Fests and events, 12/11.

"On the occasion of a complete retrospective of Werner Herzog's films at the Pompidou Center, in Paris," noted the New Yorker's Richard Brody yesterday, Le Monde published, today, an interview with the director, which contains the following unpleasant response to a question from the critic Jacques Mandelbaum: 'You're usually counted, alongside Werner Schroeter or Rainer Werner Fassbinder, among the directors who launched the new German cinema in the 1960s and 70s. Do you agree with this?'" The answer is a bit rattling, too.

Susan King rounds up local goings on for the Los Angeles Times.

A new print of Milos Forman's The Firemen's Ball screens at BAM for a week starting tomorrow. Eric Kohn in the New York Press: "Forman lovingly parodies all dysfunctional systems with much pomp and fanfare. It's an outlook that sums up his entire career, from the earlier hit Loves of a Blonde (which also features the comically-inspired imprecision of horny old men) to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (another clever potshot at self-interested authority figures)." More from Dan Jackson in the Tisch Film Review: "The Firemen's Ball has the distinction of being a film with a back-story that is at times more interesting than the film itself."

FilmCatcher's Damon Smith has been scanning the shorts programs slated for the upcoming Sundance Film Festival and notes that "two smart, young Indiewood actors are taking a seat in the director's chair": Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet.

The Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) "may be in need of money, but its staff and board are already making significant changes to next year's festival (which will take place Sept 8 - 13). Clay Smith reports. Also in the Austin Chronicle, Anne S Lewis tells the story behind In a Dream, screening Wednesday.

"What can you take from some of these films, except a paralyzing hopelessness?" Gerald Peary looks back on the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) in the Boston Phoenix.

Online viewing tips. "Cinematical reader DJ S pieced together this list of available trailers for a whole bunch of Sundance films."

Posted by dwhudson at December 11, 2008 3:09 PM