Film Comment. Nov/Dec 06.

Before breaking open the November/December issue of Film Comment, it should be noted that people are still talking (or typing) about the last issue in which Paul Schrader presented what he had so far on a film canon he'd since abandoned. Not only has the topic been revived on the a_film_by list, but FC is running a handful of readers' responses - and Schrader's response to that response.

While he may be giving up on his particular project, Schrader is sticking to his elitist guns: "The idea of an exclusive Canon (the dreaded antecedent to High Art) is to leave things out. Film studies have been swamped by inclusiveness and nonjudgmental standards." What's more, "'Eurocentrism?' Damn straight."

Right, then. On to the magazine, starting with the great Geoffrey O'Brien: "If Nine Queens was a comedy of urban streets and suites, The Aura is a dream journey into the wilderness—slower, more open-ended, less obviously satisfying in its manipulation of plot turns yet creating a more insidiously lingering emotional effect." Ultimately, "The Aura is the more ambitious film." Related: Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE and Jean Oppenheimer in the Voice.

For Your Consideration (along with Stranger Than Fiction and Borat) has Andrew Sarris thinking in the New York Observer about what's funny; similarly, here, Kent Jones: "As entertaining as the Ben Stiller-Will Ferrell-Owen Wilson movies are, they’re dogged by a tiring self-satisfaction and showboating.... By contrast, [Christopher] Guest and crew are less interested in being number one than in creating viable characters who suffer real disappointments and setbacks.... Maybe the loveliest quality of these movies is the fact that they’re such winningly democratic ventures."

Chris Chang calls out for a distributor for Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night.

Now here's very fine editorial choice: Guy Maddin on the Quay Brothers' The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes: "[T]hey've never made anything like this before!"

Posted by dwhudson at November 15, 2006 8:53 AM