Fests and events, 2/13.

The House Next Door has put together a walloping preview of Film Comments Selects, the series opening tomorrow and running through February 28. Even if you're far and away from New York and won't be able to attend, a few of these capsule reviews at the very least will be of interest.

Related: Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer on The Duchess of Langeais: "Mr Rivette may have been so mesmerized by the profound precision of Balzac's prose that he failed to perceive how boring the literary narrative would be when it was brought to the screen comparatively intact." But Benjamin Strong finds that "Rivette wisely pumps up the irony found in the Balzac original, awakening its dormant class invective."

"BAMcinematek has become a reliable curator of Czech cinema with its annual contemporary surveys and its 2006 modernism excavation," writes Nicolas Rapold. "All demonstrate life after (and before) Loves of a Blonde."

"One of the films playing the SF Indie Fest is a movie we've all seen before, and yet it's guaranteed we've never seen it like this," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. "Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation began as a labor of love, and then became a work of obsession."

And Eve O'Neill files a dispatch from the fest to SF360.

"My sense is that John Ford's breakthrough 1924 silent The Iron Horse isn't highly regarded by Ford fans, and I didn't have a strong reaction to it when I first saw it years ago," writes Dan Sallitt. "But the Museum of the Moving Image showed a good print in their current Ford at Fox series (which continues through February 24), and, I dunno, suddenly I really like the film. Certainly it seems to me the silent Ford that most conveys the directorial personality that we find in Ford's mature work."

John Oursler previews Dawn of Japanese Animation for the Reeler. Through Saturday.

The Austin Chronicle has launched its SXSW blog.

Posted by dwhudson at February 13, 2008 2:43 PM