White Material, Making Plans for Lena and Rompecabezas at IFC

Though I didn't find any official announcements of such, it looks as if Claire Denis' White Material and Christophe Honoré's Making Plans for Lena [Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser] have landed at IFC Films. BAMcinématek is presenting a three-day spotlight on IFC Films beginning 19 March, and both films are on the line-up along with Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Elia Suleiman's The Time That Remains, Kim Ji-woon's The Good, the Bad, the Weird, Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Johnnie To's Vengeance and Tales from the Golden Age. For those in NYC, both Honoré and star Chiara Mastroianni will be present for a Q&A following the 20 March screening of Making Plans for Lena; this will be the fourth Honoré film that IFC has released following Dans Paris, Les chansons d'amour and La belle personne. More information here. In addition to the films above, IFC did officially announce their acquisition of Puzzle [Rompecabezas], the directorial debut of Natalie Smirnoff who previously worked as an assistant director on Lucrecia Martel's La ciénaga and The Holy Girl and casting director on The Headless Woman. Starring the amazing María Onetto, Puzzle was the sole Latin American film in competition at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

Things That Happen When You're Away

For the past two months or so, I've taken myself off the radar, cinema-wise, focusing on... well, nothing in particular. This week I've been trying to catch up on all the film/media news I've been missing/ignoring, and Christ, a lot has happened. Here are some of the highlights. Thanks to Jordany, Jason H, Blake and all the sources I culled the material from.

1. New Yorker Films comes back to life after closing its doors a year ago. Does that mean Céline and Julie will hit DVD this year?

2. Michael Haneke scraps the "old age" project he was set to shoot with Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

3. Though rumors had been circulating for a while, I guess the untimely death of you-know-who has shifted Amy Heckerling's focus from a Clueless sequel onto a vampire film (hmm), which will reteam her with Alicia Silverstone.

4. Carlos Reygadas announced his next film, something of an auto-biopic, entitled Post Tenebras Lux. I also overlooked the omnibus film he took part in, Revolución, which commemorated the centennial of the Mexican Revolution. Revolución screened at Berlin last week; the other directors who took part in the film are Mariana Chenillo (Cinco días sin Nora), Fernando Eimbcke (Lake Tahoe), Amat Escalante (Los bastardos), Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo García (Mother and Child), Diego Luna, Gerardo Naranjo (Voy a explotar), Rodrigo Plá (La zona) and Patricia Riggen (La misma luna).

5. Penélope Cruz was tipped as starring in Lars von Trier's upcoming Melancholia, but the rumor was later denied. Too bad she's opting for the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

6. Speaking of Lars von Trier and rumors, there was a lot of hoopla over von Trier making a Five Obsctructions-esque dare to Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro to remake Taxi Driver. But that apparently wasn't exactly true either.

7. Mariah Carey wore this outfit.

8. Beautiful, weird mystery and intrigue surround the release of these video teasers, by apparently a well-known pop star. "Christina Aguilera? Kylie Minogue? Little Boots? Röyskopp?" I was asked. "Goldfrapp? Sally Shapiro?" I replied. More speculation here.

9. Three truly exceptional albums hit record stores (or, really, iTunes and the like). And one I'm still confounded about (listen to it here).

10. Lucrecia Martel saw all three of her films on Cinema Tropical's list of the 10 best Latin American films of the decade. I can't say I'm surprised.

In DVD news, Tony Palmer and Frank Zappa's 200 Motels will make its overdue debut on DVD via Palmer through MVD. The release date? April 20, naturally. I was browsing Breaking Glass Pictures' Facebook page and was more than pleased to see that they've picked up the DVD rights to Gabriel Fleming's The Lost Coast, a haunting, outstanding film about four friends over Halloween night in San Francisco. The Lost Coast was previously available as a DVD-R on Amazon; it's still available to watch on Hulu (with commercial breaks) as well as streaming on Netflix (sans commercials). Breaking Glass will release it on 4 May, and it comes highly recommended.

I should also be attending the 7th annual True False Film Festival (which also slipped my mind). It begins on Thursday, and as I live two hours away I figure I may as well. Let me know if I should pay specific attention to anything screening there, as I haven't given the line-up a close examination yet. Another great documentary festival, Big Sky, announced their awards the other day, which you can find here. My good friend Stewart Copeland's new film Let Your Feet Do the Talkin' made its world premiere at Big Sky as well.

Something Resembling a 2009 Wrap-Up

I'm still of the mind that it's little use for me to create any sort of "Best Of" list for 2009 when it comes to film. More than most years, the 2009 release calendar in the US was difficult, as so many of the notable releases came from years past (a lot of which I'd already seen thanks to importing DVDs when the films' future in the US looked grim). So instead of mulling over a list of official '09 releases, most of which I didn't see, I singled out the films released theatrically in the US within the past twelve months that made the Decade List; or in the case of Fish Tank, premiering internationally... or in the case of Love Exposure, making its festival debut in the US. I will be writing more about both Fish Tank and The White Ribbon once I get a chance to see them again.

1. The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza] / Lucrecia Martel / Strand Releasing
2. Summer Hours [L’heure d’été] / Olivier Assayas / IFC Films
3. Fish Tank / Andrea Arnold / IFC Films
4. Love Exposure / Sion Sono
5. The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] / Michael Haneke / Sony Pictures Classics
6. 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums] / Claire Denis / Cinema Guild
7. Liverpool / Lisandro Alonso
8. Taxidermia / György Pálfi / Here! Films
9. Julia / Erick Zonca / Magnolia
10. Tony Manero / Pablo Larraín / Lorber Films
11. Drag Me to Hell / Sam Raimi / Universal

And, following those 11, here's a supplemental list of films that impressed me on some level (alphabetically). Antichrist resonated in ways I didn't expect... Nancy Kissam's Drool balanced its dark humor and self-discovery perfectly, with two hilarious performances from Laura Harring and Jill Marie Jones... The Girlfriend Experience is pretty fantastic and easily the best offering from Soderbergh over the past 10 years... Goodbye Solo defied its Driving Miss Daisy set-up to reveal a painfully sad portrait of two fascinatingly different men... while wholly unnecessary, Halloween 2 was Rob Zombie's love letter to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Irrèversible, tied with a nasty, tattered bow and a big fuck-you to the original's tedious sequel... like The Seventh Continent minus its misanthropy, Home introduced a new voice in European cinema, Ursula Meier, as well as showcasing a pair of great performances from Isabelle Huppert (in high heel boots!) and Olivier Gourmet... while more of a series pilot than a film, In the Loop was unquestionably the funniest film of '09... a bad idea on nearly every level, Gregor Jordan's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Informers benefited from working from his weakest book and became the most successful film translation of Ellis' writing... it's always refreshing to see a film, like The Maid, that thwarts every single one of your notions of where you think the narrative is headed... unsettling doesn't begin to describe Martyrs... Silent Light is another radiant film from Mexico's finest auteur, Carlos Reygadas... David Lowery's Malick-esque St. Nick was certainly the best feature directorial debut by an American filmmaker I saw all year... improving upon Boxing Helena isn't hard, but Jennifer Chambers Lynch's second film Surveillance, fifteen years later, is a really enjoyable piece of trash and has the year's most delectably perverse fuck scene (well, aside from Antichrist)...

Antichrist / Lars von Trier / IFC Films
Beeswax / Andrew Bujalski / Cinema Guild
Drool / Nancy Kissam / Strand Releasing
The Girlfriend Experience / Steven Soderbergh / Magnolia
Goodbye Solo / Ramin Bahrani / Roadside Attractions
Halloween 2 / Rob Zombie / The Weinstein Company
Home / Ursula Meier / Lorber Films
In the Loop / Armando Iannucci / IFC Films
Import/Export / Ulrich Seidl / Palisades Tartan
The Informers / Gregor Jordan / Senator
The Limits of Control / Jim Jarmusch / Focus Features
The Maid [La nana] / Sebastián Silva / Elephant Eye Films
Martyrs / Pascal Laugier / The Weinstein Company
Revanche / Götz Spielmann / Janus Films
Silent Light [Stellet licht] / Carlos Reygadas / Palisades Tartan
St. Nick / David Lowery
Surveillance / Jennifer Chambers Lynch / Magnolia
Tetro / Francis Ford Coppola / American Zoetrope
Vinyan / Fabrice Du Welz / Sony Pictures
You, the Living [Du levande] / Roy Andersson / Palisades Tartan
You Wont Miss Me / Ry Russo-Young

...and the lousiest films of the year. Some were dreadfully mediocre (Youth in Revolt), some hilariously inept (Watercolors), some excruciating in every way (Between Love & Goodbye), some were ruined by their incompetent directors (Precious, Jennifer's Body), some were douche parades (Bronson, Donkey Punch), some were chores to get through (Adam, Humpday)... and all were fucking baaaaad.

Adam / Max Mayer / Fox Searchlight
Between Love & Goodbye / Casper Andreas / TLA Releasing
Bronson / Nicolas Winding Refn / Magnolia
Donkey Punch / Oliver Blackburn / Magnolia
Humpday / Lynn Shelton / Magnolia
Jennifer’s Body / Karen Kusama / 20th Century Fox
Make the Yule Tide Gay / Rob Williams / TLA Releasing
Mammoth / Lukas Moodysson / IFC Films
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire / Lee Daniels / Lionsgate
Watercolors / David Oliveras / Here! Films
Youth in Revolt / Miguel Arteta / The Weinstein Company

Spending most of the year focusing on the 2000s, I did a lousy job of keeping up with any film released before 1999, but of those I did see (most of them queer and/or French), these were the stand-outs.

Les corps ouverts / Sébastien Lifshitz
L’eau froide [Cold Water] / Olivier Assayas
L’important c’est d’aimer / Andrzej Żuławski
Loads / Curt McDowell
Made in USA / Jean-Luc Godard
Possession / Andrzej Żuławski
Salomè / Camelo Bene
Le sexe des anges / Lionel Soukaz

And... in a perfect world, I would have seen all of these as well. A wish-list of viewings, from festival premieres to belated US releases. Alas...

24 City / Jia Zhang-ke / Cinema Guild
About Elly / Asghar Farhadi / Here! Films
Accident / Cheang Pou-Soi / Palisades Tartan
Air Doll / Hirokazu Kor-eeda
Ander / Roberto Castón
The Ape [Apan] / Jesper Ganslandt
Around a Small Mountain [36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup] / Jacques Rivette / Cinema Guild
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans / Werner Herzog / First Look
The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d’Agnès] / Agnès Varda / Cinema Guild
Bluebeard [Barbe Bleue] / Catherine Breillat / Strand Releasing

Bright Star / Jane Campion / Apparition
Brotherhood [Broderskab] / Nicolo Donato
Can Go Through Skin [Kan door huid heen] / Esther Rots
City of Life and Death / Lu Chuan / National Geographic Films
The Cove / Louie Psihoyos / Roadside Attractions
Cracks / Jordan Scott / IFC Films
La danse, le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris / Frederick Wiseman / Zipporah Films
Desert Flower / Sherry Horman
The Dirty Saints [Los santos sucios] / Luis Ortega
Dogtooth / Giorgos Lanthimos / Kino

Don’t Look Back [Ne te retourne pas] / Marina de Van
Due South [Plein sud] / Sébastien Lifshitz
Duplicity / Tony Gilroy / Universal
Enter the Void / Gaspar Noé
Everyone Else [Alle Anderen] / Maren Ade / Cinema Guild
Eyes Wide Open / Haim Tabakman
Face [Visage] / Tsai Ming-liang
Fantastic Mr. Fox / Wes Anderson / 20th Century Fox
Father of My Children [Le père de mes enfants] / Mia Hansen-Løve / IFC Films
Freedom [Liberté] / Tony Gatlif

The Girl on the Train [La fille du RER] / André Téchiné / Strand Releasing
Go Get Some Rosemary [Daddy Longlegs] / Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie
Hadewijch / Bruno Dumont / IFC Films
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno [L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot] / Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
Hipsters / Valeriy Todorovskiy
Honeymoons [Medeni mesec] / Goran Paskaljević
The House of the Devil / Ti West / Dark Sky Films/Magnolia
I Am Love [Io sono l’amore] / Luca Guadagnino / Magnolia
I Am Not Your Friend [Nem vagyok a barátod] / György Pálfi
I Killed My Mother [J’ai tué ma mère] / Xavier Dolan / Here! Films

Independencia / Raya Martin
Inglourious Basterds / Quentin Tarantino / Universal
Ivul / Andrew Kötting
Jaffa / Keren Yedaya
Jerichow / Christian Petzold / Cinema Guild
Katalin Varga / Peter Strickland
Kill Daddy Goodnight [Das Vaterspiel] / Michael Glawogger
Kinatay / Brillante Mendoza
The King of Escape [Le roi de l’évasion] / Alain Guiraudie
Like You Know It All / Hong Sang-soo

Me and Orson Welles / Richard Linklater / Freestyle Releasing
The Milk of Sorrow [La teta asustada] / Claudia Llosa
The Misfortunates [De helaasheid der dingen] / Felix Van Groeningen / NeoClassics Films
Mother / Bong Joon-ho / Magnolia
Napoli, Napoli, Napoli / Abel Ferrara
Navidad / Sebastián Campos
Ne change rien / Pedro Costa
Life During Wartime / Todd Solondz
Lourdes / Jessica Hausner / Palisades Tartan
Making Plans for Lena [Non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser] / Christophe Honoré

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? / Werner Herzog
Night and Day / Hong Sang-soo / IFC Films
No puedo vivir sin ti / Leon Dai
Of Time and the City / Terrence Davies / Strand Releasing
Passing Strange / Spike Lee / IFC Films
Persécution / Patrice Chéreau
Plan B / Marco Berger
Police, Adjective [Poliţist, adj.] / Corneliu Porumboiu / IFC Films
Polytechnique / Denis Villeneuve
A Prophet [Un prophète] / Jacqued Audiard / Sony Pictures Classics

The Refuge [Le refuge] / François Ozon
Ricky / François Ozon / IFC Films
Serbis / Brillante Mendoza / Here! Films
A Serious Man / Joel Coen, Ethan Coen / Focus Features
She, a Chinese / Guo Xiaolu
A Single Man / Tom Ford / The Weinstein Company
Soul Kitchen / Fatih Akin
Spring Fever / Lou Ye / Strand Releasing
Strella [A Woman’s Way] / Panos H. Koutras
Still Walking / Hirokazu Kor-eeda / IFC Films

The Sun / Aleksandr Sokurov / Lorber Films
Sweet Rush [Tatarak] / Andrzej Wajda
Sweetgrass / Ilisa Barbash, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Tales from the Golden Age [Aminitiri din epoca de aur] / Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru / IFC Films
Thirst / Park Chan-wook / Focus Features
This Is Love / Matthias Glasner
Three Monkeys [Üç maymun] / Nuri Bilge Ceylan / Zeitgeist
To Die Like a Man [Morrer Como Un Homem] / João Pedro Rodrigues
Triage / Danis Tanović
Tsar / Pavel Lungin

Unmade Beds / Alexis Dos Santos / IFC Films
Vengeance / Johnnie To / IFC Films
Villa Amalia / Benoît Jacquot
Vincere / Marco Bellocchio / IFC Films
Weaving Girl / Wang Quanan
Where the Wild Things Are / Spike Jonze / Warner
Whip It / Drew Barrymore / 20th Century Fox
White Material / Claire Denis
Wild Grass [Les herbes folles] / Alain Resnais / Sony Pictures Classics
Zombieland / Ruben Fleischer / Sony Pictures

My favorite time of year: John Waters' Top 10 of 2009

Not only does the end of each year bring me to want to relive my favorite Christmas movie (sorry Arnaud Desplechin, Bruce Willis), but it also marks the time when John Waters provides his Top 10 films of the year for Artforum. Last year his #1 was a tie between Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Christophe Honoré's Love Songs [Les chansons d'amour], both of which made my list too although there were quite a few of you who weren't as impressed. This year, it's Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export. The real joy of his lists though is the sentence or two that accompany the films. You can read it all at the link above, but the two highlights for me were Antichrist ("If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, this is the movie he would have made.") and In the Loop ("A smart, mean, foulmouthed British satire about the struggle for global power that asks the all-important question: How do you debate the invasion of Iraq if your gums start to bleed in the middle of your presentation?"). Ha!

1. Import/Export, d. Ulrich Seidl
2. Antichrist, d. Lars von Trier
3. In the Loop, d. Armando Iannucci
4. World's Greatest Dad, d. Bobcat Goldthwait (hello, Shakes the Clown!)
5. Brüno, d. Larry Charles
6. Lorna's Silence [Le silence de Lorna], d. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
7. Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos], d. Pedro Almodóvar
8. The Baader Meinhof Complex [Der Baader Meinhof Komplex], d. Uli Edel
9. Whatever Works, d. Woody Allen
10. The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], d. Lucrecia Martel

The Decade List: La mujer sin cabeza (2008)

La mujer sin cabeza [The Headless Woman] – dir. Lucrecia Martel

Of all of the decade’s notable directorial debuts, no other director found their footing as succinctly and skillfully as Lucrecia Martel, who managed to craft one of the striking masterpieces latter part of the ‘00s with her third film, The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza]. Building upon the worlds of both La ciénaga and La niña santa, Martel molds The Headless Woman around a central mystery. Did bottle-blonde, affluent dentist Véro (María Onetto, brilliant in an extremely challenging role) run over and kill someone on an empty road? In a moment of panic, she drives away from the accident where something, whether a dog or a person, was fatally hit. It depends on who you ask what the answer to the cryptic puzzle is, but most will agree, nothing about The Headless Woman can be deduced in simple terms.

Martel’s films thrive on the peripheral; she spends no time introducing characters, all of whom seem to know or have blood relations to the those upon which she focuses and seem to flutter in and out during the course of her films. It’s a refreshing, if frequently disorienting, technique, and one she puts to masterful use in The Headless Woman. Following the accident, Véro suffers a strange bout of amnesia as she disassociates herself from the crash. After a visit to the hospital, she hides away in a hotel, not unlike La niña santa, which is owned by either one of her family members or close friends (forgive me for not remembering a lot of the factual details, even though I did just watch the film again this past Sunday).

It becomes apparent that what Véro is suffering isn’t just fleeting panic but something more psychologically severe during the scene where she walks into her place of work and sits herself down in the waiting room, clearly unaware of her own profession or why she’s even there. Martel gives us very few details about Véro before the crash, which happens within the first fifteen minutes of the film, placing the audience on the same level as the protagonist, blind to almost everything that’s come before the accident and just as startled at everything that follows. Véro’s actions following the crash seem mechanical; she knows which hotel to go to and which house is hers, but she lacks recognition of the people around her and the circumstances of her own life. At the hotel, she runs into Juan Manuel (Daniel Genoud), a face she recognizes, and has sex with him. It’s later revealed that Juan Manuel is the husband of Josefina (Claudia Cantero), who’s either Véro’s sister or her cousin (no review or person I talked to seemed to be really sure about which). Though the question as to whether the two were partaking in an ongoing affair or if it happened just the one night is never directly answered, Martel tells us all we need to know when Véro, then convinced she did in fact kill someone that day, and Juan Manuel face one another again at her house.

The emphasis on the peripheral in The Headless Woman is where Martel’s strength as a filmmaker reveals itself even more dynamically than in her previous efforts (after La niña santa, The Headless Woman is the second of her films that Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar co-produced). When used in the realm of characterization, the film shows a peculiar, surprising sense of humor. From Véro’s crazy tía Lala (María Vaner) who sees ghosts and Josefina’s hepatitis-ridden daughter Candita (the wonderful Inés Efron of XXY) who discloses her crush on Véro by groping her and stating at one point, “love letters are to be answered or returned,” the actual world of The Headless Woman is a bizarre one, even outside of Véro’s mental distress. The combined efforts of cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez (who also shot Rodrigo Moreno’s wonderful El custodio) and the entire sound department rival Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men in technical flawlessness and innovation.

(While I hate to keep harping on this particular subject, especially as I’ve argued against it many times before, it’s worth noting that I don’t think I could truly appreciate the film’s technical prowess until seeing it projected on the big screen, where it swallowed me whole. It probably also helped that I was seeing it for the second time, after watching it at home months prior. But without being encompassed by the film in a theatre, committing one’s self to it without the leisure of home viewing, The Headless Woman loses some of its power. Note also how several critics have admitted to not really "getting" what Martel was up to and changing their tune after seeing it a second time.)

Truly though, it’s the way Martel addresses the film’s central mystery that makes The Headless Woman such an uncompromising and incandescent film. The details surrounding the disappearance of a child (more than likely one of the boys we see running around the canal in the opening scene), a block in the canal after the big rainstorm that arrives just after the accident and Candita’s offhand mention of a murder are all revealed almost extrinsically. For those familiar with Martel’s work though, nothing can truly be described as extrinsic in her films. In a certain light, the elements described above nearly create a secondary narrative, but as Martel situates the film entirely in Véro’s perspective, they cannot be seen as mere red herrings. I think if you pay attention to not only the details but the way in which the men in Véro’s life—her husband Marcos (César Bordón), her brother Marcelo (Guillermo Arengo) and Juan Manuel—interact with her, there is an answer to what happened on the road that day. Add that to Josefina’s proclamation that all the women of their family eventually succumb to madness, recognize the division of class in the film and The Headless Woman becomes less opaque than it originally appears.

While certainly a difficult film to market, the fact that it took The Headless Woman over a year to make it to the United States after premiering at Cannes in 2008 can best be attributed to reported cat-calls and boos it received at the premiere. The film doesn’t have the beneficial shock factor of something like Antichrist, which was picked up for US distribution immediately, and it wasn’t until I saw the film top IndieWire’s poll of the best undistributed films of 2008 did I realize the jeers it received at Cannes were as unjustified as they tend to be at that particular festival. Think of them then as a nod to the reception Michelangelo Antonioni’s now classic L’avventura, which also surrounds a mystery without an expected resolution, received in 1960. For the perceptive viewer (or one that’s given the film more than one sitting), The Headless Woman is utterly brilliant filmmaking, the sort that will hopefully fuck with and perplex audiences for decades to come.

With: María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Inés Efron, Daniel Genoud, Guillermo Arengo, María Vaner, Alicia Muxo, Pía Uribelarrea
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Cinematography: Bárbara Álvarez
Country of Origin: Argentina/France/Italy/Spain
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 21 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 6 October 2008 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: FIPRESCI Prize (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival)

Announcing... The 18th Annual Saint Louis International Film Festival

Cinema Saint Louis has officially unveiled the line-up for the 18th annual Saint Louis International Film Festival today. I've known about all this for a while, as I did some assisting this year, but now that everything's set in stone (at least, as much as it can be) I can discuss some of the highlights this year. The four best films we're screening: Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], Lisandro Alonso's Liverpool, Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum [35 rhums] and Andrew Bujalski's Beeswax. All four will make their local debuts at the festival, which begins 12 November 2009, opening with Lone Scherfig's An Education, with Peter Sarsgaard, who hails from the Saint Louis area, in attendance. Sadly, I was so focused on the features this year I haven't had a chance to see any of the documentaries yet.

Bujalski will be in attendance at the Beeswax screening on 13 November at Webster University. Lee Daniels is coming with Precious (I tried to get Mariah, but y'know, she's busy) on 14 November. Director Kirk Jones will also be present for Everybody's Fine, a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno tutti bene with Robert DeNiro, Drew Barrymore, Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. Jason Reitman is coming with Up in the Air, followed by a Q&A, on 14 November at the Tivoli Theatre. Other appearances include Kevin Willmott with his The Only Good Indian; author Daniel Woodrell for the Director's Cut of Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil; Connie Stevens for Saving Grace B. Jones as well as co-stars Penelope Ann Miller, Rylee Fansler, Evie Louise Thompson and Tricia Leigh Fisher; Faruk Sabanovoc, co-writer and art director of Snow [Snijeg]; David Lowery with his excellent feature debut St. Nick; Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, with The Young Victoria which she co-produced with Martin Scorsese; AJ Schnack with his Convention; Joel Hodgson and the original crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000; Joe Berlinger with his latest film Crude; and Ry Russo-Young, writer/director of You Wont Miss Me, another film that comes highly recommended.

Stewart Copeland's Jennifer, which I discussed twice before, will screen as part of the Documentary Short collection "Individuals." Another friend of mine Mike Steinberg, director of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, will premiere two documentaries: Old Dog, New Trick and The Pride of St. Louis (co-directed by Thomas Crone). The screenings, on 20 November, will be followed by a concert from the subjects of the docs, local musicians Steve Scorfina and the band Mama's Pride (one of my father's favorites, actually).

Closing on Sunday, 22 November, you have your pick between Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès [Les plages d'Agnès], Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria.

A few other films screening this year that I quite admire: Nancy Kissam's Drool; two films from Christian Petzold, Yella and Jerichow; Lucía Puenzo's XXY; and Noah Buschel's The Missing Person. And a couple I have yet to see: Jia Zhang-ke's 24 City; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys [Üç maymun]; Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public; and Hans-Christian Schmid's Storm [Sturm]. Check out the full schedule and descriptions (many of which were written by yours truly) at Cinema Saint Louis' website. I'll have more updates closer to the fest itself.

DVD Release Update: 1 September - Headless Woman, My Effortless Brilliance, etc.

Of the DVD releases below, you'll find that Sony has finally decided to throw the Uma Thurman romantic comedy The Accidental Husband, which is reportedly another awful career move for the actress and has been in release limbo for two years; you'll find another sure-to-be-irritating entry into the Eating Out series, directed by, um, Glenn Gaylord; and also release dates for Lynn Shelton's My Effortless Brilliance, Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman and Pablo Trapero's Lion's Den.

- It's Gary Shandling's Show, The Complete Series, 1986-1990, Shout! Factory, 20 October
- Messiah of Evil: The Second Coming, 1973, d. Willard Huyck, Code Red, 35th Anniversary Special Edition, 27 October
- Unmistaken Child, 2008, d. Nati Baratz, Oscilloscope, 3 November
- The Accidental Husband, 2008, d. Griffin Dunne, Sony Pictures, 10 November, w. Uma Thurman, Colin Firth, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Sam Shepard, Justina Machado
- The Divine Weapon, 2008, d. Kim Yu-jin, Virgil Films, 10 November
- Eating Out: All You Can Eat, 2009, d. Glenn Gaylord, Ariztical, 10 November
- Spectacle: Elvis Costello with..., Season 1, 2008-2009, Video Service Corp., also on Blu-ray, 10 November
- American Venus, 2007, d. Bruce Sweeney, MPI, 17 November, w. Rebecca De Mornay
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Very Sunny Christmas, 2009, 20th Century Fox, also on Blu-ray, 17 November
- My Effortless Brilliance, 2008, d. Lynn Shelton, IFC Films, 17 November
- Prisoner, 2007, d. David Alford, Robert Archer Lynn, IFC Films, 17 November, w. Julian McMahon, Elias Koteas
- Vampire Party [Les dents de la nuit], 2008, d. Stephan Cafiero, Vincent Lobelle, Dark Sky Films, 17 November, w. Tchéky Karyo, Julien Boisselier, Hélène de Fougerolles, Stéphane Freiss
- Meat Weed America, 2007, d. Aiden Dillard, Troma, 24 November, w. Lloyd Kaufman, Debbie Rochon, Peter Stickles
- Lion's Den [Leonera], 2008, d. Pablo Trapero, Strand Releasing, 8 December
- We Want a Child, 1949, d. Lau Lauritzen, Televista, 8 December
- Antony and Cleopatra [Marcantonio e Cleopatra], 1913, d. Enrico Guazzoni, Televista, 15 December
- The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], 2008, d. Lucrecia Martel, Strand Releasing, 15 December
- Spartacus [Spartaco], 1913, d. Giovanni Enrico Vidali, Televista, 15 December
- Big Love, The Complete 3rd Season, 2009, HBO, 22 December
- Crude, 2009, d. Joe Berlinger, First Run Features, 16 March 2010

The Decade List: La niña santa (2004)

La niña santa [The Holy Girl] - dir. Lucrecia Martel

Few filmmakers can depict a sense of wonder quite as breathtakingly as Lucrecia Martel can. Her command of the cinematic form is evident throughout her second feature La niña santa, but it's fully realized in a singular moment midway through the film. Within the film, the scene, best described as the one where the "miracle" occurs, functions as somewhat of a springboard for teenage Amalia (María Alche) to carry out the muddled idea of salvation she's constructed, but for me personally, it's one of those rare instances in which one is reminded of why they fell in love with the cinematic arts in the first place.

Like the other exemplary scenes I can trace this love back to, it doesn't work its magic when extracted from the whole it came from. Martel's cinema is one of highly concentrated sensory immersion; few artists can entrance me the way she does. She brings me to a point in which I'm rendered silent, unable to convey with any efficiency the swarming thoughts she conjures or speculate why that is. Forgive my inarticulateness.

With: Mercedes Morán, María Alche, Julieta Zylberberg, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Mía Maestro, Marta Lubos, Arturo Goetz, Alejo Mango, Mónica Villa, Leandro Stivelman
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel, Juan Pablo Domenech
Cinematography: Félix Monti
Music: Andres Gerszenzon
Country of Origin: Argentina/Spain/Italy/Netherlands
US Distributor: HBO Films/Fine Line Features

Premiere: 6 May 2004 (Argentina)
US Premiere: 10 October 2004 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Director, Best New Actress - Julieta Zylberberg (Clarin Awards, Argentina)

Silent Light Coming to DVD; You, the Living and Taxidermia Coming to the Theatre

Through Vivendi Visual, Palisades Tartan will release their first two DVDs in the US in September. Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light [Stellet licht] will finally be out on 9 Sept, along with Anders Morgenthaler's animated actioner Princess on 29 Sept. Vivendi also announced Aaron Woodley's Tennessee, starring none other than Mariah Carey, on 1 September. Additionally, Kino will be releasing Emily Hubley's The Toe Tactic and Sean Baker and Tsou Shih-Ching's Take Out on 1 September. Magnet will have Ringo Lam, Johnny To and Tsui Hark's Triangle on 15 September. And, my pick for best title of the year so far goes to Life Is Hot in Cracktown, which Anchor Bay will release on 25 August. It also is ranking on the list of strangest casts of the year (Lara Flynn Boyle, Illeana Douglas, RZA, Brandon Routh, Kerry Washington, Mark Webber and Vondie Curtis-Hall); let me know if the film is as good as it sounds.

Surprisingly, I haven't heard of really any post-Cannes acquisitions, aside from Oscilloscope's pick-up of Michel Gondry's The Thorn in the Heart [L'épine dans le coeur]. However, it looks as if Roy Andersson's You, the Living [Du levande] and György Pálfi's Taxidermia, both previously stuck in release limbo after Tartan USA died, will finally see a theatrical release this year from Palisades Tartan, who picked up most of their library, and Regent Releasing, respectively.

Music Box Films have two German films lined up for later this year, the old-people-fucking flick Cloud 9 [Wolke 9] from director Andreas Dresdon (Summer in Berlin) and music video director Philipp Stölzl's North Face [Nordwand] with Benno Fürmann and Johanna Wokalek.

In addition to Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza], Strand also has a number of films lined up for later this year: Pascal-Alex Vincent's Give Me Your Hand [Donne-moi la main]; Pablo Trapero's Lion's Den [Leonera]; Noah Buschel's The Missing Person, with Michael Shannon and Amy Ryan; Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy, with Jess Weixler, Jason Ritter and Tracie Thoms; and Karin Albou's The Wedding Song [Le chant des mariées].

Regent Releasing picked up Lucía Puenzo's follow-up to her wonderful XXY, The Fish Child [El niño pez], which also stars Inés Efron, a few months ago. Regent will also release Eran Merav's Zion & His Brother, with Ronit Elkabetz, in the near future. That's all for now.

The Decade List: La ciénaga (2001)

La ciénaga - dir. Lucrecia Martel

Following close behind Sébastien Lifshitz as my favorite filmmaker to emerge within the decade, Lucrecia Martel represents the most promising figure in Argentinean cinema, a country whose artistic surge on the map of international cinema has unjustly received less attention than Romania. No other country produced a string of film debuts more striking than Argentina, with Martel's La ciénaga, Lucía Puenzo's XXY and Alexis Dos Santos' Glue. La ciénaga's setting, a crumbling summer home in the northwest part of Argentina, provides a metaphor for the state of ruin within the upper middle-class family, and on a larger scale, the white aristocracy of the country itself.

Unlike one of 2001's worst films Life as a House, this isn't spelled out for the viewer or handed with a plate of schmaltz (or a shitty title, though maybe the comparison to another middling Kevin Kline film The Ice Storm is more accurate). It seeps within the film's narrative, though it's pretty difficult to call La ciénaga a narrative. Set across five or so sweltering summer days, the children of two families convene at the summer house of Mecha (Graciela Borges) and Gregorio (Martín Adjemián). After falling and cutting up her chest, Mecha recovers from her drunken accident, which opens the film, by planting herself in her room watching news footage of yet another sighting of the Virgin Mary. Her cousin Tali (Mercedes Morán) brings her children to play with the seemingly endless number of young bodies that run through the hallways and swamp (the literal, English translation of the title) and lounge across the house's beds. Mecha and Tali have grown apart for reasons unbeknownst to us, though it may have something to do with Tali having a better grip on reality than her boozy cousin.

There's nothing flattering about how Martel portrays the adults in La ciénaga; even Tali shares her cousin's unsavory racism, though it's more in check than Mecha's without the amplifying effects of alcohol. The opening scene provides the visual clue as a bunch of "adults," most of which are too drunk to even stand up, drop handfuls of ice in their wine glasses. Cellulite and beer bellies mark the flesh their bathing suits don't conceal. Most of the children are no better, with scars and cuts in place of their elders' aging marks, but with parents as inattentive as Mecha and Gregorio, it's hard to expect any less.

The characters in La ciénaga can be defined by their excuses. Mecha uses her "accident" as a cushion to hide away in her bed and drink the day away without anyone harassing her about it. She also invents reasons to belittle her native servants, such as accusing Isabel (Andrea López) of stealing towels, a sad attempt at exerting superiority. When he hears of his mother's accident, Mecha's eldest son José (Juan Cruz Bordeu, the actual son of Borges) uses this to get away from his older lover Mercedes (Silvia Baylé), who was, strangely, also his father's former mistress. José never seems the least bit concerned for his mother's "ailment" but uses this retreat to party and lay about the house in his underwear. Tali recites her own excuses for why she can't follow through with her and Mecha's plan to go shopping in Bolivia, which is an excuse in itself to maybe reconnect with Mecha or likely get away from her family. Merely talking about the trip to Bolivia provides the biggest illusion for Mecha, who begins to resemble traits of her late mother who spent the last twenty years of her life locked in bed.

Despite this, Martel isn't out to denunciate her characters, a trick that would sell her uncanny vision short. Based on memories from her own childhood, La ciénaga is as evocative of summer as any film I've seen. Though filled with hopeless individuals and bookended by two very unsettling occurrences that happen so seamlessly they're easy to overlook, La ciénaga is utterly sumptuous. While Argentina has never been a heavyweight in the ring of international cinema, filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel are changing that. Thus, it's not so much a resurrection of nation's cinematic legacy as it is the exciting dawning of, hopefully, a new era of cinema art.

With: Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Andrea López, Sofia Bertolotto, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé, Daniel Valenzuela, Noelia Bravo Herrera, Sebastián Montagna, Fabio Villafane, Diego Baenas
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Cinematography: Hugo Colace
Country of Origin: Argentina/France/Spain
US Distributor: Cowboy Booking/Home Vision

Premiere: 8 February 2001 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: September 2001 (Telluride Film Festival)

Awards: Alfred Bauer Award for Best First Film (Berlin International Film Festival)