Thom Andersen's 34-minute Get Out of the Car, slated for screenings at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, is the filmmaker's response to his own previous film, Los Angeles Plays Itself, notes Vadim Rizov in the LA Weekly: "The film depicts Los Angeles as wasteland, with lots of decaying or empty billboards, functional murals and ad hoc decorations but no visible human life. On the sound track, neighborhood residents and skeptical passersby question the value or entertainment factor of the emptiness being captured; others angrily lament the destruction of neighborhood landmarks like South Central Farm. Musical snippets — old soul and rock, gospel choirs, norteño — add their own allusions." Vadim surveys the oeuvre, interviews Andersen via email and adds that the new film "comes home to LA" tonight as part of Cinefamily's Evening with Thom Anderson: "Get Out of the Car marks his return to 16 mm film, and it will be shown with Andersen's rarer 1960s shorts of original footage of LA." See, too, Andersen's "Get Out of the Car: A Commentary."
Also in the LA Weekly: Nicolas Rapold on Ken Russell — the occasion is the American Cinematheque's Brave New World: An In-Person Tribute to Ken Russell, running tomorrow through Sunday — and J Hoberman on Michelangelo Antonioni's Le amiche (1955), screening tomorrow and Saturday at LACMA. In the Los Angeles Times, Susan King rounds up more local goings on.
ELSEWHERE
"Noir's notorious elasticity is on full display in Not Necessarily Noir, an extraordinary police lineup of double bills organized by the Roxie's resident noir programmer Elliot Lavine." Matt Sussman in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Following on the heels of Lavine's May series I Still Wake Up Dreaming, which celebrated the down and dirty world of B pictures, the two-week long Not Necessarily Noir, as its title indicates, includes films that scan as noir more in terms of their sensibility than which video store shelf they'd sit on. From Cold War sci-fi (the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers kicks off the series) to more contemporary dramas such as Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992) — and let's not forget the 1983 WTF remake of Breathless starring Richard Gere — Noir plays fast and loose with genre and decade but ensures that at the core of each of its titles gleams a heart of darkness." Tomorrow through September 2.
"Attention film lovers in or around Tacoma, Washington," calls out Jason Guerrasio at the Filmmaker blog. "Beginning this Friday, The Grand Cinema will be presenting projects from this year's '25 New Faces of Independent Film.' Nowhere else in the country will you be able to see the works from this year's 25 New Faces in a concentrated program at the same venue. The six-day event will include 21 films and 12 of the '25' will be making the trip to be in attendance, including New Low's Adam Bowers, Babyland's Marc Fratello and The New Year's Trieste Kelly Dunn." Tomorrow through August 26.
"The Melbourne Underground Film Festival returns to terrorize Australia with a selection of outrageous genre films for its 11th annual edition," writes Mike Everleth, who has the lineup. Tomorrow through August 28.
The Anime Cine Experience happens in New Delhi this weekend and Nitesh Rohit has the lineup, the synopses, the works.
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