Nyff 2013

New York Film Festival 2013
September 27 - October 13, 2013

Filmleaf's NYFF 2013 Festival Coverage reviews thread begins here.

Links to reviews:
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen 2013)
About Time (Richard Curtis 2013)
Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat 2013)
Alan Partridge [Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa] (Declan Lowney 2013)
All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor 2013)
American Promise (Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson 2013)
At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman 2013)
Bastards (Claire Denis 2013)
Blue Is the Warmest Color (La vie d'Adèle; Abdelatif Kéchiche 2013)
Burning Bush (Agnieszka Holland 2013)
Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass 2013)
Child of God (James Franco 2013)
Club Sandwich (Fernando Eimcke 2013)
Gloria (Sebastián Lelioa 2013)
Her (Spike Jonze 2013)
Immigrant, The (James Gray 2013)
Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen 2013)
Invisible Woman, The (Ralph Fiennes 2013)
Jealousy (Philippe Garrel 2013)
Jimmy, Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (Arndau Desplechin 2013)
Last of the Unjust, The (Claude Lanzmann 2013)
Like Father, Like Son (Hirakazu Koreeda 2013)
Missing Picture, The (Rithy Panh 2013)
My Name Is Hmmm... (agnès b. 2013)
Nebraska (Alexander Payne 2013)
Nobody's Daughter (Hong Sang-soo 2013)
North, the End of History (Lav Diaz 2013)
Omar (Hany Abu-Assad 2013)
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch 2013)
Real (Kiyoshi Kurosawa 2013)
Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The (Ben Stiller 2013)
Square, The (Jehane Noujaim 2013)
Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie 2013)
Stray Dogs (Tsiai Ming-liang 2013)
Touch of Sin, A (Jia Zhang-ke 2013)
Week-End, Le (Roger Mitchell 2013)
When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Corneliu Porumboiu 2013)
Wind Rises, The (Hayao Miyazaki 2013)

The main slate has been announced and is here. There are 35 films, the biggest main slate yet. There are usually 25-30. The Main Slate is also listed at the start of the 2013 NYFF Filmleaf Festival Coverage thread.

REMEMBER: This is the thread where individual Filmleaf reviews of the films will be announced with links to the Festival Coverage section, and it's also the place for members to post any comments they wish about the festival, the films, and the reviews.


A quick tour of the Main Slate. *

A lot from Cannes, as usual

"Familiar faces abound in the lineup, which features over 20 filmmakers making a return to NYFF, some of them for the fifth, sixth, even seventh time! Repeat returnees include Catherine Breillat (Abuse of Weakness), the Coen brothers (Inside Llewyn Davis), Claire Denis (Bastards), Arnaud Desplechin (Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Agnieska Holland (Burning Bush), Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive), Alexander Payne (Nebraska), and Jia Zhangke (A Touch of Evil)" -- Filmlinc, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, festival introduction page. All these (except Burning Bush and more come from this spring's Cannes festival, including items that won six of Cannes' big prizes, twelve Cannes films in all. Two other Cannes films included are Jia Zhang-ke's A Touch of Sin and James Gray's The Immigrant (with Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard). Also included from Cannes is Alain Giraudie's controversial (and admired) French film of anonymous gay sex and murder, The Stranger by the Lake; Strand Releasing will bring this out. And less blessed at Cannes but included is NYFF fave Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (ill received and by some, mocked). Last but not least is the top Cannes winner, Abdellatif Kechiche's steamy study of a youthful lesbian affair, Blue is the Warmest Color, with Léa Seydoux. There are some titles from Locarno and Venice too. There are also five English films and eight French ones. Is the fact that there's only one from Latin America due to the absence of Richard Peña? Let's hope not! More likely it's more than anything simply due to what was good and suitable for inclusion in the slate when it was made up this year.

More comedies. . . opening, centerpiece, and closing night films.

This is the first slate supervised by Kent Jones, the new Programming Director and Selection Committee (jury) Chair since Richard Peña retired. Variety suggests that Jones' different taste may be most visible in the greater number of comedies. They start with Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Spike Jonze's Her, the centerpiece and closing night films, respectively; and continue with Around Time (Richard Curtis), Le Week-End (Roger Mitchell), and Alan Partridge (Declan Lowney, with Steve Coogan, an actor who was featured in the NYFF 2005 film by Michael Winterbottom, Tristram Shandy ).

The opening night film is Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, the true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years. (There are plenty of hijackings these days by Somalis, and the Danish film A Hijacking from earlier this year (ND/NF 2013) is a good fictionalized account of one that this will invite comparison with.)

Claire Denis is included, with Basterds. From J.C. Chandor, whose (Margin Call) was a highlight of ND/NF 2011, comes a one-man dialogue-less shipwreck film starring Robert Redvord, All Is Lost. Agnieszka Holland is back with Burning Bush. The Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki is represented with his first film in five years, The Wind Rises, as is NYFF regular Hong Sang-soo with Nobody's Daughter Haewon. Frederick Wiseman is on hand again with At Berkeley. Hirakasu Koreeda is on hand with Like Father, Like Son, another film about kids (like Nodoby Knows and the FCS 2012 I Wish).

There are some films from actors-turned-director: Ben Stiller's Walter Mitty, James Franco's Southern Gothic tale Child of God, and Ralph Fiennes' Dickens biopic, The Invisible Woman. The French clothing designer agnès B. dons the director's mantle with My Name Is Hmmm.

What about heavy stuff?

There may be more lightness, but the traditional NYFF serious, heavy films are not missing. Three or four clearly qualify in this category. One is Rithy Panh's The Missing Picture, about "four years spent under the Khmer Rouge and the destruction of the filmmaker's family and his culture; without a single memento left behind." Panh "creates his'missing images' with narration and painstakingly executed dioramas." Claude Lanzmann's 218 min. The Last of the Unjust rexamines Adolph Eichmann while primarily focusing on Benjamin Memelstein, the last Jewish elder of Theresienstadt. In his 250 min. North, the End of History Filippino director Lav Diaz delivers his version of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Tsai Ming-liang's 138-min. Stray Dogs concerns a homeless family "living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world." Also serious and political are Jehane Noujaim's portrait of events unfolding in Meidan at-Tahrir, the Cairo epicenter of the Egyptian revolution of 25 January 2011, through the Arab Spring and beyond, an updated documentary. Out of the Palestinian Occupied Territories from Hany Abu-Assad, director of Paradise Now (NYFF 2005), comes Omar, "a tense, gripping, ticking clock thriller about betrayal, suspected and real." Unflinching and long is Brewster and Stephenson's 140 min. doc about two black kids who attend Manhattan's prestigious Dalton School, which covers over a decade in a family's life at home and outside.

On the arid, conceptual side from Romanian Corneliu Porumboiu is When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, a "rigorously structured and fascinatingly oblique new film from Corneliu Porumboiu that examines the life of a film director during the moments on a shoot when the camera isn’t rolling."

Other cool stuff?

For fans of independent French cinema and the Garrel family (some detest one or both; I like both) there will be Jealousy, directed by Philippe Garrel and starring his son Louis and Anna Mouglalis.

Sebastián Lelio's Gloria, from Chile, concerns a middleaged woman who finds romance with some comic consequences.

I've already referred to Claire Denis' Bastards twice, but I want to mention it treats a French sex ring scandal as a noir, and is described by Variety as a "hypnotic nocturnal thriller. " This has Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille -- and Lola Créton "wandering the streets naked except for high heels" (Mike D'Anglo at Cannes for AV Club, who gave it a B).

Breillat's Abuse of Weakness, based on her own 2004 stroke and exploitation by the "star swinidler" Christophe Rocancourt, we may note, stars Isabelle Huppert in the main role.

This post has now mentioned just about all the Main Slate selections, but remember you can see detailed listings of them both in the Filmleaf Festival Coverage NYFF 2013 thread, and on the Film Society of Lincoln Center's website page for the festival, where you'll find the Film Society's short blurbs describing, and of course hyping, each film.

I will focus on the Main slate in my coverage and will try to provide a review of all the titles. However bear in mind that besides the Main Slate the NYFF includes other gala and special events, documentary sections, spotlights on emerging filmmakers, and panels that will be announced in subsequent days and weeks as well as NYFF’s Views From the Avant-Garde and Convergence programs. Since the Lincoln Center remodel completed two years ago the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center across the street from the Walter Reade Theater provides two small theaters and three screens, permitting more screenings, along with the main public venue, Alice Tully Hall. Watch the NYFF website for news about these other events.

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ADDITIONAL TITLE.

The FSLC has added another feature film to this year's NYFF Main Slate so now it's 36 instead of 35 (last year it was 28).

REAL (2013) 127m
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Country: Japan
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s first feature since 2008’s Tokyo Sonata, his most romantic movie yet, is an exquisitely crafted sci-fi fable about young love, marriage, and the merging of two psyches in the face of death.

I am happy about this addition but it's looking more and more like the screening schedule will be grueling with so many more movies to watch in the same number of days as before.

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NYFF51 Gala Tributes will celebrate actress Cate Blanchett and actor/director Ralph Fiennes!
Read More

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TELLURIDE, AUG. 29-SEPT. 2, 2013

The 40th Telluride Film Festival has announced its main program, the ‘SHOW,' below. Some of these are NYFF Main Slate items. A notable one excluded from the NYFF is Farhadi's THE PAST, which was much admired at Cannes. LA MAISON DE LA RADIO was delayed from its earlier planned inclusion in this year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center. THE UNKNOWN UNKNON is a one-one-one interview and review of the career around the Iraq war of Donald Rumsfeld, no doubt a kind of sequel to Errol Morris's famous film about Robert S. McNamara, THE FOG OF WAR. Other titles are worth looking into. Fore more details about this year's Telluride, go here. The Telluride Film Festival, in Colorado, just before the NYFF, was co-founded 40 years ago with James Card and Bill Pence by Tom Luddy, who's still at the helm. Each year the fest chooses a cool "Guest Director," and Errol Morris and Alexander Payne are among these, as well as: Laurie Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, John Boorman, J.P. Gorin, Edith Kramer, Peter Sellars, Stephen Sondheim, Bertrand Tavernier and Slavoj Zizek.

Titles I'll be reviewing in the NYFF are highlighted in silver. A Cannes prize-winner I miss from the NYFF list is Farhadi's THE PAST, included at Telluride.

Philippe Garrel's BEFORE THE WINTER CHILL isn't listed elsewhere (the NYFF includes what IMDb lists as his newest film, JEALOUSY). CHILL may be the "untitled 2012 project" Allociné lists for Garrel, a sequel to A BURNING HOT SUMMER/UN ÉTÉ BRÛLANT with Louis Garrel, Monica Belluci, Laura Smet, and Michel Piccoli. It looks like he was working on two movies at once, or in close succession.



· ALL IS LOST (d. J.C. Chandor, U.S., 2013)

· BEFORE THE WINTER CHILL (d. Philippe Claudel, France, 2013)

· BETHLEHEM (d. Yuval Adler, Israel, 2013)

· BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (d. Abdellatif Kechiche, France, 2013)

· BURNING BUSH (d. Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic, 2013)

· DEATH ROW: BLAINE MILAM + ROBERT FRATTA (d. Werner Herzog, U.S., 2013)

· FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS (d. Mitra Farahani, U.S., 2013)

· THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN (d. Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, U.S., 2013)

· GLORIA (d. Sebastián Lelio, Chile, 2013)

· GRAVITY (d. Alfonso Cuarón, U.S./U.K., 2013)

· IDA (d. Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland, 2013)

· INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (d. Joel and Ethan Coen, U.S., 2013)

· THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (d. Ralph Fiennes, U.K., 2013)

· LABOR DAY (d. Jason Reitman, U.S., 2013)

· THE LUNCHBOX (d. Ritesh Batra, India, 2013)

· LA MAISON DE LA RADIO (d. Nicolas Philibert, France, 2013)

· MANUSCRIPTS DON’T BURN (d. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2013)

· THE MISSING PICTURE (d. Rithy Panh, Cambodia/France, 2013)

· NEBRASKA (d. Alexander Payne, U.S., 2013)

· PALO ALTO (d. Gia Coppola, U.S., 2013)

· THE PAST (d. Asghar Farhadi, France/Italy, 2013)

· SLOW FOOD STORY (d. Stefano Sardo, Italy, 2013)

· STARRED UP (d. David Mackenzie, U.K., 2013)

· TIM’S VERMEER (d. Teller, U.S., 2013)

· TRACKS (d. John Curran, Australia, 2013)

· UNDER THE SKIN (d. Jonathan Glazer, U.K., 2013)

· THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (d. Errol Morris, U.S., 2013)

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NYFF Revivals, Documentaries, and Convergence Announced

Film Society of Lincoln Center has revealed the lineup for newly-added sections of the upcoming 51st New York Film Festival that spotlight documentaries and restorations, in addition to the Main Slate's Official Selection and Gala Tributes. Plus: the program for three days of NYFF Convergence 2013 has been announced.

Quote:

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TO LEARN MORE click here.

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(Lots of sidebar pieces on these and other new festival aspects there now.)

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Press screenings schedule announced.

This came with my 2013 NYFF press accreditation today 29 Aug. 2013

View the schedule in the Festival Coverage section HERE.

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Another title added to the NYFF: Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave

For details go here. The film's US premiere, this will be screened as a special Film Comment selecton.

Cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Adepero Oduye, Paul Dano, Brad Pitt and Alfre Woodard. McQueen's third film with Fassbender. Brad Pitt is a producer.

12 Years A Slave is based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who was abducted in Washington, D.C. in 1841 and brought to slave trader James Burch (Paul Giamatti) who sold him to a gentleman farmer named William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch). He was then sold to a mentally unbalanced cotton grower, named Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender), whose cruelty embodies the evils of slavery.--FSLC.

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click on the logo for the festival website.

The Venice Film Festival runs 28th August to 7th September 2013. It contains many titles not in the NYFF and you'll find coverage of it on Flickfeast, UK by Kezia Tooby.

Here's the main lineup, followed by the often more interesting "Orizzonti" (Horizons) series

M A I N .... L I N E U P

MERZAK ALLOUACHE - ES-STOUH Algeria, France, 94'
Adila Bendimerad, Nassima Belmihoub, Ahcene Benzerari, Aïssa Chouat, Mourad Khen, Myriam Ait El Hadj
GIANNI AMELIO - L'INTREPIDO Italy, 104'
Antonio Albanese, Livia Rossi, Gabriele Rendina, Alfonso Santagata, Sandra Ceccarelli
ALEXANDROS AVRANAS - MISS VIOLENCE Greece, 99'
Themis Panou, Eleni Roussinou
JOHN CURRAN - TRACKS Australia, 110'
Mia Wasikowska, Adam Driver
EMMA DANTE - VIA CASTELLANA BANDIERA Italy, Switzerland, France, 90'
Elena Cotta, Emma Dante, Alba Rohrwacher, Renato Malfatti, Dario Casarolo, Carmine Maringola
XAVIER DOLAN - TOM À LA FERME Canada, France, 95'
Xavier Dolan, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Lise Roy, Evelyne Brochu
JAMES FRANCO - CHILD OF GOD USA, 104'
Scott Haze, Tim Blake, Nelson Jim Parrack
STEPHEN FREARS - PHILOMENA UK, 94'
Judi Dench, Steve Coogan
PHILIPPE GARREL - LA JALOUSIE France, 77'
Louis Garrel, Anna Mouglalis
TERRY GILLIAM - THE ZERO THEOREM UK, USA, 107'
Christoph Waltz, Matt Damon, Mélanie Thierry, David Thewlis, Lucas Hedges, Ben Whishaw, Tilda Swinton
AMOS GITAI - ANA ARABIA Israel, France, 84'
Yuval Scharf, Sarah Adler, Uri Gavriel, Norman Issa, Yussuf Abuwarda, Shady Srur, Assi Levy
JONATHAN GLAZER - UNDER THE SKIN UK, 107'
Scarlett Johansson
DAVID GORDON GREEN - JOE USA, 117'
Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Ronie Gene Blevins
PHILIP GRÖNING - DIE FRAU DES POLIZISTEN Germany, 175'
Alexandra Finder, David Zimmerschied, Pia Kleemann, Chiara Kleemann, Horst Rehberg, Katharina Susewind, Lars Rudolph
PETER LANDESMAN - PARKLAND USA, 92'
James Badge Dale, Zac Efron, Jackie Earle Haley, Colin Hanks, David Harbour, Marcia Gay Harden, Ron Livingston, Jeremy Strong, Billy Bob Thornton, Jackie Weaver, Tom Welling, Paul Giamatti
HAYAO MIYAZAKI - KAZE TACHINU Japan, 126'
(Animation)
ERROL MORRIS - THE UNKNOWN KNOWN USA, 105'
Donald Rumsfeld, Errol Morris (documentary)
KELLY REICHARDT - NIGHT MOVES USA, 112'
Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard, James Le Gros
GIANFRANCO ROSI - SACRO GRA Italy, 93'
(documentary)
MING-LIANG TSAI - JIAOYOU (STRAY DOGS) Chinese Taipei, France, 138'
Lee Kang-sheng, Lu Yi-ching, Lee Yi-cheng, Lee Yi-chieh, Chen Shiang-chyi

O R I Z Z O N T I

VALERIA ALLIEVI - QUELLO CHE RESTA Italy, 20'
(documentary)
SERIK APRYMOV - BAUYR (LITTLE BROTHER) Kazakhstan, 95'
Almat Galym, Alisher Aprymov
ENRICO MARIA ARTALE - IL TERZO TEMPO Italy, 96'
Stefania Rocca, Stefano Cassetti, Lorenzo Richelmy, Edoardo Pesce, Margherita Laterza
AGNÈS B. - JE M'APPELLE HMMM... France, 120'
Douglas Gordon, Lou-Léila Demerliac, Sylvie Testud, Jacques Bonnaffé, Marie-Christine Barrault, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Jean-François Garreau
RICCARDO BERNASCONI, FRANCESCA REVERDITO - DEATH FOR A UNICORN Switzerland, 15'
Tilda Swinton, Luis Molteni, Lorenzoluca Gronchi, Emma Fossani, Elowen McClaud
SHUBHASHISH BHUTIANI - KUSH India, 20'
Sonika Chopra, Shayaan Sameer, Anil Sharma
CÉCILE BICLER - TOUTES LES BELLES CHOSES France, 17'
Laure Calamy, Marie-Bénedicte Cazeneuve
GIORGIO BOSISIO - UN PENSIERO KALAŠNIKOV Italy, UK, 21'
Paolo Roberto Di Seglio, Lorenza Pisano, Anna Sala
ROBIN CAMPILLO - EASTERN BOYS France, 128'
Olivier Rabourdin, Kirill Emelyanov, Danil Vorobyev, Edea Darcque, Beka Markozashvili
GIA COPPOLA - PALO ALTO USA, 98'
Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer, James Franco, Val Kilmer, Keegan Allen, Nat Wolff, Colleen Camp

The 2013 Telluride Film Festival winds up

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The Telluride Festival has ended (2 Sept. 2013), their 40th, producer, curator, and all-knowing film scholar Tom Luddy still at the helm. I first saw him as head of the "FW Murnau Film Society" while a student at Berkeley (as was he), when his film history expertise was impressive. From 1975-1980 Luddy was director of the then-young Pacific Film Society (a part of the Berkeley Art Museum).

Telluride has guest directors each year, announced as a surprise when the fest begins. The six guest directors this year were: Don Delillo, Buck Henry, Phillip Lopate, Michael Ondaatje, film scholar B. Ruby Rich and Salman Rushdie. Don't ask me why, but any event that has Rushdie on hand is guaranteed an increased hipness factor. The fest's coolness was therefore further assured by luring him.

There were some "sneak previews" at Telluride not originally announced in their list including Steve McQueen's 12 YEARS A SLAVE (U.S., 2013)--just added to the NYFF Main Slate, and he was there with Brad Pitt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o; Denis Villeneuve’s PRISONERS (U.S., 2013) and Villeneuve was on hand; Shane Salerno’s SALINGER with Salerno and AE Hotchner via Skype and panelists David Shields, Buddy Squires, Jean Miller and Dylan Sellers in person. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall presented Hayao Miyazaki’s THE WIND RISES (Japan, 2013), and announced that it will be Miyazaki’s last film; he is retiring. The Miyazaki title will also be part of the NYFF Main Slate.

Special recognition awards went to Robert Redford; T Bone Burnett and the Coen Brothers; and Mohammad Rasoulof.

A list of other notables present follows. I have highlighted some names to show why this is the hippest and most exclusive of US fests, in a way, and also includes cool people who don't come solely from the film industry (though most do): Yuval Adler, The Alloy Orchestra, the Americans, Michael Barker, Ritesh Batra, Sarah-Violet Bliss, Frances Bodomo, David Cairns, Patrick Cazals, J.C. Chandor, Ethan Clarke, Philippe Claudel, Linda Jones Clough, Francis For Coppola, Gia Coppola, Mark Cousins, Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón, John Curran, Mark Danner, Robyn Davidson, Don DeLillo, Bruce Dern, Tony Donoghue, Paul Duane, Geoff Dyer, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Mitra Farahani, Asghar Farhadi, Battiste Fenwick, Ralph Fiennes, Joey Figueroa, Michael Fitzgerald, Scott Foundas, Robin Frohardt, Alberto Fuguet, Paulina García, Dan Geller, Jonathan Glazer, Dayna Goldfine, Emily Harrold, Buck Henry, Werner Herzog, Agnieszka Holland, John Horn, Bob Hurwitz, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Annette Insdorf, Oscar Isaac, Tim Jenison, Barry Jenkins, Tamara Jenkins, Penn Jillette, Esther Julie-Anne, Abdellatif Kechiche, Dieter Kosslick, Zak Knutson, Andrej Landin, Sebastián Lelio, Mark Levinson, Phillip Lopate, Colin MacCabe, David Mackenzie, Lauren MacMullan, Emilio Maille, Leonard Maltin, Joshua Marston, Joyce Maynard, Todd McCarthy, Jean Miller, Monique Montgomery, Errol Morris, Dario Nardi, Gregory Nava, Michael Ondaatje, Rithy Panh, Tatiana Pauhofová, Pawel Pawlikowski, Alexander Payne, Nicolas Philibert, Bill Plympton, Michael Pollan, Punch Brothers, Josh Radnor, Tahar Rahim, Alejandro Ramirez, Kirill Razlogov, Godfrey Reggio, Jason Reitman, B. Ruby Rich, Rob Richert, Pierre Rissient, A.V. Rockwell, Bobby Roth, Salman Rushdie, Lisanne Sartor, Dylan Sellers, Léa Seydoux, David Shields, Buddy Squires, Barry Sonnenfeld, Jordana Spiro, Milos Stehlik, Matt Steinauer, Dean Tavoularis, Teller, Gabriel Thibaudeau, David Thomson, Agata Trzebuchowska, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Mia Wasikowska, Alice Waters, Todd Wiseman, Joey Xanders, Sara Zandieh and Farley Ziegler.

But lest I'm misunderstood, let me add that Telluride is considered a particularly friendly and democratic festival. In the Variety Guide to Film Festivals Todd McCarthy wrote, "The Telluride Film Festival represents the rarest jewel in the crown of the festival-going experience. It is the most open, democratic and collegial of festivals, in addition to being one of the best programmed and run." So there!

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Well, I"m in New York now (9/14) and the Press & Industry screenings of the New York Film Festival begin on Monday, 9/16. See the Festival Coverage Section for the schedule. First day: Frederick Wiseman's 4-hour AT BERKELEY and Koreeda's 127-min. LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

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Frederick Wiseman: At Berkeley (2013)

Veteran indie documentarian Wiseman, now 83, provides a generally positive take on the jewel in the crown of the University of California's bevy of campuses as it is today. Four hours.

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Hirakazu Koreeda: Like Father, Like Son (2013)

Koreeda's third film about children separated from their parents this time takes the form of the old babies-switched-at-birth story. It succeeds inso far as it refrains from any easy or definite resolution, though it does not altogether avoid cliché.

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James Franco: Child of God (2013)

Franco has produced a well-made adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novel with a dedicated central performance by Scott Haze. But is this novel adaptable?

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Jia Zhang-ke: A Touch of Sin (2013)

Jia, China's most significant independent Sixth Generation filmmaker, has taken a new turn to violence, focused partly on the horrors of the new China and what they lead to. Four episodes. This won the screenwirting award at Cannes, where like CHILD OF GOD it debuted. But the episodes aren't very well balanced, even though they all have some remarkable moments, and wonderful images.

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Hong Sang-soo: Nobody's Daughter Haewon (2013)

You might say Hong, who reiterates the same themes endlessly anyway, is running on empty here. Others just discovering him, or having forgotten the many others, seen at previous NYFFs or elsewhere, may be delighted. But what is clearly new is that a young woman is at the center of the story, and the boy students, profs, or director/profs are on the periphery. Cameo by Jane Birkin, who comments that the actress at the center who plays Haewon (Jeong Eun-chae) resembles her daughter, Charlotte Gaonsbourg (and she does, and is meant to).

I've been meaning to ask you if you saw "Strangers by the lake" and wondered what you thought of it for two reasons: one, you're a brilliant film critic whom I admire very much and you are an openly gay man who keenly observes gay portrayals in cinema.

I understand the film is an homage to "Strangers on a train," by Alfred Hitchcock and that the gay scenes were meant to unsettle audiences as much as the blatant violence. Can't wait to read what you thought as I am an ardent studier/fan of Hitch and wonder what you thought about the parallels and comparisons.

Be patient, that's coming. I don't know about a connection with STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, though. Who said that?

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Roger Mitchell: Le Week-End (2013)

An English couple celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary with a dangerously extravagant return to the site of their honeymoon, Paris. Hanif Kureishi's screenplay provides some bitter, thorny comedy and Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, and Jeff Goldblum, with help from Olly Alexander, provide some suave acting. A pleasing, slightly edgy art house entertainment for the older audience with more class than Mitchell's last-year NYFF comedy, HYDE PARK ON HUDSON.

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Claude Lanzmann: The Last of the Unjust (2013)

A magisterial reediting, in the solemn, epic Lanzmann style, of a Seventies interview in Rome with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish elder of Theresienstadt, the "model ghetto" in Poland that was a cover or facade for the Nazi death camps. Nearly four hours, necessary for Lanzmann's complex portrait of moral ambiguity. Also first hand information from Murmelstein that undercuts Hannah Arendt's "banality" approach to Adolf Eichman, whom Murmelstein knew and dealt with personally and can impllicate in Kristalnacht and describe as a "devil" throughout the Nazi years.

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Hayao Miyazaki: The Wind Rises (2013)

And speaking of World War II, here's a romanticized animated biopic about Jiro Hirokoshi, the inventor of a Japanese warplane used to bomb Pearl Harbor and in kamikaze operations. The second half slows down for a romantic "Magic Mountain" love story between the engineer and his girlfriend who has TB. It's the famous animator Miyazaki's final film: he's retiring (at 72).

I wouldn't care if Miyazaki made a movie of his dog relieving himself, I would rush out to buy it. When he announced his retirement the other day, I joined about a billion people who wept. I own all of his films and watched them frequently. I can hardly wait for the theatrical release and then the DVD. Thanks for the review (I haven't even read it yet!), Chris. I'm a huge follower of animation and have admired those artists all during my life.

Read it. Intrigued. thanks

This will be your pissing dog then.

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Lav Diaz: North, the End of History (2013)

Some say this is a masterpice of "slow cinema." I'd say it's a very so-so 90-minute Filippino film based loosely on Dostoyevsky in an unfortunate uncut four-hour-plus form, and to be avoided.

Like you cinemabon, I am a huge fan of Miyazaki and have never been disappointed by any of his films although I do have my favorites (of course). Apparently the Nov. release CK announced in his review is only for the purpose of qualifying for Oscars as a 2013 release. It will probably be a week's run in L.A. or NYC. Most of the USA will get it the last Friday in February.

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Alain Guiraudie: Stranger by the Lake (2013)

From Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2013, summer French release got rave reviews. Murder at a gay cruising area in the south of France. Explicit sex boldly used to establish the dominant reality of the place, may shock the squeamish too much, or be too gay for the straight. Obviously I ddn't have that problem. Tight, formal, repetitive construction, economy, suspense. Amoral love affair. A touch of comedy. The best movie-movie so far in the screenings.

Oh, Chris - you've such a way with words; which way I've no idea. Is pissing dog anything like Peking Duck?

It's Miyazaki, so it's more like sushi, maybe.

My review of STRANGER BY THE LAKE that you wanted is up now.

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Rithy Panh: The Missing Picture (2013)

Longtime French resident Panh, whose filmmaking career has mostly focused on the Khmer Rouge/Pol Pot genocidal regime and its aftermath, this time uses clay figurines in dioramas and archival footage to recount his own personal story age 11-15 when he lost a large part of his family but survived 1975-79 in the slave labor "reeducation" camps. A partly poetic and impressionistic account, both specific and vague, results.

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Richard Curtis: About Time (2013)

A rom-com by the writer-director of NOTTING HILL and LOVE, ACTUALLY, only this time instead of Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts we get comer Domhnall Gleeson, who's Irish but does English, and Rachel McAdams, and the action is livened up by the male lead's being able to use time travel to go back and tweak his interactions with the female sex. But wouldn't this be more useful for a teenager than a twenty-something -- and isn't this trick a way to goose a story that's a tad blah? This is where I ask how come this was deemed worthy to be included in the NYFF's Main Slate.

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Fernando Eimbcke: Club Sandwich (20130

Another little gem from this youngish (43-year-old) Mexican director. This one depicts a 15-year-old son with his single 35-year-old mom at a resort off-season when she must come to terms with his not being mamma's boy anymore after a sexy 16-year-old girl turns out also to be staying there.

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Arnaud Desplechin: Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (2013)

An adaptation of a well-known work from 1951 by Georges Devereux, about the Jewish-Hungarian adopted French anthropologist and psychiatrist's treatment of a war-damaged Native American (he'd had a cranial injury in Europe) sent to Karl Menninger's Topeka Winter Hospital. Starring Matthieu Amalric and Benicio Del Toro as the doctor and patient, respectively. Desplechin's first film in English. Debuted at Cannes.

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Corneliu Corumboiu: When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

Romanian blunt realism is dropped in favor of dry conceptualism. References to chopsticks and Antonioni abound. A director's off hours dealt with ironically and formally in eight eleven-minute reels, because the director (for this is a self-referential piece) must work within the traditional temporal confines of film where alone he feels at home.

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Tsai Ming-liang: Stray Dogs (2013)

A non-narrative study, much involved with wandering, standing, staring, sleeping, eating, and relieving oneself (but that makes it sound too exciting!), of a family of marginal people living on the edges of Taipei. Admirers of Tsai see this, perhaps his most austere film yet, as a wonder of formal perfection. Alas, for me it seemed like nothing but slow torture designed to put one off film-watching and festivals.

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Jehane Noujaim: The Square (2013)

Noujaim (THE CONTROL ROOM) has made a thrilling and moving account of the main events of the Egyptian revolution of January 2011 and its aftermath from the point of view of half a dozen ordinary, yet qutie extraordinary, people who participated and were in Midan Tahrir during the events and whose lives have been changed forever by them. Larger political complexities and some of the historical details are missing at some points, but this remains a remarkable document and political filmmaking such as one rarely gets a chance to witness. Surely Noujaim's most accomplished work yet, perhaps ever.

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Agnieszka Holland: Burning Bush (2013)

Agnieszka Holland's superb three-part HBO Europe miniseries, this year's Czech Best Foreign Oscar entry, is a picture of events in Czechoslovakia following a dramatic act of protest in 1969.

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Catherine Breillat: Abuse of Weakness (2013)

She was herself yet not herself, says the conned artist in Breillat's neat, elegant memoir in which Isabelle Huppert brilliantly plays the filmmaker, who really had this experience. After a serious stroke, semi-disabled, she discovered a jailbird and con man on late night TV who would be perfect to play that kind of character in her next film. She contacts him, and he begins to be indispensable, and eventually cons her out of nearly €1 million.

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Joel, Ethan Coen: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A musical film follows the winter Odyssey of a young folksinger in 1961 New York, said to be based on Dave von Ronk, broke, out of luck, with a trip to Chicago, couch surfing, and dead ends in his recording career.

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Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson: American Promise (2013)

Following the Michael Apted "Up" principle but focusing on their own son and one other boy, African-American filmmakers provide a rich chronicle of Idris Brewster and Seun Sommers over a 12-year period, from age 5 to age 18, from kindergarten at the prestigious Manhattan Dalton School till they go their separate ways in high school and both are admitted as college freshmen. Issues of race, opportunity, competition and dozens of moments from the lives make this a rich human document. A PBS POV film coming in Feb. 2014.

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Paul Greengrass: Captain Phillips (2013)

Docudrama ace Greengrass films this feature of the first hijacking of a US ship in around 200 years, by Somalis, and Tom Hanks stars. The film excels as usual for the director in its violent action and vérité effects, but falters in its second half and is outshone by the Danish film A HIJACKING, about a similar incident, also involving Somali pirates, but featuring tense negotiations. The Americans just sent in the Navy. The gala opening night film of the NYFF, this was also the film's world premiere. Hanks does provide a memorably emotional finale.

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Declan Lowney: Alan Partridge (2013)

Steve Coogan stars in a broad English comedy expanding his egocentric comic character, a Norwich radio emcee, who gets to grandstand by playing negotiator/mediator when a rival, downsized at his suggestion, stages a siege. Armando Ianucci of THE THICK OF IT and IN THE LOOP is among the writers who contribute to the high-speed dialogue. The full original title of the film which opened in the UK this summer is ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA.