Fests and events, 9/20.

The Variety España team has landed in San Sebastian, where the festival has opened with David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises. Currently in rotation at the site are umpteen fine photos of Viggo Mortensen in various poses. The fest runs through September 29.

"By most accounts, this year's New York Film Festival is one of the strongest in years." Slant revs up its coverage well over a week ahead of time. They're not alone; already, we're seeing previews at the House Next Door, the IFC Blog, the Reeler, the SpoutBlog and from Premiere's Glenn Kenny.

Lots of blogging going on from the IFP Filmmaker Conference at Filmmaker - and the Film Panel Notetaker's at work, too.

"When the Portuguese director Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth, a nearly three-hour movie about the displaced residents of a gutted Lisbon housing slum, emerged as the most divisive film - among critics, audiences, reportedly even the jury - in the competition of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, the fracas underscored something that many admirers of Costa's work had already realized: namely, that the debate over Costa (whose six feature films will be screened this weekend at REDCAT) is no ordinary case of some people 'liking' a certain filmmaker and others not," writes Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. "Rather, Costa is a kind of cause - a mission - that you either believe in or don't."

"Maybe the trauma of another intractable war has sparked the movies' recent interest in 60s headliners: the Beatles in Across the Universe, Dylan in I'm Not There, Vietnam everywhere," suggests Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix. "This flashback wouldn't be complete without a look back at the film œuvre of Norman Mailer. If nothing else, a Mailer retrospective provides a window, however distorted and monomaniacal, to a time when writers could be cultural icons as well-known as Paris Hilton is today, a time when movies were analyzed with a passion now reserved for fantasy football. In the 60s, Norman Mailer was not only a writer, he was a cultural icon. And he aspired to make art movies." The Cinematic Life of Norman Mailer runs at the Harvard Film Archive Sunday through Tuesday.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian's Johnny Ray Huston notes that Midnights for Maniacs programmer Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is "reviving one of the greatest space vampire movies ever, Tobe Hooper's 1985 Lifeforce. Now you can ponder space vampirism in its full, bodacious 70mm splendor, as primarily embodied by naked alien Mathilda May, who brought anarchic madness to London almost 20 years before 28 Days Later." Sunday at the Castro.

John Waters comes to Duke University tomorrow night. Zack Smith talks with him for the Independent Weekly.

Rob Christopher has a brief preview of this year's Chicago International Film Festival (October 4 through 17) at the Chicagoist.

Miami's edition of the Italian Film Festival opens October 4, too, runs through October 9, and the lineup's up.

Posted by dwhudson at September 20, 2007 6:47 AM