Marjane Satrapi Q&A in the NYT Magazine

Check out this Marjane Satrapi Q&A. Persepolis comes out here in the US on December 25. Usually these short Q&As are really boring, but this one? No, definitely not boring:

Are you suggesting that veiling and unveiling women are equally reductive? I disagree. We have to look at ourselves here also. Why do all the women get plastic surgery? Why? Why? Why should we look like some freaks with big lips that look like an anus? What is so sexy about that? What is sexy about having something that looks like a goose anus?

I never really thought about goose anatomy. I looked when I was on a farm in France.

Atta girl, Marjane!

Persepolis: Los Angeles Screening in November

Don’t you hate it when film reviewers employ stale cliches about films, like,”You’ll laugh; you’ll cry…”? I do, too. Yet here I am, only having watched the trailer and “Making of Persepolis” (available on the film’s beautiful website), and I know for a fact that when I finally see Persepolis on November 10th, I will laugh (”Eye of the Tiger” never sounded better), and oh, how I will cry (”Here, I’ve made you another swan…”)…!Along with co-writer-director Vincent Parranaud, Marjane Satrapi and an army of artists have literally animated the pages of her overwhelmingly successful graphic novels, Persepolis; each image has been hand-drawn, traced in black felt tip, and filmed to create the final, highly-anticipated product. The result evokes what I believe is the raison d’etre of film adaptations (animated or otherwise) yet is so rarely achieved: an exhilarating visual experience that not only stands equal to the experience of the original page, but deeply intensifies it through the spectacle of the moving image.

Released in France in late June 2007, the film adaptation of Persepolis seems to have succeeded in this endeavor, having taken home the Jury Prize at Cannes, and already selected to represent France at the 2008 Oscars. After what feels like an eternity of anticipation, Persepolis has finally also been screened at various film festivals in North America (Toronto, Telluride, NYC, Austin, L.A.), and is set for limited release in the U.S. in December 2007.

For those of you Angelenos/as like myself who just can’t wait, your next opportunity to see the original French release is at the American Film Institute’s 2007 AFI FEST , which will screen Persepolis on November 10th, following a tribute to Catherine Deneuve, the renowned French actress who lends her voice to the film. (The English version will be a dub featuring Sean Penn, Iggy Pop, and Gena Rowlands, to name a few…I’d suggest going for the French original!) Here are the details:

PERSEPOLIS Screening
Saturday, November 10th 7:00pm
ArcLight Theatre 10 (map)