Observer Film Quarterly. July 08.

France's highest-paid actress is set to reveal several more unseen sides of herself this autumn, when a BFI Southbank retrospective, entitled Jubilations, will coincide with the premiere of In-I, a dance work co-created with her co-performer, London-born choreographer Akram Khan. Additionally, the BFI atrium will be showcasing Binoche's paintings of directors with whom she has worked and of herself in character.

As if that weren't achievement enough for one woman, a bilingual book will be published at the same time, composed not only of paintings, but also poems she has written about some of those same directors. And all of this after having just released five films in 10 months.

Related: Binoche's recent diary for the London Times.

"Cinematic new waves are announced with such frequency that it's hard to tell where one ends and the next begins," writes Ryan Gilbey. "But there is currently an unmistakable groundswell in British cinema, heralded by a clutch of directors who are chafing against the boundaries of narrative filmmaking, and in some cases dismantling them altogether." He talks with six: Matthew Thompson (Dummy), Joanna Hogg (Unrelated), Duane Hopkins (Better Things), Marianna Palka (Good Dick), Steve McQueen (Hunger) and Saul Dibb (The Duchess).

The London Film Festival will open on October 15 with the world premiere of Frost/Nixon. Jason Solomons considers the festival's "intent to become, instead of Venice or Toronto, the place for premieres" and to become, in general, "bigger and glitzier."

Solomons also gets Mel Brooks to recall hooking up with David Lynch for The Elephant Man: "I guess it was the outsider aspect that appealed to him. And that's where I think we met, mentally. My films, even if they're comic, they're about: 'Let's accept the bizarre. Let's learn more about these creatures, or these Jews.' I know the Elephant Man wasn't Jewish, but, to me, the story had all the aspects of anti-semitism and [Joseph] Merrick had all the traits of the classic wandering Jew."

"Kristin Scott Thomas gives an extraordinary performance, one of the best of her career, in I've Loved You So Long, which had its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February," argues Killian Fox. Also, "Introducing... Michael Fassbender," star of Hunger and François Ozon's Angel.

And Fox asks novelist Siri Hustvedt about the films that have resonated in her life. And: Some big stars' modest debuts.

"Trilogies have been springing up all over, and choosing the top 10 is no longer an easy matter." Philip French gives it a go.

"These days, cannabis is popping up everywhere," notes Charles Gant. "Pineapple Express will be beaten into UK theatres by The Wackness, in which shrink Ben Kingsley dispenses therapy to teenage patient Josh Peck in exchange for little bags of weed. It will be followed this autumn by feature-length animation Free Jimmy, whose tagline, intriguingly, is: 'Four stoners, three gangsters and a million reasons to free one junkie elephant.' And recent weeks have seen two new announcements: the self-descriptive High School, from the producer of American Pie; and Shrink, another comedy about a psychiatrist pot-head, this time starring Kevin Spacey." A list of five best stoner comedies follows.

Guillermo del Toro takes another look into those famous sketchbooks.

"Elite Squad, released in the UK next month, proved to be one of the most explosive and controversial films in the history of Brazilian cinema." Tom Phillips reports.

A "blast from the past," as Film Comment calls them: novelist Howard Jacobson's 1993 interview with Spike Lee, conducted in the wake of the release of Malcolm X.

And there are brief previews of Ethan and Joel Coen's Burn After Reading, Steven Soderbergh's Che and Kevin MacDonald's State of Play.

Also in this week's Observer, though not in the Quarterly:

"Last year, US director Richard Shepard made the fictional The Hunting Party, inspired by an Esquire article in which a group of journalists set out to capture Radovan Karadzic in Bosnia." Killian Fox asks him, "How did you react to the arrest?"

"The crane cabbies of the world, the men (and now women) who climb 100 metres straight into the air every day to help build new concrete worlds, are an astonishing, serene, brave, contemplative lot, according to the graceful and revealing The Solitary Life of Cranes, winner of the FourDocs short film competion at last week's Britdoc Festival in Oxford." Euan Ferguson in the Observer.

Philip French considers Simone Signoret and reviews The Dark Knight, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, Before the Rains, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, Paris, Baby Mama and Quiet City.

Mark Kermode's "DVD of the week": Funny Games US.

Posted by dwhudson at July 27, 2008 6:57 AM