By Rex Reed 12/14/11 9:28am

movies

From left: Reilly, Foster, Waltz and Winslet.

Award-Winning Play God of Carnage Grows Up On Screen

Roman Polanski’s Carnage, a brisk, 79-minute adaptation of the wildly successful play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, is a case of the right film by the wrong director. This one-set, four-character theater piece that kept audiences in stitches for long runs in London, Paris and on Broadway, is a giddy war of words and modern manners between a quartet of highly sophisticated, unspeakably duplicitous New Yorkers who thrust and parry on the front lines of the domestic battlefield to see who can draw more blood with the sharpest teeth and most insincere smile. It’s a slight but highly entertaining little morsel that leaves you laughing and thinking about how rotten apples never fall far from the tree, and it needs a director who knows how to move four people nimbly through a single living room in Brooklyn without claustrophobia. Mr. Polanski is a gimlet-eyed master craftsman, but comedy is not his forte. Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 9/15/11 1:55pm

fall arts preview

Polanski. (Photo: Miguel Medina / AFP / Getty Images)

The New York Film Festival Nears 50

The first New York Film Festival, in 1963, featured Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water, the then-30-year-old director’s Polish-language feature debut. “Film Fete Places Accent on Youth”, The New York Times headline read. Mr. Polanski was joined by established directors like Alain Resnais, with Muriel, and lesser-known names like Glauber Rocha, with Barravento, his feature debut at the fest.

That inaugural festival ran from Sept. 10 to Sept. 19, and the Sept. 20 cover of Time featured two of the actors from Knife in the Water, with the headline “Cinema as an International Art.” Two American directors were featured at that inaugural festival: Alex Segal, who had previously worked almost entirely in television, and Adolfas Mekas, with his debut feature, Hallelujah the Hills. The festival’s official program depicted a film canister covered in shipping labels and addressed to Lincoln Center – its international origin obscure. Read More

By Dan Duray 5/17/10 12:02pm

Eye Opener: Monserrate on the Prowl

The fairytale romance of Hiram Monserrate and Karla Giraldo ends. [NYP] 

Syracuse students didn’t really get naked to protest Jamie Dimon. [NYP]

Uncharted frontiers of fatty meat: sheep-pig bacon. [NYDN]

Analyzing NBC’s leaked fall lineup. [BI]

Gramercy Park showdown! [WSJ] 

David Carr meta-protests online headlines. Read More