Fests and events, 11/20.

Host and Guest will be screening tomorrow evening at 9:30 and again on Thanksgiving Day at 5 pm as part of the Chinese American Film Festival in San Francisco. Yes, it's a Korean film, but Adam Hartzell explains how this has come about in his introduction to his interview with director Sin Dong-il at Hell on Frisco Bay.

William Kentridge's "art has an affecting, hand-made, do-it-yourself quality that is matched by a natural storytelling ability and a critical intellect," writes Adrian Searle in the Guardian. "If his adoption of stop-motion animation and his almost expressionist, graphic use of charcoal appear old-fashioned, they are purposefully so. The more one looks, the more references pile in." William Kentridge: Fragile Identities, an exhibition, symposium and performance series is taking place at various venues Brighton through the end of the year.

In an entry for Artforum's diary, Jennifer Allen describes Bruce LaBruce's "theatrical debut as both director and dramatist. In moving from behind the camera to behind the scenes, LaBruce - affectionately known as BLAB to friends, fans, and those in a hurry - mixed race, class, gender, and sexuality to make an explosive combination of the nuclear family." Cheap Blacky's just wrapped in Berlin.

Vadim Rizov attended Monday night's screening of David Fincher's director's cut of Zodiac: "[F]or my money, it's one of the finest films of the decade. Host and chief interrogator Kent Jones wasn't the only one confessing to having seen the movie five times or more; one man prefaced his question with such ecstatic praise that Fincher interrupted him before he could even get to the question: 'Thank God for you, sir.'"

Also at the Reeler: There's still a lot of Ingmar Bergman to be seen in NYC, notes Miriam Bale.

"As a Brooklyn-raised upstart in the 1930's New York theater scene, [Norman] Lloyd had the luck to work with some great directors, including Elia Kazan and Orson Welles," writes Julia Wallace. "The high point of his 70-plus-year career was his role as the saboteur in Saboteur, which will be paired as a double feature with Who Is Norman Lloyd? for the week of its run at Film Forum." And John Anderson talks with Lloyd.

Kathy Fennessy at the Siffblog on The Landlord: "Though Harold and Maude would secure his reputation the following year - once it caught on, that is - [Hal] Ashby's first film proves he had the touch from the start." At the Northwest Film Forum from Friday through Thursday.

Posted by dwhudson at November 20, 2007 3:11 PM