During La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, director Frederick Wiseman’s leisurely immersion into the rhythms of the POB, the world outside of the company’s grand, historic home is irrelevant. If the company was not seen rehearsing The Nutcracker—along with several premieres and a repertory staple—one would have no idea what time of year it was. Wiseman and his crew roamed the studios, stage, offices, corridors, as well as the rooftop and the catacombs of the venerable Palais Garnier for three months in late 2007. In this eminent documentary filmmaker’s trademark style, the film offers an elegantly edited compilation without any information beyond what we see and hear, as though we too had an open pass to observe behind the scenes. Read more

ASHLEY SPRINGER IS rapidly becoming the go-to guy for movies that require sexually explicit high school scenes. After losing his dick in 2008’s Teeth (a fantastic, underappreciated black comedy about a teenager with vagina dentata), Springer is back on screen in director Adam Salky’s Dare (based on Salky’s 2005 short, also written by David Brind), helping Emmy Rossum shed her good girl image as onethird of a sexually adventurous trio nearing the end of their high school careers. Read more Read it in print

WHEN JOE MAUCERI was young, his grandmother took him to a double feature.The first movie was a Yogi Bear cartoon, during which Mauceri quickly fell asleep. The adults decided to let him snooze and take in the second feature: Robert Aldrich’s creep-tastic Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in which Bette Davis plays an aging recluse living in the same house where her married lover (Bruce Dern) was mutilated decades earlier.When Mauceri finally opened his eyes, he was confronted with a rather startling image. Read more Read it in print

It’s fitting that the Asia Society should whittle down Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s filmography down to what they deem to be his bare essentials, leading up to Face, his latest and certainly one of his best films. Tsai’s films are about mundane phantoms, invisible people that exist in the same places as one other but rarely at the same time. A complete weeklong retrospective of Tsai’s work shouldn’t be done since none of his characters in any given film can fit into the same spot, let alone the same frame-of-mind. To respect the films’ spare vision of sexual mystery and longing, you have to be a little selective in choosing which ones best fit together. Read more

When Andrew Jacobs spent several late-summer days at Four Seasons Lodge, a close-knit Catskills bungalow colony, in 2005, he was there to write a feature article for the New York Times. But his experiences amid the longstanding community of aging but spirited Holocaust survivors affected him well beyond completing the article. Rapidly and efficiently, the Times staffer morphed into a documentary filmmaker. He felt compelled to capture the unique atmosphere and vivid personalities of the place particularly when he learned that the colony had been sold to a developer, and that the summer of 2006 was scheduled to be its last. Read more

Crude Oil (Yuan You) Nov. 4 through 8, Light Industry, 230 36th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), Brooklyn, www.lightindustry.org; times vary, donation requested Wang Bing’s epic 14-hour film Read more

At a moment when DVD sales continue to decline and new releases can often be downloaded (legally or otherwise) days after their theatrical release, Matt Grady has taken a bit of a gamble. The 39-year-old founder of Factory 25, a new independent film and music label based out of Brooklyn, is betting that you’ll still shell out some money for a DVD—or even a vinyl record—so long as what you’re getting is more than just a disc in a plastic case. Read more

In the opening scene of director Allan Miller's new film about the acclaimed Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, the sweaty-browed maestro poises his baton over a student orchestra in Rotterdam. “I’m important now,” he says, daring the musicians to better respond to his stick. “You cannot start without me.” Read more

In a fitting dramatic flourish, the Two Boots Pioneer theater closed one year ago this upcoming Halloween. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was the last movie screened at the much-missed hub for both vintage and contemporary cult flicks. The saddest part about the space closing was how quickly its unusual programming disappeared with nothing to fill the space. Programmer/manager Lee Paterson’s eclectic and exciting month-long “Schlocktober” festival, featuring everything from Italian zombies to Mexican wrestlers, made it seem as if the Pioneer was going strong right up until its last night. This is the first Halloween in a decade that New Yorkers will have to get their horror fix without the theater and, while it’s tempting to say that it’s not going to be an easy one, there is hope yet. Read more

Starting tomorrow, the Museum of Modern Art will present Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years, a retrospective of the work of the 39-year-old filmmaker running the gamut from his early commercials and music videos to clips from his upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic childrens book Where The Wild Things Are. Read more