Fests and events, 9/8.

"[Sam] Peckinpah is an American maverick who makes Clint Eastwood look like John McCain," writes Andrew Hultkrans for Artforum. "His legion of imitators - has there ever been a director whose style has been so shamelessly, and shallowly, lifted? - mistook the bloodshed for bloodlust, deep melancholy for cheap comedy. For every Martin Scorsese, there's three or more pale riders - Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Robert Rodriguez, say - whose balletic orgies of violence go no more than skin deep." Sam Peckinpah: Blood Poet runs at Harvard Film Archive through Friday.

"On Friday, the annual Flaherty Seminar will arrive for the first time at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a special three-day presentation of works," notes S James Snyder in the New York Sun. "The series, titled The Age of Migration, promises to explore 'how hybrid documentaries, video Web logs, and personal narratives have become vehicles which collapse physical distances and connect people to their homelands and their histories.'"

Robert Downey: A Prince, a revival of early work from Downey Jr's father, runs at the Anthology Film Archives from Friday through September 18. Ed Halter talks with Downey for Moving Image Source.

It was Pierre Bismuth who came up with the original idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and he co-wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay with Charlie Kaufman. In the Guardian, Jessica Lack talks with him about his latest collaboration with Michel Gondry, The All-seeing Eye (the hardcore-techno version), on view at the BFI Southbank Gallery from September 12 through November 16. Lack: "Set in a bourgeois Parisian apartment, the camera slowly scans the object d'art scattered around the flat, from moose head to pot plant. The soundtrack comes from Eternal Sunshine played on a TV and Kirsten Dunst as Mary can be seen amiably intimidating the lovelorn Andy. As the camera rotates things start to disappear. First the books on the shelves, then the kitchen, then the scene out of the window until all that is left is a white cube."

Vadim Rizov at the House Next Door on Shoot the Piano Player, screening at Film Forum through Thursday: "[O]ut of all the rep options open to NYC residents this week, it's the easiest to attend and one of the most essential.... [W]ith a spangly new print and subtitles that do their (sometimes endearingly awkward) best to keep up with a dense selection of slangy song lyrics and Gallicized translations of already archaic American slang, it's pretty much an optimal viewing experience." More from filmmaker Chris Anthony Diaz.

At Filmmaker, Paul Krik, whose Able Danger opens in four cities, Thursday - that's right, 9/11 - lists his favorite conspiracy movies.

Independent Film Week, September 14 through 19, will open with Medicine for Melancholy.

Agustin Gurza previews the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival for the Los Angeles Times. September 12 through 19.

Posted by dwhudson at September 8, 2008 1:50 PM