Perhaps because Gross doesn’t write for a daily outlet but more likely because the erudition of his criticism is genuinely thrilling, the occasional essays on film by screenwriter Larry Gross pack a punch within our metacritic’d, tomato-splattered blogosphere. Here he is with an early appreciation of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There that’s just gone online at Film Comment. “How can a work not give us politics and yet be so political?” he asks in a piece that opens by quoting Jean-Godard, and Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari and ends by considering how Haynes’s film fits into a moment signified by […]
Over at his Hot Blog, David Poland has excited early words about Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There at Telluride. An excerpt: I also think this movie is a classic example of one where the first viewing is really just a toe in the water. If ever there was a movie made for the DVD era, this is it. (I wouldn’t bother to try to watch any longer clip than four minutes on an iPod… even the larger screen version due this Christmas.) Haynes & Moverman find a richness in this 10 year sliver of Dylan’s life – again, a conventional […]
I’ll admit that it initially seemed a little weird when news broke that Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There would be opening on two screens at the Film Forum and also at Lincoln Plaza in late November. Decently budgeted (reportedly $13.5 million) and starring Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere and others, it hardly, as this piece by John Anderson in The New York Times points out, seems a likely candidate for a small arthouse opening. But, it is a Todd Haynes film and the Film Forum is a great venue that carries cultural weight. I think, then, in the end […]
Pitchfork Media reports today on the soundtrack for Todd Haynes’s upcoming I’m Not There. The film is now slated for release on November 21 and the soundtrack will be release three weeks earlier, on October 30. Artists who will cover Dylan on what sounds like a fantastic disk include Karen O., the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth, Tom Verlaine, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Yo La Tengo, Antony and the Johnsons and many, many more. A complete track listing can be found at the link.
Jim Lyons died on Thursday in New York. If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes – Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven – as well as Spring Forward, The Virgin Suicides, and Silver Lake Life. Most recently, he was the co-editor of A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this […]
Both underseen and mythologized due to rights-holder issues, one of the great pieces of proto-independent cinema — and certainly one of the most provocative director launches ever — can now be seen on Google Video. Click here to view Todd Haynes’s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.
Over at his blog Sit Down Man, You’re a Bloody Tragedy,, Owen Hatherley writes about Todd Haynes’s Safe and recognizes its foreshadowing of our contemporary urban situation: From it’s opening sex scene onwards- the grim treadmill behind the neon-lit Southern California cityscape of the generic erotic thriller- Todd Haynes’ Safe is a depiction of the most important city of the early 1990s. The edge of apocalypse you can hear in the synth whines of Dr Dre’s The Chronic, the fire and brimstone of Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, Mike Davis’ City of Quartz and of course the LA Riots: in all this […]
In her Risky Business blog, Ann Thompson links to John DeFore’s “Bootleg Movies,” a piece appearing in Slate detailing “the strange films you find in the back alleys of the internet.” From the piece: These businesses, outgrowths of the kind of tape-trading scenes familiar to Grateful Dead fans, are run by enthusiasts out to finance their own hobbies, not to make a killing. (Traditional bootleggers charge a premium, but most offerings here are half the price of ordinary releases.) They sell everything from forgotten silents to auteurist curiosities to spaghetti westerns—usually on discs mastered from an old VHS release or […]
While writing the blogs below, I’ve been listening to the new CD remaster of Brian Eno’s great Here Come the Warm Jets, which was recently released along with three other Eno classics from the ’70s. Todd Haynes referenced this album in his Velvet Goldmine, and, if anything, it sounds more inventive and emotionally connecting after all these years. All four albums are thoughtfully reviewed at Pitchfork Media, and tracks from two of them — Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Before and After Science, along with a couple of other Eno albums, provide most of the soundtrack to Olivier Assayas’s […]
Thanks to David Poland and his Hot Button for posting this link to the Holy Grail of underground videos: Todd Haynes’s Barbie-doll-epic Superstar. The Illegal Art organization, which highlights and exhibits works that tangle with and illuminate the complexities and inequities of copyright law, has posted a downloadable copy of Haynes’s hard-to-find first film. The 43-minute work draws on the same Sirkian influences displayed in his more recent Far from Heaven in telling the tragic tale of anorexic pop diva Karen Carpenter. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the site, which features work by Joe Gibbons, Negativeland […]