Octopus Tentacles #4: Bleak Week Edition

In which I attend a queer film festival and things get bleak.

Eleven Groothuis

Eleven Groothuis

— 1 min read
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I attended Denver's queer film festival CinemaQ recently. I saw a lot of good films and one really bad one. I'll have more to say on CinemaQ, but here are other things I've been reading and watching.

  • I loved this piece by Keith Phipps at The Reveal on Waterloo, the film that possibly derailed Kubrick's legendary unmade masterpiece Napoleon.
  • There is a lot to dislike in this long read from the New Yorker about The Chosen, but from my perspective as a heathen, it is a fascinating dive into the world of Christian filmmaking and fandom.
  • The Criterion Current highlights this year's Bleak Week programming: "the American Cinematheque festival that, in just five years, has become an annual early-summer phenomenon, spreading to nearly one hundred theaters in seventy-three cities around the world."
  • Bleak Week has spread to my area too. The Sie FilmCenter in Denver (the site of aforementioned CinemaQ) is programming Bleak Week content June 12-18. Films include Harmony Korine's Gummo, David Fincher's Se7en, and Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse.
  • Back over to the Criterion Current, here's an interview with legendary film critic and seminal Criterion Collection/Janus Films contributor Peter Cowie.
  • Lastly on the Criterion Current, Andrew Chan interviews Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Maclay, authors of Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema.
  • "Martin Scorsese Is Embracing A.I." is an absolutely apocalyptic phrase. While the article frames Scorsese's use of A.I. as "a sign of Hollywood's softening stance on artificial intelligence", as always, that "softening stance" seems to come from someone either financially invested in A.I. or from a high-level producer, director, or executive presumably confident that A.I. will only take the jobs of people below them.
  • In the realm of A.I., I honestly don't know how to react (except with resolute horror) to this profile of A.I. "actress" Tilly Norwood.
  • I read this profile of a present-day direct-to-VHS film called This is How the World Ends, which, as a VHS fangirl, undeniably excites me.

Let me know in the comments what you've been reading and watching. Thanks for reading!

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