Weekend Edition

The arrival of a handful of new Andrzej Wajda DVDs seems an opportune moment to point to the new Cinema Warsaw in The Polish National Home, tucked into what indieWIRE calls "hipster haven Greenpoint, Brooklyn." The "only Polish cinema on the East Coast," they claim, is currently showing a series of films by Wajda and Roman Polanski. Besides the official site, perhaps the best intro to Wajda is a piece that appeared in Kinoeye, a terrific online publication devoted central and eastern European film, when the director was given one of those lifetime achievement Oscars.

Both Wajda and Polanski have made Holocaust-related films, practically a genre unto itself. In the Jewish News, Suzanne Chessler talks to Annette Insdorf about her new edition of Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust.

We've been rather flippantly pointing to various summer movie packages over the past week or two, but when the New York Times unleashes theirs, you've gotta give it at least a double-take. Besides the inevitable package-opener on Matrix Reloaded, which sets the tone - each article devoted to a single flick has plenty to say about the genre it springs from - among the highlights are: Jerry Seinfeld on car chases, Molly Haskell on the batch of originals that have inspired Renée Zellweger and Ewan McGregor's "affectionate rechanneling of Day and Hudson" in Down With Love and Alexandra Lange on that film's design, Dave Kehr on the DVDs heading down the pipe, Stephanie Zacharek's approving nod to the extras on the 20th-anniversary DVD release of The Right Stuff (coming June 10), David Thomson on how the The Hours DVD (June 24) reveals much of what can go wrong with packages like these, and profiles of Luis Guzmán, Naomi Watts and Lena Olin. As if that were enough for a lazy Sunday morning, Rudolph Valentino is on the cover of the NYT Book Review.

The LA Times runs a longish piece on Tobey Maguire's journey out of and back into the Spider-Man sequel. Also: First-time director Kerry Conran's all-blue-screen World of Tomorrow, now shooting with Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, Tribeca and a big dose of "Ask Manhola Dargis."

Cleopatra cost $44 million in 1963 dollars (that'd be around $300 million today), nearly breaking 20th Century Fox. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and their on-again, off-again romance didn't fare too well, either. David Varela has written a play about the goings-on on the set which'll be broadcast by the BBC on Monday, May 12 (you'll be able to catch it in the archive later, too).

Steve Rhodes writes about the AMC showing of the restored version of The Good, Bad and the Ugly Saturday night at 8 pm EST. No commercials; further, interrupted showings follow.

This weekend's online viewing tip comes by way of GreenCine members glamarama and dpowers in the New Release Spotlight topic. Go to the site for Richard Elfman, Danny's big bro. Find "Movies" and watch the clip from Forbidden Zone. Then start exploring for more.



Posted by dwhudson at May 10, 2003 4:22 PM