ReverseBlog (Free subscription) | yesterday
For Kiyoshi Kurosawa, obliqueness often seems to be the order of the day. But hiding beneath his more forthrightly abstract films, like Barren Illusion, Charisma, and Bright Future, and lying closer to the surface of more generically situated works...
Reverse Shot - (Free subscription) | yesterday
That Kurosawa masks his social critique in ghostly, vague affectation often gives him the tag of Abstract Auteur, though compared with willfully obscure directors like Lucrecia Martel and Claire Denis, he’s far more digestible. His latest film, Tokyo Sonata , moves away from his recent forays into toying with horror and sci-fi conventions, but it’s no less generic. read more
Dispatches from Zembla (Free subscription) | 10/02/2008
Are love and lust mutually contradictory ideas? Hannah Arendt (quoting St. Augustine) said that to her "I love you" meant the same as "I want you to be." Just affirming other's existence seems like nothing out of ordinary but there is something much deeper in the notion. Sexual desire by its very nature seems to imply that one uses other person for one's own gratification, which in turn is the same...
GreenCine Daily (Free subscription) | 09/20/2008
"Ozu's name came up often last week at TIFF, most frequently in regard to Hirokazu Kore-eda's domestic drama, Still Walking, and Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum, which was directly inspired by Late Spring," writes Darren Hughes. "I watched...
Girish (Free subscription) | 09/17/2008
So, I'm back from a week in Toronto, where I took in a couple of dozen screenings. Here's how the films stacked up. Flat-Out, Holy-Cow Masterpiece: RR (James Benning, USA) Top-Of-The-Heap Favorites: 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, France) Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA) Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso, Argentina) A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France) Jerichow (Christian Petzold, Germany) Lorna's...
eugonline (Free subscription) | 09/06/2008
In the wake of Venice fest screenings last week, Claire Denis' "35 Rhums" arrived in Toronto with quite a buzz. Writing in indieWIRE, Shane Danielsen called it, "magnificently directed, faultlessly performed, alert to the beauty and mystery of commonplace things." Watching the film the other day here in Canada, I have to agree, its a wonderful movie that I've...
The Evening Class (Free subscription) | 09/06/2008
For some it is difficult to retire the past, for others impossible, and—in the case of a dead cat—for at least one fellow it’s comically effortless. Claire Denis’ 35 Rhums (variously translated as 35 Rums and 35 Shots , and best conflated as 35 Shots of Rum ) is her melancholic ode to recompense and reconciliation in the face of irretrievable loss. Lionel (in a charismatically understated performance...
Salon (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008
The Venice Film Festival takes risks while Toronto promises gems like Claire Denis' "35 rhums," an intimate movie about the pleasures of home -- and knowing when to leave it.
A.V. Club (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008
Ricky Gervais goes Hollywood, Claire Denis goes Ozu, and the new film from the director of Brick .
Filmmaker Magazine: Blog (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008
Things seen and overheard, Day One of the Toronto International Film Festival: Ads hyping the new hybrid Escalade are opening every screening of this year's Toronto Film Festival; whether that's a subconscious meta-commentary on the festival itself, a similar all-consuming mammoth that's uniting unwieldy pomp and flash with more down-to-earth concern, is entirely unknown. While today was the
Variety.com (Free subscription) | 09/03/2008
Film News: Claire Denis pic screened at Venice -- Robert Beeson and Pam Engel’s new Brit arthouse distrib New Wave Films has acquired Claire Denis’ Paris-set family drama “35 Shots of Rum” from Gallic sales company Elle Driver at Venice.
Entertainment - The Post Chronicle (Free subscription) | 09/02/2008
As the Venice Film Festival reached its halfway point Monday, critics were, for once, unanimous: The lineup has been underwhelming....
On The Scene (Free subscription) | 09/01/2008
by Shane Danielsen (September 1, 2008) With the press incensed by the lack of major interview opportunities ( George Clooney and Brad Pitt , in town for " Burn After Reading ", politely but firmly declined all requests), and industry numbers noticeably down from previous years, the Venice Film Festival had to deliver in terms of films, if it hoped to silence a growing army of naysayers. After three...
GreenCine Daily (Free subscription) | 09/01/2008
Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum "is like a dance, like an atmospheric manifestation, like an epic chanting in which stylization plays out in the vibrant presence of bodies, voices, silences, music and sounds," writes Jean-Michel Frodon in a journal...
Times Online (Free subscription) | 08/31/2008
Four days into the Venice Film Festival, and the programme feels as though it has been temporarily hijacked by hubris and bombast. With a spectacularly inept thriller (Barbet Schroeder’s Inju, La Bete Dans L’Ombre) and an incoherently hallucinatory gangster movie (the unwatchable Plastic City by Lu Lik-wai) on offer, the audience is more than ready for something intimate and meaningful, a film that...
