Great Britain
COLOR ME KUBRICK
2005, Brian Cook, Great Britain, 86 min.
With John Malkovich, Jim Davidson, Richard E. Grant, Peter Bowles
“A sly, enormously entertaining romp.”--Lisa Nesselson, Variety
“A joy for Kubrick fans.”--Phillip Piggott, cinemattraction.com
Subtitled “A True. . .ish Story,” this bizarre comic footnote to film history is based on the exploits of Alan Conway, a gay British con man who profitably impersonated Stanley Kubrick in the 1990s, despite having little knowledge of the reclusive director’s life or films. Director Brian Cook and screenwriter Anthony Frewin were longtime associates of Kubrick (Cook as assistant director, Frewin as research assistant), and they fill the film with clever visual and musical references to the master’s oeuvre, plus amusing cameos by Ken Russell and Honor Blackman. With wobbly American accent and outrageous wardrobe, Malkovich has a field day as the flamboyant Conway; Mark Adnum of spiked called it “one of the great homo performances.” In English. Preview courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. 35mm. (MR)
Sunday, March 4, 3:00 pm
Thursday, March 8, 8:15 pm
GLASTONBURY
2006, Julien Temple, Britain, 138 min.
Pop-savvy filmmaker Temple (THE FILTH AND THE FURY, ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS) took five years to shape thousands of hours of footage into an exhilarating portrait of the world’s longest-running rock festival. The result is neither a conventional concert film nor a tidy chronological history but an immersion, simulating the three-day filth-and-fury experience of the festival in dazzlingly-edited patterns that evoke not only the 35-year history of the event but also its place in a larger history of British muddling-through, medieval fairs, and Arthurian legend. It’s as much about the ambience as the acts, the latter including standout gigs by Nick Cave, Morrissey, Björk, Joe Strummer, Ray Davies, and a climactic one-two wallop of Pulp and David Bowie. In English. Preview courtesy of THINKFilm. 35mm. (MR)
Saturday, March 3, 7:30 pm
THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA
2006, Sophie Fiennes, Britain, 150 min.
With Slavoj Zizek
“The fastest-moving, most shamelessly enjoyable film I’ve seen at Toronto so far this year.”--Jim Emerson, Jim Emerson’s Scanners : Blog
“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art,” declares celebrated structuralist Slavoj Zizek, and he proceeds to illustrate the medium’s power to create desire via sometimes outrageous, often brilliant insights on 43 films, ranging from DUCK SOUP to THE MATRIX, with special emphasis on Hitchcock, Lynch, and Tarkovsky. This is no stodgy talking-head lecture; director Sophie Fiennes brings Zizek’s ideas to life through fluid editing and cheeky use of settings that place the flamboyant philosopher in the scenes he discusses: descending into the PSYCHO cellar, sitting on the CONVERSATION toilet, hiding in the BLUE VELVET closet, and many more. In English. DigiBeta video courtesy of Lone Star Productions. (MR)
Saturday, March 17, 7:30 pm
Wednesday, March 21, 6:30 pm
RED ROAD
2006, Andrea Arnold, Britain, 113 min.
With Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, Nathalie Press
“It’s dynamite, the kind of sexy, paranoid, creepily atmospheric picture that invades all your senses at once.”--Andrew O’Hehir, salon.com
One of the must buzzed-about films on the festival circuit has been this debut feature by Andrea Arnold, whose short film WASP won an Oscar in 2005. Her ultra-edgy, erotically explicit thriller centers on a youngish widow (Dickie) who oversees a bank of surveillance monitors in a seedy Glasgow neighborhood. One day she spots Clyde (Curran), an evil blast from her past. When she starts stalking, then flirting with him, it seems like a case of the fly walking straight into the spider’s parlor. . . In English. Preview courtesy of Tartan Films USA. 35mm. (MR)
Friday, March 9, 6:00 pm
Saturday, March 10, 8:00 pm
UNREQUITED LOVE: ON STALKING AND BEING STALKED
2006, Chris Petit, Britain, 77 min.
With Rebecca Marshall, Gregory Dart, Vibeche Standal
“Best of all [the films at the Rotterdam Film Festival], London cine-essayist and psychogeographer Chris Petit’s UNREQUITED LOVE is a Chris Marker-like meditation on the metaphysics of stalking.”--Dennis Lim, Village Voice
British indie pioneer Petit (RADIO ON) calls stalking “one of the great subjects of the late twentieth century.” Loosely based on Gregory Dart’s autobiographical book, this coolly disquieting anti-thriller tracks the “viral emotion” through a LA RONDE-like narrative in which a harassed woman (Marshall) flees to London where she begins stalking an author (Dart) who himself becomes obsessed with a woman (Standal) in Leipzig. . . Petit builds a dense matrix of associations and allusions--drawing provocative links between terrorists and stalkers (“fundamentalists of love”), channeling Jean Rhys and Patricia Highsmith, and following the characters through locations haunted by the ghosts of films past such as BLOWUP, PEEPING TOM, and TORN CURTAIN. UNREQUITED LOVE is available on DVD through Illuminations Television (www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk). In English. DigiBeta video. (MR)