Alex Ross Perry’s first feature Impolex was an oblique gloss on Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, while his higher-profile follow-up, The Color Wheel, stole the font of Philip Roth’s ’70s hardcovers for its credits, as well as that writer’s abrasive fearlessness and sexual disreputability. Literature hangs heavy over Listen Up Philip as well, not least in its subject: a young, New York novelist on the precipice of success being mentored by a Roth-like literary titan. That writer’s spirit is still present, but the major structural reference is William Gaddis’ behemoth debut The Recognitions, whose main through line is a pure-spirited and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 20, 2014(Distributed by Cinema Conservancy and Factory 25, The Color Wheel opens theatrically in NYC at BAM on Friday, May 18, 2012. It world premiered at the 2011 Sarasota Film Festival and co-shared the Best Narrative award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival before screening at BAMcinemaFest and many, many more festivals throughout the world. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published on June 22, 2011.) Full disclosure: I first met Alex Ross Perry in the autumn of 2010. We had attended a screening with a mutual friend and he mentioned to me that he was finishing a new film and offered me a look. As a […]
by Tom Hall on May 17, 2012In the mainstream film world, it seems like the art of the poster is long lost. The glory days of stylish art and creative interpretation has given way to big text and giant celebrity heads. But there is hope in the indie world, and from an unusual location. Adrian Kolarczyk is in his early 20s, from outside of Krakow, Poland – and he makes movie posters. I met him through the Off + Camera Film Festival, a fest I help program an American film section for. Kolarczyk came to see a film we programmed, Alex Ross Perry’s Impolex. Easily one […]
by Mike Plante on Oct 13, 2011Described as a “comedic symphony of disappointment and forgiveness,” Alex Ross Perry’s new feature, The Color Wheel, is written by lead Carlen Altman and Perry, and shot in a lovely, low contrast B&W by Sean Price Williams. Some of you may remember Altman for her role in Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me. And you’ll remember Ross from his feature Impoplex of a couple of years ago. According to the website, the film rests “uncomfortably somewhere between the solipsistic, unrepressed id of late Jerry Lewis, the confrontational pseudo-sexual self loathing of Philip Roth, and the black and white motels, diners […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2011