To-do: Week starting Thursday 23rd June: Sleeping Beauty, Meek’s Cutoff, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Cars 2, Transformers 3, Nicholas Ray, MIAF
Week starting Thursday 23rd June
New releases opening this week:
SLEEPING BEAUTY is a “controversial” work about “female sexuality” released in unfortunate proximity to Catherine Breillat’s film of the same name.
MEEK’S CUTOFF is the latest film from Kelly Reichardt, the distinctive American independent director. The first period piece for Reichardt, this film follows a group of American settlers and their strained dependence on a Native American as they search for water in the Oregonian desert. Showing at Nova after its exclusive run at ACMI. Check out Brad Nguyen’s review here.
THE LAST CIRCUS is a Spanish film that at some point features two rampaging, disfigured clowns with machetes and machine guns duelling over a large-breasted trapeze artist on top of a 200ft-high cross. Somehow, this will say something about the post-Franco era. This could either be brilliant or terrible.
ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES is a film about the “alternative” film festival, described as a “post-punk DIY bricolage” which sounds highly irritating but it should feature some good music so there’s always that. Aren’t you people all illegally downloading music? Why are you paying actual money to see a film about music you don’t pay to listen to?
CARS 2 is a film about cars. It’s also about how funny and quirky those silly Japanese people are. lol
TRANSFORMERS 3: DARK OF THE MOON is a film about cars. It’s also a film about how hot Megan Fox’s ass is. Oh wait, she’s not in this one? Who have they replaced her with? A model from England whose measurements (according to Wikipedia) are 34-25-35? Yes, that will do. Released on Wednesday 29.
THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT REVIVAL is a probably gloriously incoherent propaganda film about the founding of the Chinese Communist Party that will somehow express the virtues of socialism through the vernacular of Hollywood blockbusters, complete with product placement.
Special seasons:
The Melbourne Cinematheque presents YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN: THE BALLAD OF NICHOLAS RAY, a three-week retrospective of the great director, held in high regard by the famous French New Wave directors. Jean-Luc Godard once extravagantly announced, “There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray”. The season opens with IN A LONELY PLACE (1950), starring Humphrey Bogart as a failed screenwriter wrongfully accused of murder; and KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (1949) also starring Humphrey Bogart, this time as a lawyer defending a young hood accused of murder. At ACMI each Wednesday, June 29 – July 13.
Film festivals:
The MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL features 30 programs of animation over 8 days including new and old films. Highlights include a focus on contemporary Polish animators and a retrospective of UPA studios responsible for characters such as Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing. At ACMI, June 19-26. (site here)
Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place" at ACMI
