Post Cannes 2011/Onward

Well, that was amazing. Cannes 2011 happened in the blink of an eye, vibrant flashes of cinema heaven that will keep me on an epic high for weeks. I met a lot of great people and look forward to developing those relationships over the course of many Cannes years to come. Collecting my thoughts and sanity during this massive withdrawal will be a slow process, and I may post some pictures as June progresses to remind myself the experience actually happened. The end tally for those interested parties – 38 feature films total, full reviews of which you can find here at The House Next Door (Day 1 – 12). Also, I’m starting a new gig at SanDiego.com, a cool local outlet that’s actually paying me for my services. I’ll be doing essays (in some form or another) on Comic-Con and The Los Angeles Film Festival, not to mention reviews of some wide releases, so stay tuned. Thanks to everyone who supported my Cannes trip and read my dispatches. Without you guys I’d be talking to myself.

Links Galore

The House Next Door
SDAFF 2010 #1: Intro/Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
SDAFF 2010 #2: Macho Like Me/Bodyguards and Assassins/ Alien vs. Ninja
SDAFF 2010 #3: City of Life and Death/71: Into the Fire
SDAFF 2010 #4: House of Suh/Tibet in Song

Slant Magazine
Seven Samurai (Blu)
Jolene
Red Hill
Smash His Camera (DVD)
Searchers 2.0 (DVD)

InRO
The American

– Thoughts to come on Uncle Boonmee, Winter’s Bone, and Certified Copy before I embark on my journey up to the AFI Film Festival. Thanks for being patient.

New Focus: RETROSPECTIVES

With the light-speed expansion of Gone Cinema Poaching, where I’ll be covering mostly new films and filmmakers, Match Cuts will primarily shift to focus on glaring gaps in my cinematic foundation. Over the coming months I will be watching and writing on films by specific filmmakers I’ve unforgivably ignored over the course of my 28 years on this Earth.

This will be an expansive project, covering 10+ films per auteur (depending on availability) in order to immerse myself in these particular cinematic worlds. Already queued up: Kenji Mizoguchi, Jacques Tournuer, Edward Yang, Pedro Costa, Douglas Sirk, Moshen Maklmalbaf, Tsai Ming-liang, Hong Sang-soo, and Frank Tashlin. But first, one of the masters of Polish cinema – Jerzy Skolimowski. My experience with Skolimowski begins and ends with his great turn in Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, so basically I’m starting from scratch. Wish me luck.

Gone Poaching for Wild Things

In what will be a regular gig over at Chazz Lyon’s excellent new blog Gone Cinema Poaching, I will be contributing weekly reviews of new films and the occasional long essay on various topics. It’s an exciting opportunity for me to branch out and explore new avenues of this fascinating business, so I’m looking forward to the increased workload. Not wasting any time, Chazz has already posted my first assignment, Spike Jonze’s fascinating and problematic Where the Wild Things Are, which you can find here.

I will continue to post on Match Cuts as always, with a plethora of new material in the coming weeks like posts on The Informant!, Eden Lake, the Korean gangster film Breathless, and A Serious Man, not to mention the continuing Best of the Decade Project. So here we go…

Seattle Here I Come…

The next five days will find Match Cuts exploring the grand North West, Seattle, WA in particular. When I return, tales of the epic mountain ranges, crisp cityscapes, and Scarecrow Video will be told. I leave you with the above image, a stunning still from the opening sequence of Alan J. Pakula’s still-mesmerizing conspiracy film The Parallax View, a doosy set on the top of the Space Needle. I’ll let you know if I get embroiled in any intrigue a long the way.

An Epic Project…

…is in the works. I’ll be unveiling this joint venture in the next few weeks, as soon as the final touches have been ironed out. In the meantime, I’ll have some more thoughts on Inglorious Basterds, which I just saw for the second time today and think is most certainly the best American film of 2009. Only Spike Jonze has a chance to top it.

-GH

Update

A slew of ridiculously busy days, including attending a wedding with my lovely lady, and an epic Labor Day weekend of work and research at the Del Mar Racetrack has left me considerably lacking in the movie department. However, come Wed., I’ll be back to full throttle, checking out a number of new films, including Monte Walsh, Sin Nombre, Duplicity, District 9, Martel X 2 (The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman), and for me the long anticipated debut from Steve McQueen, Hunger. Can’t wait.