| TORINO '06: seen Tue 14th Nov (incl. August Days, Hustle) and Wed 15th (Twilight's Last Gleaming) |
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| Tuesday, 14 November 2006 | |
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Thursday, 5.00pm First chance I've had to write anything for two days, and I have about fifteen minutes until I have to exit the press centre. In brief, then: Tuesday was rewarding, with the best new film I've seen here so far (as of now) namely Marc Recha's autobiographical travelogue-cum-nature-movie-cum-family-chronicle August Days, a visually striking and thematically intriguing record of a trip taken by Recha and his brother into a rural corner of Catalonia. Next up, Aldrich's character-piece cop movie Hustle starring Burt Reynolds and Catherine Deneuve, which favours mood and attitude ahead of plot and continues to hold up pretty well three decades on. I then caught what's so far the best of the competition entries I've seen, namely Kazakh drama The Lineman's Diary (though at least four different translations of the title are in circulation at this festival): intimate ethnographic study of a family in a small village whose lives are dominated by the intercontinental railway which passes within yards of their house. In the year of Borat, a timely look at actual Kazakh lives, the sparkling highlight of which is brief archive footage of Cossacks and trains from what looks like the 1920s. Picture is shot on alluring sepia monochrome, endowing it with a timeless quality. Nothing amazing, but succeeds on its own limited terms and has found pretty much universal favour among the critics I've spoken to here (which is more than can be said for most of the competition entries...) Day ended with The Screwfly Solution, Joe Dante's second entry in the Masters of Horror TV series - last year's segment being the terrific satire Homecoming. Sci-fi tale of a mysterious global pandemic is more scattershot and ambitious in its aims, and hits its targets only intermittently. Yesterday (Wednesday) I caught only one film - due to various factors which I don't have time to explain right now - but it was a corker, and by some way the best of the 20-odd titles I've seen so far. Pic in question in Robert Aldrich's 1977 paranoid thriller-cum-action-movie-cum-satire Twilight's Last Gleaming, a kind of cross between Dr Strangelove and Air Force One showcasing a barnstorming turn from Charles Durning as an American president in dire extremis. As usual with Aldrich, the running-time is excessive at 143 minutes, but the tension is maintained at a high level throughout - and the running current of very black humour makes for an entertaining watch. It's also chillingly topical in the light of recent American foreign-policy, and numerous lines drew gasps and laughter from the rapt audience at the Turin screening... More anon: time's run out on me. Again. Neil Young 15th November, 2006 August Days : [7/10] : Dies d'agost : Spain 2006 (copyright-dated 2005) : Marc RECHA : 92m (timed) : seen at Ambrosio cinema Hustle : [7/10] : USA 1975 : Robert ALDRICH : 120m (timed, approx) : Massimo The Lineman's Diary : [6/10] : Zapiski putevogo obkhodchika aka Notes by the Trackman : Kazakhstan 2006 : Zhanabek ZHEITUROV ; 63m (timed) : Ambrosio Masters of Horror 2 - The Screwfly Solution : [TV 6/10] : USA 2006 : Joe DANTE : 56m (approx) : Greenwich Village Twilight's Last Gleaming : [8/10] : USA/W.Germany 1977 : Robert ALDRICH : 140m (timed) : Greenwich Village Jigsaw Lounge 2006 Torino Film Festival coverage : index page official site...  |
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