The Last-Minute ND/NF 2010 Preview, Part 2: Hunting & Zn. to Norteado

Families take the center stage in the second part of our New Directors New Films preview. In the Netherlands, a couple comes undone thanks to a new arrival. In Italy, a concubine dares to wander outside a brood’s closed ranks. In Canada, mother and son make like a WWE production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And you don’t even want to know what they’re doing to each other in Greece. It’s a line-up so gripping that film fans won’t even be able to turn from the screen to tell that elderly couple behind them to shut up. Hit the linked titles for more goodies.

Read the first part of our New Directors/New Films preview.

Hunting & Zn. (Hunting & Sons)

Tako and Sandra oughta be poster children for the Netherlands good life. Successful in both work and in life, the childhood sweethearts are the envy of all their friends. Sandra’s pregnancy should be cause for further celebration. In Sander Burger’s domestic horror, however, the blessed event is the very thing that causes their bourgeois bliss to spectacularly deflate. Don’t stand too close to the canal!

Io sono l’amore (I Am Love)

Luca Guadagnino takes a few frames from Visconti in this fragrant family saga, garnished with plenty of love, Italian style. Tilda Swinton is the beautiful Russian odalisque who marries into a fashion dynasty. Her second-class spousal existence is upended when she falls for a humpy young chef. Problem is Swinton’s surging libido might bring down the rest of the clan with her.

The Great SXSW 2010 Preview Dump: Festival Favorites, Part 2

Is Sundance a little out of your price range, but a Greyhound bus ticket to Austin can be accommodated? Than Festival Favorites is the category for you. Here are the highlights of festivals gone have been cherry-picked … well, perhaps combine-harvested is closer to the truth. Still, all the way from Cannes comes the celebrated Kynodontas; there’s the hit Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s best-seller; and finally Last Train Home might make you a little more appreciative of the Austin bus terminal. Click on the titles for trailers where available.

Read our SXSW Headliners Preview.
Read the first part of our SXSW Spotlight Premieres preview.
Read the second part of our SXSW Spotlight Premieres preview.
Read our SXSW Narrative Features Competition preview.
Read our SXSW Documentary Features Competition preview.
Read the first part our SXSW Emerging Visions preview.
Read the second part our SXSW Emerging Visions preview.
Read our SXSW Lone Star States preview.
Read our SXSW 24 Beats Per Second preview.
Read our SXSW SW Global preview.
Read the first part of our SXSW Festival Favorites preview.

How to Fold a Flag

What happens when the war is over? With the impressive Iraqi war documentaries Gunner Palace and The Prisoner to their credit, Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein decided to find out. They follow four soldiers picking up the pieces after life on the firing line. Their post-war ambitions range from Jon Powers’ quest for a seat in Congress to achieving glory in the cage fighting ring.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Basquiat began his artistic life as “SAMO,” the graffiti philosopher of the 1980s New York downtown scene. He ended it with a needle in his arm, having alienated many of his friends and deciding that money was the only measure of artistic success. Music video director, Beastie Boy spouse and onetime Basquiat pal Tamra Davis tells the artistic poster boy’s story.

Rotterdam 2010 Preview: Spectrum Premieres

How best to define the Rotterdam Film Festival’s Spectrum sidebar? The site declares that it “brings together highlights of the film year, new work by prominent auteurs and topical, strong and innovative films by accomplished filmmakers.” So really, any old tat. This year’s assortment is particularly lively. As well as a prime cut of Dutch perversity, there are tactile love stories from Thailand, a pair of robust films from the Philippines, the return of Chris Petit, and an Austin-set horror flick. Sharp and sexy, the Spectrum is festival popcorn without tears.

Ang Mundo sa Panahon ng Bato (Stone is the Earth)

Last year the world got the first intimations that Filipino cinema was undergoing a kind of renaissance. Ramon Mes de Guzman moved to filmmaking after becoming a literary success with the short story collection Barriotic Punk. He follows up his festival hit The Road to Kalimugtong with the story of a rural family. A homecoming is followed by a discovery which threatens to undo them all.

Content

Writer/director Chris Petit’s 1980 debut Radio On was the kind of film it’s hard to live down. Shepherded by Wim Wenders, the mix of British road movie and rock ‘n’ roll is still a touchstone for cultists and psychogeographers alike (Petit is profiled in Iain Sinclair’s Lights Out for the Territory.) His latest promises more of the glorious same. Another journey is mediated by a new century and the zen of the stick shift.