“You get me?” barks Career Drill Sergeant Zim (Clancy Brown). The young, beautiful, and vapid recruits giving him their full attention answer in kind: “Sir yes sir!” Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) and his fellow roughnecks might get Zim, but most people do not. Since its first theatrical run through today, viewers misread, misunderstand, and, frankly, misattribute Starship Troopers time and again, failing to see the cutting satire at work.
The most recent example comes from author Isaac Young, who took to Twitter to critique the film’s approach to satire. Young argued that director Paul Verhoeven failed to make fun of the Terran Federation because the attractive heroes, clean cities, and technologically advanced schools look nicer than the ugly bugs they fight.
Why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody, a thread:
Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation.
The most recent example comes from author Isaac Young, who took to Twitter to critique the film’s approach to satire. Young argued that director Paul Verhoeven failed to make fun of the Terran Federation because the attractive heroes, clean cities, and technologically advanced schools look nicer than the ugly bugs they fight.
Why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody, a thread:
Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation.
- 2/28/2024
- by Joe George
- Den of Geek
- 7/22/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
How do we live with some of the shit that we’ve been forced to watch on a daily basis? Why are we so eager to immortalize the worst images that our world is capable of producing, and what kind of awful power do we lend such tragedies by sanctifying them into spectacles that can play out over and over again?
While Jordan Peele has fast become one of the most relevant and profitable of modern American filmmakers, “Nope” is the first time that he’s been afforded a budget fit for a true blockbuster spectacle, and that’s exactly what he’s created with it. But if this is such an old school delight that it starts with a shout-out to early cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge (before paying homage to more direct influences like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), it’s also a thoroughly modern popcorn movie for...
While Jordan Peele has fast become one of the most relevant and profitable of modern American filmmakers, “Nope” is the first time that he’s been afforded a budget fit for a true blockbuster spectacle, and that’s exactly what he’s created with it. But if this is such an old school delight that it starts with a shout-out to early cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge (before paying homage to more direct influences like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”), it’s also a thoroughly modern popcorn movie for...
- 7/20/2022
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Rock fiends everywhere mourned last fall when the Montreal art-punk quartet Ought announced they were calling it quits. The news abruptly ended one of the past decade’s most adventurous indie runs, with the righteous fury of gems like 2014’s More Than Any Other Day and 2015’s Sun Coming Down.
Enter Cola — a band for right now, rising from the ashes of Ought, specializing in guitar-driven tales of modern life and high-tech alienation. As singer/guitarist Tim Darcy says, with one of his nervous laughs, “Yeah, there’s definitely some dystopia in there.
Enter Cola — a band for right now, rising from the ashes of Ought, specializing in guitar-driven tales of modern life and high-tech alienation. As singer/guitarist Tim Darcy says, with one of his nervous laughs, “Yeah, there’s definitely some dystopia in there.
- 4/6/2022
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of Modern Art
Peter Bogdanovich’s very funny, never-before-seen Squirrels to the Nuts has an exclusive run (about which more here), while a retrospective of Larry Fessenden’s genre house Glass Eye Pix is underway.
Metrograph
A Robert Siodmak retrospective has started, as has “Pop Plays Itself,” a collection of musicians onscreen, while Resnais, Demy, and Marker lead Left Bank Cinema; Metrograph A to Z continues with Powell-Pressburger and Ray; Perfect Blue and Son of the White Mare are in “Late Nights“; Charles Grodin is paid tribute with screenings of Midnight Run and Clifford.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on imageless films—featuring Hollis Frampton, Guy Debord, and Derek Jarman—is underway while some of Buster Keaton’s greatest works screen in “Essential Cinema.”
Film Forum
Joseph Losey’s great Mr. Klein has been restored, as has Bronco Bullfrog...
Museum of Modern Art
Peter Bogdanovich’s very funny, never-before-seen Squirrels to the Nuts has an exclusive run (about which more here), while a retrospective of Larry Fessenden’s genre house Glass Eye Pix is underway.
Metrograph
A Robert Siodmak retrospective has started, as has “Pop Plays Itself,” a collection of musicians onscreen, while Resnais, Demy, and Marker lead Left Bank Cinema; Metrograph A to Z continues with Powell-Pressburger and Ray; Perfect Blue and Son of the White Mare are in “Late Nights“; Charles Grodin is paid tribute with screenings of Midnight Run and Clifford.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on imageless films—featuring Hollis Frampton, Guy Debord, and Derek Jarman—is underway while some of Buster Keaton’s greatest works screen in “Essential Cinema.”
Film Forum
Joseph Losey’s great Mr. Klein has been restored, as has Bronco Bullfrog...
- 4/1/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Welcome back to Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. In a time when arthouse theaters are hurting more than ever and there are a plethora of streaming options at your fingertips, we wanted to introduce new conversations that put a specific focus on the films that are foundational or perhaps overlooked in cinephile culture. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel (co-host of The Film Stage Show), Intermission is a 1-on-1 supplementary discussion podcast that focuses on one arthouse, foreign, or experimental film per episode as picked by the guest.
For our third episode, we talked with critic Phuong Le about Chantal Akerman’s 1978 classic of European rootlessness, Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (aka The Meetings of Anna), which is currently available on The Criterion Channel and on disc. Akerman occupies a revered but somewhat reductive place in the larger canon as the filmmaker behind foundational 70s experiments like Jeanne Dielman,...
For our third episode, we talked with critic Phuong Le about Chantal Akerman’s 1978 classic of European rootlessness, Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (aka The Meetings of Anna), which is currently available on The Criterion Channel and on disc. Akerman occupies a revered but somewhat reductive place in the larger canon as the filmmaker behind foundational 70s experiments like Jeanne Dielman,...
- 5/22/2020
- by Michael Snydel
- The Film Stage
Mubi's retrospective The Parallel Worlds of Olivier Assayas is showing May 3 – June 11, 2019 in the United States.Cold WaterWhen a filmmaker’s body of work is as prolific as it is varied, the paths to profile split two: the explanatory chronology that threads together A-to-b episodes of a life, and the thematic retrofit that groups one film with an unsuspecting other. But both are really about the same, hopeful thing: that the right arrangement of themes and biographic detail will yield some incandescent truth about their practice. With Olivier Assayas, the truths are dropped generously in correspondence—“Cinema has to be light,” he has told Kent Jones, and later, Film Comment1—always too articulate and discerning an interviewee to not betray his past as a writer and (reluctant) critic at Cahiers du cinéma, then helmed by Serge Daney and Toubiana. Assayas is, in fact, generous enough to have written a memoir,...
- 5/5/2019
- MUBI
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) is showing March 25 - April 24, 2018 in many countries as part of the retrospective The Present Is Woman, the Woman Is Present.The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.—Guy Debord, The Society of the SpectacleBodies confusedMemories misused—“Strange Days,” The Doors A blindfolded woman experiences her own rape and murder through the eyes and senses of the man raping and murdering her. The act done, the life gone from her, the blindfold is removed. In her eyes, dark black in the unlit room (the woman's name is Iris), we see the masked perpetrator. It’s an image of an image: displaced. For we are watching this heinous monstrosity unfold as a point-of-view shot, our viewing experience shared by a helpless onscreen...
- 3/21/2018
- MUBI
Among the many pleasures nestled in Joseph Losey’s late triumph Roads to the South (Yves Montand saying the name “Walter Benjamin” is the purest delight) is a scene where father and son communists, Montand and Laurent Malet, play Russian roulette. Montand is a screenwriter whom Malet believes has lost his revolutionary nerve and sold out. Their mother, who linked the firebrands, has died, and they seem to have nothing left binding them. How could a young agitator respect this lapsed whore of a Marxist, selling movies and living vicariously through real activists as he grows old and dies in his cozy estate? How can one be a Marxist and still respect the cinema? Pasolini spent his too-short life investigating this question with every movie he made, never arriving at an answer beyond the mere fact of having done so, thus demonstrating its possibility. Have we need of further proof?...
- 2/21/2018
- MUBI
F.J. Ossang. Photo by Locarno Festival / Sailas VanettiA punk poet and musician, F.J. Ossang’s shorts and features produced since the early 1980s pull vividly from silent cinema, particularly German Expressionism, as well as American noir, to reinvent cinema's legacy for a new era. His latest movie, 9 Doigts (9 Fingers), which premiered in competition at the Locarno Festival and has now traveled to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, begins as a cryptic gangster film—shot in silken black and white 35mm—before the criminals make a break for a cargo ship, plunging the film in the kind of feverish maritime malaise found in Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line, Georges Franju’s 1973 TV adaptation of that novel, and pre-Code tropical hothouses like Safe in Hell (1931).But as beautiful as the setting and photography is—and as delirious as some of the cynical, doom-saying criminals are, each prone to mythopoetic threats...
- 1/26/2018
- MUBI
“I loved the movie,” I told Cate Blanchett.
“Is it a movie?” Cate Blanchett replied.
“Um…” I said, still shaking her hand.
“Really,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
In another context, that could have been a trick question. But I was meeting with the Artist Formerly Known as Carol to discuss “Manifesto,” and there are no easy answers when it comes to the her beguiling collaboration with German video pioneer Julian Rosefeldt (whom she met at a gallery opening six years ago and vowed to work with that same night). In fact, it could be argued that the movie — or not movie — exists to embarrass easy answers, to encourage critical thinking, to challenge our preconceptions of what art should be and what art should be called.
Read More: Cate Blanchett In ‘Manifesto’: Julian Rosefeldt’s Stunning Film Installation is a Masterclass in Performance — Review
Initially...
“Is it a movie?” Cate Blanchett replied.
“Um…” I said, still shaking her hand.
“Really,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
In another context, that could have been a trick question. But I was meeting with the Artist Formerly Known as Carol to discuss “Manifesto,” and there are no easy answers when it comes to the her beguiling collaboration with German video pioneer Julian Rosefeldt (whom she met at a gallery opening six years ago and vowed to work with that same night). In fact, it could be argued that the movie — or not movie — exists to embarrass easy answers, to encourage critical thinking, to challenge our preconceptions of what art should be and what art should be called.
Read More: Cate Blanchett In ‘Manifesto’: Julian Rosefeldt’s Stunning Film Installation is a Masterclass in Performance — Review
Initially...
- 5/11/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Take one Oscar-winning actor. Pair her with a German visual artist, one with a puckish sense of humor. Give her 13 different roles, including female archetypes ranging from a Southern housewife to a blow-dried broadcast newsreader, and pray that Cindy Sherman doesn't sue. And then give her some of the most (in)famous declarations of sociopolitical/artistic intent ever written – Marx to Maples Arce, Dziga Vertov to Guy Debord, Dada to Dogme '95 – to speak in lieu of dialogue, while totally in character. At this point, you are either breathing heavy...
- 5/10/2017
- Rollingstone.com
Cate Blanchett and Julian Rosefeldt talk Manifesto animals and more inside the Crosby Street Hotel Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Through the words of Yvonne Rainer, Louis Aragon, Olga Rozanova, Guy Debord, Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia, Lebbeus Woods and others in Julian Rosefeldt's film Manifesto, a chameleonic Cate Blanchett in 14 roles, speaks lines of truth and dare to us giving them all new context in contemporary situations.
Cate Blanchett: "Julian and I were both in New York and we sat down and he had come up with sort of about fifty characters, about fifty, sixty different scenarios." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The role of the Manifesto animals as being "another way of portraying humanity", how the changing of the settings each day "was a...
Through the words of Yvonne Rainer, Louis Aragon, Olga Rozanova, Guy Debord, Lars von Trier, Stan Brakhage, Werner Herzog, Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Vinterberg, Tristan Tzara, Paul Éluard, Claes Oldenburg, Sol LeWitt, Barnett Newman, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, André Breton, Antonio Sant'Elia, Lebbeus Woods and others in Julian Rosefeldt's film Manifesto, a chameleonic Cate Blanchett in 14 roles, speaks lines of truth and dare to us giving them all new context in contemporary situations.
Cate Blanchett: "Julian and I were both in New York and we sat down and he had come up with sort of about fifty characters, about fifty, sixty different scenarios." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
The role of the Manifesto animals as being "another way of portraying humanity", how the changing of the settings each day "was a...
- 4/28/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
“Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.”—Fidel CastroTen years in the making, almost forty in clandestine obscurity, Fernando Birri's Org (1967-1978) had almost disappeared after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and resurfaced for the first time, in its legitimate and restored form, at this year's Berlinale where it was screened in Forum. A hallucinatory deluge of colors, sounds and syncopated reveries, Org is an onomatopoeic film where the aesthetic and political tensions of a decade coalesce into an unresolved crucible of psychedelic militancy. The cinema of Dziga Vertov and Guy Debord is projected through the canvases of Roy Lichtenstein, social realism is supplanted by a third worldly modernism. Of the many semiotic victims strewn along the film's path is the convulsive plot which remains illegible throughout and yet alludes to an archetypal structure that is undermined at its very basis. The festival helpfully described...
- 3/6/2017
- MUBI
In today's roundup of current goings on: Early Soviet cinema, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining backwards and forwards, Kenneth Anger's Santa Monica workshop, David Bowie in Los Angeles, Fritz Lang in San Francisco, László Nemes in Chicago, Harun Farocki in São Paulo, Seijun Suzuki in Toronto, Guy Debord in Vienna, James Benning in Berlin, John Akomfrah, Grant Gee and Orhan Pamuk in London, Agnès Varda in Paris, and in Helsinki, "A Simple Event: Tales from Iranian New Wave Cinema." » - David Hudson...
- 1/30/2016
- Keyframe
In today's roundup of current goings on: Early Soviet cinema, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining backwards and forwards, Kenneth Anger's Santa Monica workshop, David Bowie in Los Angeles, Fritz Lang in San Francisco, László Nemes in Chicago, Harun Farocki in São Paulo, Seijun Suzuki in Toronto, Guy Debord in Vienna, James Benning in Berlin, John Akomfrah, Grant Gee and Orhan Pamuk in London, Agnès Varda in Paris, and in Helsinki, "A Simple Event: Tales from Iranian New Wave Cinema." » - David Hudson...
- 1/30/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
Thus Spoke the Spectacle by Eric Goodman Kraine Theater, NYC March 29-August 30, 2015
Thus Spoke the Spectacle identifies itself as a "theatrical rock performance" and draws on writers such as Noam Chomsky, Marshall McLuhan, and, as the title suggests, Guy Debord and Friedrich Nietzsche. This multimedia performance brings those influences together with video and still imagery that is accompanied by creator Eric Goodman on guitar and vocals and Leo Friere on drums. Divided into ten songs, Goodman’s hourlong piece sets out to critique what Debord, in the title of one of his best-known works, calls the society of the spectacle, the elevation of the superficial that is presented by mass media and passively consumed by the audience.
There are some quite successful juxtapositions. A newscaster reporting on mutilated animals quickly cuts to a commercial for a fast-food burger. Reports of murder and destruction give way to ads worshipping consumer goods.
Thus Spoke the Spectacle identifies itself as a "theatrical rock performance" and draws on writers such as Noam Chomsky, Marshall McLuhan, and, as the title suggests, Guy Debord and Friedrich Nietzsche. This multimedia performance brings those influences together with video and still imagery that is accompanied by creator Eric Goodman on guitar and vocals and Leo Friere on drums. Divided into ten songs, Goodman’s hourlong piece sets out to critique what Debord, in the title of one of his best-known works, calls the society of the spectacle, the elevation of the superficial that is presented by mass media and passively consumed by the audience.
There are some quite successful juxtapositions. A newscaster reporting on mutilated animals quickly cuts to a commercial for a fast-food burger. Reports of murder and destruction give way to ads worshipping consumer goods.
- 7/13/2015
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Adieu au langageWhen I stumbled out of the theatre after my first viewing of Jean-Luc Godard’s newest film, Adieu au langage—which will be released on home video by Kino Lorber on April 14—I felt that nagging feeling that only a few films can give. That feeling isn’t necessarily limited to great or even good films, but belongs instead to a certain special, disparate troupe. I left feeling that Godard had made a film that wanted to think about film in some way, aligning itself with the films that made their ways into books of philosophy by film theorists Noël Carroll and Stanley Cavell.Admittedly, there’s a danger in these feelings. Adieu au langage, as well as the whole lot of these “thinking” films, could simply be playfully “meta,” purposefully toying with the conversations that critics and academics love. Maybe I’ve just taken the filmmaker’s bait here,...
- 4/14/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India The Rubin Museum of Art Through February 2, 2015 Two Tents Mary Boone Gallery Through December 20, 2014
The original impulse in my life as an artist was to write and to break from writing into image.... Art is the last oral tradition alive in the West. - Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente, the nomadic Neo-Expressionist painter and sculptor, continues to pursue his travels and artistic investigations, and, fortunately for New Yorkers this Fall, has brought back the resulting documents to two concurrent shows: Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India, at the Rubin Museum and Two Tents at Mary Boone. Clemente follows somewhat in the traditions set by writers such as Paul Bowles and Christopher Isherwood, or musicians like The Beatles and David Bowie -- artists who used travel both as a metaphor and a seemingly endless reserve of creative energies from which to renew interest in their pursuits.
The original impulse in my life as an artist was to write and to break from writing into image.... Art is the last oral tradition alive in the West. - Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente, the nomadic Neo-Expressionist painter and sculptor, continues to pursue his travels and artistic investigations, and, fortunately for New Yorkers this Fall, has brought back the resulting documents to two concurrent shows: Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India, at the Rubin Museum and Two Tents at Mary Boone. Clemente follows somewhat in the traditions set by writers such as Paul Bowles and Christopher Isherwood, or musicians like The Beatles and David Bowie -- artists who used travel both as a metaphor and a seemingly endless reserve of creative energies from which to renew interest in their pursuits.
- 12/19/2014
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Today's news briefing highlights an ongoing discussion of Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) and an essay on "the digitally composited or embellished sequences" in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) and Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light (2010) in Sequence. We also point to a special issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema on Dušan Makavejev, a primer on Guy Debord, a review of a book on Tom Cruise and a survey of Jim Jarmusch's career. » - David Hudson...
- 7/28/2014
- Keyframe
Today's news briefing highlights an ongoing discussion of Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) and an essay on "the digitally composited or embellished sequences" in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) and Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light (2010) in Sequence. We also point to a special issue of Studies in Eastern European Cinema on Dušan Makavejev, a primer on Guy Debord, a review of a book on Tom Cruise and a survey of Jim Jarmusch's career. » - David Hudson...
- 7/28/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
“To describe the spectacle, its formation, its functions and the forces which tend to dissolve it, one must artificially distinguish certain inseparable elements. When analyzing the spectacle one speaks, to some extent, the language of the spectacular itself in the sense that one moves through the methodological terrain of the very society which expresses itself in the spectacle. But the spectacle is nothing other than the sense of the total practice of a social-economic formation, its use of time. It is the historical movement in which we are caught.” – Thesis 11 from Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover (2002) is a genre-bending corporate espionage thriller that takes elements from neo-noir, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle to depict the final triumph of the image over organic solidarity in late-capitalism. Beginning as a simple thriller about a multinational conglomerate named the Volf Corporation,...
Olivier Assayas’ Demonlover (2002) is a genre-bending corporate espionage thriller that takes elements from neo-noir, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle to depict the final triumph of the image over organic solidarity in late-capitalism. Beginning as a simple thriller about a multinational conglomerate named the Volf Corporation,...
- 1/22/2014
- by Cody Lang
- SoundOnSight
It wrecks lives – but it has also inspired art from the poetry of Baudelaire to the music of Lou Reed. In Paris and Berlin, Andrew Hussey traces the path of heroin through modern culture
One of the easiest places to find heroin in Paris is in the streets in and around the Gare du Nord, a stone's throw away from the Eurostar terminal. I know about this place partly because I live in Paris and I am a frequent Eurostar traveller, and partly because this is where Google sent me when I typed in the request "Where to find heroin in Paris". Apparently the most popular spot for dealing is the rue Ambroise-Paré which contains a series of entrances to underground car parks where users can shoot up in relative privacy. The place permanently stinks of piss and is under constant police surveillance, as dealers and clients scurry back and forth between their hiding places.
One of the easiest places to find heroin in Paris is in the streets in and around the Gare du Nord, a stone's throw away from the Eurostar terminal. I know about this place partly because I live in Paris and I am a frequent Eurostar traveller, and partly because this is where Google sent me when I typed in the request "Where to find heroin in Paris". Apparently the most popular spot for dealing is the rue Ambroise-Paré which contains a series of entrances to underground car parks where users can shoot up in relative privacy. The place permanently stinks of piss and is under constant police surveillance, as dealers and clients scurry back and forth between their hiding places.
- 12/22/2013
- by Andrew Hussey
- The Guardian - Film News
On the occasion of Anthology Film Archive's retrospective on Jean Epstein and the publishing of a new anthology on the filmmaker edited by Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, we are here reprinting the essay by Nicole Brenez, "Ultra-Modern: Jean Epstein, or Cinema 'Serving the Forces of Transgression and Revolt.'" The anthology is published by Amsterdam University Press and available in the Us and Canada from the University of Chicago Press. Many thanks to Amsterdam University Press, University of Chicago Press, Magdalena Hernas, Sarah Keller and Nicole Brenez.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
- 5/30/2012
- MUBI
Above: Elisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz. Photograph by Michael Ackerman.
“I am Ophelia. She who the river could not hold.” These words, taken from Heinrich Müller’s play Hamletmachine, are spoken by a girl playing an actress at the start of the beautiful new film Low Life, screening Sunday and Wednesday as part of Lincoln Center’s series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. She is one of a group of young people who gather together in the streets and in their rooms at night, quoting and making plays, films, novels, and songs in an effort to choose their own identities, and to resist identities imposed on them by the State. The binaries of native/immigrant, legal/illegal, and natural/unnatural come into relief in particular through the love story of Carmen (Camille Rutherford), born in Lyon, and Hussain (Arash Naiman), an Afghan poet threatened with deportation. When together they’re quiet...
“I am Ophelia. She who the river could not hold.” These words, taken from Heinrich Müller’s play Hamletmachine, are spoken by a girl playing an actress at the start of the beautiful new film Low Life, screening Sunday and Wednesday as part of Lincoln Center’s series Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. She is one of a group of young people who gather together in the streets and in their rooms at night, quoting and making plays, films, novels, and songs in an effort to choose their own identities, and to resist identities imposed on them by the State. The binaries of native/immigrant, legal/illegal, and natural/unnatural come into relief in particular through the love story of Carmen (Camille Rutherford), born in Lyon, and Hussain (Arash Naiman), an Afghan poet threatened with deportation. When together they’re quiet...
- 2/29/2012
- MUBI
In anticipation of the public sector strikes on Thursday 30 June, here are five great cinematic portrayals of downing tools
For the most part, cinema celebrates capitalism. From the wild frontiers of the western genre, where it's every man for himself, to James Bond saving the world from evil Soviet plots – not to mention all the movies celebrating the "magic" of Christmas: film is full of individualistic messages.
But not all movies ignore the existence of communist thinking entirely: there are plenty of on-screen characters wearing overalls and flat caps, and refusing to doff those caps to authority. One of the first films to portray workers rising up was Strike, a 1925 silent movie by Russian propagandist Sergei Eisenstein. From 1952, Salt of the Earth tells the true story of workers taking action against lower wages for Mexican workers, and was subsequently banned by a Us government paranoid about communism. But even apolitical...
For the most part, cinema celebrates capitalism. From the wild frontiers of the western genre, where it's every man for himself, to James Bond saving the world from evil Soviet plots – not to mention all the movies celebrating the "magic" of Christmas: film is full of individualistic messages.
But not all movies ignore the existence of communist thinking entirely: there are plenty of on-screen characters wearing overalls and flat caps, and refusing to doff those caps to authority. One of the first films to portray workers rising up was Strike, a 1925 silent movie by Russian propagandist Sergei Eisenstein. From 1952, Salt of the Earth tells the true story of workers taking action against lower wages for Mexican workers, and was subsequently banned by a Us government paranoid about communism. But even apolitical...
- 6/29/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Happy Mother’s Day! Let’s get to it:
This week’s Must Read is j. j. murphy’s review of the Candy Darling documentary Beautiful Darling. Murphy usually writes about indie film screenplays, but I also really like his writings on Warhol, since I’ve been a Warhol nut since college.For Artforum, Amy Taubin reviews James Fotopoulos’ new feature Alice in Wonderland, which just made its World Premiere at Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery. Taubin said it was a must see and now I’m dying to see it, too.Also, Fotopoulos has totally relaunched his company Fantasma Inc. on the web. Check out their new redesigned homepage, then hit ‘em up on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and subscribe to the blog.For Time Out Chicago, Patrick Friel interviews the legendary Ken Jacobs about his lesser-discussed live-performance pieces.Bob Moricz was wowed by a Cinema Project screening of the films of William Eggleston.
This week’s Must Read is j. j. murphy’s review of the Candy Darling documentary Beautiful Darling. Murphy usually writes about indie film screenplays, but I also really like his writings on Warhol, since I’ve been a Warhol nut since college.For Artforum, Amy Taubin reviews James Fotopoulos’ new feature Alice in Wonderland, which just made its World Premiere at Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery. Taubin said it was a must see and now I’m dying to see it, too.Also, Fotopoulos has totally relaunched his company Fantasma Inc. on the web. Check out their new redesigned homepage, then hit ‘em up on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and subscribe to the blog.For Time Out Chicago, Patrick Friel interviews the legendary Ken Jacobs about his lesser-discussed live-performance pieces.Bob Moricz was wowed by a Cinema Project screening of the films of William Eggleston.
- 5/8/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This post will self-destruct in two weeks...well, not exactly, but the videos below will be since Google unceremoniously announced the end of Google Video over the weekend that they are putting a kibosh on the video service as of April 29th that unlike the one they eventually bought, YouTube, allowed users to upload video longer than 10 minutes. This development won't be mourned by many, as the video quality was never that great and since 2009, users lost the ability to upload videos, so it became something of a barren wasteland in terms of content.
However, unrestricted by time and largely ungoverned, the site also became the place on the Internet where cinema's orphans could be widely seen, either because they now belong to the public domain or because issues legal or otherwise have prevented their release through traditional means. Naturally, this meant there was plenty of piracy on the site of more recent films,...
However, unrestricted by time and largely ungoverned, the site also became the place on the Internet where cinema's orphans could be widely seen, either because they now belong to the public domain or because issues legal or otherwise have prevented their release through traditional means. Naturally, this meant there was plenty of piracy on the site of more recent films,...
- 4/18/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
Above: Zoulikha Bouabdellah's Al Attlal (Ruines), left, and Pierre Léon's À la barbe d'Ivan, right.
Nicole Brenez has curated two programs of new work from the French avant-garde for this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema 2011 in New York; below she has offered her program notes in French. Program one (on Saturday) concentrates on filmmakers reappropriating images; program two (Sunday) is the new feature by Ange Leccia, Nuit bleue. Below, I’ve translated Brenez’s extended appreciation of Leccia and Nuit bleue; as usual, I’ve tried to stay faithful to the sound and rhythm of the original where possible. Beneath the translated extract you'll find the full article by Ms. Brenez in its original French. —David Phelps
***
…Although Ange Leccia has also practiced re-appropriating images (especially Jean Luc-Godard’s) in his installations and his films, Nuit bleuetakes up a different aesthetic vein, one rich with a long tradition of the French avant-garde.
Nicole Brenez has curated two programs of new work from the French avant-garde for this year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema 2011 in New York; below she has offered her program notes in French. Program one (on Saturday) concentrates on filmmakers reappropriating images; program two (Sunday) is the new feature by Ange Leccia, Nuit bleue. Below, I’ve translated Brenez’s extended appreciation of Leccia and Nuit bleue; as usual, I’ve tried to stay faithful to the sound and rhythm of the original where possible. Beneath the translated extract you'll find the full article by Ms. Brenez in its original French. —David Phelps
***
…Although Ange Leccia has also practiced re-appropriating images (especially Jean Luc-Godard’s) in his installations and his films, Nuit bleuetakes up a different aesthetic vein, one rich with a long tradition of the French avant-garde.
- 3/19/2011
- MUBI
Welcome to the last Underground Film Links post of 2010. I started this feature this year and it quickly became one of the most popular destinations on the site. Keep those great links coming in 2011!
Squeaking in under the wire, Wreck and Salvage’s Aaron Valdez comes up with the quote of the year, perhaps the quote of the century: “Who the f*** is Stan Brakhage compared to Charlie Chainsaw?” I’ve long felt the same thing, but have failed to put it quite so eloquently. Just to be clear: I am 100% absolutely not kidding. A big, special Bad Lit congrats to Andrea Grover, the new curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Sag Harbor, NY! I totally screwed up and forgot to post the news earlier that the always incredibly awesome Ata Film & Video Festival in San Francisco had a special touring program screen all the way over in Hong Kong earlier this month.
Squeaking in under the wire, Wreck and Salvage’s Aaron Valdez comes up with the quote of the year, perhaps the quote of the century: “Who the f*** is Stan Brakhage compared to Charlie Chainsaw?” I’ve long felt the same thing, but have failed to put it quite so eloquently. Just to be clear: I am 100% absolutely not kidding. A big, special Bad Lit congrats to Andrea Grover, the new curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Sag Harbor, NY! I totally screwed up and forgot to post the news earlier that the always incredibly awesome Ata Film & Video Festival in San Francisco had a special touring program screen all the way over in Hong Kong earlier this month.
- 12/26/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Like its role model, the pioneering post-hardcore band Nation Of Ulysses, Refused always presented itself as a gang—albeit one that wore Portishead T-shirts, quoted Guy Debord, and hailed from Sweden. But Refused’s us-against-the-world unity had disintegrated by the time The Shape Of Punk To Come was made. The group split bitterly the month the disc was released in 1998, and the implosion mythologized Refused just as much as its patchwork of hardcore, metal, electronica, jazz, and sociopolitical sloganeering. Shape has aged incredibly well, however—its dynamism and exploratory spirit remain gripping. Granted, the techno breakdown of the disc ...
- 6/8/2010
- avclub.com
"Started in 2006, [Undercurrent], a labor of love for its founder Chris Fujiwara, remains in many ways a quintessential small magazine, posting only one or two issues a year, yet still enriching the world of film criticism," wrote Paul Fileri in Film Comment a couple of months ago, and now, #6, a special issue on film festivals is up at Fipreschi's site. But first, note the new translation of Olivier Assayas's 2001 talk on Guy Debord.
- 5/11/2010
- MUBI
"Started in 2006, [Undercurrent], a labor of love for its founder Chris Fujiwara, remains in many ways a quintessential small magazine, posting only one or two issues a year, yet still enriching the world of film criticism," wrote Paul Fileri in Film Comment a couple of months ago, and now, #6, a special issue on film festivals is up at Fipreschi's site. But first, note the new translation of Olivier Assayas's 2001 talk on Guy Debord.
- 5/11/2010
- MUBI
In 1967, French theorist Guy Debord opened his book The Society of the Spectacle, with the following pronouncement: “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.” We kindly ask you to consider this maxim when you consider this: “Michael Jackson’s estate and Cirque du Soleil will team up for a concert-like production that will tour sports arenas starting in the fall of 2011 to be followed late in 2012 with a permanent show in Las Vegas akin to existing Cirque productions built around the music of the Beatles and Elvis Presley,” according to The Los Angeles Times.
- 4/20/2010
- Vanity Fair
New York -- The New York Film Festival is getting a bit more "Class," courtesy of the Festival de Cannes and Sony Pictures Classics.
Laurent Cantet's Palme d'Or-winning look at teachers in a French high school, "The Class," will open the 46th annual fest, which runs Sept. 26-Oct. 12.
The fest also will feature two showcases: In the Realm of Oshima (featuring the work of Japanese director Nagisa Oshima) and the annual Views From the Avant-Garde featuring a 30th anniversary presentation of Guy Debord's "We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire."
"Class" is the fourth Palme d'Or film to open the fest, following 2000's "Dancer in the Dark," 1996's "Secrets and Lies" and 1994's "Pulp Fiction." Spc picked up three international territory distribution rights for the film after Cannes.
Foreign films have dominated the opening slot, comprising 26 of the fest's 46 starting films. Three of Cantet's four features have played in programs at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents Nyff, including "Human Resources" at 2000's New Directors/New Films series, "Time Out" at the 2001 Nyff and "Heading South" at 2006's Rendez-vous with French Cinema.
Laurent Cantet's Palme d'Or-winning look at teachers in a French high school, "The Class," will open the 46th annual fest, which runs Sept. 26-Oct. 12.
The fest also will feature two showcases: In the Realm of Oshima (featuring the work of Japanese director Nagisa Oshima) and the annual Views From the Avant-Garde featuring a 30th anniversary presentation of Guy Debord's "We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire."
"Class" is the fourth Palme d'Or film to open the fest, following 2000's "Dancer in the Dark," 1996's "Secrets and Lies" and 1994's "Pulp Fiction." Spc picked up three international territory distribution rights for the film after Cannes.
Foreign films have dominated the opening slot, comprising 26 of the fest's 46 starting films. Three of Cantet's four features have played in programs at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which presents Nyff, including "Human Resources" at 2000's New Directors/New Films series, "Time Out" at the 2001 Nyff and "Heading South" at 2006's Rendez-vous with French Cinema.
- 7/15/2008
- by By Gregg Goldstein
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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