefinable whatsits. Even with the abbreviated running times, there was too much to take in, so I gravitated toward known entities and intriguing descriptions, same as I would have had...
2020-05-18 22:47:05 +0000 UTC View PostCircumstantial Pleasures (Lewis Klahr, 2020)
For years now, Lewis Klahr has mastered a particular kind of cinema. Using cut-out and object animation in stop-motion, he has used the copy-stand as a sort of field of dreams, moving fragments of forgotten romances, movie stars, confrontations, and half-formed ideologies across the screen in a way tha...
2020-05-17 01:35:37 +0000 UTC View PostSwimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke, 2020)
Even in a year where there's no Cannes, and new films of any kind are few and far between, there's been relatively little fanfare for this sparkling new documentary from Jia Zhangke, which perhaps indicates the extent to which we've come to take this master filmmaker for granted. In a somewhat unexpect...
2020-05-16 23:01:20 +0000 UTC View PostSorry to say...
Pardon the extended silence here. Not exactly what you're paying for. Apologies.
In addition to the usual COVID-19 related "life is terrible," "hope I can hug my dad again before he dies" sluggishness, I was derailed last weekend by final grading for my five classes for the spring term. I have al...
2020-05-15 21:58:10 +0000 UTC View PostWhere Has My Mind Been?
Several weeks ago, at the kind request of filmmaker / cinephile Maximilien Luc Proctor, I curated a program for the Ultra Dogme Virtual Film Festival. There has been a lot of great programming from Ultra Dogme over the last several weeks. If you missed my program (which was admittedly a bit...odd), you...
2020-05-06 06:54:39 +0000 UTC View PostVisions du Réel 2020: Quick Notes, Part Two
So this is a quick second installment of my report on films I watched for the at-home version of the Swiss documentary festival. Most of the stuff I viewed will be addressed in an upcoming festival report for Cinema Scope. Below, I am jotting down some remarks on films I did not cover in that piece.
2020-05-03 06:34:56 +0000 UTC
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Technoboss (João Nicolau, 2019)
Cinema and obsolescence: two great tastes that go great together. Although we are in the midst of "exceptional circumstances" that may hasten the decline of the movies as we have traditionally understood them, we have been bemoaning the death of the medium for as long as anyone has been paying attentio...
2020-05-01 18:19:01 +0000 UTC View PostVisions du Réel 2020: Quick Notes
I have been doing what I can to dip into this year's online edition of the Swiss documentary festival, and I may end up doing a longer write-up. At least I am hopeful that I will be able to. But for now, I wanted to share some thoughts about the first batch of films I've seen, before they completely evaporate from memory.
2020-04-28 02:35:50 +0000 UTC
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(puzzle answers)
As you can see, there was a theme running throughout my planned crossword. In short, failure and futility.
USWNT without goalkeeper Solo (6 letters) - NOHOPE
wow, this sucks (6 letters) - VACUUM
clarinetist Acker (4 letter) - BILK
Tay-Tay bugbear (5 letters) - KANYE
the end en Francais (3 l...
2020-04-23 18:50:06 +0000 UTC View PostThe Pettifogger (Lewis Klahr, 2011)
In one of those odd confluences of ill-timing and bad circumstance, I never got around to seeing Lewis Klahr's debut feature until now. There's no real excuse for this. I consistently find Klahr to be among the most compelling makers of experimental cinema working today, and his second feature, Six...
2020-04-23 07:34:30 +0000 UTC View PostImages 2020: Seen and Not Seen
Today (in between watching episodes of the perfectly passable Netflix series "Ozark"), I have been dipping into the live stream of this year's Images Festival. All online, for obvious reasons, Images kicked off on Friday with Sky Hopinka's maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore, which...
2020-04-19 23:25:55 +0000 UTC View PostGood Trash, Bad Rubbish
Les Coquillettes (Sophie Letourneau, 2013)
Light as a souffle and a pitch right down the middle to a bored cinephile audience needing distraction, Les Coquillettes is essentially a French episode of Sex and the City that takes place at the Locarno Film Festival....
2020-04-18 03:40:24 +0000 UTC View PostKrabi, 2562 (Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers, 2019)
To everything there is usually a season, and the spring is typically when the films from the previous fall festival season slowly make their way into the larger world, in arthouse cinemas and on various streaming platforms. But of course, we all know this is not a typical spring. As COVID-19 h...
2020-04-15 03:03:05 +0000 UTC View Post