Brooklyn Rail. Nov 07.

"For Staring Back, an exhibition of 200 black-and-white photographs dating from 1952 to 2006, Chris Marker selected only what he calls instead 'Superliminal' images: those exceptional shots that stand out strikingly from many virtually the same," notes Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle.

"This was the best Film Festival in years," writes David N Meyer, looking back on the NYFF. "It's been a good while since the Festival got accused of being too smart, too historical, too in touch with the times, too educational, too aware of the debt it owes the very universe it created. Let's hope they hear the same accusations next year."

"What Gone Baby Gone recognizes is that, much as we like to pretend 'it's all about the kids,' most of the time it isn't," writes Tessa DeCarlo. "On the public stage and often even in the privacy of our homes, we cherish (or abuse) children as stand-ins for ourselves, symbols we use to express our need for love and community, our anger at the ways the world has disappointed us, our fears and hopes about the future.... That same theme emerges from Amir Bar-Lev's documentary about Marla Olmstead, a four-year-old from Binghamton, New York.... At its most disturbing, My Kid Could Paint That suggests how much damage can be inflicted on a child with the best of intentions."

"'Pandering' hardly seems an adequate word for American Gangster, a biopic of 1960s Harlem heroin king Frank Lucas directed by middle-aged white millionaire Ridley Scott, written by middle-aged white millionaire Steve Zaillian, produced by middle-aged white millionaire Brian Grazer, and designed to soft-sell an African American audience on the proposition of the druglord as symbol of heroic honesty and self-determination in a racist society," argues Mark Asch.

"Seinfeld, Friends, and even Sex in the City were about transplants (some pulling up roots only from Long Island, but non-native species nonetheless)," writes Sarahjane Blum. "However, the world the adults from most New York stories aspired to and achieved in remains but a playground that Gossip Girl's privileged kids have pretty much outgrown.... Everyone has, at best, mixed feelings towards their hometown, and if you can't dream of moving to New York, what's left?"

Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2007 3:27 PM