You Won’t Believe Why ‘Burden of Dreams’ is Touted as the Best Making-Of Doc Ever! Best Movies This Week!

Introduction

Hi there! I’m Mark Olsen. Pleased to guide you once more through the realm of Absolutely Incredible Movies.

Currently, I’m reporting from Toronto, as part of the LAT crew covering the Toronto International Film Festival. To stay updated with our festival coverage, don’t forget to subscribe to The Envelope: TIFF Daily newsletter. (And please don’t stop reading this one!)

In the inaugural issue of our newsletter, I had a chat with Cameron Bailey, the CEO of TIFF, and Anita Lee, the festival’s head of programming, before the commencement of this year’s event. Recently, Alberto Barbera, artistic director of the Venice Film Festival, publicly criticized TIFF in an interview, straining the diplomatic relations between these highly competitive autumn festivals.

Reactions from the TIFF Team

Reacting to this, Bailey stated, “All of us organizing festivals strive to find the best films we can and present them to audiences, highlighting the significance of bringing films to film culture and the industry. We each have our unique methods of doing this. We might explain it differently, but in a world where people have more choices than ever before, and are sometimes overwhelmed by these choices, festivals become particularly important because you want to know which are the key films that I need to follow this year? Which ones are going to be most engaging, most transformative? We’re all trying to do that at film festivals and I think that’s something to be applauded.”

I also had the opportunity to speak with Durga Chew-Bose, an acclaimed author making her debut as a film director with a modern adaptation of “Bonjour Tristesse” featuring Lily McInerny, Claes Bang, and Chloë Sevigny.

Chew-Bose confessed that she was initially hesitant to take on the project but eventually realized, “I felt there was an opportunity to express my voice. It’s not my original story, but I treated the challenge of adapting it as if it were. How can I contribute? How can my voice continue the story? Not just the Françoise Sagan book but also the Otto Preminger version. That is a significant part of the book’s iconography. It was not only a major book but also a major film with big stars. So, I kind of see our ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ as a continuation of that legacy.”

Insights from Anderson .Paak

Ashley Lee had a conversation with Anderson .Paak about his debut as a feature film director, “K-Pops,” in which he also stars alongside his son Soul Rasheed in a story about a drummer who discovers his long-lost child. Speaking about working with his son, .Paak said, “I was a bit worried that he might not want to do it because of the early call times, having to learn choreography, and quickly adapting to the filmmaking process. Additionally, films take a long time to make. As he grew older, we had to modify the script so it would still suit him and be something he could be proud of. I didn’t want him to watch it, find it embarrassing, never want to try acting again, and ultimately regret it.”

Highlights from the Telluride Film Festival

Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg, and Glenn Whipp concluded their coverage of the Telluride Film Festival by listing their seven favorite films, including Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys,” and Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5.”

The 4K Premiere of ‘Burden of Dreams’

This Saturday, the Academy Museum will host the Los Angeles premiere of a 4K restoration of Les Blank’s 1982 documentary “Burden of Dreams,” which documents the infamous making of Werner Herzog’s film “Fitzcarraldo.” The film, one of the most striking depictions of artistic folly and sheer insanity ever captured on film, tells the story of a man trying to exploit the untapped rubber resources in the Amazon, and Herzog’s attempt to manually drag a 320-ton boat up and over a hill in the jungle. Herzog and Les Blank’s son, Herrod Blank, will be present at the screening.

In his original Times review of “Burden of Dreams,” Kevin Thomas remarked that the film “emerges as one of the finest, most comprehensive examinations of a filmmaker at work ever made, raising the question: What is the cost of art?”

In a 1982 Times profile of Blank penned by Michael London, Blank said of Herzog, “Toward the end, I really began to wonder why he was going through so much trouble. I knew why I was — because he was.” He further stated that comparing “Burden of Dreams” to “Fitzcarraldo” was like comparing apples to oranges, noting, “My film might be a very good apple, I think his is a very good orange.”

70mm Screening of ‘Geronimo: An American Legend’

This Sunday, the Academy Museum will feature Walter Hill’s 1993 “Geronimo: An American Legend” in 70mm. The script is by John Milius and Larry Gross, and stars Wes Studi as the Apache leader. The film provides a remarkably nuanced perspective of the American Indian Wars and features a cast that includes Jason Patric, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Matt Damon.

In his contemporary review, Kenneth Turan wrote, “A visually stunning and respectful Western that aims to echo and modernize the myths of the past, it is a commendable piece of work that, perhaps inevitably, ends up being slightly cold-hearted.”

In a Times Q&A at the time of release with Jane Galbraith, Studi said he wasn’t concerned about being typecast in historical Native American roles. “I’ve played a type,” he said. “Maybe there’s now a Wes Studi type, which is one step away from being unknown. I can’t be offended by that.”

Other Noteworthy Films

‘My First Film’

This Saturday, Now Instant Image Hall will host a screening of Zia Anger’s “My First Film” followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker. (The film is also available for streaming on MUBI.) “My First Film” is a complex piece of autofiction that follows Vita (Odessa Young) as she narrates the making of a semi-autobiographical film starring her friend Dina (Devon Ross) and the struggles of working with an inexperienced and often unreliable crew. This film is based on Anger’s experience of making her own lost project, titled “Always All Ways, Annie Marie.”

In a Q&A included in the press notes for the film, Anger explained what compelled her to revisit the project, noting, “I have been trying to make feature films since 2010 and, to be honest, this is the first one that had a lot of momentum behind it. You have to make one film to make another, so I did it.”

‘Jackie Brown’

The New Beverly will screen Quentin Tarantino’s personal 35mm print of his 1997 film “Jackie Brown” every Friday in September at midnight. I find the idea of presenting “Jackie Brown” as a midnight movie intriguing, as I personally view it as a mid-day movie, one you can unwind and spend time with.

Interestingly, the Vista Theater (which is also owned by the filmmaker) will showcase Tarantino’s personal 16mm print of “Reservoir Dogs” in its Video Archives Cinema Club room this Saturday and Tuesday.

Shot with affection in L.A.’s South Bay, “Jackie Brown” features Pam Grier as a flight attendant for a low-cost airline who gets caught up with local criminal Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) and requires the services of a bail bondsman. Enter Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a helpful individual who might become something more. Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film morphs into a thrilling who’s-tricking-who caper while also offering a meditative reflection on middle age. Robert De Niro and Bridget Fonda deliver fantastic supporting performances, and Michael Keaton appears as the same clueless FBI agent as in Steven Soderbergh’s Leonard adaptation, “Out of Sight.”

Reviewing the film upon its release, Kenneth Turan was not entirely impressed, writing, “The result is a raunchy doodle, a leisurely and easygoing diversion that goes down easy enough but is far from compelling. … [Tarantino has] relaxed so much he hasn’t given this film more than attitude, and even attitude can wear thin after a while.”

‘His Three Daughters’

One of my favorite films at last year’s TIFF was Azazael Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters,” featuring Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, and Carrie Coon as three sisters who reunite in their father’s apartment as they await his passing in hospice care.

Jacobs’ previous films include “Momma’s Man,” “The Lovers,” and “French Exit,” and he has also directed for television. “His Three Daughters,” apart from being a platform for three powerhouse performances from an amazing trio of actors, has a sense of control that feels like a significant development for Jacobs as a filmmaker.

The film is currently in theaters. Starting on Monday, the Egyptian Theater will host a series of films that influenced Jacobs in creating his latest work, including Eric Rohmer’s “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” Alan Parker’s “Shoot the Moon,” Dennis Hopper’s “Out of the Blue,” Peter Hedges’ “Pieces of April,” and Michael Roemer’s “The Plot Against Harry.” “His Three Daughters” will be screened in 35mm on Sept. 25, along with a Q&A with Jacobs and producer-costume designer Diaz Jacobs. (“His Three Daughters” will also be screened on 35mm at the New Beverly Sept. 13-15 and will be available for streaming on Netflix starting Sept 20.)

For an upcoming story on the movie, I spoke to the three lead actors and Jacobs. The director told me, “This was definitely the film where I was most meticulous in everything that I planned. I don’t think I’ve had the ability before to pursue the kind of precision that I wanted with this one.”

‘No Fear, No Die’

On Tuesday, Mezzanine will present the West Coast premiere of a 4K restoration of Claire Denis’ 1990 film “No Fear, No Die.” The film, shot by Denis’ frequent collaborator, cinematographer Agnès Godard, stars Isaach de Bankolé and Alex Descas as immigrants to Paris who become involved with an illegal cockfighting ring.

Writing about the film recently in the New Yorker, Richard Brody said, “The film is Denis’s first masterpiece, and it set the tone for her best work to come. In the course of her wide-ranging career, one of the most illustrious in the current cinema, Denis’s concern for social critique has sometimes overwhelmed curiosity, and her control of tone and effect sometimes inhibits spontaneity. In ‘No Fear, No Die,’ her abundant and nuanced observations, her aesthetic sensibility, and her analytical world view are unified. She films as if she is a part of the world she films, as do the best modern documentarians; her fiction, here, offers a sense of immediate experience, a feeling of freedom.”