Parallax View

DVD/Blu-ray: Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Certified Copy’

Sean Axmaker — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:18:11 +0000

The Certified Copy (Criterion) of Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s first European production refers to artworks – Why do we value a reproduction less than an original and what does authenticity even mean? – but resonates just as effectively with the art of filmmaking and its relationship to reproduction and recreation. “It’s our perception that gives it [...]

Still Life: ‘Robin and Marian’

Kathleen Murphy — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:22:07 +0000

[Originally published in Movietone News 49, April 1976] Ripeness has gone to rot with a vengeance in Richard Lester’s latest film. In some wasteland out at the edge of the world (patently not a holy land) a one-eyed old man and some women and children hide out in a cracked, ungarrisoned castle and do not [...]

SIFFing: Parallax View’s SIFF 2012 Guide

Editor — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:41:46 +0000

The 38th Annual Seattle International Film Festival opened on Thursday, May 17, with a screening of Lynn Shelton’s locally-produced My Sister’s Sister, and runs 25 days through Sunday, June 12. Here is Parallax View’s coverage and guide to SIFF resources. SIFF Week by Week: SIFF Highlights – Tuesday, May 22 (Seattle Times) SIFF Highlights – [...]

Good ‘Samaritan’

Kathleen Murphy — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:12:10 +0000

Like most casualties of Noirland, Foley (Samuel L. Jackson) is pretty much DOA from the get-go. Haunted by the moment he put a bullet into his grifter partner’s head, he gets out of jail after a 25-year stretch to find his world mostly emptied of old friends, lovers, fellow thieves. Foley walks heavy, age and [...]

The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for week of May 18

Editor — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:03:46 +0000

The only links page that matters… except for all the others. Seattle screenings and cinema events are surveyed at Parallax View here, with a focus on SIFF 2012. Whatever the financial tally when all’s said and done, the contributors to this year’s For the Love of Film blogathon have simply provided too many riches on [...]

Seattle Screens: All SIFF 2012, All the Time (or so it seems)

Sean Axmaker — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:13:16 +0000

While The Dictator and Battleship compete for multiplex audiences, the usually robust Seattle film scene has otherwise given a wide berth to the annual event that devours all. Yes, SIFF 2012 has begun. Opening night celebrates local filmmaker Lynn Shelton’s latest, My Sister’s Sister, and by extension an impressive line-up of Washington State-born films. From [...]

Notes on Abel Gance’s ‘Napoleon’

Sean Axmaker — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:41:59 +0000

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III, which runs from Sunday, May 13 through Friday, May 18, 2012, is dedicated to helping the National Film Preservation Foundation raise money to score and stream the recently unearthed reels of The White Shadow, a silent film from director Graham Cutts that young Alfred Hitchcock worked [...]

DVD: ‘The Buccaneer’

Sean Axmaker — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:38:16 +0000

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Buccaneer is a pirate movie by way of a grand historical adventure a la DeMille. Based loosely on the true story of the French-born “privateer” Jean Lafitte (he preferred the term to pirate), who fought side-by-side with General Andrew Jackson against the British in the War of 1812, it stars Fredric March as [...]

DVD/Blu-ray: Mario Monicelli’s ‘The Organizer’

Sean Axmaker — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:21:14 +0000

Mario Monicelli, one of the most prolific and popular directors of post-war Italian cinema, never earned a reputation in the U.S. like his compadre, Federico Fellini, despite the international success of numerous films, from Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) to A Very Petit Bourgeois (1977). Perhaps it’s because his preferred genre was comedy, notably the commedia all’italiana, a mix [...]

Restoring the Lost ‘Metropolis’

Sean Axmaker — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:22:48 +0000