"When Yen Tan was growing up in the 80s, he didn't dream of making movie posters; he dreamed of making movies like the big American blockbusters that flooded the movie theatres of his native Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia." But, as Josh Rosenblatt tells the story in the Austin Chronicle, Tan would instead become an independent filmmaker, designing his own artwork for his low-budget projects. Eventually, other indie filmmakers came calling, and now Tan is a full-time graphic designer with his own company, Otto is the One. A gallery.
Los Angeles. Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov, which ran at MoMA in April 2011, opens tomorrow at the Billy Wilder Theater and runs through March 31. One hopes (but doubts) that J Hoberman will see a second pay check for his overview of the retrospective for the Voice now that the LA Weekly's repurposed it. At any rate, the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan marvels at the sights of "Lenin recovering from an assassination attempt, Trotsky visiting the front, a furious crowd in Minsk denouncing the murder of Rosa Luxemburg. Amazing."
Back in the LA Weekly, Ernest Hardy previews this year's Pan African Film Festival, running through February 20, and Genevieve Yue recommends Lee Anne Schmitt's documentary, The Last Buffalo Hunt, which "parses the remains of Western conquest, the boom of expansion contracted into a desiccated, ghostly history." At REDCAT on Monday.
UCLA presents an evening with Douglas Trumbull, who'll be receiving a special Oscar on Saturday, the Gordon E Sawyer Award for filmmakers "whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry." Admission is free, but the RSVP list is full. Anyone shut out can turn to John Anderson's recent profile for the New York Times.
Antwerp. Chantal Akerman: Too Far, Too Close opens today at the Museum for Contemporary Art and will be on view through June 10.
Vienna. Two series open at the Austrian Film Museum today, Preston Sturges: Seven Films. 1940-44 and Robert Altman: Sixteen Films. 1970-2006, both through March 7.
Boston. The 37th Boston Science Fiction Film Festival opens today and runs through February 20.
In the works. In Hong Sang-soo's In Another Country, "there are three women named Anne who each consecutively visit a seaside town," reports Jean Noh. "They each stay at the same small hotel by the shore and venture onto the beach where each of the Annes meet a group of the same people including a certain lifeguard who restlessly wanders up and down the beach. [Isabelle] Huppert plays all three of these different Annes and aside from her, the rest of the cast is all Korean, although the film was mostly shot in the English language."
Also in Screen, Andreas Wiseman reports that Liz Garbus's Marilyn Monroe documentary Fragments will feature a slew of stars reading various roles, such as F Murray Abraham as her psychiatrist, Paul Giamatti as George Cukor and so on. Also lined up: Uma Thurman, Viola Davis, Lindsay Lohan, Ellen Burstyn and Evan Rachel Wood.
Christophe Gans will direct Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux in a new Beauty and the Beast, reports the Playlist's Kevin Jagernauth.
Robert Redford will be the sole cast member of JC Chandor's All Is Lost, "the story of an old man struggling to survive in open sea," reports Anna Robinson at the Alt Film Guide, where Zac Gille has news on Oliver Hirschbiegel's Caught in Flight, in which Naomi Watts will play Princess Diana, and Andre Soares reports that screenwriter Steven Knight (Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things) will be rebooting Rebecca (as opposed to remaking Hitchcock's original) by going back to Daphne Du Maurier's novel.
Viewing (2'59"). Jean Dujardin auditions for the role of every villain Hollywood might come up with over the next two or three years.
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