“The Sun” at Sundance Cinemas

Sheez, my post titles have been works of art today.

Eminent Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov’s 2004 feature “The Sun,” which received its first (limited) run in American theaters last November, is now playing at Madison’s Sundance Cinemas. For local cinephiles, this is cause for serious excitement: Sokurov is one of the boldest, most dazzlingly grandiose film artists working today. (Anyone who has seen his 2002 film “Russian Ark,” which is as much a dance performed by a cast of thousands as it is a singular cinematic achievement, can attest to the boldness and dazzling grandiosity of which I speak.)

“The Sun” was showered with praise by critics like Manohla Dargis and J. Hoberman during its November release; I’m pleased to see that my editor at Isthmus, Kenneth Burns, also found it thoroughly thought-provoking. I’m hoping to catch “The Sun” at some point this weekend—tornadoes permitting.

Favorites from the decade that was

Fifty fillets of film, alphabetically ordered. Now I can finally get on with my life.

Links to links to links to links

Because aggregating links to interesting stuff is a better use of one’s time than fulfilling one’s obligations, whatever those might be (in my case, writing and eating and breathing and, every once in a while, sleeping):

Alexander Sokurov’s latest, The Sun (2005), is finally getting its first run on American screens at NY’s Film Forum (the best cinema on Earth, for all my Madisonian readers). Unsurprisingly the film is receiving a whole lot of critical love: J. Hoberman digs it, as does Manohla Dargis, as does Daniel Kasman. I’m unsure whether I’ll be able to swing by the Forum to catch a showing while I’m temporarily back on the right coast next week, so hopefully the film’ll make its way to Madison at some point in the however distant future. If you’re fiending to see some Sokurov, Four Star Video Heaven has a pretty damn respectable collection of his films, including Moloch (1999), which is the first film in Sokurov’s “Men of Power” series (of which The Sun is a part).

Jack Craver’s debut for the Isthmus advances a “j’accuse” that anybody with a sense of both humor and history will surely smile upon reading: Mayor Dave as monarch.

I’m an armchair-philosopher’s armchair-philosopher, but I’m nevertheless fascinated by the recent online writings of contemporary thinker Graham Harman, who here gives a necessarily terse explanation of the two types of objects that he thinks are: real objects and sensual objects. (For good measure, here’s Michael Austin’s lucid explication of Harman’s theory of vicarious causation and Levi Bryant’s own take on what really happens between objects.) Harman’s book Guerrilla Metaphysics, in which he advances the über-intriguing, quasi-aesthetic concept of allure, is on my “note to self: read these soon” list. It seems inevitable that film and literary studies will have to confront Harman’s ideas (as well as Bryant’s, once his book The Democracy of Objects is published).

Do yourself a favor and read all four parts (one, two, three and four) of Robert Polito’s ode to Manny Farber over at the Auteurs’ Notebook. Sticky, sticky stuff.

I hereby decree that sneaker pimp Sonny Vaccaro is allowed to be all “I told y’all so” regarding the NBA’s newest phenom (and starting point guard of your Milwaukee Bucks), Brandon Jennings. Jennings’s now-legendary 55 point performance, which I had the pleasure of watching as it happened, was probably the most thrilling thing I’ve seen these past couple weeks… granted, that isn’t saying much.