NYFF: A Dog Day of a Documentary in 'The Dog'

NYFF moves into its final week Here's Glenn on The Dog.

Whether you watched Dog Day Afternoon for the first time or the tenth when The Film Experience’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” series featured it one year ago, you can surely attest to it being one helluva movie. I recently caught it on the big screen and, boy, does it slay audiences. It’s always refreshing to see a film go over so well from a genre that looks comparatively tame compared to modern day equivalents. Shots remain unedited for minutes and yet the action and the tension are palpable.

Now, even if you’ve never seen Sidney Lumet’s 1975 masterpiece then it’s still hard to deny that the true life story was seemingly made for movies...

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Reader Ranking: Smackdown '68

I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying the newly revived Supporting Actress Smackdown feature. So far we've covered 1952 and 1980 and we've added your rankings as part of the determining factor on who wins! The Year of the Month (awkward title!) for October is "1968". Send me your email ballot before October 28th with "1968" as the subject line, ranking only the supporting actress nominees you've seen with a grade from 1 to 5 hearts as we do for each... If you haven't yet seen them get to renting! Some of these are must-sees, I promise, and not just for these nominated women.

We'll be talking about Faces and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter both of which I've never seen. The other three supporting actress nominees are from films I am gaga crazy for so I'm excited to revisit Rosemary's Baby, Rachel Rachel and Funny Girl. Join me!

REQUESTS? What do you think would improve the Smackdown? And any favorites from 1968? I recently revisited 2001: A Space Odyssey and we're always down for The Planet of the Apes (and so is TV's Mad Men) but what else? Last month I ran out of time to talk about extra films for 1980 but that won't stop me from asking again. Which off-Smackdown '68 films are you most interested in? 

poll by twiigs.com

LFF: All is Lost

David reports from the London Film Festival on his first voyage to meet Robert Redford, lost at sea... (This film is also playing at NYFF)

Since Kanye West just brought The Truman Show and its climatic sailing sequence into public parlance again, it’s perfectly appropriate for me to refer to All is Lost as an enlarged version of that scene. The manipulator of the heavens here is not a flatcapped Ed Harris, but writer-director J. C. Chandor, fleeing from the immensely talkative boardroom of Margin Call to the vast sea of a practically wordless one-man-show. ‘Our Man’ (as the credits call him) is Robert Redford, in an Oscar-buzzed performance that is certainly his most remarkable in many years. Not only for the physical commitment - the rough winds of the sea buffet the sailor every which way - but for the restraint with which he crafts a stolid and complex man who barely says a word.

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Tarantino's Preemie Top Ten

October 5th seems like an exceptionally weird time to deliver a top ten list. It's too late in the year for a "so far" list and too early for anything like completist summation and way way too early for anything like retrospective nostalgia. But Quentin Tarantino has never been known to shut up when he felt like talking so he's revealed his top ten of 2013 (so far) which are, in alphabetical order

• Afternoon Delight (Jill Soloway)
• Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)
• Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)
• The Conjuring (James Wan)
• Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg)
• Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
• Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
• Kick Ass 2 (Jeff Wadlow)
• The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski)
• This Is The End (Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg)

It's very Tarantino and that's all I have to say about that. I only wish he had revealed a top ten of 2012 instead since he never did one for that year. Yes, conflict of interest with Django Unchained or what not, but literally no one would blink if he had put his own film on it. It would've been very Tarantino and that's all anyone could have said about that. 

P.S. the world would be a better place if all directors did this, don'cha think? I mean not in October but at all.

Accidental Rewatches: Hocus Pocus

Hocus Pocus has been on the telly a lot lately. I guess that means it's October? I started to watch but Bette Midler forced me away with her insane voicework. I swear every other word in every line of her dialogue she treats like it's the climax of the sentence AND the movie. It's just impossible to listen to. Good grief that movie is noisy.

And so much mugging! I'm surprised I still had a wallet by the time the credits rolled.

Remember when Sarah Jessica Parker was a silver screen sex symbol? That girl has had so many acts in her career. The comic but non-ironic sex symbol years were inbetween the memorable TV personas from the early Square Pegs geekery and the Sex and the City Mega-Icon status. Let's call it the "SanDeE*" years. What a strong stretch that was for her. So many enjoyable performances in mostly good films: L.A. Story, Ed Wood, Honeymoon in Vegas, Til There Was You, Miami Rhapsody, Mars Attacks!, The First Wives Club. 

Do you think her career has a fourth act in it?

But back to Hocus Pocus... when was the last time you watched it? And do you think the remake/sequel idea that was floated last year is ever going to happen?