INDEPENDENT FILM FOR INDEPENDENT MINDS

Three very different films make it onto my hit list this week; prepare to be charmed, exhausted, and amused by an eclectic group of films from Germany, America and England.

Rialto Channel’s Director’s Series this September features the work of David Lynch, and to get you into the mood Rialto is also playing a documentary about the director, simply titled Lynch (Thursday 6^th September, 8.30pm).

This week Naomi Watts and Sean Penn amp up the intensity in Fair Game (Saturday 8^th September, 8.30pm), a political thriller based on the true story of CIA agent Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson.

Following on from last week’s blog celebrating the work of Tony Scott, I came across an interesting interview with Quentin Tarantino who attended a double screening of Scott’s True Romance and Domino at the LA Film School in Hollywood last week.

Over recent weeks I’ve seen a number of films centered on political issues from the 60s and 70s. The Sapphires was an uplifting and amusing true story about an Aboriginal girl group who performed to troops in Vietnam during the war, and When I Rise and Sing Your Song were both moving documentaries about various artists’ participation in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Hollywood is this week reeling over the sad news of film director Tony Scott’s death. The 68-year-old brother and business partner of director Sir Ridley Scott threw himself of the Vincent Thomas Bridge spanning the Los Angeles Harbour in San Pedro on Tuesday in an apparent suicide.

Another Year is another stunning film from veteran British filmmaker Mike Leigh. It screens on Rialto Channel (Saturday 25^th August, 8.30pm) as an addition to this month’s Director’s Series on Sunday nights, which in August celebrates the work of Mr. Leigh.

The New Zealand International Film Festival has given us a good lead on what films will be hitting the big screens over the next 12 months. Already scheduled to return to our theatres are I Wish, Moonrise Kingdom, The Angel’s Share, The Sapphires, Your Sister’s Sister, How Far is Heaven, Where Do We Go Now and On the Road.

Writer and director Pawel Pawlikowski’s adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fift(Saturday 18^th August, 8.30pm) is an intense, moody and mysterious psycho-thriller about a writer’s descent into madness.

The NZIFF finished in Auckland on Sunday evening after an exhausting but enriching couple of weeks. With an International Film Festival and the Olympics at the same time it would be fair to say it’s been an emotional couple of weeks.