Fests and events, 2/14.

"Boundaries of geography, genre and taste are tested and occasionally trampled in the ninth edition of Film Comment Selects, the annual cinema roundup from the editors of Film Comment magazine, which runs through Feb 28 at the Walter Reade Theater," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Such border crossings are common inside the pages of Film Comment, a citadel of intellectually committed, aesthetically adventurous, sometimes prickly, sometimes maddening, sometimes baffling, if invariably lively and passionate cinephilia that is published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. You may want to throw the magazine against the wall on occasion, but it remains essential reading."

Related: Bryant Frazer and Phil Nugent (ScreenGrab) on The Duchess of Langleais; and Simon Abrams has a batch of capsule reviews at Twitch.

Miriam Bale (Reeler), Bruce Bennett (New York Sun) and Eric Kohn (New York Press) preview MoMA's Milos Forman retrospective.

"Once again, the Film Noir Foundation is bringing a week of crime, mad love, death and despair to the citizens of Seattle, this time as part of the SIFF Winter 2008 program," writes Anne M Hockens at the Siffblog. Tomorrow through February 21.

"This month the Austin Film Society presents the sequel to one of its most provocative Essential Cinema series programs from last year," writes Josh Rosenblatt in the Chronicle. "Children of Abraham/Ibrahim 2: Films of the Middle East and North Africa picks up right where last February's presentation left off, with rarely seen cinematic visions of a region rich in history and tradition but mired in misunderstanding, poverty, and war."

Michael Guillén: "I'm not sure which was more disturbing: catching Adam Wingard's Pop Skull at SF IndieFest or hooking up with the film's producers for a luncheon interview in San Francisco's notorious Tenderloin."

The Pan African Film Festival runs through Sunday; in the LA Weekly, Ernest Hardy notes that the films made available for press preview haven't been all that encouraging. Meanwhile, Charles Burnett's Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, an "epic film about Namibia's campaign for independence from South Africa - almost three hours long, spanning six decades and featuring more than 150 speaking parts in multiple languages and dialects - wasn't available for preview, and as the festival's opening-night gala, with tickets priced at $150 (which includes admission to an after-party), it's likely priced outside the budget of the average filmgoer."

SXSW interviews at Hollywood Bitchslap: Marshall Fine, whose Do You Sleep in the Nude? is a documentary about Rex Reed; Joe Maggio, director of the "incidental film" Paper Covers Rock; Daniel Stamm, whose A Necessary Death is "a movie about a documentarian making a movie about a suicidal person."

Posted by dwhudson at February 14, 2008 2:32 PM