Fests and events, 3/7.

On the occasion of 30 Years of J. Hoberman, at BAM through, Bruce Bennett writes in the New York Sun: "Like Lester Bangs, who examined old, new, mainstream, and vanguard work with equal suspicion, passion, and curiosity, Mr Hoberman created his own aesthetic beat, putting experimental short works, foreign art films, and mainstream Hollywood fare all under the same energetic scrutiny. Infuriating though it often could be, a Hoberman review invariably articulated a fierce intelligence and a strong desire to position films within both the mechanisms of expression their makers employed and the social and political contexts from which the work emerged."

"While the film might make sense within its own societal context, it's impossible to place anywhere in the American cultural landscape," writes Martin Tsai, introducing festival favorite Funky Forest: The First Contact to New York Sun readers. "Using the television sketch comedy show format as a framing device, Funky Forest is a series of bizarre non sequiturs interconnected by recurring characters: Imagine a two-and-a-half-hour episode of Saturday Night Live or MADtv, directed by Michel Gondry. No, make that Matthew Barney. No, make that David Cronenberg." At the ImaginAsian Theater through March 13.

Also, Nicolas Rapold on Myra Breckinridge: "Fueled by Gore Vidal's rambunctious source novel, the 1970 film was a studio production aiming to shock and subvert, and the result was a treat for gawkers of 1960s camp. 38 years after its premiere, New Yorkers can watch the oddity firsthand in a new print this weekend at Anthology Film Archives." More from Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

"[W]hile the body of [Dames], directed by Ray Enright, is tepid, the big-show finale is ultimately worth the wait," writes Hazel-Dawn Dumpert. "That's when the directorial reins are handed over to mad genius Busby Berkeley, and the enterprise spins off, literally at times, into the kaleidoscopic, gyroscopic world of one man's obsessive imagination."

Also in the LA Weekly, John Tottenham: "When Sergio Leone shifted the action of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo from a windswept silk-trading outpost to a sun-drenched Mexican border town, he ran a blade through the traditional Western, stripping it down and opening it up, eviscerating its tiresome romantic subplots, upping the violence and deepening the fatalism." A Fistful of Dollars and Yojimbo are at the ImaginAsian Center through March 13.

Posted by dwhudson at March 7, 2008 12:54 PM