By most accounts, this year’s New York Film Festival is one of the strongest in years. For that we may thank The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman and L.A. Weekly’s Scott Foundas, both of whom recently joined the festival’s selection committee. Trying to keep it real, the group most notably embraced new films by Abel Ferrara (Go Go Tales) and Brian De Palma (Redacted), two NYC auteurs who’d never been invited to the festival before.
Also of note is how the committee jumped on one Argento bandwagon while dissing another: Asia stars in Go Go Tales and Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress, but her father Dario’s Mother of Tears is a no-show. The lunatic cred Ferrara will bring to the festival will ease the pain of having to wait for the final part in the Three Mothers trilogy, though we must cop to the real reason for why the film’s absence stings: Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, which taints the program this year with its lazy roll call of references to Argento’s gialli.
Though this year’s lineup is especially top-heavy with Cannes carryovers, we’re not complaining given that we finally get to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Paranoid Park, No Country For Old Men, and Silent Light. And we haven’t even mentioned the new ones by Todd Haynes, Eric Rohmer, Aleksandr Sokurov, and Hou Hsiao-hsien!
Beginning September 18, check back daily as a synopsis and full review of each festival film will be added to our ongoing coverage. The 45th New York Film Festival will run from September 28 to October 14, 2007. For more information please check the festival’s main program. Ed Gonzalez
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2Days (Cristian Mungiu)
• Actresses (Bruni Tedeschi)
• Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov)
• The Ax in the Attic (Ed Pincus and Lucia Small)
• Before the Devil Knows Your Dead (Sidney Lumet)
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott)
• Calle Santa Fe (Carmen Castillo)
• The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
• Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol)
• Go Go Tales (Abel Ferrara)
• I Just Didn’t Do It (Masayuki Suo)
• I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
• In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
• The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat)
• The Man from London (Béla Tarr)
• Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)
• Married Life (Ira Sachs)
• Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (John Landis)
• No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
• The Orphanage (Juan Antonio Bayona)
• Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
• Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi)
• Redacted (Brian De Palma)
• The Romance of Astreé and Céladon (Eric Rohmer)
• Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
• Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
• Useless (Jia Zhang-ke)
• Fados (Carlos Saura)
• Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford)
• The Iron Horse (John Ford)
• Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl)
• The Other Side of the Mirror (Murray Lerner)
• Runnin’ Down a Dream (Peter Bogdanovich)
• Underworld (Josef Von Sternberg)
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