Search Results for: abel ferrara

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I’ve seen four Cinevegas movies so far — Paul Dinello ‘s Strangers with Candy on Friday night, and then John Maringouin‘s Running Stumbled, Eva Aridjis‘s The Favor and Gregory Berkin and Jack Sheehan‘s Skin City on Saturday. The Aradjis film, a low-budget domestic drama about a nice, dweeby middle-aged guy taking a stab at fatherhood … Read more

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HE will be switching bases later this afternoon (Friday, 6.9) from Los Angeles to the Palm Casino in Las Vegas for a few days of Cinevegas, the “world’s most dangerous film festival”. I have, in all sincerity, a place in my heart for “the worst money-grubbing place in the world,” as Albert Brooks called Las … Read more

Toronto’s Eleven

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Toronto’s Eleven I’ve only been coming here since ’98, but it seemed to me like the best Toronto Film Festival ever. Too many good films, too many I didn’t get to see, the energy always there…every day felt like a full deck. I saw (or re-saw) eleven films here that I know will matter in … Read more

Curried Hell

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Girl Power It was early Wednesday afternoon, and I was standing in the hallway of the 26th floor of Toronto’s Four Season’s hotel, waiting for my ten-minute quickie with In Her Shoes director Curtis Hanson. And then a door opened about three feet away and Shoes costar Shirley Maclaine, who owns each and every scene … Read more

Guess what’s surprisingly good? And

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Guess what’s surprisingly good? And is easily one of the best edited films I’ve seen at the Toronto Film festival so far, not to mention one of the most unsettling and a dead-serious spiritual seeker? Abel Ferrara’s Mary, which I saw Sunday night at the Isabel Bader theatre. I didn’t have many hopes for this … Read more

Cheers to the Brokeback Mountain

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Cheers to the Brokeback Mountain team — director Ang Lee, producer James Schamus and Focus Features — for having taken the Golden Lion (i.e., the best feature prize) at the just-wrapped Venice Film Festival. A BBC report claims that George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck “had been the hot favourite among film critics to … Read more

Change of Season

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The winding down of the ’05 summer is fortunate in two respects: it’s getting a tiny bit cooler in the city (there was a transcendent breeze travelling southward down Broadway Monday night around 9:30 pm), and it gives me something to write about during a flat week. It felt to me like an above-average summer. … Read more

Is this going to be

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Is this going to be an awesome Toronto Film Festival or what? The selections will include Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown with Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst; Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble; Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride; Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story; George Clooney’s Good Night, And Good Luck; Mary Harron’s The Notorious Bettie Page … Read more

Downfall’s Oliver Hirschbiegel doing Body

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Downfall‘s Oliver Hirschbiegel doing Body Snatchers (or Invasion of…), a remake of a ’70s Phil Kaufman film that was a remake of a landmark ’50s Don Siegel film that was also reworked by Abel Ferrara in ’93….really terrible idea! Even with (or do I mean particularly with?) Nicole Kidman in whatever the lead role will … Read more

Song Of A Poet Who Died In The Gutter

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“Sorry Abel, but Pier Paolo Pasolini was not predictable, and Pasolini feels too much like a grab-bag of the late filmmaker’s greatest hits. There are welcome readings and dramatizations from his notes and un-filmed ideas. There are actual clips from his features. There is a beautifully shot blowjob that recalls the matter-of-fact naturalism of the … Read more