January 9, 2007

Film Comment. Jan/Feb 07.

Film Comment: Jan/Feb 07 The new issue of Film Comment looks back a bit and ahead a lot. "Terra Incognita" collects critics' recommendations: "19 Films to Look Out For" in the coming year.

Chris Chang calls for a distributor for Summer Palace, "a sprawling, deeply moving epic." You knew about director Lou Ye's run-ins with the Chinese government, but: "To make matters worse, rumors are circulating about the destruction of extant prints."

Updated through 1/11.

Play It As It Lays "If you were to imagine a celluloid ancestor to Mulholland Drive's Diane Selwyn, she'd probably look a lot like Maria Wyeth, the heroine of Frank Perry's acerbic Play It As It Lays, a 1972 film based on Joan Didion's merciless second novel." And like Paulina Borsook and many others, Melissa Anderson is wondering whatever happened to it.

Nathan Lee reviews Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan, "a hardcore exploitation flick that also happens to be the most impassioned spiritual parable in recent memory."

And following up on its critic's poll, FC is asking you to vote in its readers' poll.

Update, 1/11: Via Movie City News, I see that I missed "A Blast from the Past," Chris Chang's assessment of the career of Donald Cammell in the July/August 1996 issue, that is, the year Cammell committed suicide: "Adding to the dismay, his first film - and easily his best—continues to be primarily thought of as a Nicolas Roeg film, Roeg having been Cammell's co-directing cameraman. The irony cuts deep: the male leads, Mick Jagger and James Fox, exchange and merge their narrative identities until the audience is forced into a confused double take. (In the real world, Cammell and Roeg would never publicly discuss who was responsible for what. As the copy for Performance's posters put it: 'Vice. And Versa.')"



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Posted by dwhudson at January 9, 2007 9:23 AM

Comments

I just listened to a podcast interview with Joan Didion that I enjoyed, it was my first time hearing her voice. B&N's Meet the Writers

I also mentioned the Mulholland Drive connection and my obsession with Play It As It Lays back October 4th.

I think about this film and novel a lot, I don't know why.

Posted by: Jerry Lentz at January 9, 2007 3:50 PM

The Didion book has been one of my favorites since I read it and I've never been able to see the film so this article may have me ponying up the $6. I had to have the Schrader Canon issue and while this is a little more slight, it's a passion and, maybe, this will prompt a subscription. Or, more time at Barnes & Noble ignoring Muzak.... While Nathan Lee is the shit, the magazine isn't at the same level it once was, I fear.

Have you seen the film? Read the book? Any opinions?

Posted by: Ryland at January 9, 2007 4:47 PM