'Carlos' director Olivier Assayas poses with Sam Juliano after Sunday afternoon screening of 330 minute screening of "roadshow edition" of film at IFC Film Center (photo by Lucille Juliano)
by Sam Juliano
Big Apple sports fans are sitting pretty this week with impressive wins registered by both the Giants and Jets, and a 1-1 showing for the Yankees in Texas, with a three-game return to the Bronx this week for games 3, 4 and 5. Meanwhile, up in Beantown, the Patriots have been playing championship-caliber football, and down in the City of Brotherly Love, the Phillies are hoping to even their series with the Giants. As of this writing they are ahead in the game.
Over in the Windy City, resilient Marilyn Ferdinand continues her incomparable coverage of the the Chicago International Film Festival, which probably has yieled more great films this year than ever before. The latest films by some of the world’s greatest filmmakers have been showcased at the annual film fest. At Movies Over Matter Jason Marshall has resumed his fabulous annual countdown of cinema history, completing ‘1936’ this week. At Wonders in the Dark, Joel Bocko has penned a terrific review of Marco Bellochio’s Fists in the Pocket and has posted a breathtaking visual summation of For All Mankind. Jim Clark’s exceptional treatment of Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s celebrated novel attracted a load of inspired comments, and Allan Fish has really gone into high gear with his authoritative work on Japanese cinema. Above all however is the amazing ‘horror’ film countdown, which has reached #15 as of this writing (The Shining) and has sustained the superlative work of Jamie Uhler, Troy and Kevin Olson and Robert Taylor. The final stretch, which concludes on Halloween Day has many gleefully addicted.
This week has been a memorable one on the cultural scene, as a reasonably solid off-Broadway stage play, another delightful Ozu screening, and two of the year’s very best films in the 330 minute roadshow edition of Olivier Assayas’s Carlos and an intoxicating award-winning Australian film titled Samson and Delilah.
William Hoffman’s AS IS is an off-Broadway revival of a Tony Award-nominated play from 1985, at a time when AIDS was seen as a death sentence. It’s the story of an AIDS patient and his relationships, and the progression of his disease even in the played out interactions with medical personel. The spare and creative staging is imaginative, and for the most part the play builds some valid emotion by putting the leads under a magnifying glass. The performances are respectable, but are probably not on the same level as the original staging from decades ago (understandably). The only thing I could speak down are the hard wooden chairs we had to endure at the tiny Studio Theatre on Theatre Row.
Carlos ***** (Sunday) IFC Film Center; Q & A with director
Samson and Delilah **** 1/2 (Friday night) Village East Cinemas
Good Morning *** 1/2 (Sunday morning) IFC Film Center (more…)
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