Ferrara, 8/29.

"At this point, I think that [Abel] Ferrara has created a more powerful, and also (despite his obsessiveness) more varied body of work than even Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee, let alone others of his American contemporaries. But he is probably too on the edge, with too anarchic and obsessive (even if these terms seem contradictory to one another) an imagination, to ever transcend his (merely) cult following." This comes at the end of Steven Shaviro's entry on Go Go Tales, "almost Ferrara's version of a Capraesque 1930s comedy, a pomo update of one of those films that was designed to make people feel good despite the Great Depression." There may be a spoiler in there; Shaviro's caught the film at the Montreal World Film Festival, running through Monday.

Jay A Fernandez has read Billy Finkelstein's screenplay for Bad Lieutenant '08 - that's right, a remake - and reports in the Los Angeles Times: "Veteran producer Edward R Pressman (Badlands, American Psycho), who developed and produced the first movie, is poised to revisit the Lieutenant and 'try to reinvent the film in a way that would be relevant again,' as he puts it." '08 "is less a sequel or a prequel than an attempt to take the raw material of the original film and weave it into 21st century, post-9/11 New York.... Pressman has discussed the new version with Ferrara and [Harvey] Keitel, although neither is attached to the project."

Meanwhile, the Oldenburg Film Festival (September 12 through 16) will stage a Ferrara retrospective, reports Ed Meza for Variety.

Posted by dwhudson at August 29, 2007 1:17 AM