Stranger by the Lake
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Eyes Wide Shut
French director Alain Guiraudie’s first feature, the 2003 coming-of-age film No Rest for the Brave, opens in a nondescript bar in a sleepy town where Basile, the agitated protagonist, is recounting a strange dream to his friend Igor. The disturbed young man believes the dream carries a fatal warning: if he falls asleep again, he will die. What follows is a Buñuelian picaresque that is shot in the style of social realism but structured as a series of narrative ruptures creating the filmic equivalent of the surrealist game of exquisite corpse. Guiraudie has, over the past decade, continued to probe […]
by Paul Dallas on Jan 17, 2014 -
The Sundance Queer Preview — 2014 Edition
The most exciting film festival in America gets underway next week. The prestigious Sundance Film Festival will unspool more than 120 new features, shorts, documentaries and innovative media projects in Park City, Utah from January 16th to 26th — showcasing, as always, a hefty slate of LGBT films for the edification of the citizens of Utah and the visiting masses. With the Sundance stamp of approval chances are good that you’ll be seeing many of these have some kind of release in 2014 (whether at your own local LGBT film fest, art house theater, digital platform or else on DVD). […]
by Jenni Olson on Jan 14, 2014 -
These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: New York Film Festival I
I have both good and bad news about the New York Film Festival (September 27-October 13). First, the good news: For the most part, the films in this impressive, carefully balanced program are very good. And the bad: The fest has become so expansive that quantity just may overshadow quality. A bright, high-energy, and well-regarded expert in all things cinema, Kent Jones debuts as head of the NYFF. For the first time in its 51 years, the composition of the selection committee has been, wisely, revised. Traditionally it was guided by the fest director, always a professional programmer, but rounded […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 26, 2013
