Certified Copy: Kiarostami and the Real Thing
FLATLAND IS A 19TH CENTURY inter-dimensional head-trip, still popular with math and computer geeks, a fantasy of a two-dimensional being whose mind is blown by his encounters with other dimensions. (Among other things, he discovers that the elite of his own world knew about the existence of a third-dimension, but hid that knowledge from the masses.) The novel was a favorite of C. S. Lewis, who used it to communicate paradoxes of art and spirituality. The Trinity, for example,... Read More
The greatest movies Americans only wish they could watch
I’m beginning to wonder: How many cinematic masterpieces will I miss in my lifetime because nobody has bothered to make them available in America? This question is on my mind because I’ve just watched my imported blu-ray of Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy a fourth time, and my review will go up tomorrow at Image. It’s probably my favorite film of the last five or six years. But what good will a review do for readers in the U.S.? They only way they can... Read More
Is Kiarostami directing Binoche?
A year ago, there were reports that Summer Hours star Juliette Binoche was continuing her quest to work with all of the world’s great directors, and the name Abbas Kiarostami came up. But then things got quiet, and buzz is building for Kiarostami’s new Binoche-free movie Shirin. Recently, the reports started up again, and now the project — reportedly titled Certified Copy —seems to be gathering momentum. You can see some photographs of the happy couple and information... Read More
Kiarostami’s Shirin at Hong Kong fest
David Bordwell has seen Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and reports that it’s unlike anything he’s seen before. And if it’s an April Fool’s joke, it’s elaborate, subtle, and well worth falling for. I’m falling for it, anyway… After a credit sequence presenting the classic tale Khosrow and Shirin in a swift series of drawings, the film severs sound from image. What we hear over the next 85... Read More
Quixotic Visions
Don Quixote – now there’s a loaded character for a filmmaker to take up. Whether Spanish director Albert Serra is a genuine man of vision or a tilter at windmills, credit him at least for the wit and self-understanding to choose the Man from LaMancha as his breakthrough feature subject. Of course, as soon as viewers realize that Serra’s Honor of the Knights (Honor de cavalleria, 2006) sets this beloved character adrift without the familiar narrative — or any narrative... Read More
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