The New York Film Festival marches forward today with a full slate of films much anticipated and highly touted. Now in its fifth day, features from the Main Slate, Spotlight on Documentary and Revivals section will all be well represented.
Starting off is James Franco’s Child of God, a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 1973 novel, screening at 12:00pm. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter remarked “Franco [remains] true to the spirit of McCarthy's vernacular lyricism,” and Justin Chang of Variety noted “Franco has emerged with an extremely faithful, suitably raw but still relatively hemmed-in adaptation that compares favorably with his earlier films…”
For documentary fans, there are a number of choices today. Joaquim Pinto’s What Now? Remind Me (rush available), a feature which focuses on the filmmaker's experience with an experimental treatment for HIV and which won the 2013 Locarno Film Festival Jury Prize, screens at 2:30pm. Who is Dayani Cristal?, a “documentary” mystery about the identity of a deceased person bearing the tattoo “Dayani Cristal,” plays at 3:30pm, while Fifi Howls From Happiness, with director Mitra Farahani and producer Marjaneh Moghimi in person, will be shown at 6:00pm, preceded by the new short 23rd August 2008. To round out the documentary screenings for Tuesday, The Dog, which focuses on the real life inspiration behind the fateful summer day in 1972 that inspired the hit Sydney Lumet film Dog Day Afternoon, will screen at 8:15pm with directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren in the house.
Also at 6:00pm, the Romanian New Wave’s Corneliu Proumboiu (of police, adjective fame) will be on hand to present his latest feature, When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody reflected “after making two features that extract political subtleties from memory and language, the Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu now looks within to extract them from the cinema itself.”
And if you fancy yourself a fan of the immensely successful 2003 hit film, Love Actually—Kent Jones recently confirmed that the entire selection committee is—then you may be interested in About Time, the latest from English director Richard Curtis. Starring Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy, About Time is sure to be one of the biggest crowd-pleasers of the fest. Curtis and stars Nighy and Domhnall Gleeson will be at the 6:00pm screening.
Premiering at Cannes last May, Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (9:15pm, rush available), starring Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Almaric, closes out the Main Slate screenings for Tuesday. The film was recently described by Kent Jones as a film “based on the story of a Blackfoot Indian who was sent to Winter Hospital in the late forties and was presented as a schizophrenic. Before they made the diagnosis, the doctors decided that they needed someone who knew more about his culture than they did, so they called in a doctor.” Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York remarked “Del Toro and Amalric's many analytic interactions come to feel like arias.” Desplechin, Del Toro and Almaric will each be at the screening.
Looking for something a little more vintage? On the Revivals end, Try and Get Me from director Cy Endfield will screen at 6:15pm (rush available). A 1950 noir, the film will be introduced by Eddie Muller of the UCLA Archive and the Film Noir Foundation, who teamed on this beautiful 35mm restoration.
In addition to the screenings, our free NYFF Live talks will provide a double dose of discussions. At 7:00pm, the festival’s two featured filmmakers in the Emerging Artists program, Fernando Eimbcke and Joanna Hogg, will discuss their work (Eimbcke's new film Club Sandwich also screens at 8:30pm, rush available). At 8:00pm, a second NYFF Live talk will take place shining a light on the lucrative world of video games. The composers of the newly released video game, Grand Theft Auto V, will be on hand to go over the various ways they crafted the music for this worldwide phenomenon.
Tuesday, October 1
12:00pm Child of God (Official Selection, FBT) STANDBY ONLY
2:30pm What Now? Remind Me (Motion Portraits, FBT) RUSH AVAILABLE
3:30pm Who Is Dayani Crystal? (Motion Portraits, HGT)
6:00pm About Time (Official Selection, ATH)
6:00pm When Evening Falls On Bucharest Or Metabolism (Official Selection, WRT) STANDBY ONLY
6:00pm Fifi Howls From Happiness (Motion Portraits, HGT)
6:15pm Try and Get Me (Revivals, FBT) RUSH AVAILABLE
7:00pm NYFF Live: Emerging Artists (Talks, AMP) FREE
8:00pm NYFF Live: Music of GTAV (Talks, AMP) FREE
8:15pm The Dog (Motion Portraits, FBT) STANDBY ONLY
8:30pm Club Sandwich (Emerging Artists, WRT) RUSH AVAILABLE
9:15pm Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian (Official Selection, ATH) RUSH AVAILABLE
