What is this beguiling painting?
Three new stories, after the jump.
Continue reading “Wes Chats Noir, Gets an Art Show, and Waris Installs”
The (Mr.) Foxy cover of Film Comment
The November/December 2009 issue of Film Comment features Mr. Fox on the cover and a great article about the film by Kent Jones on the inside. Pick it up at your local bookseller or buy it directly from the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
The great folks over at Film Comment (Twitter) sent over an excerpt from the article:
ANIMAL PLANET
Fantastic Mr. Fox will undoubtedly provoke a lot of chatter about the inevitability of Wes Anderson turning to animation, as well as a flurry of musings over the distinctions to be made between his new adaptation (from a beloved Roald Dahl children’s novel) and his previous, strictly original films (in the end, the difference is negligible). There’s no doubt in my mind that the words “clever,” “quirky,” “cool,” “twee,” and “arch” will be employed by someone, somewhere, ironically and otherwise. And another Wes Anderson movie will come and go, its surfaces examined down to the minutest detail, its emotional underpinning impatiently and perhaps even proudly overlooked.
Bravo. Can’t wait to read it.
indieWire: Scorsese’s Saves The World (Cinema)
Martin Scorsese is saving world cinema, or trying anyway. The goal of his new World Cinema Foundation, with Kent Jones as its executive director and allied with Criterion and the Auteurs, is “preserving and promoting films from around the world.”
The Foundation, which has four films in this year’s Cannes Classics section at the Festival de Cannes, will use its alliances to take films from the fest in France to other festivals and museums, followed by a roll out to universities, film clubs, online at The Auteurs, via iTunes and Netflix, through to Criterion DVDs.
“These are considered to be the best films to have ever been made,” praised Cakarel from The Auteurs, adding that the films need to be made available worldwide, for free, so that they can be discovered by international audiences. His site has launched four preserved WCF titles online today.
The Auteurs, a virtual Internet-based cinematheque, will present a World Cinema Foundation portal on their emerging international platform online, incorporating discussion forums, video interviews and editorial content built around the films themselves. B-Side will re-launch and re-develop the WCF website. Criterion will create special DVDs of WCF titles.
“Film culture is richer now than fifteen years ago,” proclaimed Becker from Criterion, saying that these alliances can arm engaged audiences while also reaching out to new moviegoers.