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6 articles from 2008

8 July 2008 9:02 PM, PDT | From avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news

As re-releases of neglected masterpieces like I Am Cuba and Army Of Shadows have shown, cinema history is littered with great movies that, for one reason or another, were out of step with the times and thus unfairly relegated to the dustbin. Thank to companies like Rialto Pictures, forgotten classics like Claude Sautet's Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) can finally see the light of day. Though it starred Jean-Paul Belmondo, the charismatic New Wave figurehead who was making a name for himself in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Sautet's film didn't quite fit into the French New Wave box, in spite of its evident love for American gangster films and a subtle impulse for tweaking their conventions. What Classe Tous Risques lacks in ostentatious New Wave flair, it more than makes up for in rueful, unexpectedly touching twists on the familiar "honor among thieves" theme. Looking every bit the blocky.

Scott Tobias

1 July 2008 3:59 PM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Michael Atkinson

Nobody seemed quite capable of dismissing or faintly praising, then dismissing "My Blueberry Nights" (2007) fast enough when it wandered into American theaters this April . it was as if the collective unconscious had decided to make Wong Kar-wai pay in little cuts for both the demanding ordeal he put us all through with "2046" and for the hubris he subsequently displayed by daring to shoot his next film in the U.S., in English, and casting an inexperienced pop star (Norah Jones) in the lead. Fortunately, the film press one-upmanship has already faded into the disposable past, and the movie remains with us, nothing less than a blessing, a quintessentially Wongian daydream of romantic suspension and sweet lyrical conceits. If you require the Hong Kong context and the Cantonese-with-subtitles with your balladeering Wongness, you're just an import film slummer . "My Blueberry Nights" plays like a trip-around-the-world continuation of "Chungking Express,

Michael Atkinson

3 June 2008 3:08 PM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news

French filmmaker Jean-luc Godard has withdrawn from a film festival in Israel, after a Palestinian group asked him to boycott the country.

The director was due to attend the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival, but backed out citing "circumstances beyond his control", according to organisers.

The move follows an open letter to Godard issued last week (ends30May08) by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. It asked him to "take a courageous stand and cancel your trip to Israel. Did you ever go to an Afrikaner film festival in apartheid South Africa? Why Israel then?"

Godard has refused to confirm a link between the letter and his withdrawal.

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3 June 2008 10:38 AM, PDT | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, who has made no secret of his support for the cause of Palestinian Arabs, has touched off a new controversy in Israel by suddenly canceling a scheduled appearance at the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival. In his letter to the festival's organizers he cited "circumstances beyond his control," the festival said. But last week, a group called the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel had sent Godard an open letter urging him to "take a courageous stand and cancel your trip to Israel." Reuters said that a source in Godard's office confirmed that he had canceled his visit "for political reasons."

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20 May 2008 4:11 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Michael Atkinson

"A Film in the Making" is how Jean-Luc Godard defined "La Chinoise" (1967) in the film itself, in one of its many aphoristic title card face-slaps, and it's a simple parameter with which to view all Godard: as a process, not a product; as interrogation, not "entertainment"; and as a refutation of commercial culture and every easy market-driven conclusion it encourages. Of course, a filmmaker can hardly take a more politically radical position, and here we have Godard entering, at the spiraling end of the '60s, into his most radicalized and notoriously forbidding period, when the youthful ardor for old Hollywood began to slip away and a maddened attention to the unsolvable political present gripped him like a fever. I know, I've had my randy libertine's way with Godard and Godard-love a good deal in this space lately, as his massive oeuvre gets digitized for home video posterity,

Michael Atkinson

10 April 2008 8:23 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Matt Singer

In honor of their 40 years on movie screens, from 1968's "Sympathy for the Devil" to last week's release of "Shine a Light," we're taking a look at The Rolling Stones' filmography, featuring enough collaborations with great directors to make any actor jealous and enough abandoned or aborted projects to give any movie investor heartburn.

Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

The Film: Godard captures the Stones during the recording sessions for "Beggars Banquet" in the summer of 1968 and charts the evolution of the song "Sympathy for the Devil" through a series of uninterrupted long takes. The Stones' progress is intercut with a series of vignettes about, amongst other things, black revolutionaries, an interview with a woman named "Eve Democracy," graffiti artists defacing public property with sarcastic slogans like "Cinemarxism" and "Freudemocracy," and a bookstore where people pay for their purchases of pornography and comic books

Matt Singer

6 articles from 2008