Monday, October 14, 2019
NOBEL PRIZES 2019
NOBEL PRIZES 2019
Abiy Ahmed Ali
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his important work to promote reconciliation, solidarity and social justice. The prize is also meant to recognize all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions.
PHYSICS
James Peebles
Michel Mayor & Didier Queloz
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos, with one half to James Peebles for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology and the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
William G. Kaelin Jr & Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe & Gregg L. Semenza
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2019 was awarded jointly to William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.
CHEMISTRY
John B. Goodenough & M. Stanley Whittingham & Akira Yoshino
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 was awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham, and Akira Yoshino for the development of the lithium-ion battery. This lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery is now used in everything from mobile phones to laptops and electric vehicles. It can also store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power, making possible a fossil fuel-free society.
ECONOMICS
Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo & Michael Kremer
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2019 was awarded jointly to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.
LITERATURE
Peter Handke (2019)
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019 was awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.
Olga Tokarczuk (2018 - This award was delayed from last year)
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 was awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.
Nobel Prize® is the registered trademark of the Nobel Foundation
Labels: chemistry, Economics, Literature, Nobel Prize, Peace, physics, Physiology or Medicine
Wednesday, October 02, 2019
SURFACE EVENT AT MICROSOFT
Microsoft announced a series of upgrades to the Surface computers, which will be available for purchase for this holiday season. See list below.
They also announced two surprising and dramatically new Surface computers that will be available next year, along with a new flavor of Windows 10.
- The first is a two-screen Surface that allows multitasking between the windows, folds to half the size (or expands to twice the size), and allows an external keyboard to be attached and folded into place.
- This comes with a new "modular" version of Windows called Windows 10X. Microsoft hopes to have developers creating for the new version of Windows by the time the new computer is released for the "2020 holiday season".
- Also coming next year is a Surface phone (!), running Android, and it will also have a dual screen.
NEW:
SURFACE LAPTOP 3 – 13.5 or 15” screen; AMD Processor; USB-C; 2019; Starts at $999.
SURFACE PRO 7 – 12.3” screen; USB-C; 2019; Starts at $749.
SURFACE PRO X – 13” screen; swappable solid-state drive; “slim pen”; ARM – MS SQ1 chip; 2019; Starts at $999.
SURFACE NEO – Dual screen; Windows 10X; physical keyboard; “slim pen”; 2020; Starts at $???
SURFACE DUO – Dual screen; Android phone; “Surface”; 2020; Starts at $???
SURFACE EARBUDS – Supports all virtual audio assistants; translates speech in 60 languages; speech to text; 2019; Starts at $249.
WINDOWS 10X – Supports dual screens.
Labels: dual-screen, Microsoft, Surface, Surface Duo, Surface Neo, Windows 10X
Sunday, September 22, 2019
COLBERT & JULIA-LOUIS DREYFUS
AN EVENING WITH
STEPHEN COLBERT & JULIA-LOUIS DREYFUS
Julia-Louis Dreyfus will be joining Stephen Colbert at the NJ PAC on Dec 7. It's a benefit for Montclair Film. They have a very active film program in the town of Montclair NJ, including a lot of interesting programs and classes for students and adults. Their advisory committee contains some super-stellar names. They organize the Montclair Film Festival (in May) which is one of the more-and-more-interesting-every-year film festivals.
Tickets are on sale now. (In the clouds, seats are about $80. In the first few rows seats can go for upwards of 7 times that price. ... It's a benefit.)
TICKETS
MONTCLAIR FILM
Labels: Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Montclair Film, Moontclair, NJ PAC, Stephen Colbert
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
NYVR - Theme: ETHICS ... PANEL & DEMOS (with me)
NYVR - the New York Virtual Reality Meetup will feature a panel discussion on ETHICS IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES. on Thursday evening (9/19).
I (that's me, Eric Roffman) will be presenting an introduction to the panel discussion and later, in the demos, showing a trailer of my new VR video, PITCH #7 from PITCH for Pi DAY; and discussing the non-fiction, immersive project on immigration, WE CAME TO AMERICA. Both projects feature interaction between ethics and emerging technology.
PITCH #7 from PITCH for Pi DAY is a short, fictional, dramatic, 3D 360 VR video, with spatial audio -- dealing with a proposal for a super-hi-tech medical system -- shot with the VUZE camera.
Information details about the event are available at
https://www.meetup.com/NYVR-Virtual-Reality-NYC/events/260947426/
Labels: Ethics, NYVR, PI DAY, PITCH #7 from PITCH for Pi DAY, the New York Virtual Reality Meetup, VR Video, Vuze
Thursday, September 12, 2019
SPOOOKY...
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
9/11
One Earth.
All humans: one species.
* * *
No man is an island
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls...
It tolls for thee.
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls...
It tolls for thee.
John Donne, 1624
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
APPLE ANNOUNCEMENTS
The announcements from Apple today were significant in a few ways.
The announcements from Apple today were significant in few ways.
It was significant, I suspect, that Tim Cook did not begin with the usual status report. He said it was because there was so much to announce. But was it because the "status" did not have the status of his usual status report? There were, in fact, a lot of announcements, but they seemed all too lightweight. Was he trying to boost their significance, by going right to them?
The most interesting reveal was not that Apple+ would sell for only $4.99 per month ("for your whole family!" he exclaimed). It was that he was seeding the subscriber base for the service by giving away free subscriptions for a year with every new Apple product sold. (That's only $60 worth, of course, but a lot of new subscribers.)
At least two of the new shows seem very promising: the Jennifer Aniston, Steve Carell, Reese Witherspoon series, THE MORNING SHOW, and a series, SEE, whose premise is that all humans have gone blind, but now children are born that can see. It may be just a "protect the baby" action flick, but if, as it claims in the promos, it delves into what humanity would be like if no-one could see, it could be profound.
The game streaming service, Apple Arcade, at $4.99 / mo, is also interesting -- although, since all the games are new and unique to Arcade, they come with no existing traction.
The hardware announcements were the usual improvements in almost every facet of hardware, but nothing new and exciting. The software improvements in camera technology may be useful for some people. Slow motion selfies, or slomofies, are likely to find both popularity and ridicule.
Several of the promotional/informational videos shown were brilliantly made.
In a discussion of the chip technology, it was mentioned that they now have built-in Machine Learning Hardware, right on your phone. While Apple has emphasized they respect privacy, this suggests a new, broad front for privacy invasion, as every manufacturer adopts similar technology: What is the phone learning about YOU, and who can learn what they -- the phone (and other objects you have around you all the time) -- are learning???
Prices were generally lower. With high resolution photos, home videos, videos from Apple+, plus more powerful Apps and games, many users may need to upgrade phones with lots of memory, raising the actual cost.
There was no mention of AR/VR/MR.
In summary, this seems to be a year of building the services segment, trying to maintain sales, and waiting for major new products (next year?) with: 5G capabilities, AR/VR/MR innovations (?), and (hopefully) some totally new ideas!
THE APPLE ANNOUNCEMENT
https://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2019
THE MORNING SHOW TRAILER
THE TRAILER FOR: SEE
Labels: Announcements, Apple, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, iPad, iPhone, Jennifer Aniston, machine learning, privacy, Reese Witherspoon, SEE, Steve Carell, THE MORNING SHOW
Wednesday, September 04, 2019
QALENDAR SEPTEMBER 2019 UPDATED
QPORIT'S QALENDAR
SEPTEMBER 2019
LEGEND
TECH
FILM
THEATER (date is first preview)
THEATER (date is first preview)
GAMES
TV
HOLIDAYS
SUNDAYS
SEPTEMBER
SEPTEMBER
01 SUNDAY
02 MON - HOLIDAY - LABOR DAY
.......- GAMES - WORLD SPEED CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP (ongoing)
................ >> www.chess.com
03 TUE - THEATER - CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (SHAW) - thru 2019-10-12
>> https://gingoldgroup.org/caesar-and-cleopatra/
04
>> QALENDAR updated Sep 5
05
06
07
08 SUNDAY
09
10 TUE - TECH - APPLE iPHONE EVENT
>> https://www.apple.com/apple-events/
11
12
13
14 SAT - THEATER - THE SOUND INSIDE - with Mary-Louise Parker; Opens 10/17
15 SUNDAY
16
17
18
19 THU - TECH - NYVR MEETUP - Theme: Ethics
- THEATER - THE ROSE TATTOO by Tennessee Williams; with Marise Tomei, Tina Benko; Opens 10/15
20
21 SAT - THEATER - CONFERENCE: "I WISH TO GO TO THE FESTIVAL
>> https://www.eventbrite.com/e/i-wish-to-go-to-the-festival-the-how-tos-of-producing-in-a-theatre-festival-tickets-70757815531
22 SUNDAY
23
24
25 WED - TECH - OCULUS CONNECT - thru 9/26
26 THU - TECH - NYC MEDIA LAB ANNUAL SUMMIT
>> https://summit.nycmedialab.org
27 FRI - FILM - 57th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (NYFF) - thru 10/13
.............. >> https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/news-roundup-57th-new-york-film.html
28
29 SUNDAY
29 SUN - HOLIDAY - ROSH HASHONAH - begins at sundown; thru 9/31
30
OCTOBER
OCTOBER
01
02
03
04
05
06 SUNDAY
07
08 TUE - HOLIDAY - YOM KIPPUR - begins at sundown; thru 10/9
09
10 THU - FILM - HAMPTONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (HIFF) - thru 10/14
>> https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/07/preview-1-hiff-2019-hamptons.html
- THEATER - CTI: "THE FLOP HOUSE - NETWORKING & DISCUSSION"
>> https://www.commercialtheaterinstitute.com/product/the-flop-house
11
12
13 SUNDAY
14 MON - HOLIDAY - COLUMBUS DAY
15
16
17
18
19
20 SUNDAY
21
22
23
24
25 FRI - THEATER - CTI: "WHO GETS WHAT?"
>> https://www.commercialtheaterinstitute.com/product/who-gets-what/?utm_source=General
26
27 SUNDAY
27 SUN - TV - SILICON VALLEY RETURNS - Season 6: final
31 THU - HOLIDAY - HALLOWEEN
NOVEMBER
NOVEMBER
03 SUN - THEATER - JAGGED LITTLE PILL - directed by Diane Paulus; Opens 12/5
14 THU - THEATER - CTI: "MARKETING SEMINAR" - thru 2019-11-15
>> https://www.commercialtheaterinstitute.com/product/marketing-seminar/
28 THU - HOLIDAY - THANKSGIVING
DECEMBER
DECEMBER
06 FRI - TV - THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL - Amazon; Season 3
>> https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/mrs-maisel-returns-2019-12-06-season-3.html
10 TUE - THEATER - WEST SIDE STORY - Opens 2020-02-06
14
20 FRI - FILM - STAR WARS IX - THE RISE OF SKYWALKER - Trilogy x Trilogy finale!
25 WED - HOLIDAY - CHRISTMAS
31 TUE - HOLIDAY - NEW YEAR'S EVE
Labels: 2019, Calendar, Chess, games, HIFF, Holidays, music, NYC Media Lab, NYFF, Oculus, QALENDAR, Star Wars IX, Tech, theater, TV, West Side Story
Monday, August 19, 2019
MARKET PLUNGE - LET'S TEST THE PREDICTIONS
On Wednesday, 8/14/2019, the Dow plunged 800+ points. One factor was an "inversion in the yield curve". Specifically, the 10 year T-Note yield dipped below the 2 year T-note yield. (Both yields were about 1.6% and differed by only about .02 % , very briefly.)
On CNBC, they showed a chart that claimed that (at least) since 1978 an inverted yield curve was followed by a pattern. Here are the dates, results and the implied forecasts.
The inversion was so brief that unless it recurs, these forecasts should be heavily salted. On the other hand, in May there was an inversion of the 3 year T-Note and the 10 year T-Note, so these "predictions" could happen 3 months earlier than described below.
So... here are the dates and the numbers, in writing(!), and we can test these "predictions" over the next two years.
As of 9:00 AM 8/14/2019
DOW: 26,279.91
S & P 500: 2926.32
NASDAQ: 8016.36
After an inversion of the yield curve:
A] - 12 months later, the S&P 500 was up an average of 12%.
"Prediction" - on 8/14/2020 (before the election), the S&P will be at 3,277.
"Prediction:" - on 2/14/2021 (Shortly AFTER the next inauguration) the markets will all go negative.
C] - 22 months later, there is a recession
"Prediction:" June 2021, there is a recession.
Whoever is elected -- in fact, whoever is running -- should keep this history in mind, in planning for the future. Whoever wins may have an economic tiger to control. Remember, the last big economic problem occurred at the end of the Bush administration, in the summer and fall of 2008, during the election, and required the attention of both candidates. Bipartisan cooperation prevented an even worse recession than actually occurred. On taking office, the economy was an immediate priority of the Obama administration. Adroit action set in motion the current long bull market.
Made even more difficult by the current political environment, during this election and after it will be critical, in a crisis, for the presiding administration and the opposition to find effective measures than can command bipartisan support, to prevent economic damage to the entire nation.
FOLLOW-UP OBSERVATIONS!...
2019-08-23 >> Yield curve inverted again (!) when market plunged again.
LINK
THE YIELD CURVE - WIKIPEDIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_curve
Labels: economic predictions, inversion of the yield curve, T-Notes, yield curve
MRS MAISEL RETURNS 2019-12-06 Season 3
The award winning Amazon series, THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, will return for season 3 on December 6.
The returning cast includes...
Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam 'Midge' Maisel
Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson
Tony Shalhoub as Abe Weissman
Marin Hinkle as Rose Weissman
Michael Zegan as Joel Maisel
Matilda Szydagis as Zelda
Joel Johnstone as Archie Cleary
(Though IMDB has not updated Marin and Michael's credits.)
Rumor (and the season teaser) has it that the season begins with a trip to Miami. (I hope these segments are better than last season's opening segments in Paris, which were very disappointing (I love Paris), requiring a few more episodes before the series got its mojo back, with episodes brilliantly directed by Daniel Palladino and creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.) The teaser also shows Midge on an armed services tour. Sterling K Brown (THIS IS US) makes a guest appearance.
The show has 20 Emmy nominations (check in on September 22 for the results), second only to the last season of GAME OF THRONES.
SEASON TEASER
LINKS
THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL - WIKIPEDIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marvelous_Mrs._Maisel
THE MARVELOUS MRS MAISEL - IMDB
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5788792/
RACHEL BROSNAHAN - IMDB
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3014031/
AMY SHERMAN PALLADINO - WIKIPEDIA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Sherman-Palladino
EMMYS
https://www.emmys.com/
Labels: Alex Borstein, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Marin Hinkle, Miriam 'Midge' Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan, Rose Weissman, Susie Myerson, THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, Tony Shalhoub. Abe Weissman
Sunday, August 11, 2019
57 YEARS OF NYFF OPENING NIGHTS
THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
OPENING NIGHT FILMS
1963-2019
The New York Film Festival opened in 1963 with Luis Bunuel's THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, from Mexico.25 opening nights featured US productions or co-productions, including all the last eight. French films opened the festival 15 times. China, Japan, and the Soviet Union have also been represented, along with a number of other European countries.
Francois Truffaut has been featured three times, with SMALL CHANGE (1976), DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), and THE WILD CHILD (1970), and Pedro Almodovar twice, with ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999) and WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1988). Akira Kurasawa with RAN (1985) and Jean-Luc Godard with ALPHAVILLE (1965) are also among the many great names of world cinema that have been seen on opening night.
Of course, many of these and other great filmmakers have had additional films in the Main Slate. In fact, Almodovar arrives again this year with PAIN AND GLORY.
Here's the complete list of NYFF opening night films:
NYFF 57 2019 The Irishman (Martin Scorcese, US)
NYFF 56 2018 The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/US)
NYFF 55 2017 Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, US)
NYFF 54 2016 13TH (Ava DuVernay, US)
NYFF 53 2015 The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, US)
NYFF 52 2014 Gone Girl (David Fincher, US)
NYFF 51 2013 Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US)
NYFF 50 2012 Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US)
NYFF 49 2011 Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)
NYFF 48 2010 The Social Network (David Fincher, US)
NYFF 47 2009 Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)
NYFF 46 2008 The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
NYFF 45 2007 The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)
NYFF 44 2006 The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)
NYFF 43 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, US)
NYFF 42 2004 Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)
NYFF 41 2003 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)
NYFF 40 2002 About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)
NYFF 39 2001 Va savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)
NYFF 38 2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
NYFF 37 1999 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
NYFF 36 1998 Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)
NYFF 35 1997 The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)
NYFF 34 1996 Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
NYFF 33 1995 Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)
NYFF 32 1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)
NYFF 31 1993 Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)
NYFF 30 1992 Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)
NYFF 29 1991 The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France)
NYFF 28 1990 Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, US)
NYFF 27 1989 Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, France)
NYFF 26 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
NYFF 25 1987 Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)
NYFF 24 1986 Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)
NYFF 23 1985 Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
NYFF 22 1984 Country (Richard Pearce, US)
NYFF 21 1983 The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)
NYFF 20 1982 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)
NYFF 19 1981 Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)
NYFF 18 1980 Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)
NYFF 17 1979 Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)
NYFF 16 1978 A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)
NYFF 15 1977 One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France)
NYFF 14 1976 Small Change (François Truffaut, France)
NYFF 13 1975 Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
NYFF 12 1974 Don’t Cry with Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)
NYFF 11 1973 Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)
NYFF 10 1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)
NYFF 9 1971 The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)
NYFF 8 1970 The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)
NYFF 7 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)
NYFF 6 1968 Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
NYFF 5 1967 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)
NYFF 4 1966 Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)
NYFF 3 1965 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
NYFF 2 1964 Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, USSR)
NYFF 1 1963 The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
NYFF OFFICIAL SITE
QPORIT
For links to all our
Previews, Reviews, Views and News,
about NYFF 57 - 2019 please subscribe! and see:
https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/news-roundup-57th-new-york-film.html
https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/news-roundup-57th-new-york-film.html
Labels: Almodovar, Bunuel, New York Film Festival, NYFF, Opening Night, Scorcese, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, THE IRISHMAN, Truffaut
Friday, August 09, 2019
Preview: NYFF 2019 - MAIN SLATE
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
THE 57th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
NYFF 2019
Sep 27 to Oct 13, 2019
MAIN SLATE
29 features include new films from
Pedro Almodóvar, Olivier Assayas, Kantemir Balagov,
Noah Baumbach, Marco Bellocchio, Bertrand Bonello,
Bong Joon-ho, Pedro Costa, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne,
Arnaud Desplechin, Diao Yinan, Mati Diop, Koji Fukada,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Nadav Lapid, Oliver Laxe, Lou Ye,
Pietro Marcello, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles,
Edward Norton, Corneliu Porumboiu, Kelly Reichardt,
Angela Schanelec, Céline Sciamma, Martin Scorsese,
Albert Serra, Justine Triet, Agnès Varda, and Federico Veiroj
NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said, “Cinema is the domain of freedom, and it’s an ongoing struggle to maintain that freedom. It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to make films of real ambition anywhere in this world. Each and every movie in this lineup, big or small, whether it’s made in Italy or Senegal or New York City, is the result of artists behind the camera fighting on multiple fronts to realize a vision and create something new in the world. That includes masters like Martin Scorsese and Pedro Almodóvar and newcomers to the festival like Mati Diop and Angela Schanelec.”
This year’s Main Slate showcases films from 17 different countries, including new titles from celebrated auteurs, extraordinary work from directors making their NYFF debuts, and captivating features that earned acclaim at international festivals. France has the most productions and co-productions, with many other European countries participating. South America, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and Israel are all represented. All three tentpole films come from the USA, with two of those released by Netflix.
Ten films in the festival were honored at Cannes, including
- Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or–winner Parasite;
- Grand Prix–winner Atlantics:
- A Ghost Love Story, directed by Mati Diop, an alum of annual FLC series Art of the Real and winner of the 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award;
- Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, NYFF’s Film Comment Presents selection and winner of both the Queer Palm and the Best Screenplay prize;
- Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, awarded Best Actor for Antonio Banderas;
- Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Jury Prize–winner Bacurau;
- Young Ahmed, which brought home the Best Director prize for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne;
- and three Un Certain Regard winners, including
- Oliver Laxe’s Jury Prize–winner Fire Will Come,
- Albert Serra’s Special Jury Prize–winner Liberté, and
- Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, which collected the Best Director prize.
Top prize winners from the Berlinale will also appear in the Main Slate:
- Nadav Lapid’s Golden Bear–winner Synonyms and
- Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But…, which won the Silver Bear for Best Director.
Olivier Assayas makes his 10th appearance at the festival with Wasp Network, while other returning filmmakers include Arnaud Desplechin, Kelly Reichardt, Corneliu Porumboiu, Bertrand Bonello, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Marco Bellocchio, Pedro Costa, and Agnès Varda, whose final film Varda by Agnès will screen posthumously.
Making their New York Film Festival debuts are New Directors/New Films alums Pietro Marcello, Lou Ye, and Federico Veiroj, whose work has also screened in FLC’s Neighboring Scenes series. Filmmakers new to the festival include Diao Yinan, Koji Fukada, and Justine Triet, an alum of FLC’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
This year’s New York Film Festival poster is designed by Main Slate director Pedro Almodóvar, whose film Pain and Glory marks his 11th NYFF appearance. Speaking about his inspiration for the design, Almodóvar said, “For the basis of this year’s New York Film Festival poster, I used a photo of a still life that I exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery. The masses of color on which the text is printed are reminiscent of an animated sequence that appears in my latest film, Pain and Glory, though for this version I have chosen less bright colors, using muted shades of red, blue, green, and mauve. These colors correspond to the palette in which I seem to move lately.”
NYFF57 Opening Night is Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman,
Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is the Centerpiece,
Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn will close the festival.
Still to come, the roster for:
NYFF Special Events,
Spotlight on Documentary,
Convergence,
Shorts,
Retrospective,
Revivals,
Projections and
filmmaker conversations and panels...
For links to all our
Previews, Reviews, Views and News,
Previews, Reviews, Views and News,
about NYFF 57 - 2019 please subscribe! and see:
https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/news-roundup-57th-new-york-film.html
https://qporit.blogspot.com/2019/08/news-roundup-57th-new-york-film.html
Tickets for the 57th New York Film Festival will go on sale to the general public on September 8.
Festival and VIP passes are on sale now and offer one of the earliest opportunities to purchase tickets and secure seats at some of the festival’s biggest events, including Opening and Closing Night. Learn more at
57th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL MAIN SLATE
Films & Descriptions
Opening Night
The Irishman
Dir. Martin Scorsese, USA
World Premiere
The Irishman is a richly textured epic of American crime, a dense, complex story told with astonishing fluidity. Based on Charles Brandt’s nonfiction book I Heard You Paint Houses, it is a film about friendship and loyalty between men who commit unspeakable acts and turn on a dime against each other, and the possibility of redemption in a world where it seems as distant as the moon. The roster of talent behind and in front of the camera is astonishing, and at the core of The Irishman are four great artists collectively hitting a new peak: Joe Pesci as Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Bufalino, Al Pacino as Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, and Robert De Niro as their right-hand man, Frank Sheeran, each working in the closest harmony imaginable with the film’s incomparable creator, Martin Scorsese. A Netflix release.
Centerpiece
Marriage Story
Dir. Noah Baumbach, USA, 136m
Noah Baumbach’s new film is about the rapid tangling and gradual untangling of impetuosity, resentment, and abiding love between a married couple negotiating their divorce and the custody of their son. Adam Driver is Charlie, a 100-percent New York experimental theater director; Scarlett Johansson is Nicole, his principal actress and soon-to-be L.A.-based ex-wife. Their “amicable” breakup devolves, one painful rash response and hostile counter-response at a time, into a legal battlefield, led on Nicole’s side by Laura Dern and on Charlie’s side by “nice” Alan Alda and “not-so-nice” Ray Liotta. What is so remarkable about Marriage Story is its frank understanding of the emotional fluctuations between Charlie and Nicole: they are both short-sighted, both occasionally petty, both vindictive, and both loving. The film is as harrowing as it is hilarious as it is deeply moving. With Merritt Wever and Julie Hagerty as Nicole’s sister and mom, and Azhy Robertson as their beloved son, Henry. A Netflix release.
Closing Night
Motherless Brooklyn
Dir. Edward Norton, USA, 144m
In an unusually bold adaptation, writer-director-producer Edward Norton has transplanted the main character of Jonathan Lethem’s best-selling novel Motherless Brooklyn from modern Brooklyn into an entirely new, richly woven neo-noir narrative, reset in 1950s New York. Emotionally shattered by a botched job, Lionel Essrog (Norton), a lonely private detective with Tourette syndrome, finds himself drawn into a multilayered conspiracy that expands to encompass the city’s ever-growing racial divide and the devious personal and political machinations of a Robert Moses–like master builder, played by Alec Baldwin. Featuring a rigorously controlled star turn by Norton and outstanding additional supporting performances by Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Mann, and Cherry Jones, plus a haunting soundtrack (featuring a score by Daniel Pemberton, with orchestration by Wynton Marsalis, and an original song by Thom Yorke), Motherless Brooklyn is the kind of movie Hollywood almost never makes anymore, and a complexly conceived, robust evocation of a bygone era of New York that speaks to our present moment. A Warner Bros. Picture.
Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story
Dir. Mati Diop, France/Senegal/Belgium, 105m
U.S. Premiere
Building on the promise—and then some—of her acclaimed shorts, Mati Diop has fashioned an extraordinary drama that skirts the line between realism and fantasy, romance and horror, and which, in its crystalline empathy, humanity, and political outrage, confirms the arrival of a major talent. Set in Senegal, the birth country of her legendary director uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, the film initially follows the blossoming love between young construction worker Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), who’s being exploited by his rich boss, and Ada (Mama Sané), about to enter into an unwanted arranged marriage with a wealthier man. Souleiman and his fed-up coworkers soon disappear during an attempt to migrate to Spain in a pirogue, yet somehow his presence is still quite literally felt in Dakar. Transmuting a global crisis into a ghostly tale of possession, the gripping, hallucinatory Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story was the winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A Netflix release.
Bacurau
Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, Brazil, 130m
U.S. Premiere
A vibrant, richly diverse backcountry Brazilian town finds its sun-dappled day-to-day disturbed when its inhabitants become the targets of a group of marauding, wealthy tourists. The perpetrators of this Most Dangerous Game–esque class warfare, however, may have met their match in the fed-up, resourceful denizens of little Bacurau. Those who remember Kleber Mendonça Filho’s wonderful NYFF54 crowd-pleaser Aquarius starring Sonia Braga—who appears here in a memorable supporting role—might be surprised by the new terrain and occasional ultraviolence of his latest, codirected with his longtime production designer Juliano Dornelles. Yet this wild shape-shifter shares with that film the exhilaration of witnessing society’s forgotten and marginalized standing up for themselves by any means necessary. With references to the fearless genre works of John Carpenter, George Miller, and Sergio Leone, Bacurau, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is a vividly angry power-to-the-people fable like no other. A Kino Lorber release.
Beanpole
Dir. Kantemir Balagov, Russia, 130m
In immediate post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world. As the film begins, Iya, long and slender and towering over everyone—hence the film’s title—works as a nurse in a shell-shocked hospital, presiding over traumatized soldiers. A shocking accident brings them closer and also seals their fates. The 27-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov—whose debut feature Closeness caused a stir at Cannes and the New Directors/New Films festival just last year—won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war.
Fire Will Come
Dir. Oliver Laxe, Spain/France/Luxembourg, 85m
U.S. Premiere
The beauties and terrors of nature—human and otherwise—drive this extraordinary, elemental new film from Oliver Laxe, in which the verdant Galician landscape becomes the setting for forceful internal and external dramas. After making films abroad for years, interrogating the line between filmmaker and subject in such locales as Tangiers (You Are All Captains) and Morocco (Mimosas), Laxe returns to the rustic village in northwest Spain where his grandparents were born to tell the story of Amador (Amador Arias), who has recently served time in prison for arson and has come home to live with his elderly mother, Benedicta (Benedicta Sanchez)—both played brilliantly by nonprofessional actors. Laxe follows Amador’s day-to-day readjustment, immersing the viewer in the deep eucalyptus forests and vast countryside of northwest Spain, building to an astonishing climax fueled by an uncontrollable fury.
First Cow
Dir. Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 121m
Kelly Reichardt once again trains her perceptive and patient eye on the Pacific Northwest, this time evoking an authentically hardscrabble early 19th-century way of life. A taciturn loner and skilled cook (John Magaro) has traveled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds true connection with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) also seeking his fortune; soon the two collaborate on a successful business, although its longevity is reliant upon the clandestine participation of a nearby wealthy landowner’s prized milking cow. From this simple premise Reichardt constructs an interrogation of foundational Americana that recalls her earlier triumph Old Joy in its sensitive depiction of male friendship, yet is driven by a mounting suspense all its own. Reichardt shows her distinct talent for depicting the peculiar rhythms of daily living and ability to capture the immense, unsettling quietude of rural America. An A24 release.
A Girl Missing
Dir. Koji Fukada, Japan, 111m
U.S. Premiere
Director Koji Fukada and star Mariko Tsutsui have created one of the most memorable, enigmatic movie protagonists in years in this compelling and beautifully humane drama. Middle-aged Ichiko works as a private nurse in a small town for a family, functioning as caregiver for the entirely female clan’s elderly matriarch, and befriending the two teenage daughters; when one of the girls disappears, Ichiko gets caught up in the resulting media sensation in increasingly surprising and devastating ways. Fukada keeps the story tightly focused on Ichiko’s perspective, illustrating with patience and compassion the different forms of trauma that can be created by one event, and—in keeping with the themes of his internationally acclaimed Harmonium—how easily and frighteningly a life can spiral out of control.
I Was at Home, But…
Dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany, 105m
U.S. Premiere
Though she’s been an essential voice in contemporary German cinema since the ’90s, Angela Schanelec is poised to find wider international audiences with I Was at Home, But…, which won her the Best Director prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An elliptical yet emotionally lucid variation on the domestic drama, her latest film intricately navigates the psychological contours of a Berlin family in crisis: Astrid—played with barely concealed fury by Maren Eggert—is trying to hold herself and her fragile teenage son and young daughter together following the death of their father two years earlier. Yet as in all her films, Schanelec develops her story and characters in highly unexpected ways, shooting in exquisite, fragmented tableaux and leaving much to the viewer’s imagination, hinting at a spiritual grace lurking beneath the unsettled surface of every scene. A Cinema Guild release.
Liberté
Dir. Albert Serra, France/Portugal/Spain, 132m
U.S. Premiere
For the bold of imagination, not the faint of heart, the latest work from Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra (The Death of Louis XIV) is easily his most provocative yet. In the 18th century, somewhere deep in a forest clearing, a group of bewigged libertines engage in a series of pansexual games of pain, torture, humiliation, and other dissolute, Sadean pleasures, attempting to reach some form of erotic nirvana, though rarely ever appearing to truly enjoy themselves. Serra’s truly radical film, set over the course of one night, is at once an aesthetic and sonic pleasure—every composition is a thing of eerily lit perfection, its soundtrack the chirps and rustles of the nighttime forest—and an unsparing depiction of the human drive for corporeal cruelty and sexual release. As its title suggests, Liberté is a film about the meaning of freedom, in both sex and in art.
Martin Eden
Dir. Pietro Marcello, Italy, 129m
U.S. Premiere
For the past fifteen years, Pietro Marcello has been working at the vanguard of Italian cinema, creating films that straddle the line between documentary and fiction, but which play off both a 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century neorealism in their class-conscious focus on wanderers and transients. Marcello’s most straightforwardly fictional feature to date, Martin Eden is set in a provocatively unspecified moment in Italy’s history yet was adapted from a 1909 novel by American author Jack London. Martin (played by the marvelously committed Luca Marinelli) is a dissatisfied prole with artistic aspirations who hopes that his dreams of becoming a writer will help him rise above his station and marry a wealthy young university student (Jessica Cressy); the twinned dissatisfactions of working-class toil and bourgeois success lead to political reawakening and destructive anxiety. Martin Eden is an enveloping, superbly mounted bildungsroman.
The Moneychanger
Dir. Federico Veiroj, Uruguay, 97m
U.S. Premiere
Leading light of contemporary Uruguayan cinema Federico Veiroj (A Useful Life) specializes in complexly drawn protagonists struggling amidst the specters of professional and personal failures. His new film, based on the 1979 novella Así habló el cambista by fellow countryman Juan Enrique Gruber, is his most ambitious, political, and forceful yet. Set largely in Montevideo, The Moneychanger stars Daniel Hendler in a tightly coiled performance of comical discomfort as Humberto Brause, who takes advantage of Uruguay’s poor economy by specializing in offshore money laundering. Spanning the fifties to the seventies, the film follows Humberto as he gets increasingly in over his head with multiple shady book-cooking schemes throughout South America, leading to an ultimate life-or-death decision.
Oh Mercy!
Dir. Arnaud Desplechin, France, 119m
North American Premiere
In a change of pace from such recent kaleidoscopic knockouts as My Golden Years (NYFF53) and Ismael’s Ghosts (NYFF55), Arnaud Desplechin shows a different and no less impressive side of his mastery with this taut policier, based on a true murder case. The scene of the crime is Roubaix, the city in Northern France where Desplechin was born and where he’s set many of his films. Here, during a somber Christmas season, a middle-aged, French-Algerian detective is investigating the fatal strangulation of a poor, elderly woman in her apartment, with suspicion falling on her next-door neighbors, two young white women with a complicated interpersonal bond. Desplechin turns what might have been a lurid thriller into a work of engrossing psychological portraiture and socioeconomic inquiry that pays exquisite attention to the nuances of each remarkable performance, including Roschdy Zem as police captain Douad, and Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier as the suspects.
Pain and Glory
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 113m
Pedro Almodóvar cuts straight to the heart with his intensely personal latest, which finds the great Spanish filmmaker tapping into new reservoirs of introspection and emotional warmth. Antonio Banderas deservedly won the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for his miraculous, internalized portrayal of Salvador Mallo, a director not too subtly modeled on Almodóvar himself, whose growing health problems—including tinnitus, migraines, and spinal pain—and creative block have initiated a midlife reckoning. Moving in and out of time, evoking Salvador’s childhood in the sixties (featuring Penélope Cruz as his doting mother); his years of triumph in the eighties; and present-day Madrid, where he navigates new artistic challenges, Pain and Glory is both a moving summative statement on a career and an indication of more brilliant things to come. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Parasite
Dir. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 132m
In Bong Joon-ho’s exhilarating new film, a threadbare family of four struggling to make ends meet gradually hatches a scheme to work for, and as a result infiltrate, the wealthy household of an entrepreneur, his seemingly frivolous wife, and their troubled kids. How they go about doing this—and how their best-laid plans spiral out to destruction and madness—constitutes one of the wildest, scariest, and most unexpectedly affecting movies in years, a portrayal of contemporary class resentment that deservedly won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. As with all of this South Korean filmmaker’s best works, Parasite is both rollicking and ruminative in its depiction of the extremes to which human beings push themselves in a world of unending, unbridgeable economic inequality. A NEON release.
Film Comment Presents
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Dir. Céline Sciamma, France, 121m
On the cusp of the 19th century, young painter Marianne travels to a rugged, rocky island off the coast of Brittany. Here, she has been commissioned to create a wedding portrait of the wealthy yet free-spirited Héloise, whose hand in marriage has been promised to a man she’s never met. Resentful of the forced union, Héloise at first refuses to be painted, yet a growing bond—at first emotional and then erotic—develops between the women, exquisitely etched by Noémie Merlant as the artist and Adèle Haenel as her initially reluctant muse. With a visual precision as delicate as that of Merlant’s Marianne—whose patient acts of creation are lovingly dwelt upon—Céline Sciamma classically builds her double portrait from tentative romance to melodramatic rapture to a quietly devastating ending, all while subverting the traditional story of an artist and “his” muse. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A NEON release.
Saturday Fiction
Dir. Lou Ye, China, 125m
U.S. Premiere
The incomparable Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern) gives a mesmerizing, take-no-prisoners performance in Saturday Fiction, a slow-burn spy thriller set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai on the cusp of World War II. She plays acclaimed actress Jean Yu, who has returned to Shanghai from China after a long absence. Jean Yu is in rehearsals for a play to be directed by a former lover (Mark Chao), but she seems to have ulterior motives, functioning as a double agent and gathering intelligence for the Allies, including the fateful realization of Japan’s imminent attack on Pearl Harbor. Shooting in evocative black-and-white, director Lou Ye (Spring Fever) has created here a gripping thriller that builds to a nerve-wracking climax, and which never loses sight of the human beings caught up in the gears of history.
Sibyl
Dir. Justine Triet, France/Belgium, 100m
U.S. Premiere
Past and present collide in an increasingly complicated and highly entertaining fashion in Justine Triet’s intricate study of the professional and personal masks we wear as we perform our daily lives. Psychotherapist Sybil (Virginie Efira) abruptly decides to leave her practice to restart her writing career—only to find herself increasingly embroiled in the life of a desperate new patient: Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a movie star dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic affair with her costar, Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), while trying to finish a film shoot under the watchful eye of a demanding director (Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller, splendidly high-strung), who happens to be Igor’s wife. Sybil, negotiating her own past demons, makes the fateful decision to use Margot’s experiences as inspiration for her book, as boundaries of propriety fall one after another. As she proved in her previous film In Bed with Victoria, which also starred the magnificently expressive Efira, Triet is a master at creating heroines of intense complexity, and of maintaining a tricky balance between volatile drama and sly comedy.
Synonyms
Dir. Nadav Lapid, France/Israel/Germany, 123m
U.S. Premiere
In his lacerating third feature, director Nadav Lapid’s camera races to keep up with the adventures of peripatetic Yoav (Tom Mercier), a disillusioned Israeli who has absconded to Paris following his military training. Having disavowed Hebrew, he devotes himself to learning the intricacies of the French language, falls into an emotional and intellectual triangle with a wealthy bohemian couple (Quentin Dolmaire and Louise Chevillotte), and frequently finds himself objectified, both politically and sexually. A powerful expression of the impossibility of escaping one’s roots, Synonyms is, even after the unforgettable Policeman (NYFF48) and The Kindergarten Teacher, Lapid’s boldest and most haunting work yet, a film about language and physicality, masculinity and nationhood. A Kino Lorber release.
To the Ends of the Earth
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 120m
U.S. Premiere
For more than two decades, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been at the artistic forefront of Japanese cinema, bending the form to his own singular, internalized rhythms in such films as Cure, Pulse, and Tokyo Sonata (NYFF46). His latest is no exception, an unexpected narrative following Yoko (former J-pop idol Atsuko Maeda), a television host whose trip to Uzbekistan to shoot an episode of her reality travel show begins to dissolve her chipper persona, revealing the paranoia and dislocation beneath. Filled with absurdly humorous set pieces, and climaxing with a cathartic burst unprecedented in Kurosawa’s oeuvre, To the Ends of the Earth is both an entertaining tale of culture clash and a penetrating depiction of a young woman’s alienation and anxiety that pushes the director’s craft into new, mysterious, and enormously emotional realms.
The Traitor
Dir. Marco Bellocchio, Italy, 145m
U.S. Premiere
Since the galvanizing burst of his unforgettable debut feature Fists in the Pocket (NYFF3), Marco Bellocchio has remained an Italian auteur of rigor and fury, representing social unrest in stories that range from the intimate to the epochal. In his 80th year, he has returned with one of his most compelling films. Pierfrancesco Favino commands the screen throughout this decades-spanning true-life narrative as Tommaso Buscetta, the mafia boss turned informant who helped take down a large swath of organized crime leaders in Sicily in the eighties. In one fully realized, impressively staged scene after another, including the notorious Maxi Trial, overseen by Judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi), Bellocchio interrogates received ideas about loyalty that so many other movies of this genre use to romanticize their characters. This is a very different kind of mafia drama, one that has the structure of a procedural but coasts on the waves of psychological portraiture. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Varda by Agnès
Dir. Agnès Varda, France, 115m
When Agnès Varda died earlier this year at age 90, the world lost one of its most inspirational cinematic radicals. From her neorealist-tinged 1954 feature debut La Pointe Courte to her New Wave treasures Cléo from 5 to 7 and Le Bonheur to her inquiries into those on society’s outskirts like Vagabond (NYFF23), The Gleaners and I (NYFF38), and the 2017 Oscar nominee Faces Places (NYFF55), she made enduring films that were both forthrightly political and gratifyingly mercurial, and which toggled between fiction and documentary decades before it was more commonplace in art cinema. In what would be her final work, partially constructed of onstage interviews and lectures, interspersed with a wealth of clips and archival footage, Varda guides us through her career, from her movies to her remarkable still photography to the delightful and creative installation work. It’s a fitting farewell to a filmmaker, told in her own words. A Janus Films release.
Vitalina Varela
Dir. Pedro Costa, Portugal, 124m
U.S. Premiere
Portuguese director Pedro Costa has continually returned in his films to the Fontainhas neighborhood, a shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon that’s home to largely immigrant communities. Not merely a chronicler of the poor and dispossessed, Costa renders onscreen characters that exist somewhere between real and fictional, the living and the dead. His latest, a film of deeply concentrated beauty, stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in a truly remarkable performance. Reprising and expanding upon her haunted supporting role from Costa’s Horse Money (NYFF52), she plays a Cape Verdean woman who has come to Fontainhas for her husband’s funeral after being separated from him for decades due to economic circumstance, and despite her alienation begins to establish a new life there. The grief of the present and the ghosts of the past commingle in Costa’s ravishing chiaroscuro compositions, a film of shadow and whisper that might be the director’s most visually extraordinary work. A Grasshopper Film release.
Wasp Network
Dir. Olivier Assayas, France/Spain/Brazil, 127m
U.S. Premiere
Olivier Assayas brings his customary style and urgency to an unexpected subject in this epic chronicle of a small group of Cuban defectors in Miami who in the early nineties established a spy web to infiltrate anti-Castroist terrorist groups carrying out violent attacks on Cuban soil. Amidst a dazzling ensemble that includes Gael García Bernal, Wagner Moura, Ana de Armas, and Leonardo Sbaraglia, Assayas mostly centers on the saga of network member René Gonzalez (Édgar Ramírez, star of Assayas’s Carlos, NYFF48) and his wife Olga (Penélope Cruz, in a superb performance of complex emotional transparency), who for many years is kept in the dark about René’s double life in America. Inspired by Fernando Morais’s meticulously researched book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War, Wasp Network is a nuanced, gripping thriller from one of the world’s most adventurous, globe-hopping filmmakers, told with journalistic detail and vivid sympathy for those Cubans in exile who sought liberation back home while being targeted by the U.S. government.
The Whistlers
Dir. Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 98m
In a delightful twist, leading Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, whose inventive comedies such as Police, Adjective (NYFF47) and The Treasure (NYFF53) have for more than a decade brought deadpan charm and political perceptiveness to his country’s cinematic renaissance, has made his first all-out genre film—a clever, swift, and elegant neo-noir with a wonderfully off-kilter central conceit. Easily corruptible Bucharest police detective Cristi—played by the eternally stoic Vlad Ivanov—arrives on the mist-enshrouded Canary Island of La Gomera, where he learns a clandestine, tribal language, improbably made entirely out of whistling; this form of hidden communication will keep his superiors off his trail as he becomes increasingly embroiled in a convoluted gangster scheme involving a stash of Euros hidden in a mattress and a sultry femme fatale named, of course, Gilda. Porumboiu’s take on the crime drama furthers his explorations of the intricacies and limitations of language, but is also his most playful, even exuberant, film. A Magnolia Pictures release.
The Wild Goose Lake
Dir. Diao Yinan, China/France, 112m
U.S. Premiere
Chinese director Diao Yinan’s much anticipated follow-up to his breakthrough noir Black Coal, Thin Ice is an altogether more colorful crime drama. A formalist gangster thriller drenched in reds and blues, though imbued with a melancholic tone that speaks to contemporary China’s vast economic disparities, the elegantly down-and-dirty The Wild Goose Lake, set in the nooks and crannies of densely populated Wuhan, follows the desperate attempts of small-time mob boss Zhou Zenong (the charismatic Hu Ge) to stay alive after he mistakenly kills a cop and a dead-or-alive reward is put on his head. The filmmaker proves his action bona fides in a series of stylized set pieces and violent shocks—including a showstopper on a stolen motorbike—simultaneously devising a romance between Zhou and a mysterious young woman (Gwei Lun-mei) who’s out to either help or betray him. Diao deftly keeps multiple characters and chronologies spinning, all the while creating an atmosphere thick with eroticism and danger. A Film Movement release.
Young Ahmed
Dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium, 84m
North American Premiere
The Dardenne Brothers won this year’s Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for this brave new work, another intimate portrayal-in-furious-motion of a protagonist in crisis. The filmmakers’ radical empathy alights on a Muslim teenager (extraordinary first-time actor Idir Ben Addi) in a small Belgian town who is being gradually radicalized into extremism despite the desperate protestations of his single mother (Claire Bodson), and who winds up hatching a murderous plot targeting his beloved teacher (Myriem Akheddiou). Taking a serious view of a difficult issue—the effect of fanaticism on the body and soul—the Dardennes here remind viewers why they continue to be at the center of 21st-century cinema.
Zombi Child
Dir. Bertrand Bonello, France, 103m
U.S. Premiere
After giving multiple shots to the arm of contemporary French cinema with such audacious films as House of Tolerance, Saint Laurent (NYFF52), and Nocturama, Bertrand Bonello injects urgency and history into the well-worn walking-dead genre with this unconventional plunge into horror-fantasy. Bonello moves fluidly between 1962 Haiti, where a young man known as Clairvius Narcisse (Mackenson Bijou), made into a zombie by his resentful brother, ends up working as a slave in the sugar cane fields, and a contemporary Paris girls’ boarding school, where a white teenage girl (Louise Labèque) befriends Clairvius’s direct descendant (Wislanda Louimat), who was orphaned in the 2010 Haiti earthquake. These two disparate strands ultimately come together in a film that evokes Jacques Tourneur more than George Romero, and feverishly dissolves boundaries of time and space as it questions colonialist mythmaking. A Film Movement release.
Labels: Agnes Varda, Berlinale, Cannes, MARRIAGE STORY, Martin Scorcese, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN, Noah Baumbach, NYFF, NYFF 2019 57th New York Film Festival, Pedro Almadovar, THE IRISHMAN
