Minnelli, Clements, Tynan

"Vincente Minnelli disowned his last movie, A Matter of Time (1976), when it was taken away from him by its producers, American International Pictures, and after its initial release it pretty much disappeared from view," writes Dan Callahan. It was supposed to screen in New York this evening as part of the BAMcinématek series Vincente Minnelli Favorites; whether or not that pans out, do read Dan's piece on this oddity featuring Liza Minnelli, Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. "Big bursts of primary colors periodically slash the film's pale, golden images, and in the best sequences there's a rich, sophisticated air of fantasy being pursued and then captured, like a fluttering yellow and brown butterfly restrained by a pin. It's a very flawed movie, mainly due to producer interference, but it cries out for restoration of some kind, if only so that we can see Minnelli's last dreams more clearly."

Also in the L Magazine, Miriam Bale has a good long talk with Whitney Biennial artist Dawn Clements, who "draws interior spaces, often from movies, and most often from melodramas." And David Phelps revisits John Sturges's Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), playing for just two more nights at Film Forum.

The New York Documentary Festival: Festival dei Popoli runs today through Sunday at Anthology Film Archives. For overviews, see Nicolas Rapold in the Voice and James van Maanen.

"Kenneth Tynan's fame rests on his drama criticism, but he was as much devoted to film as to theatre," writes Michael Billington in the Guardian. "He wrote movie criticism for the Observer and star profiles for the New Yorker, and was also, at various times, a script adviser and screenwriter. In fact, it was while working in the former capacity for Michael Balcon at Ealing Studios in 1958 that Tynan co-scripted Nowhere to Go with the movie's director, Seth Holt. Holt, who had worked for the patriarchal Balcon since 1953, once described Nowhere to Go as 'the least Ealing film ever made.' And what he and Tynan concocted was a movie that ran totally counter to the studio's preoccupation with harmless eccentrics and benevolent communities. It is, in fact, a crime story about an ex-con who robs an old lady of her coin collection and was, in the words of Charles Barr, exceptional for the time in that it was 'neither police-centred or moralistic.'"

Screens this evening at BFI Southbank in London.

"TIFF Cinematheque — formerly Cinematheque Ontario — is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, and has announced an impressively bursting summer schedule." Criterion congratulates.

For artnet Magazine, David D'Arcy looks back on the highlights of this year's International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal, "an event that is better described as one of the best film festivals for films that you’re unlikely to hear about, much less see."

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