NYFF. Honorably mentioned.

To wrap up coverage of the coverage of the New York Film Festival, here are some loose ends, tied.

Feature Films:

Calle Santa Fe:

• Calle Santa Fe - "whose ostensible goal is to exhume lost leftist political history and provide a framework for future progressive movements - is the political equivalent of a rambling, numbingly-long lecture from a smug 60s boomer who wants you to understand that music peaked in 1967 and no one will ever be as awesome as Jimi Hendrix," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler.

• "As a portrait of one woman's difficult attempts to reconcile with the past, and as a study of the long-term efficacy of revolution (and revolutionary zeal), Calle Santa Fe draws out its arguments until they no longer have any impact," writes Nick Schager at Slant.

A Girl Cut in Two:

• "Not unlike Chabrol's recent works, Merci pour le chocolat and The Flower of Evil, A Girl Cut in Two takes a pragmatic, almost laidback approach to its sensational narrative, situating scandal as something of a given within such privileged settings," writes Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. "Though superficially similar to his 1994 film L'Enfer, which depicted the unraveling of a untrusting husband's psyche as a headfirst plunge into fiery, sweaty derangement, the jealousy on display here is naturally dispassionate, a fact of life for those who never felt the need to learn to trust."

• "An opening sequence in which red visual tinting and opera music are abruptly replaced by natural light and sound conveys the director's aim for de-romanticized inquiry, but there's almost no insight to be gleaned from the subsequent story other than that the wealthy are priggish snobs and intellectual artists are selfish pigs," writes Nick Schager.

• Earlier: Reviews and previews from Toronto and NYFF and a first round of reviews from Venice.

Useless:

• "Useless, the new documentary by Jia Zhangke, avoids grand statements about fashion or the apparel industry or the rapid changes that are transforming Chinese life, though it is decidedly about all of these things," writes Chris Wisniewski at Reverse Shot. "Clocking in at under 90 minutes, and deploying no voiceover, Useless is actually a deceptively modest piece of work - some may call it 'minor' - but its modesty should not be taken for lack of ambition or for a failure on Jia's part to grapple with his film's subjects."

• "This isn't the first time Jia has bifurcated his structure this way (Still Life does the same thing, though it eventually ties together its threads), but Useless has about four distinct stories, which is at least two too many," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. "The film goes from the hypnotic formalism of the fashion world to the slow, less-aestheticized world of the village. The mystery departs. The most surprising revelation of the press conference following the screening is that Jia sincerely admires Ma Ke's work, taking it at face value as 'an engagement with critical thinking about the state of China from the point of view of fashion.' She's his on-screen alter ego, her brand name his plight."

  Earlier: Reviews and previews from Venice, Toronto and NYFF.

Special Events:

Fados:

• "Fados is Carlos Saura's art-gallery fête of a popular genre of Portuguese music whose influence can be traced to the Moors," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "Saura's latest exaltation of a native dance may not frazzle the nerves, but its hybridization of interplaying cinematic and musical techniques is still an orgy for the eyes and ears."

• Saura "wonderfully attunes his film to bodies in motion, superimposing silhouettes of people over bustling street crowd imagery as a means of fostering a sense of collective cultural harmony," writes Nick Schager.

• Online listening tip. Keith Uhlich interviews Saura at the House Next Door.

Hamlet:

• "Vengeance as a woman or a prince? This 1921 version of Hamlet, starring Danish silent screen goddess Asta Nielsen, poses that intriguing question," writes Jenny Jediny at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "Originally created and supported through Nielsen's own production company, this interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedy proposes that Hamlet was in fact a woman, forced by her family from birth to disguise herself as a man in order to inherit the throne.... Full credit deservedly goes to Nielsen for the film's success, as her embodiment of the tragic prince is as visually exciting as it is provocative for its time period; her melancholy yet astute prince seems as aware of not merely the character's place in history, but her own unforgettable performance."

Leave Her to Heaven:

• "The story of a manipulative bride who destroys everyone around her with an all-consuming need to be loved, the film felt extremely contemporary and was a a hoot," writes Tom Hall. "I watched the movie with nothing but sympathy for Gene Tierney's portrayal of the 'crazy' bride and something just this side of eye-rolling contempt for über-stiff Cornel Wilde's 'marriage-by-numbers' groom."

• "If [John M] Stahl seems close to Carl Dreyer in his 30s work, with Leave Her to Heaven he plunges headfirst into a sort of cruel, thin Daliesque landscape where an inscrutable beauty's liberating vengeance has no limit whatsoever," writes Dan Callahan at Slant.

Runnin' Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:

• "I did it: I survived Peter Bogdanovich's 4 hour and 15 minute Tom Petty documentary, Running Down a Dream," announces Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "I cannot call myself a Tom Petty fan - in fact, I'd probably be more inherently receptive to a four hour documentary about Peter Bogdanovich - but there's something about this film that fascinates me. I think maybe it's that, in terms of the nature and total efficiency of the production, it actually achieves Bogdanovich's apparent lifelong ambition to emulate Howard Hawks."

• "Whether or not you consider Petty a major artist, the fact that he's walked the walk, integrity-wise, most faithfully over his entire career is no small thing, and he comes off here as a far more personally appealling non-compromiser than, say, John Mellencamp," writes Glenn Kenny. "He's also a good storyteller himself, and he gathered a lot of interesting pals in his travels - Dylan, coupla Beatles, Roy Orbison. So while this is more Petty than I ever imagined I would want to sit still for, I actually had a really good time with this one."

• At IFC News, Bogdanovich tells Aaron Hillis that "Tom's a big movie fan. He watches Turner Classic Movies all the time. When he goes on tour, the hotel has to have TCM or he won't stay in the room. One of the first things we talked about was Rio Bravo, which is the first clip [shown in the doc]. He loves that movie, and I do too. I think westerns, Hawks and Ford were a bonding element."

Underworld:

• "Josef von Sternberg's Underworld is a fascinating early cornerstone of both the director's worldview and the gangster genre," writes Fernando F Croce at Slant.

• "I know Underworld may be more exceptional than typical, yet it's a good reminder that Sunrise or other more widely seen silent classics are not alone in what they do," writes Chris Cagle.

"Chinese Modern: A Tribute to Cathay Studios, nominally a retrospective celebrating one of the seminal production companies in Hong Kong cinema, could just as well be a celebration of a seismic talent known as Ge Lan, aka Grace Chang," writes Kevin B Lee at the House Next Door. "Ensconced in cosmopolitan culture, from airliners to mambo clubs, Cathay's urbane entertainments envisioned a Hong Kong jet set that presaged the city's eventual ascendance as an economic powerhouse. Central to this modern vision were the stable of actresses who portrayed headstrong, independent leads in these films, not the least of which was Chang. Of the seven films in the sidebar, five feature Chang, she of the sultry, man-eating gaze and volcano voice." And he concentrates on Mambo Girl and The Wild, Wild Rose.

Posted by dwhudson at October 22, 2007 8:16 AM