Middleburg Festival 2020 - Virtual This Weekend!

by Nathaniel R

Just a heads up that the Middleburg International Film Festival, that we cover each year right here, has gone mostly virtual this year. The festival is later this week (Thurs, Oct 15th - Sunday, Oct 18th). Despite the unfortunate circumstances of movies in this bizarre year, they've somehow gathered their usual crop of buzzy Oscar contenders and possible breakout indies. You can see the full list here -- any films in particular you'd like us to cover?  You may recall that last year we did a "Coffee and Contenders" Oscar panel with Clayton Davis and Jazz Tangcay (who both work for Variety now). We're repeating that again this year since it was a success last time. This year it will be on Zoom due to, well, you know... but we're still excited.

The panel is this coming Friday at 9:00 AM EST. It will be available for free if any of you reading would like to tune in (ignore the "not available in your country" notice. They are in the process of fixing that)

NYFF: the queer slow cinema of Tsai Ming-liang's "Days"

by Sean Donovan

Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang’s brand has reached a point where any objections to his style seem of limited use or value. At this point in his career, Tsai is going to do what Tsai is always wont to do- which is make films composed of far less shots overall than most filmmakers working today, some stretching as long as 10 minutes, studies in slow repetition and urbane melancholy, sometimes touching on queer themes but just grazing them (Tsai himself is gay). When a filmmaker’s brand is so immediately recognizable it’s sometimes met with impatience and boredom by audiences, as if wondering ‘when are they gonna just get over this already?’ ‘How many lengthy shots of people doing housework is too many?’ Matías Piñeiro’s latest entry in the New York Film Festival, Isabella, received notices of exactly this kind from many critics, wondering what the balance is between honing a brand vs. refusing to develop creatively (I reviewed the film here for TFE to a similarly lukewarm shrug). 

Yet with Tsai Ming-liang I find myself not caring whatsoever about any criteria of versatility or artistic variance in his work...

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NYFF: "Isabella"

by Sean Donovan

As part of their series of drive-in events, the New York Film Festival programmed Matías Piñeiro’s latest Shakespeare-influenced drama Isabella alongside Pedro Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton’s delicious queer treasure The Human Voice (previously unpacked by Nathaniel). In some ways this choice makes sense: both films relish in vivid expressions of color, the kind of experiences you would want to have in as close to a theatrical environment as we can get right now. But in terms of intensity and impact the films could not be more different, Human Voice’s sledgehammer playfulness is a misplaced introduction to Piñeiro’s foggy and ultimately disappointing drama.    

Isabella is named after the main character of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, one of the bard’s ‘problem plays’ positioned awkwardly between comedy and drama. Isabella displays no proclivities towards the comedic, but it may have internalized the problem play position of being stuck between choices and controlled by doubt...

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NYFF: "Night of Kings"

Our coverage of the New York Film Festival -- you can buy virtual tickets to most of these films -- continues.

by Nathaniel R

The prison movie is its own specific subgenre, holding close to its own tropes, structural familiarity, and character types. Though we've never been imprisoned, we imagined these are culled from reality as much as imagined from collective nightmare. As a general rule, we long for escape from well worn genres, but in some cases it's useful shorthand. Such it is with Philippe LaCôte's Night of Kings, the buzzy Ivory Coast Oscar submission which we suspect might have been too confusing to resonate for Western audiences, were if not for these familiar, even universal, elements...

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New Fest Lineup!

by Nathaniel R

 Paul Bettany is "Uncle Frank" in a road trip film from Alan Ball
New York City's leading queer film festival is now in its 32nd year. And this year you don't even need to be in NYC to attend since they've gone virtual...

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