Screening Gotham: "They Said It" Edition

Some of today's quotable movie news of note from around New York:

--"Biographers are perhaps better situated than film critics to fathom the Riefenstahl paradox," notes Carl Rollyson in The New York Sun, introducing a pair of new books about the documentarian and the moral complexities that colored her life and career. Not-so-shocking revelations: The only person to benefit from her propaganda more than Hitler was... herself?

--"This foal is like the wipers on the windshield," Abbas Kiarostami (above) tells Keith Uhlich in an interview at The House Next Door. Without context, it's probably the single greatest, weirdest stand-alone comment of the year. With context, it's just another metaphor slathered across Kiarostami's media -- films, photographs and poetry featured in retrospectives around New York as we speak. Also, in a continuation of his work with them in Marrakech in 2005, Kiarostami is buddied up once more with Hunter College students -- this time on the Upper East Side.

--"We just hope they don't cause too many accidents," said Courtney Solomon of the marketing gimmicks planned for Wristcutters: A Love Story, the long-suffering Sundance '06 underdog which her company, AfterDark Films, bought this week. I think Solomon is overreacting, though; how could tasteful cardboard cutouts of people committing suicide -- placed "on telephone poles and trees in major markets," natch -- possibly cause an accident? Next, look for AfterDark's Weapons campaign to situate gunmen and exploding-head dummies in participating fast-food establishments.

Posted at March 8, 2007 9:46 AM