NYFF 08, 9/23.

Last week's New York Film Festival-in-general entry is about to fall off the front page, so I'll pick things up here. First, take a look at this: the Film Society of Lincoln Center has launched the filmlinc blog.

Updated through 9/27.

"Take your pick of rant: the fondness for returning to previously featured filmmakers; the Cannes-upon-the-Hudson bent that draws deeply from that pre-eminent French showcase; the simultaneously obligatory and myopic geographic spotlighting, or just the wariness of alienating viewers with too many adventurous movies in a given year." Nicolas Rapold in the New York Sun: "Though often overblown (or of interest to a precious few), some of these concerns do crop up with this year's roster, along with the usual outwardly mysterious absence of certain lauded films. But, despite all that, this year marks some identifiable steps toward getting some new names onto the foldout festival calendar."

Update: "In Praise of the Walter Reade Theater," Nathan Lee at WNYC's ART.CULT.

Update, 9/24: "The NYFF has an understandable interest in showcasing the highlights of the big three international festivals but, to my mind, a greater mission in showcasing those movies yet to land US distribution - and this year, there are many." Selection committee member J Hoberman previews the batch in the Voice.

Updates, 9/26: "The 46th New York Film Festival includes a striking number of features - among them some of the strongest and freshest films likely to be shown on Manhattan screens this year - that might be called semi- or quasi- or crypto-documentaries." AO Scott in the New York Times.

"In programming relatively few features (28 this year) - most of them drawn from the major European festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice - and in insisting on a pre-pop-culture vision of cinema as an art form, festival director Richard Peña and his staff have, perversely enough, proven to be shrewd table-setters for the fall film marketplace." Andrew O'Hehir's big preview for Salon.

"It has a decidedly French twist," writes Howard Feinstein at indieWIRE. "For one thing, 18 of the 28 features in this edition of the New York Film Festival bowed in Cannes in May. Four 'fully' French movies and eight co-pros with French backing are being screened. Given the weight of place, of site, in this year's crop, the latter frequently translates into product placement, aka 'embedded marketing,' not of Converse or Nike but of France itself - more economic exchange than organic inclusion."

"It's still small," notes writes John Magary at the Reeler," "still gives no awards and appoints actual working critics (!) to its selection committee. With its bones thrown to the black-tie opera set, it's skewed a little fancy. And it is, after 46 years, still the very best. For the New York Film Festival gives what all the best festivals give: Reverence."

"[I]t's tempting to look upon what is, by the increasingly popular 'more is more' programming standards of Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, and Tribeca, a comparatively small slate of 28 contemporary features as a reliable bellwether of global cinematic trends." Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun.

"The 2008 New York Film Festival comes after eight months of international film festivals that generally left critics disappointed," notes Steve Erickson in Gay City News, pointing out that there are, of course, nevertheless films in the lineup well worth catching.

Update, 9/27: Benjamin Strong has an overview in Fanzine.

Posted by dwhudson at September 23, 2008 6:08 AM