jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess.

Around festival lobbies and parties, all over the blogosphere and on the cover of the New York Times magazine, the merits of Haynes’s Dylan picture are being debated hotly — including the question whether it can be said to be about Bob Dylan in the first place. Here’s my video from last week’s NYFF press conference, where Todd Haynes spoke to J. Hoberman. My review of I’m Not There is up on About.com. More NYFF video: Go Go Tales, The Darjeeling Limited. Coming soon: the Coen Brothers on No Country For Old Men and Brian De Palma on Redacted.

I took a break from the festival today to catch up with reviews. Here’s a quick rundown:

I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’s Dylan picture only truly takes off when a Dylan song is playing, and that should tell you something. Cate Blanchett is great fun, but I liked her even better in tonight’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. More on that soon — and I’ve got video of the press conference with Haynes, too.

Paranoid Park
I saw this strictly out of professional curiosity, and Gus van Sant did not disappoint: yet another artful bore.

The Man From London
Everybody seems to be digging out their favorite “on drugs” lines for this year’s NYFF, so here goes: The Third Man on Ambien.

Secret Sunshine
Once again, my festival favorite (at least so far) comes from South Korea. No distributor yet, but you can get Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis and Peppermint Candy on DVD.

I’m Not There. Todd Haynes, 2007. ***
Paranoid Park. Gus van Sant, 2007. *
The Man From London. Béla Tarr, 2007. ***
Milyang. Lee Chang-dong, 2007. *****

From highly enjoyable exercises in pop style (8 Women) to over-conceptualized constructs that left me completely cold (5×2), Francois Ozon’s films are hit-or-miss. Misgivings about his adaptation of the novel by Elizabeth Taylor arose the moment the snooty Berlin box office dude made fun of our choice of movie — was this really going to be “Rosamunde Pilcher hoch zehn,” a terrible melodrama that we hadn’t packed enough tissues for?

Yes and no. The story of Angel Deverell (Romola Garai), the precocious grocer’s daughter who transforms herself into a successful writer only to lose it all to love, war, and the unpredictable currents of taste is indeed what we used to call a Schmonzette, an overblown melodrama that should be the object of our ridicule, and that of ticket takers everywhere. Anybody with a hankering for rustling fabric, lavish sets, trembling bosoms and tragic turns of events is certainly welcome to enjoy Angel at face value.

But Ozon manages to keep a generally winking attitude even while he’s presenting a fully functional romantic epic. Through the use of rear-projection, a lush score, and especially Romola Garai’s finely tuned performance, Angel has its melodramatic cake and keeps its post-ironic distance, too. The movie itself very much resembles the preposterous stories with which Angel Deverell makes her fortune — and is thus also a target for the snide comments of smarter people within the movie. With the help of an editor’s wife played by Charlotte Rampling and grim painter Esmé (Michael Fassbender), Ozon provides sophisticated commentary on the film from within the film. As recreation of a (mostly) defunct genre, Angel feels less self-conscious than Todd Haynes’ faux-Sirk Far From Heaven; thanks to Romola Garai, it is also more engaging.

Angel does not have a U.S. release date yet.

Angel. Francois Ozon, 2007. ****

The trailer:

The sidebar is home to an automated list of items I highlight in my feed reader (which, in turn, is also available as a feed) — but some of them deserve their own post. Here’s a roundup of the more interesting bits I found around the web lately:

• Watch all of Todd Haynes’ outlawed Barbie doll spectacular Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story on Google Video. Bonus: Lukas Moodysson’s latest. [via Ray Pride]
• The Friday Mix Tape: when he’s not scienceing Mouth of the Beast recordings or haunting the Knitting Factory after midnight, my friend Dan Alford is blogging groovy compilations at Hidden Track. Get his mix of Herbie Hancock covers here.
• Terrence McKenna’s Ex-Library: in what sounds like a tragic Name of the Rose tie-in, Quizno’s lays waste to the treasure trove that was the late psychedelic visionary’s library. [via Gpod]
• Long Island Nazis on Metafilter
• On her blog, Nina Hagen supports Britney.
• RSS Geekout: for those of us who use news readers to digest the interwebs, there is now Yahoo! Pipes and xFruits for remixing RSS feeds. For example, you can now read muckworld on your cell phone.[via Lifehacker]
• Cahiers du Cinema is now available online, in English. Very handsome and full of David Lynch. [via David Hudson]
• Marcy’s vomit comes in third at the Debutante Ball’s favorite line contest.
• If you’re still reading and looking for something else to click, go vote on our Oscar poll.