"Who shot Andy Warhol?" asks Pop!, a self-described "happening whodunit musical" at the Yale Repertory Theatre through December 19. Well, we know very well who, and actually, a more pertinent question might be, What don't we know by now about Andy Warhol? As Celia McGee's notes in her New York Times piece on Pop!, we won't likely tire of asking that one anytime soon: "This month he made news when his silk-screen painting 200 One Dollar Bills went for $43.7 million at auction. There are new museum and gallery shows in both London and New York; a new Bond No. 9 perfume named after him; a new book, Pop: The Genius of Andy Warhol; a new swimwear collection with his flower prints from his friend Diane von Furstenberg; and a new forgery case, involving his Brillo boxes. His face stares out from this month's ARTnews magazine with the headline 'Warhol Inc.' in hot pink."
But as Manohla Dargis reminds us, there's vital body of work too many of us know too little about: "Around 1970, two years after Valerie Solanas nearly shot Warhol to death, he withdrew his 1960s films from circulation, contributing to his marginalization in cinema history. In the years since Warhol's death in 1987, these films have begun to resurface, allowing new generations of filmgoers to experience and claim them for their historical moment." She previews several titles that'll be screening in the series Beyond the Absurd: Ronald Tavel & Andy Warhol, beginning at Anthology Film Archives in New York on December 10 (slide show), while also filling in a bit of background on Tavel: "the words he wrote for Warhol films - hilarious, abrupt, lewd, illogical, artlessly artful words - contributed to a sense of unease that even now makes the films seem radical, even a bit dangerous."
Also at Anthology - today, all day - is a program of early Chaplin shorts. For a thorough preview, see Paul Brunick at the BOMBLog: "To watch his career evolve from the anarchic slapstick of Laffing Gas to the tonally sophisticated comic-pathos of The Idle Class is to witness nothing less than the birth of a star, one that will shine for ages to come."
The Golden Horse Awards were presented last night in Taipei and Nathaniel R has a fantastic roundup of news, pix and videos. Best Picture: No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti, "which, if we ever see it in the States, might be called I Can't Live Without You or Not Without You. That's Taiwan's submission for this year's Foreign Language Film Oscar race. The film is from actor/director Leon Dai and it's about a poor man who loses his daughter once the government learns of their illegal living conditions." Dai also won Best Director, "presented by four previous winners: Ang Lee, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Johnny To and Stanley Kwan. Imagine receiving your prize from that illustrious quartet."
Irene Young has more at the Alternative Film Guide.
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