Fests and events, 11/8.

"It only took 33 years and what director Cinda Firestone quantifies as 'a zillion bootlegs,' but the landmark documentary Attica is on the verge of a major revival," writes ST VanAirsdale. "A detailed, unflinching chronicle of the 1971 riots at the titular prison - where 29 inmates and 10 hostages died in one of the bloodiest domestic uprisings in US history - and the inquiry that followed, Attica found instant acclaim before slipping into an obscurity of distribution hell." And he interviews Firestone; the film screens in just a couple of hours at the Walter Reade in NYC.

Also at the Reeler: "There's nothing wrong with the festival season hoopla in New York, but there's always been something alluring about the underdogs," writes Mat Newman. "One of those blossoming events - the Queens International Film Festival - opens its fifth year tonight in Astoria." Through Sunday.

"We had a lot of directors in common, because he knew John Ford and Howard Hawks and Fritz Lang, and we would discuss our shared memories of those sacred monsters." Peter Bogdanovich remembers Pierre Rissient and then talks with Todd McCarthy about his doc, Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema, screening at AFI Fest tomorrow and Saturday.

Also in the LA Weekly, Scott Foundas has an overview of Michael Haneke: A Cinema of Provocation, a series of eight TV films touring the US for the first time and now screening at the Silent Movie Theatre through the end of the month.

"[Don] Rickles is 81 and enjoying a little bit of a renaissance, as it happens, with a memoir, Rickles' Book, and now Mr Warmth: The Don Rickles Project, a feature-length documentary directed by John Landis, of Animal House and The Blues Brothers movie fame," writes Paul Brownfield. "The film screens at the AFI Film Festival Friday night and debuts on HBO Dec 2."

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Liane Bonin looks ahead to Tuesday's offering from the Grindhouse Film Festival.

"Electric Apricot, the directorial feature debut from Primus' slap-bass mastermind, [Les] Claypool, (playing in a limited run at the Alamo South Lamar this weekend), dissects the minutiae of the jam-band scene in a way no Phishy concert film would ever dare to attempt: via outright parody," writes Marc Savlov.

Also in the Austin Chronicle: Anne S Lewis talks with Thom Andersen about Los Angeles Plays Itself, screening November 14.

And: The Austin Asian Film Festival opens today and runs through Sunday.

Neil Morris hits the highlights of the Cucalorus Film Festival for the Independent Weekly. Through Saturday in Wilmington NC.

"The primary objective, to capture the attention of the media, has been achieved: judging by the press conference, the risk of handing over the artistic direction of the 25th Turin Film Festival (November 23 - December 1) to Nanni Moretti seems to have paid off," writes Gabriele Barcaro at Cineuropa.

"I was taken aback when I'd recently read in Catching the Big Fish that David Lynch considers Stanley Kubrick to be one of his all-time favorite filmmakers," writes Josef Braun, previewing The Films of Stanley Kubrick, a series running on Sundays in Edmonton. "He was inventive, witty, a superb craftsman, he cultivated some of movies' most chilling moods and possessed of a singular eye for tectonic visual design. But his talents are tempered by a nagging soullessness." Also, Pierrot le Fou, "which Metro Cinema will be showing this weekend to what I hope will be an eager, alert and sizable crowd."

"In [Shohei] Imamura's movies, five of which will be screened at the International House's retrospective, men and women's bestial urges are always surging to the surface," writes Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper. "But Imamura himself stands apart, which makes him in some ways closer to Ozu than, say, Seijun Suzuki." November 14 through 17.

Posted by dwhudson at November 8, 2007 1:17 PM