The News: Keeping Up with Jones

Trey Albright as the title character in Jones, opening this week at the Pioneer Theater (Photo: Vindaloo Philm-Wallah via HND)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

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

--House Next Door co-editor and Reeler contributor Keith Uhlich today has a fine read of Preston Miller's uncompromising Jones, which opens this week at the Pioneer Theater. "The entirety of Jones plays as a sort of disquieting delusion," Uhlich writes of the micro-budget feature its director characterizes as a "grim and graphic morality tale" about a Southerner's troubled, sexually charged visit to New York. "Jones' visit to a Queens-based brothel is suffused in grain -- murky exteriors contrasting with harsh-lit interiors -- lending the bizarre proceedings (involving the inopportune lactation of yet another business-minded escort) an even more mesmeric intensity." Lactation? "Mesmeric intensity"? Sign me up! Read more from Nathaniel Rogers over at The Film Experience.

--Kino International picked up a trio of films for its 2008 slate, including this year's narrative winner at Tribeca, My Father My Lord. Rounding out the acquisitions are Li Yang's Cannes alum Blind Mountain and the Toronto doc Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, which Sam Thielman reports will be released with the title -- I'm not making this up -- Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko Files. Marquee staffers around New York are surely wetting themselves with anticipation.

--Did I lean too hard on I Am Legend's flaws? Check out Scott "The Hammer" Foundas for a magnanimous second opinion: "[Will] Smith is simply dazzling here, and for all the undeniably impressive work the actor has done on his physique for this role, what's most appealing about him is his active intelligence -- how he thinks his way through a role -- and his capacity for human weakness." Actually, I'll give him that.

--Behind Andrew Wagner's highly acclaimed adaptation of Starting Out in the Evening is an even more highly acclaimed source novel by Brian Morton, who discusses the page-to-screen process over at the Web site Inside Higher Ed.

--If you didn't think Richard Corliss had lost his shit after reading Monday's awards-season survey, Reverse Shot brilliantly points out perhaps the best evidence yet for mandatory retirement. Let it suffice to say Corliss is guaranteed a spot on The Reeler's Top 10 of Top 10s of 2007.

Posted at December 12, 2007 12:36 PM