Weekend fests and events.

"Thus far I've heard the Institute alternatively characterized as a 'boot camp,' a 'fantasy camp for film critics,' and as an 'immersion' in the world of film criticism," blogs Andy Horbal. "In aggregate I think these descriptions give you an idea of the heady mixture of intensity and fun our hosts have concocted for us. This is, basically, the toughest vacation I've ever taken."

Goldring Arts Journalists are blogging from the Syracuse International Film and Video Festival, running on through tomorrow.

Andy Spletzer: "The Hidden Life of a Festival Programmer."

A "funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century," writes Rachel Saltz in the New York Times. "As India Now, a series of nine features and two shorts beginning tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art, shows, the boundaries between Bollywood and not-Bollywood began to blur.... The films at MoMA, none more than two years old, include a documentary, an animated short, a Shakespeare adaptation, a movie inspired by TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, a drama about the 2002 Gujarat riots, comedies, tragedies and, of course, some glorious melodramas."

On a related note, the big event: "It has been dubbed Bollywood's wedding of the decade," writes Randeep Ramesh in the Guardian. "Following Hindu tradition in northern India, actor Abhishek Bachchan, 31, rode in on a white horse leading his wedding procession in Mumbai, before circling a fire to marry one of his leading ladies, Aishwarya Rai, 33.... The bride is a former Miss World who became India's favourite actress, while her husband, part of a new wave of heartthrobs, is the son of actor Amitabh Bachchan, who was named the Greatest Star of the Millennium by a BBC online poll, ahead of Marlon Brando, Sir Laurence Olivier and Charlie Chaplin." Also related: Gautaman Bhaskaran's big Bollywood dispatch for the Lumière Reader.

Dana Parsons profiles Le Van-Kiet, whose Dust of Life premieres tomorrow night at the Vietnamese International Film Festival: "[I]t's a gritty look at Vietnamese gang life and the crimes and violence it produced, set against family relationships that provided balm but, unwittingly, also sowed some of the seeds of the teenagers' alienation."

Commitment and Grace: The Films of Carlos Saura runs through May 3 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and acquarello is there: "In The Garden of Delights, Carlos Saura infuses his now familiar, archetypal elements of financial crisis, physical disability, infirmity, and game hunting that were introduced in his seminal film, The Hunt as subversive, iconic symbols for the rigidity of Francoist corrupted ideology, with a healthy dose of blunt, tongue in cheek - and pointedly allegorical - Buñuelian absurdity to create a perversely wry, acerbic, and trenchant indictment of the bourgeoisie, whose unwavering support of General Franco enabled his ascension to (and retention of) power in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War."

Campbell Robertson talks with Frank Langella about playing "an unbelievable bag of neuroses" in Frost/Nixon, opening on Broadway this weekend. Related: Scenes from the play and the original interviews at NPR.

"When thinking about the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival, music may not be the very first thing that pops into your head," writes SF360's Susan Gerhard. "It may not be the second. But, says SFIFF programmer Sean Uyehara, 'The festival provides one of the best ways to check out amazing performances, whether those performances are live or on film.'" He got a list of ten places to look.

AJ Schnack has a big Full Frame wrap-up - with pix.

Posted by dwhudson at April 21, 2007 1:36 PM