Specials: "Inside Man" - Spike Lee's best film? Betty Page. Kieslowski.

Sunday specials:

THE BEST SPIKE LEE FILM EVER?
(via GreenCine Daily) Emmanuel Levy nearly hyperventilates raving about Spike Lee’s Inside Man:

… nothing short of brilliant. As of March, it’s the best film of 2006. It’s also the best film Lee has made in his twenty-year career. I’ll review the film at length next week, but for now, the best compliment I can pay Lee and Inside Man is to say that both the master of suspense Hitchcock and prince of New York City police dramas Sidney Lumet would be proud of his work.

It’s shocking to realize that the electrifying screenplay was written by a newcomer, Russell Gewirtz, and in which no detail is unimportant, and no clue is a throwaway.

BETTIE PAGE ABIDES
What ever happened to Bettie Page? Thanks to Kathy Shaidle, now I know that Page is 82, “refuses to be photographed,” and “wants fans to remember her as she was in the 1950s” … when she worked with the Billy Graham Crusade.

THREE COLORS, COUNTLESS WONDERS
(via GreenCine Daily) The Guardian’s Richard Williams on the genius of Kieslowski:

When Krzysztof Kieslowski died on March 13, 1996, it was as though a certain kind of cinema had come to an end along with him. The calm, reflective, compassionate gaze he brought to bear on the dilemmas faced by his characters made him the most humanistic of film directors. No less than the work of others, his movies demanded the skills of scriptwriters, cinematographers, editors, composers, costumiers and make-up experts; yet the audience seldom had the sensation of being manipulated by professionals. Instead, they felt they were watching the patient investigation of aspects of their own existences. “That was the whole secret of Krzysztof,” I was told after his death by Zbigniew Preisner, a close collaborator who composed the music that became such a salient feature of Kieslowski’s best-known works. “People felt close to him through his films.”