Other fests, other events, 1/24.

"Noir City 6 has the usual spread of special guests, rare titles, and newly struck prints across ten nights of double-features," writes Max Goldberg at SF360. "Plenty of notable tidbits for the hardcore, in other words, and for everyone else a chance at the kind of immersion long underlying noir appreciation." Tomorrow through February 3.

Michael Guillén launches his coverage with an interview with Alan K Rode, a frequent contributor to Film Monthly and The Big Chat who can also be heard in more than a few DVD commentaries. Rode's new book is Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy.

Aaron Hillis previews Envisioning Russia: A Century of Filmmaking, running tomorrow through February 14: "Expect film-school staples like The Battleship Potemkin and The Cranes Are Flying, as well as Soviet comedies and musicals, special-effects extravaganzas, Cold War dramas, a perestroika-era gem, contemporary stand-outs (including a special screening of Aleksander Sokurov's wartime allegory and NYFF selection Alexandra) - and, yes, the requisite Andrei Tarkovsky picture."

Also in the Voice: "First, a faith in the possibility of unknown quantities is a necessity when approaching Anthology Film Archives' selection of Polish films in Polish New Wave: A History of the Phenomenon That Never Existed," advises Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "The featured fare here screens with Brigadoon frequency, and is inaccessible even in the videotékas of deepest Greenpoint. I've had only a partial glimpse at the contents of the canisters en route to Anthology from Polska; nothing has been uninteresting." More from Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. Tomorrow through Sunday.

Acquarello has the lineup for this year's Film Comment Selects series, running February 14 through 28.

Mary Harron's coming to Durham "to launch the inaugural Filmmaker Residency Program sponsored by Duke University's Film/Video/Digital Program (FVD)," notes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly. She arrives Monday; American Psycho screens Tuesday.

In the Austin Chronicle, Josh Rosenblatt previews the Austin Jewish Film Festival. Saturday through February 1.

"They didn't really anticipate going on with the Antoine Doinel character." At the Evening Class, Laura Truffaut, François's daughter, discusses The 400 Blows, its director and star, on the occasion of Jean-Pierre Léaud: The New Wave and After, at the Pacific Film Archive through February 29.

Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King is on at the American Cinematheque through the end of the month and, in the LA Weekly, David Thomson urges you to "watch everything, not just every film they're showing but every frame of each, because Preminger knew that film was a natural corridor into desire and violence."

Stunt folk will be getting some of the attention they deserve on Tuesday at the Silent Theatre, reports Margaret Wappler in the Los Angeles Times.

The Lumière Reader's Tim Wong previews the tenth World Cinema Showcase, set to tour New Zealand this spring.

For Variety, David Mermelstein previews the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, running today through February 3, and Alissa Simon previews the Gothenburg Film Festival, running tomorrow though February 5.

"Last Friday night, people lined up around the block at the Anthology Film Archives to watch the avant-garde shorts of a Thai filmmaker whose last film made $16,000 in the US. Total," notes Vadim Rizov in the Tisch Film Review. "What was really weird was that, if Apichatpong 'Joe' Weerasethakul's work already borders the completely inscrutable and non-narrative, his shorts abandon it almost entirely."

Posted by dwhudson at January 24, 2008 1:36 PM