"Wonderstruck" is NYFF's Centerpiece Selection

Chris here. Todd Haynes's Carol follow-up, the genre mash-up Wonderstruck has been one of our most anticipated here at The Film Experience for some time, naturally. While the film got a mixed reception at Cannes and came up empty handed for prizes, that's not enough to dampen our excitement. Haynes reunited with Julianne Moore? Of course we're there! But the film just landed a prime spot on the fall festival circuit - Wonderstruck will be the Centerpiece for the New York Film Festival.

Festival hounds will remember that this spot went to 20th Century Women's world premiere last year - so let's hope the film is as beloved in these parts as that film. But will it capture Oscar's attentions more than that small film? Haynes hasn't had much luck on the big prizes, so we bet Wonderstuck could at least register below the line as his previous films have. Despite the muted Cannes reactions, one of the most universally praised elements of the film was the performance of young deaf actress Millicent Simmonds - could she be the next youngster to steal Oscar's hearts? 

Wonderstruck play's NYFF afew weeks before opening October 20. Tell us what has you most excited about the film!

October Highlights

October was busy busy busy with two festivals, the classic NYFF and the new Middleburg and our semi-annual Oscar Horrors (though a fourth season is somewhat unlikely given that we're running out of nominees outside of music and sound categories!). Here are 16 highlights from the spooky best-weather month in case you missed any of them. The fall is too too short, don't you agree?

8 Favorites
re: Isabelle Huppert's emails -Nick's scandalous discovery
Kiss Me Kate the peak of George Sidney's fluffy fun as a director? 
Loving those 20th Century Women a first impressions top ten 
Moonlight in Three Acts a tag team review 
Janis Joplin Biopics an incomplete history 
Judy & Liza "Together Wherever We Go" 
Oscar Horrors: Flatliners' Sound a confession of love for Schumacher 
Lion at Middleburg  a new festival, a winning film

8 Most Discussed
Viola Davis will be an Oscar record breaker in January
The Departed 10th Anniversary Oscar Look-back
Glenn Close is The Wife a new fim lined up
Pablo Larrain's Great Year Jackie and Neruda
Gwyneth Goes Grocery Shopping a photoshoot 
Michelle Williams Oscar Moment? Manchester by the Sea 
Oscar Horrors: The Sixth Sense Do you remember your first time? 
Posterized: Emily Blunt are you a fan?

Coming in November:
Jessica Chastain as Miss Sloane, the wonders of Lion and Arrival, Cape Fear's 25th Anniversary, Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, The Honorary Oscars, Disney's Moana and a look back at our favorite film noirs. Any requests? 

NYFF: The Lost City of Z

Here's Jason reporting from NYFF on the Closing Night film from James Gray.

Most of us aren't fortunate enough to have our lives live themselves in a perfect three-act structure. "Here I was born, and there I died," says the ghostly Madelaine in Vertigo, with an entire lifetime intuited by a comma - that's just second-act stuff, after all. Colonel Percival "Percy" Fawcett -- the real-world explorer whose explorations formed the basis first for David Grann's book The Lost City of Z and now the movie from The Immigrant director James Gray -- made three trips into the Amazonian jungle searching for his El Dorado, lending his life-story the perfect apparatus for yarn-spinning. A beginning, a wandering middle, and something approaching an end...

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A Brief Jog Right Past "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk." Get Me Outta Here!

a belated finale NYFF moment with your host, Nathaniel R

Before the world premiere of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk the great director Ang Lee appeared and asked the crowd at the NYFF screening to "keep an open mind." He was speaking about the new technology he used to shoot the 3D movie about a Texas soldier named Billy Lynn (played by talented newcomer Joe Alwyn) on leave from Iraq who is used as a patriotic prop at a football game's halftime show. The movie is shot in 4K (much higher clarity than usual) with a "revolutionary" 140 frames per second as opposed to the standard for decades upon decades now which is 24. As a cinephile without much technical savvy and who doesn't get too caught up in aspect ratios or film stocks or whatnot, I thought "no problem, Ang!"  I always attend movies with eyes wide open and the mind ready to join the party should the movie engage it.

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NYFF: "Things To Come" with Isabelle Huppert

Jason reporting from the NYFF on the new film from director Mia Hansen-Løve, currently scheduled to open in limited release on December 2nd

At about the midpoint of Things to Come Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert) says to a friend that she's "found freedom" but we know better. We've been watching freedom thrust upon her in disorienting spasms, as her husband's left her and her publishing house has tossed her old-fashioned intellectualism aside (one of them hurls out the word "classy" like it's going to burn her hands). And in truth Nathalie doesn't quite know what to make of it, this "found" freedom of hers. "Extraordinary," is what she calls it, and that approaches the thing, but not quite the way she's selling it at that moment...

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