NYFF: A Family Tour

Murtada Elfadl reporting on the New York Film Festival

Early on in A Family Tour a reporter asks the lead character, a Chinese film director exiled in Hong Kong, why she makes political films. She answers that everything she makes is personal. Over the next two hours the film shows us exactly how the political is never separate from the personal.

The film is autobiographical, the director Ying Liang having lived in exile in Hong Kong since making When Night Falls (2012), a sharply critical look at the biased judicial system in China. He has switched the protagonist’s gender so we are following a female director (Gong Zhe) as she travels to a film festival in Taiwan with her husband and small child...

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NYFF: Christophe Honoré's "Sorry Angel"

Jason Adams reporting on the New York Film Festival

The first time they meet, after eyeing each other across the seats of a cinema, puppy-eyed 22-year-old Arthur (Vincent Lacoste) describes himself as a "reader" to the somewhat older, wiser Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps).  Jacques, a writer, is amused by this perfect puzzle snap of self-descriptions. If only timing was as much on their side, his tired but smirking eyes seem to say. They might have made a beautiful movie together. (And hey, turns out they did.)

Some time later Jacques explains that there are four types of gay men. As he goes on to list them Arthur on the other end of the telephone hilariously grabs a notebook and a pen. As Jacques rattles off all of the big names proving his thesis (Rimbaud, Auden, Whitman oh my) Arthur scribbles away, a sponge sucking up all the wisdom that Jacques has to offer...

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More Fall Festival Happenings!

Chris here with more news for the fall festivals! We're counting down the days until Nathaniel and I are in Toronto, and TIFF just announced all of their Canadian titles to be seen at the festival. Most notorious among them is the delayed Xavier Dolan film The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, which will be a world premiere. Producers had previously noted that the film would be likely for the fall fests, but it's post-production woes made those comments a bit in flux. Regardless, we are very curious to see Dolan's first English language effort and his bursting cast that includes Jacob Tremblay, Natalie Portman, and Kit Harrington (but not Jessica Chastain, left to the cutting room floor).

Another noteworthy announcement is that the New York Film Festival has chosen its closing film: Julian Schnabel's Venice-bound Van Gogh biopic starring Willem Dafoe At Eternity's Gate. The film joins that fest's opening night The Favourite and centerpiece Roma, which will each play other festivals. It had been unclear in the past few months if the film would be released in time for the 20189 Oscar season but CBS films looks to open the film in November. Can we bank on Dafoe as one of our Best Actor sure things this year? And could Schnabel return after The Diving Bell and the Butterfly got so close to Oscar?

Roma Takes New York

by Jason Adams

Set your calendars - the New York Film Festival is a mere seventy-two days away now! Running from September 28 to October 14 the 56th edition of my hometown's biggest fanciest movie celebration has just made its first programming announcement - this year's Centerpiece Film will be Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white autobiographical epic Roma! 

The movie charts the course of a family over the course of a year in middle-class Mexico City in the 1970s, and even though that seems straightforward it sounds like Cuarón is still experimenting with movie technology - NYFF promises that the film features "a sound design that represents something new in the medium." Well I'm curious!

Roma is owned by Netflix and got pushed out of consideration by Cannes because of their cantankerous relationship with the streamer - NYFF has no such qualms, having screened both Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories just last year, so we'll be some of the lucky movie-goers who see Cuarón's vision on a great big screen, lucky lucky us.

TIFF & NYFF & Middleburg Wrap-Ups

Another autumn whizzes by and with it a look back on the festivals we've covered. Here's everything we reviewed from TIFF and NYFF and Middleburg this year in case you missed it. Reviews from Jason Adams, Manuel Betancourt, Nick Davis, Sean Donovan, Murtada Elfaldl, John Guerin, Chris Feil, and Nathaniel R

TIFF 2017

the films 
The Breadwinner •  Darkest Hour • 
Death of Stalin • Disaster • Downsizing • 
Euphoria • Film Stars Dont Die in Liverpool • 
First They Killed My Father • 
The Florida Project • Happy End • I, Tonya • 
The Killing of a Sacred Deer • Kings • 

Lady Bird • Lodgers • Mademoiselle Paradis • 
Mary Shelley • mother! • 
Never Steady Never Still • On Body and Soul • 
The Racer and the Jailbird • Revenge • 

The Seen and Unseen • The Shape of Water • 
Sheikh Jackson • Thelma • 
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri • 
Tigre • Western • The Wife • Zama

parties, events, randomness
greatest party photo ever • "I'm Armie" • 
Helena Bonham-Carter • mother! moods • 
portraits from the fest • PODCAST FINALE

NYFF 2017

the films 
Arthur Miller: Writer • BPM (Beats Per Minute) • Before We Vanish • 
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat • 
Faces Places • Félicité • First Reformed • The Florida Project • 

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold • Lady Bird • Let the Sunshine In • 
The Meyerowitz Stories • Mrs Hyde • Mudbound • The Rider • Spielberg •
Thelma

 parties, events, randomness 
red carpet prayer • PODCAST FINALE

MIDDLEBURG 2017

the films
Darkest Hour • A Fantastic Woman • Last Flag Flying • Mudbound •
Novitiate • Wonderstruck

parties, events, randomness
James Ivory talk • Nicholas Britell in concert