September 7, 2008

Fall previews. NYT, LAT, etc.

The New York Times' preview of what we might as well call the Serious Season opens with a profile from Dennis Lim:

Wendy and Lucy

"Michelle Williams has an Academy Award nomination, the open adulation of major filmmakers and a résumé that is striking in its worldliness and creative ambition. But if her career has seemed to progress almost inconspicuously, it is partly because of its introspective bent - small movies, subtle performances - and partly because it has lately existed in the shadow of her personal life." And there's an accompanying slide show; this fall, she'll be seen in - besides the tabloids - Synecdoche, New York and Wendy and Lucy.

Updated through 9/12.

"The current line on independent film, depending on who's doing the spinning and why, is that it's dead, in crisis or at least in trouble." But is it, asks Manohla Dargis, if all we mean by that is that the major studios are chopping off their specialty arms? "If all the studios followed the lead of Time Warner and got out of the indie film business, it might help a film like Ballast find its way into the larger world, though that's no guarantee. And perhaps that's the wrong way to look at it. Guarantees are for washing machines, after all, not art, and films like Ballast and Wendy and Lucy don't need big distributors, a mass audience or a Spirit Award to prove their worth."

Ballast

More from AO Scott on what the hell is going on. Last year, movies from the specialty divisions "were sent out into a brutally competitive marketplace, a Hobbesian battlefield of each against all. Competition may be healthy, but in this case the odds of winning seemed to grow increasingly long as the victories became pyrrhic." And now: "Will there now be fewer? Would that be a bad thing?"

The Los Angeles Times' fall preview isn't easy to find, but you might start with the photo gallery.

In the Boston Globe's fall arts preview, Wesley Morris and Ty Burr spot a trend in the slate of upcoming movies: "If this summer showed us a grim future (thank you, WALL-E and Batman), fall wants to bring us a happy past. The ultra-serious or super-dark dramas that regularly populate fall lineups have been replaced with lots of starry Hollywood entertainments that either are set in the past or feel like throwbacks. If levity doesn't completely abound, it's certainly easier than usual to find - there's more glamour, too." Also: Leslie Brokaw looks ahead to the local festivals.

With Dave Kehr's amazing release schedule in the NYT as a guide (the September page may or may not be online, but here's October, November and December), and without going the overly thorough route, here are some of the highlights of the season that leap out at first glance:

This Friday, September 12:

Righteous Kill

Wednesday, September 17:

September 19:

  • Amexicano. Ronnie Scheib in Variety: "Constantly unpredictable yet totally organic, this low-key tale of an improbable friendship between an out-of-work Italian-American and a young Mexican illegal alien in Queens maintains an engaging, even keel through bumpy tonal shifts that would derail most indie outings."

Battle in Seattle

September 26:

Choke

October 1:

October 3:

Religulous

October 8:

October 10:

Happy-Go-Lucky

October 17:

What Just Happened?

October 22:

October 24:

Let the Right One In

October 31:

November 7:

November 14:

A Christmas Tale

November 19:

November 21:

November 26:

Australia

November 28:

  • Slumdog Millionaire. From Danny Boyle. Reviews from Telluride.

    December 3:

    December 5:

    Frost/Nixon

    December 10:

    December 12:

    Doubt

    December 19:

    December 24:

    December 26:

    The Secret of the Grain

    "The New Season," an "Arts & Leisure" package in the NYT, previews much more than movies, of course, and there's a piece from theater critic Ben Brantley that'll be of interest to film folk: "Broadway, it seems, has eclipsed Playboy as the place to make Hollywood pay attention. There was a time when female movie stars who felt they were being ignored by the industry took off their clothes for Hugh Hefner's magazine. Now they brush up their Shakespeare - or Schnitzler or Miller - and hit Gotham. Of course if you can manage to be naked while appearing in a production with cultural cachet, as [Nicole] Kidman did [in The Blue Room], then you're really in business."

    For the NYT, Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek preview the season in DVD releases.

    The LAT also has a preview of books coming out this season.

    Online viewing tip. Karen Durbin talks about the performances she's highlighting this season.

    Now then. A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry, "New York. Fall Preview," and kept adding to it for about a week as other previews appeared. I'll do the same here, though, who knows, a package of some sort might pop up that'll need an entry of its own.

    Updates, 9/8: Time's "47 Things to See, Hear, and Do This Fall."

    Guardian critics pick their highlights for the season in the UK.

    Update, 9/9: Bill Gibron introduces the PopMatters preview bundle.

    Update, 9/12: The Chicago Reader posts its "Fall Arts Guide 2008."



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    Posted by dwhudson at September 7, 2008 2:27 PM