To-do: Week starting Thursday 2nd September: Reel Anime, Singapore Film Festival, William Burroughs, Alain Delon, Tomorrow When the War Began, The Kids Are Alright
Some micro-festivals to sink your teeth into this week: Madman’s Reel Anime festival (including Summer Wars – which we reviewed here - and the first 2 Evangelion films) begins Thursday while the Singapore Film Festival runs from Saturday 4th to Wednesday 8th.
The doco William S. Burroughs: A Man Within screens at ACMI Thursday through Sunday. Features interviews with Allen Ginsberg, John Waters, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Sonic Youth, Laurie Anderson, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, and David Cronenberg.
More love for Alain Delon this week at Cinematheque on Wednesday with Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers screening alongside Renoir’s early masterpiece, A Day in the Country (Une Partie de Campagne), which of course has nothing at all to do with Delon, having been shot when he was about six months old, but plenty to do with Visconti – along with Jacques Becker and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Visconti worked as Renoir’s assistant director on this film, seven years before he directed his own first film, Ossessione.
Some fun films at the Astor: The Great Escape on Sunday afternoon; Godard’s Contempt and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom on Sunday night; and parts 4 and 5 of the Cremaster Cycle on Monday.
New films opening this week: Tomorrow When the War Began based on the John Marsden novel and directed by Hollywood screenwriter Stuart Beattie (whose awful trailer tells us that the decision to go to war isn’t a matter of rationalism or intellectualising but rather a matter of “instinct”); The Tumbler which looks like an Australian remake of Three Kings but without that film’s budget or wit, The Kids Are Alright, a film about how lesbians can do the white privilege thing just as well as all you straight couples thank you very much; Going the Distance, a romantic comedy with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore; and Furry Vengeance which, going by the trailer, is not as sexy as the title would suggest.
