Clayton Patterson and mayor Rudy Giuliani in Captured, screening tonight at Rooftop Panorama (Photo: CP/Rooftop Films)

Seeing as the three-day event started yesterday, I guess I should have mentioned then that Clayton Patterson, the esteemed photographer/filmmaker/author whose tapes of the 1988 Tompkins Square Riots are perhaps the definitive record of that episode in NYC history, has his latest film premiering tonight as part of Rooftop Flims' "Rooftop Panorama" series. Captured, a screen adaptation of his 2005 book about the evolution of his beloved Lower East Side, is screening at the Open Road Rooftop above New Design High; a set by A.R.E Weapons opens the evening at 8:30 and there's an open-bar after-party down the street at Fontana's. Check out more information at Rooftop Films site, including info about Saturday's series-ending short-film program.

Meanwhile, I'm leaving town for a month and might be scarcer than usual around here for anybody still reading; very sorry about that. Do stay in touch and tell me what I'm missing -- or rather will be missing, in case I have a chance to note it here. See you in July, if not sooner...

--STV

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I know, I know -- I'm such a shill these days, but tonight's Where Internet and Film Collide event at IFC Center (8:30 p.m.) is particularly notable for a few important reasons:

1. Most notably, it's the first time the inveterate festival-chronicler and video gadfly Jamie Stuart has ever exhibited his work theatrically;

The gang's all here: A scene from Jamie Stuart's NYFF45: Part Two, screening tonight at Where Internet and Film Collide (Photo: Mutiny Company)

2. As far as I know, the same is the case for Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Leiberman's terrific "urban Western" serial The West Side;

3. After its turns at Sundance and Tribeca, tonight is likely the last chance you'll have for a while (if ever) to see Isabella Rossellini's bug-sex shorts series Green Porno outside the Sundance Channel.

4. Stuart, Bilsborrow-Koo, Leiberman and others will be on hand afterward to discuss the overlap of cinema, video and Vast! New! Frontier! of the World Wide Web. (Your scale may vary; follow the jump for the full program description.) --STV

Continue reading "TONIGHT: Internet Week NY Showcases Jamie Stuart, West Side and Bug Sex (Among Others)" »

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This is pretty spectacular: The long-gestating, all-things-film resource Moving Image Source launched today, featuring an inaugural set of articles by critics including Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dennis Lim, Melissa Anderson, Ed Halter and others. The site also has a calendar of international repertory series, screenings and other events, as well a research guide for the workplace procrastinator restless film wonk in all of you.

As you'll probably deduce from its name, the site is an offshoot of the Museum of the Moving Image; as such, all the museum's archived Pinewood Dialogues are here, as are direct links to its online collection catalog (Jaws 2 had a comic book! Who knew?) and archives of presidential election commercials since 1952. It appears that the only missing is a blog or a blogroll, but those things are just trouble anyway. Big, big congrats and thanks to MoMI for putting this together -- and happy exploring! -- STV

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Sophia Loren in Showman, screening tonight at IFC Center (Photo: Maysles Films)

A quick heads-up to those of you with a calendar gap remaining for this evening (as well as to the flakes out there who can create one in seconds flat; you know who you are): Al Maysles will drop by tonight's Stranger Than Fiction season-ender at IFC Center, where a double feature of his 1955 short Psychiatry in Russia and the Maysles Brothers' 1963 movie-exec profile Showman will screen starting at 8 p.m. Check the vintage plot synopsis from Maysles Films:

A mogul in-the-making. Showman follows movie merchant, Joe Levine during the ballyhoo of Two Women and Sofia Loren's Oscar-winning performance. Levine wheels and deals his way through daily life - surrounded by movie stars, fellow tycoons and yes-men.

Levine grew up in the slums of Boston where he became a small-time distributor of films. Only a few years ago he could be seen toting a can of film under his arm. New England was his territory. Today (at the time of Showman), he's a big executive. His territory: the world.

And today (at the time of Showman screening downtown), he's... well, let's not get into that. The rarity of the films alone makes your attendance worthwhile, as does your last chance to wish STF potentate Thom Powers the best before his annual disappearance into the Toronto Film Festival programming dungeon. Don't miss it! -- STV

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By S.T. VanAirsdale

While it's generally more fashionable to debate the vitality (and/or the viability) of recent films about the war in Iraq, the best story going is the dynamic work that's emerged from the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Especially in the realm of short films: Spike Lee's monolithic When the Levees Broke notwithstanding, Katrina yielded a strong concentration of acclaimed fest fare like South of Ten (NYFF '06), God Provides (Sundance '07), Glory at Sea! (SXSW '08) and this year's Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca (among others) selection The Second Line, which screens Sunday night as part of Sundance at BAM.

Stacked with dread: (L-R) Dane Rhodes, Al Thompson and J.D. Williams in John Magary's short The Second Line, screening Sunday as part of Sundance at BAM

Written and directed by Columbia alumnus John Magary, Line introduces storm survivor MacArthur (Al Thompson) moments after his cash is stolen from his FEMA trailer in New Orleans. Disgruntled and not a little disenfranchised, he takes work gutting a house with his cousin Natt (J.D. Williams). Class conflict ensues; the storm's casualties mount. Magary handles proximity with uncanny aplomb, peeking into devastated souls even as his physical scope is so vast as to almost encompass the curve of Earth. His New Orleans is a world capital of filth and dread, with loathing stacked higher than scraps of old homes. Yet MacArthur's breathlessness -- both literal and metaphorical -- yields a shocking, sympathetic optimism. For better and worse, there's control in the ruins. It's the ultimate theme of virtually every Katrina-related film to date, but Magary's twist gives The Second Line its fine, maybe even unprecedented edge.

After the jump, The Reeler hears from Magary about The Second Line, adapting to his next New Orleans story and the near-death experience (really!) of traveling to Sundance.

Continue reading "Strong Second Line Brings Katrina to BAM" »

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By S.T. VanAirsdale

It occurred to me about 30 minutes into Thursday's opening-night party for the third-annual Sundance at BAM why a high-school prom theme was especially brilliant for the evening. The obvious tie-in to the Nanette Burstein's reality-skein-in-documentary-clothing opener American Teen was a convenient enough peg, but seriously: An informal poll revealed that nobody in New York film appears to have attended their own proms as teenagers. As such, the punch seemed spiked with equal parts catharsis and vodka; it was the most fun I think I'd seen 90 percent of the film community have, like, ever. So, memo to MoMA, Lincoln Center, the film institute in a neighborhood below Canal Street that shall not be named, and other local programmers: Tavern on the Green out, gym in. Trust me.

Continue reading "BAM Finds Fountain of Youth For Sundance Opener" »

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Eleanore Hendricks in The Pleasure of Being Robbed, one of the better-received NYC films at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (Photo: Visit Films)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

The recently ended Cannes Film Festival wasn't quite the gathering of New York minds that we witnessed a year ago, but there was still a contingent worth watching, debating and -- obviously -- speculating over when it was all said and done. As The Reeler was chained in its New York salt mines, however, it became necessary to parse Synecdoche, New York, Two Lovers and other local-titles-in-limbo from this side of the Atlantic. And while the final landing place of many of these films has yet to be determined (count on at least two or three of them to screen at the New York Film Festival along with Palme D'Or winner The Class and other award-grabbers by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardennes), we still had plenty to go on while diagnosing how NYC fared on the Croisette.

Continue reading "NYC in the Cannes (Again)" »

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I was just telling a friend about this scene from Manhattan the other day, but about halfway through the anecdote I realized I had the context and chronology all wrong; I'd eventually need to break out the DVD. Fortunately, another fan has done the hard work for me, somehow even markedly improving on the original the only way possible: Muppets. -- STV

[H/T: Gawker]

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By S.T. VanAirsdale

Sure, it's raining non-stop in the middle of May and I was wearing a scarf as recently as last week, but the hell with it: Summer's here, damn it, because like our city's twisted, beloved genre groundhogs, Grady Hendrix and Co. have thrust this year's New York Asian Film Festival line-up through the asphalt and into our blistered urban consciousness. And I mean that as a good thing; just thank them already.

Writer/director/star Hitoshi Matsumoto in the outlandish man-battles-monster comedy Dainipponjin, screening at this year's New York Asian Film Festival

I expect I'll have a word here with Hendrix before the seventh annual festival launches June 20 at IFC Center (it concludes July 6 following its co-presentation of eight selections in the partially overlapping Japan Cuts festival at Japan Society). In the meantime, I'm agog at this year's potential: the Grim Reaper and his talking dog in Accuracy of Death; Thailand's spectacular, all-time box-office champs King Naresuan 1 and 2; the uncompromising Korean film industry-as-slaughterhouse metaphor The Butcher; Takashi Miike's "nutso reimagining of American Westerns," Sukiyaki Western Django; the blockbuster Chinese war film Assembly; and sooooo much more (Johnnie To! Always 2 -- with a cameo from Godzilla!!) that it's embarrassing and kind of devastating, really, to admit I'm going to be out of town for the whole fucking thing.

But that's not your problem. You have to decide what you're seeing, so browse on after the jump (and keep an eye on Subway Cinema's site and new blog for more updates about appearances, extras and what-not).

Continue reading "NY Asian Film Festival Line-Up Comes to Claim Our Very Souls" »

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By S.T. VanAirsdale

OK, so like every other half-ass with a blog, I'm making a resolution: I'm getting back to more regular publishing here, starting now. My proximity to the loop, as it were (i.e. so, so out of it) has frankly been shameful, so much so that I didn't know about The Sun's recent profile of ex-Pioneer Theater impresario and dear Reeler friend Ray Privett until yesterday morning; there have been other clues tweaking my guilty conscience with almost rhythmatic regularity, but this should have been an automatic for me (as it should have been for you):

In only eight years of operation, the Pioneer has provided a home for hundreds of self-sustained filmmakers who don't have a corporate safety net waiting below them; for the last four of those years, every one of those artists has been greeted at the door by the theater's inimitable programmer, Ray Privett.

"I always thought it was a mistake to try and compete head-on with the larger theaters, with places like Film Forum or Landmark or the Angelika or Village East," Mr. Privett said. "If you try to compete and do the same thing, you'll lose every time, since there's only so much you can do with one screen and 99 seats. Instead, I wanted to do the absolute opposite — to cater to the most out-there niches possible, to audiences like the local Croatian audience, which has been essentially abandoned by the 'mainstream' film community."

Continue reading "The House That Ray Built" »

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