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2009 | 2008 | 2007

1-20 of 27 articles from 2009   « Prev | Next »

Robert Gives Thanks

25 November 2009 11:01 AM, PST | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

I love slow movies. Really slow. For the longest time I thought everyone else considered that word to signify the worst in movies. Slow meant bad enough to put you to sleep. I love movies that put me to sleep. I’ve a whole collection of movies that I can pop in the DVD player whenever I can’t sleep and they’ll do the trick. If we can agree that music peaceful enough to put you to sleep can still be great, why not movies?

So this year I’m thankful for slow movies. But I’m also thankful for others who love them, because together we inspire filmmakers to keep making them. Great modern films like Goodbye, Solo and The Assassination of Jesse James..., and The Band’s Visit and Silent Light.

I’m thankful that cinema hasn’t been completely overrun by the desire to make anything »

- Robert

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DVD Playhouse--September 2009

26 September 2009 1:01 PM, PDT | The Hollywood Interview | See recent The Hollywood Interview news »

DVD Playhouse—September 2009

By

Allen Gardner

The Human Condition (Criterion) Masaki Kobayashi’s epic (574 minutes) adaptation of Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel was originally made and released as three separate films (1959-61), and is rightfully regarded as a landmark of Japanese cinema. Candide-like story of naïve, good-hearted Kaiji (Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp supervisor, to Imperial Army solider, to Soviet Pow, and Kaiji’s struggle to maintain his humanity throughout. Unfolds with the mastery of a great novel, beautifully-shot, and a stunning example of cinematic mastery on the part of its makers. Four-disc set bonuses include: Interview with Kobayashi; Interview with Nakadai; Featurette; Trailer; Essay by critic Philip Kemp. Widescreen. Dolby 3.0 surround.

State Of Play (Universal) Russell Crowe stars as a veteran Washington D.C. political reporter investigating the murder of an aide to a rising congressional star (Ben Affleck), who also happens to be an old friend. »

- The Hollywood Interview.com

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Movie Review: Stellet licht (Silent Light)

9 August 2009 9:45 PM, PDT | The Movie Fanatic | See recent The Movie Fanatic news »

Starring: Elizabeth Fehr, Jacobo Klassen, Maria Pankratz

Director: Carlos Reygadas

Release Date: January 9, 2009

Running Time: 109 min

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Distributor: Summit Entertainment

- - -

The birth of a new sunrise is the first shot of “Silent Light.” It is one of the film’s many shots that maintain a profound appreciation for nature.  And what a revelatory scene it is. The camera dwells some minutes on the darkness of the sky save for a few stars, then slowly making its way down to concentrate on two crooked looking trees, their shapes the only thing evident in the overbearing darkness. Observing the trees for a couple of minutes something extraordinary happens. The slightest pigment of bright orange light can be seen forming between the two trees, far off on the horizon. The sun studiously blooms from a flicker of light to a light capable of benefitting the entire corn fields »

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Movie Review: Stellet licht (Silent Light)

9 August 2009 9:45 PM, PDT | The Movie Fanatic | See recent The Movie Fanatic news »

Starring: Elizabeth Fehr, Jacobo Klassen, Maria Pankratz

Director: Carlos Reygadas

Release Date: January 9, 2009

Running Time: 109 min

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Distributor: Summit Entertainment

- - -

The birth of a new sunrise is the first shot of “Silent Light.” It is one of the film’s many shots that maintain a profound appreciation for nature.  And what a revelatory scene it is. The camera dwells some minutes on the darkness of the sky save for a few stars, then slowly making its way down to concentrate on two crooked looking trees, their shapes the only thing evident in the overbearing darkness. Observing the trees for a couple of minutes something extraordinary happens. The slightest pigment of bright orange light can be seen forming between the two trees, far off on the horizon. The sun studiously blooms from a flicker of light to a light capable of benefitting the entire corn fields »

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Cannes 2009: The Wrap-Up

25 May 2009 | ioncinema | See recent ioncinema news »

- With no run away, break out titles as in the previous years (Babel, Volver, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ncfom, Silent Light, The Class, Gomorrah, Synecdoche, New York, Waltz with Bashir) Cannes 2009 might not have been a bust, but it was disappointing to see so many mediocre films make it into the main comp, which could only signify that: Venice and Tiff might have vintage festival editions ahead (we'll be in Toronto covering that festival). It would be unfair to totally dis the festival as there were plenty of other films worth mentioning. At the top of my list is Andrea Arnold's second film, Fish Tank (which shared the 3rd place prize with Thirst). [Update: As an added bonus, check out the video feature (below) which was recorded with Alex Billington from Firstshowing.net. We go over some of the highlights of the fest.] Fish Tank features a delicious performance from a non-actor Katie Jarvis who was picked from obscurity (she was apparently in a heated, public argument with her boyfriend and I'm not sure if it »

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Tartan Films Resurrected at Vivdendi

25 May 2009 | shocktillyoudrop.com | See recent shocktillyoudrop news »

Vivendi Entertainment has acquired the Us home video, digital and mobile rights to Palisades Tartan's films, marking the first time the library will be available digitally to Us audiences. The Palisades Tartan catalog is comprised of two unique labels: the widely popular Asia Extreme brand and an edgy slate of Art House films from world-renowned directors. Asia Extreme highlights the most daring and twisted horror, thriller and action films from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and all of Asia, including Park Chanwook's 2004 Cannes Grand Jury Prize Winner Oldboy and Shutter . The Palisades Tartan International Art House collection boasts Michael Winterbottom.s sexually charged and critically acclaimed film 9 Songs and Academy Award -winning director Andrea Arnold.s Red Road Silent Light... »

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Vivendi Entertainment picks up the Tartan Extreme catalog!

20 May 2009 11:06 AM, PDT | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

Fans of Asian cinema surely lamented the loss of Palisades Tartan not too long ago, along with it their Asian Extreme catalog of films. But let us now be cautiously optimistic and hopeful because…

Vivendi Entertainment has acquired the U.S. home video, digital and mobile rights to Palisades Tartan’s catalog, marking the first time the library will be available digitally to Us audiences. The package includes films from two labels: Asia Extreme and the Palisades Tartan International Art House collection. Asia Extreme highlights horror, thriller and action films from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and all of Asia, including Park Chan-wook’s “Old Boy.” The Art House collection includes Michael Winterbottom’s “9 Songs” and Andrea Arnold’s “Red road.” Most recently Palisades Tartan released Carlos Reygadas’ Spirit Award-nominated film, “Silent Light.”

The good in all of this is the catalog will be available again and for the first time, »

- Mack

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Don't move. I want to move. Don't move.

13 March 2009 8:13 AM, PDT | blogs.suntimes.com/ebert | See recent Roger Ebert's Blog news »

When Sydney Pollack was making "Out of Africa" in 1985, he considered the problem of how to film Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in love scenes that were not explicit, yet were erotic. "When I have Streep and Redford together," he told me, "I don't want to see them strip naked and writhe around in bed together. The challenge was to find love scenes that would have emotion and passion and yet not violate a certain place where we want to see them. There are two really sensual love scenes. One of them is the undressing scene. I always like scenes like that. I think they're sexy. I tried to make a sort of passionate dance out of them undressing each other. The second scene consists of three absolutely terrific lines I took out of a screenplay that was written in 1973 when Nicholas Roeg was going to direct this project. It's only three lines, »

- Roger Ebert

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Sffs Screen—Michael Hawley Previews the Winter 2009 Lineup

3 February 2009 10:49 PM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »

My heartfelt thanks to Michael Hawley for sharing his preview of the current Sffs Screen lineup with Twitch. 

* * * 2008 was a wildly ambitious year for the San Francisco Film Society (Sffs). In addition to presenting a stellar 51st Sf International Film Festival and launching two successful new mini-festivals—French Cinema Now and Québec Film Week—they also assumed stewardship of the 32-year-old Film Arts Foundation and its broad range of services for Bay Area filmmakers. And as if that wasn’t a plateful, they also jumped into the film exhibition business with the Sffs Screen at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

Inaugurated last June as a venue for week-long runs of films with limited distribution, the Sffs Screen played host for three of my favorite films of 2008: Yang Li’s Blind Mountain, Andrea Staka’s Fraulein and Khuat Akhmetov’s Wind Man. I would have attended with greater frequency, but often »

- Michael Guillen

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Three Monkeys (Turkey's Submission for Oscar)

15 January 2009 11:40 AM, PST | FilmExperience | See recent FilmExperience news »

James from Out 1 here. With the 9-film shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film announced, let us all open our ears to the Annual Critics Who Cry “Snub!” While you can typically count me in that group, there are only a couple films that people are really upset about being snubbed (Gomorrah, Captain Abu Raed...but really, did you really expect Jordan to get a nomination the first year it submits?) unlike last years full-blown snub debacle (4 Months, Edge of Heaven, I Just Didn’t Do It, The Orphanage, Persepolis, Silent Light, Taxidermia, Xxy...none of which even made the shortlist!) in favor of the weakest set of foreign film nominees in a decade.

Maybe the new rules are doing some good. The inclusion of Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest feature Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun) proves, if nothing else, that the committee is getting a little more daring in their choices and, »

- James Hansen

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Silent Light

13 January 2009 1:06 PM, PST | Pastemagazine.com | See recent PasteMagazine news »

Release Date: Jan. 9 (limited)

Writer/Director: Carlos Reygadas

Cinematographer: Alexis Zabe

Starring: Cornelio Wall, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews

Studio/Run Time: Film Forum, 108 mins.

Silent Light takes place in a Mexican Mennonite farm, but it’s not a religious movie. Its tale is in many ways the classic one of forbidden love, where dedicated husband Johan (Cornelio Wall) falls in love with another woman, Marianne (Maria Pankratz), which causes complications for both of them. The twist is that due to Johan’s devotion to both his wife Esther (Miriam Toews) and his faith he is also honest with her about the affair. This effectively rips apart the emotions of all three parties, but with Johan unwilling to stop himself there’s no end in sight.

»

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The Week Sundance Begins To Freeze Our Hearts. SpoutBlog Week in Review

9 January 2009 2:19 PM, PST | Spout.com | See recent Spout news »

This week awards season got underway in earnest, we learned lineup details on Berlin and Rotterdam, and the long, cold ass kicking that is Sundance began. See you next week! Dear Zachary: A response to comments An Idiot’s Guide to the Magical Negro Polanski Wants Trial Moved Out of La Silent Light Review Criterion’s Bottle Rocket: The Best and Wors ... »

- Karina Longworth

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The Week Sundance Begins To Freeze Our Hearts. SpoutBlog Week in Review

9 January 2009 2:19 PM, PST | Spout.com | See recent Spout news »

This week awards season got underway in earnest, we learned lineup details on Berlin and Rotterdam, and the long, cold ass kicking that is Sundance began. See you next week! Dear Zachary: A response to comments An Idiot’s Guide to the Magical Negro Polanski Wants Trial Moved Out of La Silent Light Review Criterion’s Bottle Rocket: The Best and Wors ... »

- Karina Longworth

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Indie Spotlight: New Releases for Jan. 9

9 January 2009 10:32 AM, PST | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

Hey, what do you know, it's already the second weekend of 2009! Only 50 to go before 2010! Most independent-film distributors took a break the last couple weeks (as did most of mainstream Hollywood), but they're getting back into the swing of things now, and the Indie Spotlight is here, as always, to let you know what's playing beyond the multiplexes.

Your indie selections this weekend are: Cargo 200, Just Another Love Story, Silent Light, Yonkers Joe, and the After Dark Horrorfest 2009. Keep reading for the scoop on each of them.

Silent Light (pictured)

What it is: A quiet, slow, contemplative drama about a case of adultery in a small Mennonite community in northern Mexico.

What they're saying: I reviewed it for Cinematical at the Portland International Film Festival last year and described the cinematography as breathtakingly beautiful, the story simple and mesmerizing. I'm one of the 83% of critics at Rotten Tomatoes who liked it. »

- Eric D. Snider

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Discuss: The Foreign & Indie Films of 2009

8 January 2009 6:15 PM, PST | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

Many of this year's foreign and indie releases showed up on some of the more obscure top ten lists of 2008, and will no doubt be rolling out across the country in various irregular patterns all year long. For example, Steven Soderbergh's Che turned up on more than half a dozen lists that I saw (including our own James Rocchi's), yet most people haven't seen it yet. I have seen it, and I doubt it'll be sticking around long, though I greatly admire it. It's a deliberate attempt to subvert the current biopic formula, and though it's somewhat cold and ultimately a bit one-sided, it's also endlessly mesmerizing. Silent Light, the newest drama by the great and peculiar Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven) is also due to show up this month. Matteo Garrone's Italian gangster movie Gomorrah and Steve McQueen's British based-on-a-true-story drama Hunger have also »

- Jeffrey M. Anderson

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Silent Light

8 January 2009 1:06 PM, PST | avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news »

It isn't careless hyperbole to say that Silent Light—the third feature by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, who began with the art-damaged Japón and Battle In Heaven—begins with one of the most magisterial opening shots ever filmed. Without going into too much detail, which couldn't possibly do it justice anyway, Reygadas' camera catches dawn breaking on a new day in a Mennonite farm in Mexico. Like many of the exteriors in the film, it's so idyllic and beautiful that it would be easy to believe that these farmers—completely severed from the modern world in their ... »

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Silent Light

8 January 2009 1:06 PM, PST | avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news »

It isn't careless hyperbole to say that Silent Light—the third feature by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, who began with the art-damaged Japón and Battle In Heaven—begins with one of the most magisterial opening shots ever filmed. Without going into too much detail, which couldn't possibly do it justice anyway, Reygadas' camera catches dawn breaking on a new day in a Mennonite farm in Mexico. Like many of the exteriors in the film, it's so idyllic and beautiful that it would be easy to believe that these farmers—completely severed from the modern world in their dress, religion, and language (Plautdietsch, a German derivative)—had carved out their own piece of heaven on Earth. Then Reygadas cuts to the interior, and it's a different story: A large family sits solemnly at the breakfast table, praying quietly. But once they're done saying grace, the tension still remains, broken only by the sound of the. »

- Scott Tobias

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Marvelous Mennonite Madness

7 January 2009 12:35 AM, PST | NYPost.com | See recent New York Post news »

The year 2009 is just a week old, and I have already found a contender for the top-10 list I expect to compile come December.

It is "Silent Light," and the director is Carlos Reygadas, whose first two features, "Japon" and "Battle in Heaven," wowed difficult-to-please critics, including this one. So it means something when I say "Silent Light," his third feature, is his most mature work yet.

"Japon" features explicit octogenarian sex and "Battle in Heaven" highlights shots of a teen - a general's daughter, »

- By V.A. MUSETTO

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Review | Magic Hour: Carlos Reygadas's "Silent Light"

6 January 2009 1:24 PM, PST | IndieWIRE | See recent indieWIRE news »

by Kristi Mitsuda (January 6, 2009) [An indieWIRE review from Reverse Shot.]

Carlos Reygadas's visceral cinematic sensibility can be felt in every frame of "Silent Light," briefly showcased at New York's MoMA last fall and already cropping up on numerous critical year-end lists (mine included). It receives wider U.S. exposure starting this week at Gotham's Film Forum, thankfully: As with all of the Mexican filmmaker's works, it demands to be seen on the big screen; only an immersive theatrical setting can do justice to such complex visual and aural textures, painstakingly planned camera movements, and sensitivity to light. This holds particularly true in the case of "Silent Light," in which Reygadas tames his more bravura instincts, as rapturously beheld in "Japon" and "Battle in Heaven," resulting in a film no less gorgeous, but more delicate in its beauty. »

- brian

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Silent Light Review

6 January 2009 10:45 AM, PST | Spout.com | See recent Spout news »

"Tell me why I should go see a fucking movie that's in Mennonite!" -- Joshua Rothkopf. Consider the gauntlet thrown down. The above quote comes from a "pubcast" posted last week by Aaron Hillis on his first day as editor of GreenCine Daily. In this conversation between Hillis, Rothkopf, David Fear and Matt Zoller-Seitz, about where film criticism currently is and where they'd like to see it go, the verdict seemed to be that everyone would like to see more clear-headed advocacy, free of snark and academic flourish. The film implicitly referenced is that pullquote Silent Light -- which, though made by Carlos Reygadas in an Mexican Mennonite community and featuring a number of real-life Mennonites in lieu of professional actors, is not "in Mennonite," but the obscure German dialect Plaut ... »

- Karina Longworth

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2009 | 2008 | 2007

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