by Eugene Hernandez

It should surprise no one that Werner Herzog’s new film about Antartica, “Encounters at the End of the World,” is the antithesis of the most successful documentary releases in recent years, “March of the Penguins” and “An Inconvenient Truth.” Talking about filmmaking and his latest project during an AFI Fest conversation earlier this week in Los Angeles, Herzog noted that he didn’t want to make a film on “fluffy penguins” and he wasn’t trying to make a movie overtly about the climate crisis, later adding that however effective the film, “An Inconvient Truth” is actually a slideshow. His remarks effectively challenged the large audience to reconsider its own views on non-fiction film as AFI Fest unspooled a roster of acclaimed new documentary films.
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http://www.indiewire.com/ots/2007/11/dispatch_from_l_12.html

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men” by Michael Koresky (October 30, 2007)

The term “return to form” may be overused, but it certainly applies to the Coen Brothers’ new adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel  “No Country for Old Men” — in its visual economy, maddeningly beautiful symmetry, and eccentric mundanity the film is a reminder of why the Coens were initially tagged as wunderkinds. It’s easy to derive pleasure from the Hitchcockian virtuosity of “No Country”‘s mouse-trap set-ups, but the sweet surprise here is that Joel and Ethan Coen, genre vagabonds and occasional wise-asses who had been stuck in a rut as of late, have shot their latest film through with palpable, evocative melancholy and purpose. And have done so without seeming overly calculated: McCarthy’s stark prose and workmanlike trajectory have meshed beautifully with the filmmakers’ tendencies to reduce characters to singular traits. In this case, principals Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, and Tommy Lee Jones have been boiled down to their very bones; “No Country” feels like a skeleton dance, a final raging at humanity’s end.

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http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2007/1/review_the_eart.html

“The way I see it,” Penn says, calmly, “if you believe in democracy, you got to do something. We have people running the country now who really should be in prison for what they are doing to democracy. If you define our country by the constitution, we have enemies of the state in the White House, the defence department and the state department. That’s where we are now.” Sean O’Hagan speaks with Sean Penn….

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