Fests and events, 7/14.

Twitch's Todd Brown from Fantasia: "A Colt Is My Passport was apparently considered a fairly minor title by Nikkatsu at the time but it is a sharp, compelling film, one that has stood up to the test of time beautifully. Its fusion of styles and influences results in something truly unique, a treasure that can - and should - be recognized by fans of classic Hollywood, European arthouse and modern cult films alike." Todd notes that this one, along with six other Nikkatsu Action titles, has been picked up by Criterion.

Also, X-Cross: "Holy crap, Kenta Fukasaku went and made a film that doesn't suck." And: Adrift in Tokyo.

Miriam Bale at the House Next Door on William Holden: A Different Kind of Hero, running through Tuesday: "By presenting a series of thematic double features, it seeks to excavate the various and conflicting characteristics that made Holden a remarkable performer. His voice was like ashes and nails, rough with a staccato delivery. His physique was effortlessly perfect (apparently his only regular physical activity was standing on his hands out of the open windows of tall buildings after too many martinis). Over the course of his career, his face aged from golden toned to burnished copper but - even when deeply lined from age and hard living - he never stopped being empirically handsome. Holden was the ultimate movie star; yet this was his greatest humiliation." Also, Vadim Rizov on The Key.

The Discreet Charm of Charles Boyer runs at LACMA through July 26.

In the Los Angeles Times, Valli Herman talks with Faythe Levine about the silent-auction fundraiser she'll be holding in LA for her doc-in-the-making, Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY Art, Craft and Design.

Anne Thompson previews From Here to Awesome, the "discovery and distribution festival" which "showcases twelve micro-budgeted features selected from 115 submissions via a complex online process. The features, many of them weary vets of the global fest circuit, plus ten shorts, are being distributed in many different ways, including handheld devices, Amazon Unbox, Netflix, Hulu and VUDU. All revenues will go to the filmmakers." Launch is July 26.

On August 1 and 2, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents a "world premiere collaboration," Music Without Borders, featuring the Kronos Quartet and "Who's Who list of collaborators." And yes, there will be film.

"It is difficult to separate the form of Gregory Markopoulos's Eniaios, his 80-hour magnum opus, from his idiosyncratic biography," writes Michael Wang for Artforum. "At the vanguard of the American experimental film scene in the 1950s and 60s, Markopoulos emigrated to Europe in 1967 and withdrew his films from circulation. Two weekends ago, and 16 years after Markopoulos's death in 1992, the second installment of the film, cycles three through five of the 22-cycle work, was projected, for the first time, at the site outside his ancestral village of Lyssaraia in the Peloponnese specified by him as the only suitable location for the viewing of the work - what he called the Temenos, after the classical term for a sacred space delimited from the everyday." More at Secret Cinema.

Damon Wise sends a dispatch from Karlovy Vary to indieWIRE. Theodore Schwinke has the award-winners at Cineuropa.

"Film flows forward, but it loves to look back," writes Nick Bradshaw in the Guardian. "And what greater form of flashback could there be than an entire festival devoted to reviving old movies - the restored, the rediscovered, or simply the seen anew? Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato (Cinema Rediscovered), which just wrapped its 22nd edition, offers a window on the past, turning the most fantastic fiction films into documents of their time; but it also reflects back on us now, holding a yardstick to our presumptions of progress."

"Re-released for the second time (it came to Los Angeles in 1997) in a new 35mm print, Contempt is a perfectly devastating marriage of beauty and loneliness." Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly. More from Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times.

The RomeFilmFest finally drops that ridiculous name. Camillo de Marco reports on other changes going on at the Rome International Film Festival (October 22 through 31) for Cineuropa.

Online viewing tip. All the Real Americans: The World of David Gordon Green runs at BAM from July 17 through 24. New York's Bilge Ebiri: "In honor of this retro, we figured we'd present Physical Pinball, one of the terrific shorts Green did while a student at the North Carolina School of the Arts."

Posted by dwhudson at July 14, 2008 9:26 AM