The Village Voice and NYT reviews of the New Directors/New Films definitely entice me to see the Greek film Attenberg.
Some NYT video blog interviews.
Sounds like another very weird hit as was the Oscar nominated Dogtooth from last year's fest. Also recommended from last year and just out on DVD is Mia Hansen-Love’s The Father of My Children.

And a couple of gallery shows I forgot to mention:
The New Museum has a long overdue retrospective of Lynda Benglis (thru June 19) though Susan Inglett got there first a year ago. Now showing at Susan's gallery is Marcia Kure's Dressed Up - conceived while conducting research at the Smithsonian Archives as a Smithsonian Artist-Fellow in 2008: "explores symbolic codes of high fashion as imagined by hip-hop avatars and designers of historical haute couture."
Also catching my eye was Days of Hope and Bandages from emerging artist Karen Schiff - Flanagan Gallery (Community College of Rhode Island, Lincoln, Rhode Island). The show's closed but Schiff's fascination with intricate patternation certainly makes her someone to watch - though her work never comes across accurately nor strongly in reproduction. From her press release: "The show is a series of collage-paintings -- and an installation made of the gallery's pedestals -- all covered in pieces of hospital gowns. I began using these curiously textured gowns as a medium in 2009, when I started visiting my parents in hospitals. (They're both doing great now!)

A saving cinematic grace (or is that coup de) for many Manhattan mums this Easter will be Hop from the Despicable Me team - opening world-wide this week. I could happily sit through this film again but I'm guessing the age attention span cut off is around 10 or 11 years old - unless your teenagers have a sense about the irony of their own existence. Not a quality I've ever found very abundant in our young movers/shakers and couch vegetables. There's a nice dinner table conversation line given to the O'Hare family's adopted 10 year-old daughter Alex (Tiffany Espensen): "You only adopted me because Fred was such a disappointment."

Now Fred (James Marsden) is 30 going on a couch potato of 17. His 20 something sister Sam (Kaley Cuoco) coerces him into a job interview lured by a housitting gig at her boss' mansion. Meanwhile in the animation 'Dr. No' Easter egg manufacturing 'Metropolis' beneath the stone statues of Easter Island, the Easter Bunny's (Hugh Laurie) son E.B. (Russell Brand) is shirking his heir-egg apparant-cy and dreams of becoming a drummer.

E.B. does a runner down the rabbit hole winding up outside the Hollywood Playboy mansion hoping for recognition of his 'bunny' status. Instead, he ends up faux convalescing in Fred's house-sit mansion after being run over by his car. The film is directed by Tim Hill of Alvin and the Chipmunks notoriety and there's a large amount of that cloying chirpy human meets CGI character bonhomie can't wait for the bon voyage about everything.
But Hop is all so delightfully silly and the voice animation so droll one just slumps, high on the saccharine ride.

Geeks and wicked 're-mixers' would no doubt prefer Russell Brand's own face beneath the rabbit ears instead of E.B.'s bunny features - a la the final scene in The Fly. And even the brainiest kiddie would be stumped finding any irony (let alone of a religious bent or even the tremor of a rabbit double entendre in the film's 'Have a Happy Easter' message. But hey, if we want our consciousness pricked and our existence on earth affirmed there's always MoMA and New Directors/New Films. Whereas where else but Hop could you coagulate The Blind Boys of Alabama, David Hasselhoff, an Easter Bunny and the fat foreman chick with a shoulder chip Carlos (Hank Azaria)? Oh wait: isn't there a city called New York just like that;)
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Opening this 40th year of New Directors/New Films (presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center) on Wednesday night was the much heralded Margin Call (J.C. Chandor) - a fictional film about the men whose mismanagement of dollar trillions caused our economic woes. Slated US general release October. This Indy website also recommends Swedish archival doco The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Sat 26th and Mon 28th) and Stacey Steers' 16min short Night Hunter "that has to be the most innovative piece of movie magic in the entire [Fest's history]" (Fri April 1/Sat 2nd).

While absent from this year's previews, I did see four of this year's offerings at last year's 54th BFI London Film Festival. All their characters seem to be on society's margins but in reality are far closer to the centre of our fraught everyday lives. I wasn't much wowed by Marc Fitoussi's Copacabana but what's not to like about Isabelle Huppert? Interesting podcast on this link. Pia Marais' At Ellen's Age (a further screening Sat 26th) is the haunting tale of an air stewardess who 'does a runner' from her African stopover and is befriended by animal rights liberationists. (This was made well before that American steward went bonkers at a passenger and slid down the emergency chute). Short interview below:


Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone (Tues 29th/Thurs 31st) explores the fun, energetic youth arts culture in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. (Audio Q&A here). Li Hongqi's Winter Vacation (Sun 27th/Tues 29th) is one of the strongest Chinese films to emerge recently. "I shoot movies the way I play chess," says the director. "Many people think about how to play the game more brilliantly, more beautifully, more elegantly. As for me, I just want to move the chessmen off the chessboard." Winner of last year's Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Fest, its title refers to the schoolkids' bleak 'slacker' 'no mans land' holiday break. Great understated atmospheric music score, too.

And the art world.......hummmm...

Williamsburg photographer Meredith Allen (1964 - 2011) died last week - Ed Winkleman's obituary.
Lanquidity, the first solo show of paintings by New Yorker Jimbo Blachly opens at his gallery tonight.

And this week Elizabeth Taylor also passed away- even more reason to see her in A Place in the Sun that I mentioned last post. Also worth attention is Joseph Losey's Boom! with Taylor and Richard Burton (plus a great score from the recently deceased John Barry)

dwelling, the fourth exhibition in Marianne Boesky's wonderful uptown brownstone, finishes Sat 26th (sorry...April 2).
Dwellings with a difference in Home Theater, a solo exhibition of large-scale, multiple-panel, color photographs by the New York based, Croatian photographer, Hrvoje Slovenc. "He solicited people on internet sex sites, ultimately gaining their confidence and being invited into their homes. An exploration of domestic spaces in which specific areas have been designed, decorated, and outfitted for sadomasochistic sexual activities." Michael Mazzeo Gallery (thru April 23)

Also the award winning Raphael Dallaporta at L.Parker Stephenson goes crazy for Paris organs. Did you know (Ok my bird brain often has inter-stellar bird-flu enhancement)that Macy's in the Philadelphia's Wanamaker Building has the largest operational pipe organ in the world!

Another opening not to miss tonight is The Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators R. Crumb: Lines Drawn On Paper celebrating his last 40 years' work.

Opening Saturday at Higher Pictures is New York Means Business- Max Kozloff's color photographs from 1977 to 1984.
Boris Smelov photos continue at Sputnik Gallery
Hong Kong based Lee Kit's 1st US solo show is at Lombard Freid Projects
New work by Stan Douglas at David Zwirner
And a new Gary Hill multi-media show at Gladstone Gallery
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Just my luck that falling ill again I miss all the art circuses this week. The worlds of New Yorkers can oftentimes be quite small so if the art world isn't your milieu, perhaps the week needs 'spelling out', namely: The Armory Show, INDEPENDENT, and Moving Image - a new art fair of contemporary video.

My initial inverted self-anger at missing all the fun then morphed into solipsism as I asked myself, does it all really matter? In a city where's there's an art opening practically every night of the week can one get just too obsessed? Too insular? Apart from all the 'business' perhaps a young artist might just have been lucky enough to have hooked themselves a deal this week. I'm reminded that a friend of mine years ago attended the Cannes Film Festival on a whim wing and a prayer and landed herself a tipsy Hollywood honcho's signature on paper for her script. Not that it was ever eventually produced. Still, stranger things can happen.

And I mused upon such things having wangled myself into a preview of The Adjustment Bureau - a film based on sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick's 1954 story Adjustment Team. And reminded of my quips last year about my ex-boyfriend marrying me off to a 'Duke of Devonshire' on my London trip. Well if you're tired of Manhattan's least attractive trait of having to be seen to do/marry 'the right thing', then The Adjustment Bureau is the movie for you/us.

It came hot on the heels of me crying my heart out at re-watching on DVD A Place in the Sun and the Brit film Never Let Me Go. Was the romance of poor boss' nephew Monty Clift and socialite heiress Elizabeth Taylor doomed from the start? Can we ever find our 'place in the sun'? Never Let Me Go (based on Kazuo Ishiguro's quasi sci-fi novel) is about a love that is only truly consummated in death. Not a perfect film by any means but an incredibly haunting and beautiful one.

There are some fascinating extras on A Place in the Sun including memories of director George Stevens. Director Rouben Mamoulian: "When you see [his film] Giant those figures are bigger than life, there's nobility there's strength there's power in them. And you walk out [of the cinema] and say, goodness, I am proud to be a human being rather than saying isn't it a shame I'm a human being what can I do about it."

It's quite an impressive leap from the short story original to the sweeping big screen The Adjustment Bureau adaptation by writer/director George Nolfi. And it's probably more interesting to read the story after seeing the movie rather than before as it will only enhance rather than detract the experience. To say that it's a bit like The Truman Show - Peter Weir's film about the guy who doesn't realise that from birth his life's been one big reality TV show - is to say only that. The couple in The Adjustment Bureau - rising politician David Norris (Matt Damon) who bumps into and unexpectedly kisses dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) - have their lives dogged 'in the wings' by men in grey suits i.e. all lives in this world have been pre-programmed without happenstance. And it really is quite a 'Manhattan' film as much as many won't like to admit it. Without giving too much away, David tries defying the suits, fails, but then by riding the same bus he last left Elise on every day for 3 years he unexpectedly spots her. The suits are furious - particularly as David is hot political property and Elise is destined to marry a leading choreographer. Are there holes in this as a modern day sci-fi story? Well, not really if you consider it to be an allegory as director George Nolfi does successfully. Do we ever have free will? Must compromises in life be inevitable?

If you want something that's perhaps a little more realistically gritty but no less 'romantic' then I also caught up with the Sundance indie hit from some years ago Gigantic: it's hard to fault any of the elements of this film. Post Valentine's Day, and as much as we keep reminding ourselves that day is all just an advertising gimmick, there is hope for us hopeless romantics and that we don't just have to stick to being a cog in someone else's wheel.
I did venture the invite into some other darkened celluloid corners this week, much of which should remain nameless....The wondrous films of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul are all also about love, though. His latest Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (this year's Cannes Film Fest winner) plays Film Forum. Or try Syndromes and a Century.

Interesting news clipping from London:
Garrick Club in 'sexism' war of the century