45th New York Film Festival!

[samsong]

after i saw that no one gave a shit i decided not to post anymore about the festival but i loved Syndromes and a Century, too.  it had me from the very first frame.  weerasethakul is becoming one of my very favorite filmmakers, based on this and Tropical Malady.  they're like good friends and the kind of quiet, transcendent masterpieces that don't get made very often.   as much as i loved Syndromes, though, INLAND EMPIRE was my favorite of the festival.

[squints]

did you (or anyone) see Paprika?

[modage]

The 45th New York Film Festival
September 28 – October 14, 2007

The 45th New York Film Festival will premiere 28 films when it runs September 28 - October 14 at the Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. The festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and sponsored by Sardinia Region Tourism and The New York Times, also features three unique sidebars, three special event screenings and five retrospective films.

Opening Night
This year's festival opens on Friday, September 28 with Wes Anderson's new film, The Darjeeling Limited. Featuring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, the films follows three brothers as they re-forge family bonds on a train ride across India. Anjelica Huston is also featured in the Fox Searchlight release, co-written by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Schwartzman.

Centerpiece
On Saturday, October 6, Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men will be honored as the festival's Centerpiece. Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy and adapted by the Coens, the film is a mesmerizing thriller about the violent chain reaction that follows a hunter's discovery of several dead bodies, a major stash of heroin and $2 million in cash. Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson and Kelly MacDonald star.

Closing Night
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis has been selected as the festival's Closing Night film. The animated coming-of-age story, based on Satrapi's popular graphic novel about her own childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, won a Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It features the voice talents of Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Danielle Darrieux and Simon Abkarian, several of whom are expected to attend the festival's Closing Night screening at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday, Oct. 14. Sony Pictures Classics is releasing the film.

American Titles
The festival's Opening Night and Centerpiece selections headline a strong American contingent in the 2007 slate. Noah Baumbach, Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Sidney Lumet all return to the festival with American productions; Julian Schnabel and Abel Ferrara come back with international co-productions; and Brian De Palma, John Landis and Ira Sachs each make their festival debuts.

Baumbach will screen his follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, the very funny and very true Margot at the Wedding. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh star as contentious sisters thrown into a disastrous family weekend caused by Pauline's (Leigh) engagement to the underwhelming Malcolm (Jack Black). Scott Rudin produces the film, a Paramount Vantage release.

Van Sant's Paranoid Park, based on the novel by Blake Nelson, details the unraveling of a skateboarder's life after he is involved in the death of a security guard. Newcomer Alex Nevins stars in the film, for which Van Sant won Cannes' special 60th Anniversary Prize. IFC First Take will release the film.

The other American titles include Haynes' I'm Not There — a rumination on the life of Bob Dylan, with actors Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Wishaw and Marcus Carl Frankin each representing elements the famed musician's mystique — De Palma's trenchant vision of the Iraq war, Redacted, and Ira Sachs' taut melodrama Married Life. Lumet returns to the New York Film Festival for the first time in 43 years (Fail-Safe, 1964) with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, a crime story starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei. Two documentaries — Landis' Mr. Warmth, The Don Rickles Project and Ed Pincus and Lucia Small's The Axe in the Attic — round out the festival's new U.S. productions.

International Titles
The 45th New York Film Festival honors worldwide film production with more than half of its slate taken from other countries. Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the story of magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, paralyzed by a stroke, blinks out a memoir that eloquently captures his vibrant interior life. Mathieu Amalric stars as Bauby in the Miramax release, which won Cannes' Best Director award and Technical Grand Prize.

Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona will screen his feature film debut The Orphanage, a supernatural drama about a woman who re-opens the orphanage in which she was raised, only to discover terrible secrets as her seven-year-old son, Simón, begins making imaginary friends. The Picturehouse release is presented and produced by last year's Closing Night director Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth).

Among the other international titles in the festival are Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, which shared with Persepolis the Jury Prize at Cannes; Abel Ferrara's Italy/U.S. co-production Go Go Tales; Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress; Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut In Two; Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight of the Red Balloon; Eric Rohmer's The Romance of Astrea and Celadon; Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra; Béla Tarr's The Man from London; and Jia Zhang-ke's documentary Useless; Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu; and Lee Chang-dong's Korean feature, Secret Sunshine, which stars Cannes' Best Actress prize recipient, Jeon Do-yeon.

Retrospectives
Five films will be featured as special retrospectives of the 45th New York Film Festival: the long-awaited "definitive cut" of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, honoring the landmark science fiction film's 25th anniversary; the premiere of a new score by the Alloy Orchestra to accompany Josef von Sternberg's 1927 film Underworld, winner of the Best Writing Oscar® at the first Academy Awards®; John Ford's first major film The Iron Horse (1924), a massive production about the building of the transcontinental railroad; Sven Gade and Heinz Schall's 1920 German production of Hamlet, starring actress Asta Nielsen in the title role; and an evening titled "The Technicolor Show", introduced by Martin Scorsese and featuring John Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven (1945).

Music Documentaries
The Walter Reade Theater will also host three upcoming music documentaries as part of the New York Film Festival's special events. We will screen Carlos Saura's Fados, an exploration of the celebrated Portuguese musical style. Acclaimed rock documentarian Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963-1965 features footage of Bob Dylan's infamous Newport performances, where the musician first used electric amplifiers. Peter Bogdanovich will complete the set with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Runnin' Down a Dream, an in-depth look at the legendary American rock band to be screened at its full 238 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.

[Astrostic]

I got tickets for:

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Man From London
I'm Not There
No Country For Old Men
Flight of the Red Balloon

is anyone else going? I went last year and saw INLAND EMPIRE, Syndromes and a Century, and The Host.  it was a blast.  such a good line up this year that I'll have to come down from Boston two weekends instead of one.

[modage]

i ordered tix for

The Darjeeling Limited
No Country For Old Men
I'm Not There
Margot At The Wedding
Paranoid Park
talk with Wes Anderson

hopefully i will get them all.  how did you get yours?

[Astrostic]

I faxed them the order form and saw yesterday that they charged my credit card for the total amount that I asked for. 

[modage]

i should've faxed mine.  i sent it us mail on monday.  no bank activity yet.

[JG]

I can wait a week or whatever for Darjeeling, but I really want to see No Country... and I'm Not There.  SO MUCH.   

[samsong]

haven't gotten a confirmation from my friend but i ordered tickets for

I'm Not There
Leave Her to Heaven
Underworld
The Man From London
Secret Sunshine
The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
Fados

tried to go mostly with films by directors i love (ie rohmer, saura) without distributors.  the others i can wait for/try to get student rush tickets.

[grand theft sparrow]

So how early should I get there to try for student rush tickets?

[modage]

wow so this is the first year i haven't gotten all the tickets i requested but i guess it's also the first year i tried to get tickets to more than two films and some of them were the Opening/Centerpiece which i've never attempted before.  anyway, i didn't get tickets to I'm Not There, Margot At The Wedding, or No Country For Old Men. 

i can deal with I'm Not There since i ended up seeing the screener but i really want to see No Country and Margot.  i'm thinking about trying standby but i've never done it before and don't know how successful that would be.  does anybody happen to have an extra ticket to either of those or know a way i might procure one?   

[Astrostic]

a friend of mine who was only going to see I'm Not There cancelled, but I gave her ticket to another friend a couple of days ago.  I'll let you know, though, if this new guy can't come.

[modage]

thanks but i don't actually need the I'm Not There ticket because i ended up watching a screener.  if you hear anything about No Country or Margot definitely let me know.  i could let go of a Paranoid Park ticket for sure in a trade too.

[samsong]

i got everything i wanted. 

[grand theft sparrow]

Since almost everything else that struck my interest has a release date, I only bought for Flight of the Red Balloon and I got it.  I may rush for Paranoid Park but that brings up the old question:

So how early should I get there to try for student rush tickets?