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Film Comment Selects
February 14 – 28, 2008

Straight from Film Comment’s pages to the Walter Reade Theater’s screen, we’ve got two weeks of previews, films without distribution and under-recognized revivals for you to discover. As always, Film Comment’s editors and writers, fresh from their travels on the international film circuit, have handpicked an adventurous showcase of challenging and complex art cinema. There are a fistful of tributes to the eclectic visions of directors Richard Fleischer, Damon Packard and Alex Cox. And, as a Valentine special, the series kicks-off with a late-night preview of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

Actress Jeanne Balibar will appear at the opening night screening of Jacques Rivette’s newest film, The Duchess of Langeais, adapted from Honoré de Balzac’s novel "Don’t Touch the Axe" about the turbulent relationship between a French army officer (Guillaume Depardieu) and the eponymous aristocrat (Balibar) in 19th-century Paris. Other French films in the series include: Jacques Nolot’s fearless examination of age and sexuality, Before I Forget; Olivier Assayas’ woman-on-the-run thriller Boarding Gate; as well as two entries in the recent wave of exemplary French horror films, Xavier Gen’s Frontiére(s) and Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s Inside.

Controversial Austrian art-film director Ulrich Seidl (Import Export), cutting-edge Hong Kong martial-arts action filmmaker Wilson Yip (Flash Point), and Germany’s Heinz Emigholz, with the latest installment in his “Architecture as Autobiography” series, Schindler’s Houses round out the slate of well-established filmmakers.

Film Comment Selects also champions the works of young and rising film artists. Director Fatih Akin presents a compelling examination of German-Turkish relations in The Edge of Heaven, winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Cannes’ Best Actor prizewinner Konstantin Lavronenko also appears in Andrei Zvyagintsev’s dark family drama The Banishment. Filmmaker Koen Mortier creates what Film Comment editor Gavin Smith labels “A Belgian Spinal Tap” in Ex Drummer, his visually inventive, misanthropic comedy about misfit rockers, while Dutch filmmaker Nanouk Leopold may be the series’ biggest discovery with her compelling third film, the multi-generational family drama Wolfsbergen.

Alongside these premieres, the 2008 series offers rare, big-screen glimpses of under-appreciated or rarely revived films and filmmakers from the last 30 years, beginning with two movies by Hollywood journeyman Richard Fleischer: the controversial slave melodrama Mandingo and the London-set true crime story 10 Rillington Place, starring Richard Attenborough and a young John Hurt. Actor Crispin Glover will attend the series’ screening of the outrageous 1992 cult comedy Rubin and Ed, about two freeloaders lost in the Utah desert while searching for a burial spot for a recently deceased cat. A new print of one of the key French films of the ‘90s, Philippe Garrel’s J’entends plus la guitare, breathes new life into this cinematic meditation on love and loss, the inaugural theatrical release from the new distribution venture, The Film Desk. And on Friday, Feb 22 and Sunday, Feb 24, Film Comment Selects highlights Los Angeles underground, psychotronic filmmaker Damon Packard. Reflections of Evil is his confrontational, feature-length combustion of found footage, parody, and a remarkable send-up of a ‘70s-era Steven Spielberg. The second screening features a compilation program of Packard’s delirious and bizarre shorts.

On closing night, join us for an underrated golden oldie and a brand new road movie from Film Comment columnist Alex Cox. The first, 1987’s Walker starring Ed Harris, is a fantastical recounting of the U.S.-led invasion of Nicaragua in 1855. It will be followed by the New York premiere of Cox’s newest film, Searchers 2.0, in which two has-been actors embark on a revenge mission to Monument Valley, where the screenwriter of their traumatic first gig, a long-forgotten western, is scheduled to appear at a tribute screening.

Click on Calendar to view the schedule, film descriptions and to purchase tickets online.

Film Comment Selects is sponsored by Stella Artois®. With major support from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Special thanks to W Hotels.


Past Events



The Last Winter
Mon Sep 17: 8:30
With its linking of the supernatural to nature and landscape, The Last Winter builds upon Fessenden’s 2001 horror film, Wendigo, and expands the canvas for the director’s distinctive brand of unnerving, mood-driven horror.




Them
Thu Aug 2: 8:15
"a lean horror machine designed to simply wring the audience dry across barely 75 minutes of almost real-time action..." — David Cox, Film Comment




The Executioner’s Song
Sun Aug 5: 7
Based on Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, this docudrama was directed by the Mailer’s collaborator, Lawrence Schiller. Film Comment editor Gavin Smith will sit down with Schiller & Rosanna Arquette, who was nominated for an Emmy for her outstanding performance in the film, for an onstage conversation following the screening.




Norman Mailer on Film
July 22: 4:30
Author Norman Mailer will join us for an on-stage conversation. As part of the event, we will screen Tough Guys Don't Dance at 4:30pm and Maidstone at 8pm, gutsy examples of uncorked Americana - thrillingly convulsive experiences completely lacking any sense of propriety.




Joshua
George Ratliff, US, 2007; 106m
July 2: 8
An unsettling experience, this award-winning film creeps under your skin and stays there; its ambiguities will provoke plenty of post-screening debate with director/co-screenwriter George Ratliff (Hell House), producer Johnathan Dorfman and other cast members.




Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright, UK, 2007, 121m
April 10: 8:30
Big cops. Small town. Moderate Violence. From the makers of the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, comes an over the top, breakneck-paced Britcop parody. Hotshot London police officer Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is reassigned to the sleepy village of Sandford and paired up with bumbling country copper Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). All looks decidedly sedate until a series of grisly murders occur. Packed with references to the buddy cop genre and featuring a stellar British cast (Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Paddy Considine, Edward Woodward, Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman), Hot Fuzz takes the unglamorous British police drama and gives it a U.S.-style action blockbuster treatment à la Tony Scott and Michael Bay-to hilarious effect. Fans of Point Break and Bad Boys (and let's face it, that means everyone) will be rolling in the aisles.




Electra Glide in Blue
James William Guercio, USA, 1973, 114m
Tue April 10: 6:00
Record producer James William Guercio's first and last film is a visually extravagant, behaviorally loopy story of an Arizona motorcycle cop named "Big" John Wintergreen (Robert Blake) who aspires to be a big shot L.A. detective. The film is longer on mood and sun-soaked atmosphere than narrative complication, and it revels in the antics of its twitchy, hyped-up cast, a motley crew of character actors which includes Billy Green Bush as Blake's partner, Mitchell Ryan, Elisha Cook, Jr., and assorted members of the band Chicago. Stunningly shot by the legendary Conrad Hall, Electra Glide in Blue features a bravura final shot, a capper to the film's Easy Rider -in-reverse ending.




Film Comment Selects
Feb 14 - 27, 2007
The eighth edition of Film Comment magazine’s ever eclectic and adventurous showcase offers a wide assortment of previews, discoveries and rediscoveries, many of them New York if not U.S. premieres. Some have been cherry-picked from the international festival circuit by the magazine’s editors and contributors. Still others have been championed in our pages over the past year – or soon will be.




An Evening with Charles Grodin
Wed Dec 13: 6pm
Screening of Midnight Run followed by an onstage conversation.
How dry do you like your humor? If the answer is "extra," then Charles Grodin, the genius of deadpan, is your man. Few comic actors have ever had as light a touch as Grodin, and he has managed to create a collection of memorable characters during his half-century-plus in show business in films as diverse as The Heartbreak Kid, Heaven Can Wait, Real Life, The Lonely Guy, Ishtar, and of course Midnight Run.




Pine Flat
May 25
Artist and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart has crafted an exquisite, meditative portrait of youth in rural America. Pine Flat is a complex as it is spare, as endearing as it is demanding. Ms. Lockhart in Person! Reception & book signing in the Furman Gallery before the screening.





Film Comment Selects
February 15-28 2006
The 6th annual series salutes Elaine May, William Eggleston and Raul Ruiz. An eclectic assortment of NY premieres from Iran, China, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, Greece, Thailand and Sri Lanka, features work by new filmmakers like Vimukthi Jayasundara, and proven auteurs like Stanley Kwan.




An Evening with Rip Torn
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 6:30 pm
Film Comment Selects and Capital Entertainment presented an event with Rip Torn and Ira Sachs. The legendary cult actor and the indie filmmaker were on hand for a special double feature: a sneak preview of Sachs’s trenchant Sundance-winning love triangle, Forty Shades of Blue, an onstage conversation between Sachs and Torn, and a rare screening of Torn’s classic 1973 road movie, Payday.




An Evening with Anton Corbijn, Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek, and Stéphane Sednaoui
Tuesday, September 13, 2005, 7:00 pm
In 2003 the newly formed Director’s Label released three DVD collections dedicated to the work of Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Chris Cunningham. The discs contain music videos, short films, documentaries, commercials, video installations and other rarities. Newsweek promptly proclaimed the titles, “some of the best cinema made in the last decade.” The New York Times hailed the artists as “directors who transcend music.” And, most importantly, rabid fans sent the lavishly designed DVDs into certified gold and platinum orbits. Film Comment Selects, Palm Pictures, and the Director’s Label presented a special event celebrating the release of the next volumes in the series by four of today’s most innovative filmmakers: Anton Corbijn, Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek, and Stéphane Sednaoui.

The evening’s 90-minute program sampled highlights including rare director’s cuts and previously unseen content, such as Sednaoui’s short film inspired by Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”; Romanekian, a short film on Mark’s work featuring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Robin Williams; and an excerpt from NotNa, Lance Bang’s new documentary on Corbijn. Both Romanek and Glazer have already ventured into features (Romanek directed One Hour Photo and Glazer Sexy Beast and Birth), Corbijn is working on his first (based on the life and death of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis), and we assume there will be a preproduction announcement any day now from Sednaoui. Following the screening, all four directors participated in a roundtable Q&A, MC'ed by Michael Stipe, and moderated by Lance Bangs.




Police Beat with Rubber Johnny
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
9:45 Live DJ set by SMC from Warp Records
10:30 Screening

Robinson Devor’s Police Beat provides a dreamy slice of Pacific Northwest life. A black Muslim West African immigrant, working as a bicycle cop in Seattle, suffers from relationship woes. As he cycles between oddball crime scenes, his mind gradually devolves into an uncanny morass of self-doubt. Visually mesmerizing and sonically accentuated by a soundtrack featuring the Aphex Twin, Erik Satie, and other quixotic composers.

Chris Cunningham’s 6-minute masterpiece (over four years in the making), Rubber Johnny takes the viewer deep into the extremely dark world of an inbred 16-year-old mutant and his abusive TV-addicted parents. Featuring music by the legendary Aphex Twin—a regular Cunningham cohort—Rubber Johnny is guaranteed to shock. As one industry insider warns: “See it at all costs. But do not see it alone.”




2046 with Wong Kar Wai in person
Wednesday, June 15, 2005, 9:00 PM
2046 is many things at once - the year when mainland China assumes absolute control of Hong Kong; the number of the hotel room across from Tony Leung's Mr. Chow, inhabited by a parade of women he pursues and discards with impunity; and the place where disappointed lovers escape to in Chow's erotic sci-fi novel. Tony Leung's reprisal of the affable, self-mocking Mr. Chow, this time with a bitter edge, is extraordinary. Faye Wong, Carina Lau, Gong Li and an utterly electrifying Ziyi Zhang are the women who pass through his life, as vivid as ghosts from out of a forgotten past.

Director Wong Kar Wai was present for a Q&A with the audience after the screening.




We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
Tuesday, May 24: 6:30 & 9:00 PM
Blasting out of sub-Tinseltown San Pedro, California, in the early 80s, the Minutemen changed the course of music history. Fueled by proletarian angst and itchy-indie fingers, they made Nirvana possible - in every sense of the word. Utilizing archival footage of the band in various stages of action, plus an amazing array of interviews, including extensive face time with bassist Mike Watt, director Tim Irwin's much-needed documentary provides a riveting (i.e., loud) exposition of the Minutemen's achievement and premature demise. The band's meteoric rise ended with guitarist D. Boon's tragic death in 1985. Fans be warned: you'll shed a few tears. Everyone else: Get in the van.

Director Tim Irwin and producer Keith Schieron were present to introduce the film and answer questions after the screening.

Film Comment Selects presents films championed by the writers and editors of Film Comment magazine. There is an annual 2-week series as well as special events throughout the year.

Published bi-monthly, Film Comment magazine features the best writing around on new international and American cinema.


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What’s Playing When

Click on the date to read the film descriptions & to buy tickets online.

Tue Feb 26
2:15 Container
4:00 Inside
9:15 Container

Wed Feb 27
2:15 Frontière(s)
4:30 Joy Division
6:30 Inside
8:15 Dark Matter

Thu Feb 28
1:00 Dark Matter
6:30 Walker
8:30 Searchers 2.0



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