Fests and events, 2/26.

"Burton Stephen Lancaster (1913 - 1994) was one of the most paradoxical figures in Hollywood history," writes Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent. "Depending on the account, he was either a vainglorious and very hammy movie star or a sensitive and subtle actor; a sports-loving jock or a man of culture who had once wanted to be an opera singer. Some contemporaries talk about how tough he was to work with. Others revere him and credit him with launching their careers." The Lancaster season is on at BFI Southbank through March 24.

"The 7th edition of !f, the Istanbul Independent film festival, ended today and has confirmed the event's rising importance in the country's cinematographic landscape," blogs Agnès Poirer for the Guardian. "Shadowed for a long time by its elders, including the Antalya and International Istanbul festivals, launched respectively in 1964 and 1976, the young festival is the fruit of a Turkish cinematic renaissance." More from Kerem Bayrak at indieWIRE.

Pitchfork previews a slew of music-related films screening at SXSW between March 7 and 15.

Karina Longworth puts a set of questions to Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie director Jay Delaney - and she's on her way to the True/False Film Festival, which runs Thursday through Sunday.

Stefan Steinberg begins a series at WSWS on this year's Berlinale. Of the Golden Bear-winning Elite Squad, he writes:

When criticism is raised of his film, director José Padilha wants to have it both ways. Against accusations that his film glorifies the work of the elite squad he responds by pointing to those sections of his film that reveal the dehumanising training of the unit, as well as the squeals of protest by leading Brazilian police officers over the negative presentation of their own police units in the film.

But the fact remains that the film is dominated by the standpoint that the extremes of violent crime and social decay in Brazilian cities can only be dealt with through muscular, authoritarian measures. Part of the problem, the film seems to argue, are pot-smoking, pacifist, middle class students. The vicious denouncement by an enforcement officer of a young student as a piece of scum, "like the whores, the pimps, the abortionist..." is left unchallenged in the film as a whole.

Parallels are then drawn with There Will Be Blood, for which Paul Thomas Anderson won a Silver Bear: "Padilho stresses the political relevance of his movie; Anderson is desperate to play it down in his. It appears as if their films are worlds apart, but in fact they do share a common denominator - their misogynistic view of the world." But Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure - another Silver Bear winner - "is an important film."

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2008 11:01 AM