A vast improvement on the absurd and heavy-handed sex romp Ma mère, Christophe Honoré’s Dans Paris nevertheless shares one point of mutual disgust: Louis Garrel, once again naked, whiny, and over-sexed. This is an actor I loathe, on a one-way ticket since The Dreamers to get laid as many times as he can. His father does make good movies though. So often debauched and depressed, the big surprise here is that he plays an energetic free spirit: boyish, affable, and quite content to tag along with Honore’s faux-New Wavy soufflé. Roman Duris is the older brother in the doldrums of a relationship meltdown; Garrel is the incorrigible bum student adept at chasing skirts. As the two siblings board down for the night, a whimsical Paris the backdrop to their toil and trouble, the film careens from one anomaly to the next: narration that breaks the fourth wall, a phone conversation-as-musical duet, lip-service to cinema old and new. None of which falls into the trap of being pretentious or outmoded, and is juggled by Honoré with dexterity and self-control. And while Garrel gets to bed-sit with some lovely girls, it’s Duris whose turn it is to play the miserable mope. Without overstatement or hysterics, his performance is a sombre and sincere wade through depression that offsets many of the film’s brasher moments, especially a fine scene where he discusses the origins of sadness with one of Garrel’s neglected female friends. It’s all rather innocuous in the end though – impulsive filmmaking that never fails to be fun – invigorated by a lively soundtrack that skips effortlessly from Kim Wilde to excellent Canadian band Metric, fittingly gift-wrapped in the Michel Legrand-esque freestylings of Alex Beaupain’s jazz score.—Tim Wong

“If Infamous is a different interpretation, it is a queerer one: a campier rendition of Capote, more irresistibly the life of parties, more likely to be mistaken for a woman. Gleefully, all those Breakfast at Tiffany’s-inspired apartment soirees feature more prominently this time around in a film that revels in the author’s social magnetism. A persistent name-dropper, it’s also fitting that Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini, and Hope Davis get to form his haute circle of girlfriends in a world of cribbed gossip and embellished Hollywood tales that travel (and morph) as quickly from Brando to Sinatra to Bogey,” writes TIM WONG....[Read More]

One of thirty films on offer at this year’s World Cinema Showcase, Douglas McGrath’s Infamous grafts the tragic murders and birth of a literary masterpiece first detailed in Capote. The film’s second sight is curious, if not unavoidably bound to Bennett Miller’s earlier version of events. The entrée to the main course, the WCS is welcomed every Autumn; an unofficial opening to the film festival season, it curates accessible features, foreign imports and documentaries that either missed the boat the previous year, are premiering as teasers, or are returning by popular demand. Our coverage will continue over on The Festival Reader informally over the coming months. For festival venues and dates, view the Showcase media release, its full lineup of films, or worldcinemashowcase.co.nz for pending programme details.

A curious second interpretation of author Truman Capote’s making of In Cold Blood, Douglas McGrath’s Infamous revisits the tragic murders and birth of a literary masterpiece first detailed in Capote. It is one of thirty films presented at this year’s World Cinema Showcase in March and April. TIM WONG reviews.

Media Release | January 2007
The New Zealand Film Festival Trust is pleased to brighten up your autumn movie-going options with the ninth annual World Cinema Showcase. Like a miniature version of the winter event the Showcase premieres a selection of fresh, stimulating, and provocative films from around the world and provides exposure for some exceptional films and filmmakers who aren’t assured of a release in New Zealand.

For more information on the following titles + festival venues, times and dates, visit worldcinemashowcase.co.nz.

A roundup of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind; Oliver Twist, Offside, China Blue.

While Borat ultimately stole the thunder from all, 2006 remained a sombre year on reflection, both in mainstream mediocrity and an ever darkening world view. Everthing from fast food to global warming to deteriorating human relations got a look in, while moral tales in two 9/11 exorcisms and our own mass murder reconstruction in Out of the Blue stood as either moving tributes or grotesque exhumations, depending on your point of view. Lumière’s list making for the year in review mirrored some of these trends, while retaining an undying enthusiasm for film of all other levels. What’s certain is that for every bad movie, there’s a good one waiting in the wings. Sometimes, they take an eternity to reach New Zealand (as indicated in some of our best-of lists). And yet when they’re of the calibre of A History of Violence, they’re more than worth the wait.

Compiling two alternate lists this year, TIM WONG sought the The Best Movie Posters of 2006, and pre-Oscars, picked Ten Actors and Filmmakers deserving of their own gilded awards. The editors and select contributors put forward their Top Ten lists for Lumière’s annual Year in Review: Best of Film, while slightly off the beaten track (as in on The Arts Etc. Reader), SIMON SWEETMAN and BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM collated each their Ten Best Albums of 2006.

Graham Linehan/UK/2006; R4
Roadshow, $29.95 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

THE THING YOU’LL probably hear most about this show is that it was created/written by Graham Linehan (creator of Father Ted and Black Books) and produced by Ash Atalla (who produced The Office). It’s an easy way to sell The IT Crowd, reference three of the best comedy shows of the last decade and you’re guaranteed to get comedic gold. Right? Well if you can put aside the expectations, and a rather mediocre first episode, this is a very funny show. This is more in tone to Black Books than The Office, also relying on a kooky triumvirate of characters, surreal situations and stock set-up. Also Chris O’Dowd, who plays Roy, sounds exactly (and I mean exactly) like Dylan Moran.

Weather permitting, Twilight Cinema launch their Summer season of free outdoor movie screenings with pastiche high school musical Grease. Watch Danny and Sandy swoon on a big inflatable screen Friday, January 26 @ Waitangi Park, Wellington Waterfront, Wellington. Pre-show entertainment from 8pm; film commences at 9pm. The first in a series of free outdoor screenings around New Zealand.

AMENDMENT: Organisers have informed us that the following is a one-off free preview screening of a *ticketed* series of outdoor cinema screenings in Wellington, West Coast, and Christchurch.

Jacques Rivette/France/2003; R4
Accent/RS, $24.95 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

FRENCH New Wave director Jacque Rivette and Emmanuelle Beart collaborated on one of the great films of the 1990s, La Belle Noiseuse. In The Story of Marie and Julien, they re-unite, and create a film that will cause the purists to sit back and consider for days what went on, and cause the casual viewer frustration and annoyance.

Reviewed by Tim Wong

IGNORING for a moment the tedium of Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga’s insistence on doing things in threes, Babel is a bold, throbbing minor miracle, and their strongest work as a collaboration to date. Removed from the frizzle of Amores Perros and the hysteria of 21 Grams, this intercontinental triptych bursts forth with a towering energy, replete with loud, tactile imagery and a nerve-wracking precariousness. The director/writer duo take their fascination with grand human tragedy and globalise it, mastering the scale of consequence between the film’s quartet of colliding stories, each intimate, unflinching, at times crushing. Its macro-narrative is also something to behold, densely populated with Big Themes and topical waypoints: rich white tourists gallivanting naively in the Middle East; the hyper-connectivity of technology as an alienating force; the spectre of George W. Bush’s proposed 700-mile fence between Mexico and the US. Not only does Babel cross that border several times, leaving its characters stranded and at the mercy of a harsh immigration policy, but it ushers in a new insurgence of Mexican filmmakers to the mainstream.

If 2006 was the year global warming imposed itself as a threat to life on earth, 2007 does not bode well. For New Zealanders, there are already signs: an appallingly sodden holiday period to date has seen a grey Christmas and an even greyer New Year, enough miserly weather to speculatively point the finger at impending climate change (although you could say we’re experiencing global cooling more than anything). In this Summer of discontent, movies provide one of the few escapes from the gloom. Whereas this time last year we were bludgeoned by Kong, Kong, Narnia and Kong, the choices twelve months on are far more neutral and palatable: Babel, The Queen and The Prestige all agreeably grace the box office at a time when we’d otherwise be tanned and outdoors. Of course, in the spirit of the darkened cumulus overhead, you can also catch the latest Saw sequel. Some things never change.

Matt Lucas, David Walliams/UK/2006; R4 (Ltd Ed)
Roadshow, $29.95 | Reviewed by Brannavan Gnanalingam

A COUPLE OF decades ago Monty Python embarked on a live tour and realised once you’ve made a popular TV skit show, it’s a lot easier to sell out a tour. Little Britain creators Matt Lucas and David Walliams started off their comedy performing skits live – their first performance was to approximately eight people (reports on numbers vary), and their show had to be delayed so half the audience could watch Eastenders first. But suddenly their TV show took off, and now they’re estimating nearly a million people will have seen them live on a mammoth two hundred show tour. Little Britain Live is a recording of their show at Blackpool performed in May 2006.