29th Five Films, 2007

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Quiet City (Aaron Katz) at the IFC Center for a Stylus review. In the near future I'll be contributing blurbs for a couple of collaborative features and hopefully reviewing a slew of things for the New York Film Festival, pending press accreditation.
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The Artist and the Computer at MoMA.
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Automatic Updates: Shorts at MoMA. The Miranda July piece ("Nest of Tens") had some interesting moments but was not ultimately any sort of revelation.
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LOL (Joe Swanberg) at the IFC Center. There was some good discussion afterward, particularly from the guys who had seemingly come in with almost no experience watching these kinds of films. It's at once knowing and pretty depressing about guys unable to relate in a human(e) way to the women in their lives due to an obsession with technology and mediated experiences. Hannah Takes the Stairs is probably my favorite of his movies, though Young American Bodies has its charms.
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The French Connection (William Friedkin) at Film Forum. I was disappointed Roy Scheider didn't have more of a role, but Gene Hackman was great, particularly in the subway hopping scene with Fernando Del Rey. The print shown had sound levels that fluctuated from reel to reel, but it looked decent. I loved the car/train chase and the scene in which the hunted car is disassembled, reassembled, then returned. Maybe not totally first-rate but still a lot of fun.
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