Fests and events, 2/2.

"The well-oiled machinery that is the Palace-run French Film Festival in Australia unloads a shipment of new films each year onto an audience all too eager to soak up the sophistication." Matt Riviera previews this year's edition.

Claude Lelouch's Roman de gare will open this year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, reports Dade Hayes in Variety. February 29 through March 9.

"How appropriate that, as Dont Look Back wheels its way into New York's Film Forum, I'm Not There is still commanding one of the theater's other two screens; it's as if DA Pennebaker's film lined itself up perfectly with the prism of Dylanology created by Todd Haynes," writes Zachary Wigon at the House Next Door. "What's important to remember, of course, is that it is actually Haynes who is reading Pennebaker, not the other way around.... Interesting, then, that Pennebaker presents a similarly divided (and divisive) Dylan." More from Michael Joshua Rowin at Reverse Shot: "Dylan was so far ahead of the game in '65 that he already understood the best way to undermine any 'natural' relationships between sound, image and performer - long before the ubiquity of music videos and the complicated intersections between art, performance, and commerce they would inherently embody and exacerbate."

"Each year, the international slate of films at the Museum of Modern Art's Documentary Fortnight can feel like a nonfiction follow-up to the museum's Global Lens survey in January," writes Nicolas Rapold in the New York Sun. "This year's edition, newly bundled with two Academy-based series under the streamlined banner Doc Month, again trots the globe, but one of its strangest pleasures comes from rather close to home." And that would be To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore. The series runs February 13 through March 3.

The Reeler shouts out an overview of New York's "February Events Madness!" Plus, Miriam Bale on MoMA's weekend program, Introducing Bert Williams.

"A growing legal controversy is threatening to discredit Luigi Falorni's child soldier drama Heart of Fire a week before its premiere at Berlin Film Festival." Ed Meza has the story in Variety. The film is one of two German entries in the Competition, so the papers here are weighing in left and right.

Michael Guillén is still all over Noir City 6, which wraps tomorrow.

"First Trip to Park City." A terrific photo essay from Brandon Harris is recovering from his Park City experience and takes a moment to "briefly point out just how wonderful Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's Sugar is, and just how artistically, intellectually and emotionally bankrupt Clark Gregg's Choke turned out to be."

Five Things They Took Away from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival: David D'Arcy and Jason Guerrasio.

At SF360, Dennis Harvey presents "a somewhat random list of things that were good (or at least memorably bad) about the Sundance class of ought-eight."

Posted by dwhudson at February 2, 2008 7:56 AM