never coming to a theater near you: Arthouse 2009

So this Filipino critical smash Serbis, set in a porn tehater, has been cut for US distribution. What a country.

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/007318.html

What a country.

France?

"Perhaps in response to some Cannes critics who found the film jarringly pornographic, the fleeting, if memorable frames of hardcore have been excised.

that'd be critics who saw it AT the Cannes Film Festival, junior.

(not likely to be French critics for the most part. Stick w/ breathless antic for Commerce Sec'y.)

putting really explicit sex in your art-house masterpiece has always been a shortcut to int'l distribution. shame on the americans for disrupting this fine tradition.

Will Enrique Hays^

that'd be critics who saw it AT the Cannes Film Festival, junior.

who are all American, of course, old man. stick w/ breathless politix fantasies.

http://www.ifc.com/film/thedaily/2009/01/serbis.php

"'Serbis,' the new film by the Filipino director Brillante Ma Mendoza, takes place in a decrepit X-rated movie house, and often plays as if it were meant to be projected in one," writes Dennis Lim in the New York Times. "Presumably not to Mr Mendoza's surprise, 'Serbis' was one of the most divisive movies at the Cannes Film Festival last year. It prompted walkouts and critical sniping (a Variety review called it 'more exploitative than enlightening'), but it also attracted some vocal defenders, who compared it to the work of Fassbinder and John Waters."

anyone else seen Serbis? fetid, in mostly good ways...

http://www.indiewire.com/article/end_of_the_road_for_new_yorker_films_legendary_distributor_of_difficult_cin

s1ocki, anything good to say about this French-Canadian '70s-youth film C.R.A.Z.Y.? Running all week at MoMA here.

I'll be curious as to what y'all will think of Jerichow, a contemporary German spin on James Cain-style adultery noir. I didn't love it as much as Sicinski, but the lead actor (Turkish immigrant cuckold) is transfixing:

http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs38/feat_sicinski_jerichow.html

Just saw the latest Lisandro Alonso, Liverpool. Not quite buying it, and I liked his Los Muertos a lot.

anyone seen Afterschool? Has drawn many Haneke and Kubrick comparisons. Sadly, I see more of the first.

I live far from the art houses,so often have to just watch the stuff later on dvd or the tube.
The film ( I guess it's on film, not tape)'My Son, My son, What Have Ye Done?'
is going to get some kind of "distribution", so I'm hoping that might mean here. True, the reviews are not exactly promising, but what the hell, they're typically written for kids, anyway.
'INLAND EMPIRE', my recent fave, never played closer to me than about 180 miles or so.
It's pretty amusing, actually, but I first heard of and signed up for this board to discuss film.
'But there is no film discussion in ilXor!'
'I was misinformed.'

boxofficemojo is calling "Babies" an arthouse movie

and yet these babies can tell us nothing of the work of godard