Cinema Arts Society

A new org dedicated to pure cinematic experience launches in Houston this week - the Houston Cinema Arts Society. The group's inaugural events include a show with Alex Rivera tonight at the Aurora Picture Show at 7 pm. Rivera, video artist and filmmaker, will discuss and present works from 1995-2006, that preceded his first feature film Sleep Dealer. Rivera will screen Papapapá, Dia de La Independencia, Braceros, Cybraceros and The Borders Trilogy.
This weekend the HACS presents digital artist Lynn Hershman who will present two programs at the MFA, Houston, Saturday night at 7 and Sunday afternoon at 2.
The Sunday afternoon program will explore the roots of Hershman Leeson’s current new media work with viewings of her early video and performance art. Saturday evening's show will screen rare archival film and video footage chronicling the feminist art movement in the United States from 1968 to the present.

I've Loved You So Long

Some films are like a force of nature, driven by a gale of acting that literally blows you over. Kristin Scott Thomas knocks you down with the strength of her performance that anchors I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime). This is Thomas' second appearance in a French film that American audiences have seen this year. She also plays a supporting role in the well reviewed thriller Tell No One. (The latter film is one of the year's best and has been playing in Houston for months. It was at the Angelika most of the summer and last night I noticed it playing at the AMC Studio 30.)
I've Loved You So Long measures its appeal solely in terms of how you cotton to Thomas' brooding and powerful turn as a woman with a secret. This is a one-performance film in the sense that the film and all the characters revolve around revealing, layer by layer, how and why Juliette Fontaine (Thomas) got to her present state. This is a film that actors like because it's a virtual how-to manual in letting nuances of behavior slowly reveal the depth of a person. Notably this film and two others released by Sony Pictures Classics spotlight a trio of great female performances including Thomas, Melissa Leo (Frozen River), and Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married).
I've Loved You seems detached from the other characters who react with various degrees to Juliette's reintroduction to society. First we learn that Juliette has just completed a long prison sentence as she moves in with her sister and her sister's husband and small child. There's a spiral of revelations that are best viewed fresh rather than spilled here. I've Loved You So Long never wavers in its serious tone nor sugarcoats its character's fragile shells. Be assured it's French to the point of a big dinner scene where one drunken lout compares Juliette to a mysterious figure in a lovelorn French film. The introspection on display is deep and when you let the film punch its buttons the grief is real.

Fear(s) of the Dark

Peur(s) du noir or Fear(s) in the Dark plays with your imagination in a scary manner. A French animated omnibus of stories from noted Euro artists thrust the audiences in the a nightmarish world where spiders crawl on the legs of little girls and dogs eat their owners.
Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard McGuire are the artists and cartoonists that lend their bleak visions to animation. A couple of segments are interspersed throughout while other stories are told straight through.
With such downbeat themes and material the film stretches its credulity by being animated. Perhaps a live action account of the suffering on display would give it resonance with art house type crowds, as it is Fear(s) of the Dark will be readily embraced by graphic artists and misunderstood by the world at large.

Century of Hollywood Costume Design

The title states Dressed: A Century of Costume Design. You can believe this expansive book covers the entire history of film as you glance through page after page, picture after drawing of famous actors in the clothes that made them famous. Starting with silent stars like Mary Pickford and covering each decade in cinema to the present this book by Deborah Nadoolman Landis spotlights the various and in most cases anonymous costume designers responsible for looks that subsequently changed their era's fashion.
Published by Collins Design the book has copious references and notes, an introduction by Anjelica Huston and runs over 560 pages. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will host as Landis presents a lecture based on her book, followed by a reception tonight starting at 6:30 at the Brown Auditorium Theater.
Landis herself has amazing credits including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Coming to America, Animal House and The Blues Brothers. Landis is married to director John Landis. She will also introduce a screening of Coming to America on Friday at 7 pm. Coming to America gave Landis the chance to design clothes that epitomized late 80s fashions along with creating African royal regalia, plus it features Eddie Murphey in his prime. Landis's costume design was nominated for an Academy Award for this film.
Landis crowned John Belushi with his laurel wreath in Animal House and designed the fedora for Indiana Jones. Her examples of influential clothing bring home the fact of how we all strive to copy in some small way the look of our celluloid fantasies.

Docs to Watch

The following non-fiction films are in contention for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. These 15 films will be whittled down to five that will be chosen for the final nominees.

“At the Death House Door”
“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)”
“Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh”
“Encounters at the End of the World”
“Fuel”
“The Garden”
“Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts”
“I.O.U.S.A.”
“In a Dream”
“Made in America”
“Man on Wire”
“Pray the Devil Back to Hell”
“Standard Operating Procedure”
“They Killed Sister Dorothy”
“Trouble the Water”

I've personally seen six of the titles and have strong feeling for Man on Wire to emerge as a frontrunner.