Since 1963, the New York Film Festival has remained a quaintly stubborn institution tucked away in (now fully renovated!) Alice Tully Hall. Its mission from the very beginning, in the oft-sighed-over days when Richard Roud ran the show, was simple: screen roughly 25 features handpicked by a distinguished panel. Let’s be clear, these people do Read More
“It’s like prom night didn’t happen this year,” said documentarian Aviva Kempner (Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg) on Friday, September 25, standing in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall, where the New York Film Festival was celebrating its opening night. She was disappointed at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s decision to move the party from its Read More
On Saturday, Oct. 4, the paparazzi were in full blitzkrieg blast outside the Ziegfeld Theatre for the premiere centerpiece of the New York Film Festival, Changeling. Director Clint Eastwood, tall and ever-elegant in a dark suit and blue-printed tie, posed with his film’s star, Angelina Jolie—glam and sultry, and apparently back to pre-twins shape in Read More
Security was nutty this morning (bag searches and wands?) up at the Walter Reade Theater for the first American screening of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling. Based on a true story, the film is about Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother who returns home from work in 1928 only to discover her son has Read More
Ever since Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and inspired one of those famed late-night bidding wars in Toronto, everyone has been all aflutter to see the film. It’s due to close the 46th New York Film Festival on October 12th (and released by Fox Searchlight in Read More
The 46th New York Film Festival officially opens tonight with The Class (reviewed this week by Andrew Sarris), but soggy members of the press and industry showed up this morning for a screening of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. The film is all about a thirty-year-old woman named Poppy, an irrepressible schoolteacher in the north Read More
The Hollywood Reporter brings us the following tidbit on the 2009 New York Film Festival (not to jump the gun or anything, considering the 2008 New York Film Festival starts in just two weeks): Next year’s festival will focus on China, marking "the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China with a Read More
Late last night in the front room of O’Neals Restaurant at West 64th Street and Broadway, director Ira Sachs was explaining the importance of the New York Film Festival.
“A commitment to cinema—over a long period of time—as an art form,” the 42-year-old director said, was the hallmark of the festival, which for the first Read More
There are good movies, bad movies, honorable failures, good movies that indifferent audiences turn into flops and bad movies that smart publicists and ham actors turn into hits with bookings on Jay Leno. I usually welcome them all. But if there is one kind of movie I Read More
Forget the end of Labor Day weekend, Fashion Week, or the return of corduroy, tweed, and the TV network’s fall schedule: When the bright lights are festooned across the outdoor patio at Tavern on the Green this Friday night for the opening of the 45th New York Film Festival, autumn will have officially arrived. In Read More
