When a member of the 46th New York Film Festival’s selection committee says that “a festival can only be as good as what's out there” is there anything left for your Fanzine correspondent to add? I’m a longstanding admirer of Village Voice critic J. Hoberman, one of NYFF 2008’s five programmers, as well as the gracious folks at Lincoln Center who run this annual garden of flickering delights. But Hoberman’s Tuesday preview of the festival, a two-week-plus slate of new movies he helped curate, doesn’t sound like much of an endorsement. Are high expectations to blame?

As usual, the roll call of foreign auteurs is long and stately—Jia Zhang-ke, Olivier Assayas, Lucrecia Martel, Hong Sang-soo, Arnaud Desplechin, Mike Leigh, and others—while in the Yankee column, upcoming releases from critical darlings Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) and Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy) are on tap as well as Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s new period thriller starring Angelina Jolie. And yet, with the exception of Martel’s The Headless Woman (more on it later) your correspondent is feeling underwhelmed.

_{*cover image from Changeling directed by Clint Eastwood}