Wherever you are in the TFT universe, some recommendations for the weekend:

At The Belcourt in Nashville you can see what appears to be the insanely wonderful film ‘A Town Called Panic’, which wouldn’t be a bad subtitle for ‘The White Ribbon’ also screening off 21st Ave South:

Belfast’s QFT presents Robert Kenner’s provocative and well-produced documentary ‘Food, Inc’:

If you happen to be in Prague, you can head to the Kino Aero for a theatrical screening of Lars von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’ (which we reviewed on Episode 101)

And if you’re at home, TCM’s traditional season of Oscar winning films has another week to go; Frankenheimer’s mind-bending ‘Seconds’, Beatty’s visually glorious ‘Dick Tracy’, and Malick’s heart-sore masterpiece ‘Days of Heaven’ among them.  If I had cable, I’d join ‘em.

*TCM are offering an ‘Oscar Party Pack’ to the first reader who emails contact@thefilmtalk.com with ‘Oscar’ in the subject line, so if you’re planning a get-together on Sunday week, feel free to get in touch.

There’s something deceptively complex about ‘Herb and Dorothy’ – a film about two elderly art collectors, who appear to have bought paintings for the subversive and radical reason that they enjoyed looking at them, and apparently became an axis for the New York art world.  Hitchcock might have liked the mystery of how on earth they paid for the thousands of paintings filed away under bubble wrap in an NYC apartment small enough that TFT could afford to live there.  The film – just out from New Video Digital, and available for iTunes download, among other delivery mechanisms – could have turned out to be patronising in the way that stories about the elderly often are, but ‘Herb and Dorothy’ is more often endearing, with a genuine interest in the contours of the couple’s lives.

It also serves as a potted history of the New York art world, the relationship between creativity and commerce, and what Herb calls ‘the mental process’ of experiencing art.  (The artist Richard Tuttle elucidates how money gets in the way of real relationships between artists and collectors; Chuck Close talks about how Herb and Dorothy ended up influencing his work; and in what becomes a subtly moving interview in light of her recent death, Jean-Claude talks about her affection for these unlikely mavens.)  ‘Herb and Dorothy’ has some rough edges – and the choice of sentimental piano as incidental music over-eggs a story that doesn’t need to be made more gentle than it already is; but it reveals some ultimately profound things: the wonder with which Herb looks at a turtle in an aquarium is the same for when he stares at something on the walls of MoMA; a brief explanation of the different meanings of ‘wood’ opens up worlds of interpretation and invokes the need for patience in experiencing the miracle that each day already is; and the secret of a long partnership?  ‘We blended our aesthetics and we’re having fun’.  It’s a sweet movie, but has more than a little substance, and an ending that suggests both the increasingly flattened accessibility of art objects, and a declaration of hope for anyone who fears that getting old means it’s all downhill.

New Video Digital are also offering environmental warning documentary ‘The End of the Line’ from today – we’ll review soon; check out their facebook page here.

[DON'T SEE THE MEDIA PLAYER ABOVE?  THEN CLICK HERE TO LISTEN]

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DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:

SHUTTER ISLAND / A SINGLE MAN / ASK THE FILM TALK/ NIGHT AND THE CITY

Love Film Noir?  In Nashville this Monday?  Then you have no excuse not to see the delirious NIGHT AND THE CITY at The Becourt Theatre at 4:50 or 7:00 pm.

If you’re at the 7pm screening you’ll get to see yours truly introduce this fever dream of a film – a pic that has what may be the most astonishing performance I’ve ever scene in cinema- you have not seen Film Noir my friends – or film acting, till you’ve seen the non-stop man-on-a-wire performance of Richard Widmark as hustler and would-be wrestling mogul Harry Fabian.

See you there film lover!