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2 articles from 2009

20 August 2009 11:01 AM, PDT | GreenCine Daily | See recent GreenCine Daily news »

Absurdistan

Directed by Veit Helmer

2008, 90 minutes, In Russian with English subtitles

First Run Features Heterosexually speaking, one of the greatest manipulative powers women have had over men since perhaps the dawn of time is the ability to withhold sex. From Aristophanes' ancient comedy Lysistrata (about a battle between the sexes that erupts after the women of Greece lock up their chastity belts in protest of the Peloponnesian War) to the Kenyan women's activist groups who even got prostitutes to take part in a sex strike this past April, this practice has long been effective, and deftly illustrates how foolish and base we men can be. While Veit Helmer's bawdy burlesque Absurdistan seems, at first glance, like a fanciful folktale reimagining of Lysistrata, it's actually based upon a real-life Turkish incident that the Tuvalu director had read about in a 2001 newspaper article. Continued reading DVD Of The Week: Absurdistan. »

18 August 2009 7:10 AM, PDT | ifc.com | See recent IFC news »

The mistake that people have made about John Cassavetes, both those who fall swooning at the altar of his films and those who find them overwrought, irritating and indulgent, is in considering him as a realist. A mere realist. Cassavetes' work may look realistic, spontaneous and controlled in the moment by emotional typhoons, but this is not your Italian granddaddy's neo-realist peasant drama or anything like the new-ish introverted realism coming in thick bolts out of the global cameras of the Dardennes, Jia, Tsai, Reygadas, Costa, etc. The only Cassavetes movie that was truly improvised was his first, "Shadows" (1959); after that, the scripts were fleshed out in grueling detail through rehearsals, and what grumpy Hollywood turks like Sean Penn and Vincent Gallo have seen as letting the actor's id run free in a psychodramatic hothouse of booze and childish regression -- cutting through the bullshit and getting to the reality »

- Michael Atkinson

2 articles from 2009