Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2023, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.
In all honesty, the films of 2023 should take a backseat to the images we are seeing every day in Gaza, where journalists and average citizens have been recording and documenting a daily assault on their homes and livelihoods by the Idf. Whatever fakery we watched and enjoyed in the cinema this year should always be kept in perspective in importance with images that are real and actually happening right now. The Palestinians who have documented these important images have been targeted and killed with intent and purpose to silence what their photos and videos are showing and saying.
List of journalists who have been killed.
The below is of lesser note:
Best First Watches:
Angel’s Egg La belle noiseuse Centipede Horror Charley Varrick Coffy Crimson Gold...
In all honesty, the films of 2023 should take a backseat to the images we are seeing every day in Gaza, where journalists and average citizens have been recording and documenting a daily assault on their homes and livelihoods by the Idf. Whatever fakery we watched and enjoyed in the cinema this year should always be kept in perspective in importance with images that are real and actually happening right now. The Palestinians who have documented these important images have been targeted and killed with intent and purpose to silence what their photos and videos are showing and saying.
List of journalists who have been killed.
The below is of lesser note:
Best First Watches:
Angel’s Egg La belle noiseuse Centipede Horror Charley Varrick Coffy Crimson Gold...
- 1/3/2024
- by Soham Gadre
- The Film Stage
Terence Davies, the Liverpool-born director of autobiographical memory pieces like “The Long Day Closes” and “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” has died. He was 77. The English filmmaker passed away peacefully in his home after a short illness on October 7, as confirmed on his official social media pages.
Davies directed several masterpieces in his lifetime, from the sorrowful “The Deep Blue Sea” starring Rachel Weisz as an eternally unhappy seeker of love to his debut feature “Distant Voices,” built on his own closeted working-class British upbringing. You could even say the same about his last film, “Benediction,” starring Jack Lowden as the queer poet Siegfried Sassoon, wrapped around by a coterie of Bright Young Things. He received great acclaim for films like “A Quiet Passion,” starring Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, as well as the Edith Wharton adaptation “House of Mirth,” led by Gillian Anderson. Serious actors loved working with him,...
Davies directed several masterpieces in his lifetime, from the sorrowful “The Deep Blue Sea” starring Rachel Weisz as an eternally unhappy seeker of love to his debut feature “Distant Voices,” built on his own closeted working-class British upbringing. You could even say the same about his last film, “Benediction,” starring Jack Lowden as the queer poet Siegfried Sassoon, wrapped around by a coterie of Bright Young Things. He received great acclaim for films like “A Quiet Passion,” starring Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, as well as the Edith Wharton adaptation “House of Mirth,” led by Gillian Anderson. Serious actors loved working with him,...
- 10/7/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
There is, really, just one absence that slightly dampens the stellar fall festivals. This April it was announced that Kiyoshi Kurosawa would remake his great 1998 feature Serpent’s Path in Paris, with Damien Bonnard in a leading role, and excitement for which I think explains itself. Despite the director’s typically fast production time, it became evident we’d have to wait until 2024––now confirmed by Screen Daily in a story offering our first (and above) look at the film.
Contained therein is revelation that this new Serpent’s Path, despite featuring Bonnard, is instead carried by a female protagonist––played by Ko Shibasaki, soon to be heard in Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron––though no word on whether this much changes the basic plot structure. (Original writer Hiroshi Takahashi is credited with script.)
Any waiting and changes notwithstanding, there’s solid precedent for what the film might offer.
Contained therein is revelation that this new Serpent’s Path, despite featuring Bonnard, is instead carried by a female protagonist––played by Ko Shibasaki, soon to be heard in Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron––though no word on whether this much changes the basic plot structure. (Original writer Hiroshi Takahashi is credited with script.)
Any waiting and changes notwithstanding, there’s solid precedent for what the film might offer.
- 8/30/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Blind Beast.You could start cradled like the kidnapped woman in the undulating foam curves that resemble a gigantic female torso in Blind Beast (1969). You could make your approach via the swing of a Super-8 camera towards the steps of a courthouse at the beginning of A Wife Confesses (1961). You could drift into A Cheerful Girl (1957) through the kitchen window, onto a table laden with groceries and bottles of fluorescent orange soda-pop. You could inject yourself like morphine into Red Angel (1966), seep like body ink into the skin of Spider Tattoo (1966), or slide into the fevered bloodstream of All Mixed Up (1964) like powdered poison swallowed from a kite-paper pouch. Whether you arrive on the tip of a blade or the cusp of a kiss, there is no wrong place to start with Yasuzo Masumura, the postwar Japanese director whose astonishing accomplishment should by rights have him mentioned in the same...
- 8/15/2023
- MUBI
At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 37 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.
It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year,...
It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year,...
- 7/8/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Some context might help. Between 1988 and 1997 the Baltimore-based filmmaker Rob Tregenza directed three features that amassed a small, enviable group of admirers. If it’s one thing to secure bookings at arthouses and galleries, it’s quite another for your debut film to be anointed some groundbreaking moment in American movies by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr. It is simply beyond precedent to attract the interest of Jean-Luc Godard: the two met during distribution of 1996’s For Ever Mozart and amassed enough kinship for Godard to extend favors to Tregenza’s 1997 feature Inside/Out, the sole feature he produced without directing.
What almost anyone sees of Tregenza’s work are cinematographer duties for Alex Cox (Three Businessmen) and Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies). His own films, meanwhile, struggled to endure: in all my travels he only came to attention with Godard’s passing and word of that producing credit, and...
What almost anyone sees of Tregenza’s work are cinematographer duties for Alex Cox (Three Businessmen) and Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies). His own films, meanwhile, struggled to endure: in all my travels he only came to attention with Godard’s passing and word of that producing credit, and...
- 4/11/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Two-and-a-half years is hardly much wait for any director’s latest (to say nothing of Covid times) but by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s clip it’s a hot second. After producing one of 2022’s great moving-image works––movies, TV, streaming, whatever––he’s preparing his first feature since Wife of a Spy, and our friends at Ion Cinema got quite the get: they’ve learned Kurosawa’s rolling cameras this month on a remake of his 1998 feature Serpent’s Path.
While further details (e.g. casting) are nil, the earlier film might give us sense of what to anticipate. Even by Kurosawa’s standards is Serpent’s Path a cold-blooded and blood-chilling work, its story of revenge for a murdered child shaped by typically perfect production design, sustained atmosphere, ornate plotting. Where its sister film Eyes of the Spider––a production overlapping in cast, crew, and narrative jibe––offers a lighter vision of vengeance,...
While further details (e.g. casting) are nil, the earlier film might give us sense of what to anticipate. Even by Kurosawa’s standards is Serpent’s Path a cold-blooded and blood-chilling work, its story of revenge for a murdered child shaped by typically perfect production design, sustained atmosphere, ornate plotting. Where its sister film Eyes of the Spider––a production overlapping in cast, crew, and narrative jibe––offers a lighter vision of vengeance,...
- 4/4/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Auteurs and Hollywood don't always mix. Stanley Kubrick put some considerable distance between himself and the studio system after being required to stick closely to Dalton Trumbo's "Spartacus" script in 1960 — heading to England to secure funding and creative control on 1962's "Lolita." But he wasn't the first American filmmaker to flee his homeland in search of artistic freedom and funding.
Orson Welles is perhaps the ultimate example of a director clashing with a filmmaking industry unaligned with his sophisticated artistic ambitions. After his first film, "Citizen Kane," debuted in 1941 and proved a financial failure, Welles had to fight for financing and artistic control on future projects. Rko, which had funded "Citizen Kane," renegotiated Welles' contract to remove the unprecedented creative control he was initially afforded. And even though the film would eventually become regarded as one of, if not the finest movie ever made, the director would regularly find...
Orson Welles is perhaps the ultimate example of a director clashing with a filmmaking industry unaligned with his sophisticated artistic ambitions. After his first film, "Citizen Kane," debuted in 1941 and proved a financial failure, Welles had to fight for financing and artistic control on future projects. Rko, which had funded "Citizen Kane," renegotiated Welles' contract to remove the unprecedented creative control he was initially afforded. And even though the film would eventually become regarded as one of, if not the finest movie ever made, the director would regularly find...
- 3/4/2023
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
One of the year’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further...
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
One of the year’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further...
- 12/23/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSGush.The lineup for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival has been announced. Before the festival begins in Park City on January 19, peruse the selection on Notebook—including new films from Ira Sachs, Deborah Stratman (The Illinois Parables), Mary Helena Clark (Figure Minus Fact), and Fox Maxy (F1ght1ng Looks Different 2 Me Now).Victor Erice has just wrapped production on a new film, Cerrar los Ojos, in Granada, Spain, ahead of a 2023 release. This will be his fourth feature, arriving 31 years after 1992’s Dream of Light.The legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti—one of David Lynch’s most important collaborators, and the architect of all of his atmospheres—has died at age 85. In addition to his music with Lynch, Badalamenti worked with artists like Nina Simone,...
- 12/14/2022
- MUBI
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
The Kingdom I (Lars von Trier)
Before his latest opus, The Kingdom Exodus, arrives on Mubi, Lars von Trier has restored never-before-seen director’s cuts of the first two parts of his 1990s series The Kingdom. Set in the neurosurgical ward of the Danish hospital of Rigshospitalet, we’ve been itching to catch up on the series and now thankfully Mubi has afforded the opportunity with the first part, comprised of four episodes, now available the rest coming soon.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free 30 days)
Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen)
Brett Morgen—venerated documentarian behind Cobain: Montage of Heck and Jane—is the first filmmaker to land a project sanctioned by the Bowie estate. He did not take this for granted. Moonage Daydream is a radiant,...
The Kingdom I (Lars von Trier)
Before his latest opus, The Kingdom Exodus, arrives on Mubi, Lars von Trier has restored never-before-seen director’s cuts of the first two parts of his 1990s series The Kingdom. Set in the neurosurgical ward of the Danish hospital of Rigshospitalet, we’ve been itching to catch up on the series and now thankfully Mubi has afforded the opportunity with the first part, comprised of four episodes, now available the rest coming soon.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free 30 days)
Moonage Daydream (Brett Morgen)
Brett Morgen—venerated documentarian behind Cobain: Montage of Heck and Jane—is the first filmmaker to land a project sanctioned by the Bowie estate. He did not take this for granted. Moonage Daydream is a radiant,...
- 11/18/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Here’s a film documentary that feels like a time-travel machine. But we’re not escaping into the past — the past is coming to us.
In “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” film-besotted documentarian Mark Cousins hopscotches through the Master of Suspense’s body of work based on ideas and images, not your typical film-by-film chronological approach. He’s made hyperlinked connections throughout Hitchcock’s whole filmography (clips from almost every one of his films appear) to show that these works are not of the past: They remain eternally present tense.
To do that, Cousins presents us with a magnificent trick: making it seem as if Hitchcock is narrating the documentary and guiding you through his work and through the themes you might not otherwise notice. Impressionist Alistair McGowan portrays Hitch in the voiceover and has him down completely, from the sharp intake of breath to the almost-snort that precedes him...
In “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” film-besotted documentarian Mark Cousins hopscotches through the Master of Suspense’s body of work based on ideas and images, not your typical film-by-film chronological approach. He’s made hyperlinked connections throughout Hitchcock’s whole filmography (clips from almost every one of his films appear) to show that these works are not of the past: They remain eternally present tense.
To do that, Cousins presents us with a magnificent trick: making it seem as if Hitchcock is narrating the documentary and guiding you through his work and through the themes you might not otherwise notice. Impressionist Alistair McGowan portrays Hitch in the voiceover and has him down completely, from the sharp intake of breath to the almost-snort that precedes him...
- 9/5/2022
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
Pink Flamingos
Blu ray
Criterion
1972 / 1:66:1 / 93 Min.
Starring Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey
Written by John Waters
Directed by John Waters
In 1980, J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum began an exploration into those elusive films that could only be seen at the witching hour—a time when most theaters were closed and, it was implied, most decent people were home in bed. Published in 1983, their book was a catalogue of curios that defied categorization until Rosenbaum and Hoberman named them: Midnight Movies. But even alongside renegade efforts like Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos stood out as the tarnished gold standard for transgressive entertainment; it felt then, and it feels now, like a genuinely lawless movie—as of this writing, it remains banned in the town of Hicksville, New York.
A gender-bending satire of a great republic’s rush to the bottom,...
Blu ray
Criterion
1972 / 1:66:1 / 93 Min.
Starring Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey
Written by John Waters
Directed by John Waters
In 1980, J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum began an exploration into those elusive films that could only be seen at the witching hour—a time when most theaters were closed and, it was implied, most decent people were home in bed. Published in 1983, their book was a catalogue of curios that defied categorization until Rosenbaum and Hoberman named them: Midnight Movies. But even alongside renegade efforts like Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos stood out as the tarnished gold standard for transgressive entertainment; it felt then, and it feels now, like a genuinely lawless movie—as of this writing, it remains banned in the town of Hicksville, New York.
A gender-bending satire of a great republic’s rush to the bottom,...
- 7/16/2022
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
A Night of Knowing Nothing, the debut of Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia and winner of the Oeil d’or for Best Documentary at last year’s Cannes, cannily fuses two forms of knowing, or two ways of absorbing an important moment in one’s life: experiencing and its near-opposite, remembering. Through its slippery cinematic language and elusive point-of-view, Kapadia depicts a moment happening urgently in the film’s present-day strand––a wave of anti-government student protests and their resulting crackdown––and treats it like memory, which we know operates as anything but a direct mental recording device. Influential film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum convincingly argues that a film can’t be both incoherent and political––at its best, A Night of Knowing Nothing offers a challenge to this wisdom.
Through the narrative device of disputable “recovered” letters, juxtaposed with reams of poetic visuals that offer counterpoint, rather than simple illustration of the text,...
Through the narrative device of disputable “recovered” letters, juxtaposed with reams of poetic visuals that offer counterpoint, rather than simple illustration of the text,...
- 2/9/2022
- by David Katz
- The Film Stage
The Japanese wartime drama Red Angel (1966) will be available on Blu-ray January 18th from Arrow Video
Directed by Yasuzo Masumura, Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse.
When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction.
Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with...
Directed by Yasuzo Masumura, Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse.
When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction.
Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with...
- 12/22/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
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“Citizen Kane” is being restored by the Criterion Collection in honor of the film’s 80th anniversary. Regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, “Citizen Kane” follows the story of a reporter tasked with decoding the meaning of “Rosebud” — the final word uttered by Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) on his death bed. Kane, a fictitious newspaper mogul, was inspired by real-life tycoons William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, Samuel Insull, and Harold McCormick.
The Criterion edition of Welles’ 1941 feature film directorial debut will be released on November 23, but you can pre-order it now to make sure that you get a copy (in case they sell out during the Black Friday...
“Citizen Kane” is being restored by the Criterion Collection in honor of the film’s 80th anniversary. Regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time, “Citizen Kane” follows the story of a reporter tasked with decoding the meaning of “Rosebud” — the final word uttered by Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) on his death bed. Kane, a fictitious newspaper mogul, was inspired by real-life tycoons William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, Samuel Insull, and Harold McCormick.
The Criterion edition of Welles’ 1941 feature film directorial debut will be released on November 23, but you can pre-order it now to make sure that you get a copy (in case they sell out during the Black Friday...
- 11/4/2021
- by Latifah Muhammad
- Indiewire
IndieWire turns 25 this year. To mark the occasion, we’re running a series of essays about the future of everything we cover.
Quick: How many films can you find on Netflix from before 1980? Gems can be uncovered there — shout-out to Youssef Chahine’s 1958 Egyptian classic, “Cairo Station” — but the burden is on those cinephiles already interested enough to seek them out.
Lovers of film history aren’t born, they’re made. Discussions with other film fans, nights out at your university rep cinema, and serendipitous discoveries on Turner Classic Movies, certainly help. Many of us owe our parents for exposing us to classic film at an early age. Still, we’ve reached a point where movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as concurrent world cinema titles, are more accessible than ever, but risk falling further into obscurity.
There was a time when you couldn’t see even towering classics,...
Quick: How many films can you find on Netflix from before 1980? Gems can be uncovered there — shout-out to Youssef Chahine’s 1958 Egyptian classic, “Cairo Station” — but the burden is on those cinephiles already interested enough to seek them out.
Lovers of film history aren’t born, they’re made. Discussions with other film fans, nights out at your university rep cinema, and serendipitous discoveries on Turner Classic Movies, certainly help. Many of us owe our parents for exposing us to classic film at an early age. Still, we’ve reached a point where movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as concurrent world cinema titles, are more accessible than ever, but risk falling further into obscurity.
There was a time when you couldn’t see even towering classics,...
- 10/28/2021
- by Christian Blauvelt and Kristen Lopez
- Indiewire
“That’s all he ever wanted out of life… was love. That’s the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn’t have any to give.”
Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane (1941) will be available on 4k and Blu-ray October 19th. A 4-disc 4K Uhd+Blu-ray Combo and a 3-blu-ray Edition will both be available.
In the most dazzling debut feature in cinema history, twenty-five-year-old writer-producer-director-star Orson Welles synthesized the possibilities of sound-era filmmaking into what could be called the first truly modern movie. In telling the story of the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of a William Randolph Hearst–like newspaper magnate named Charles Foster Kane, Welles not only created the definitive portrait of American megalomania, he also unleashed a torrent of stylistic innovations—from the jigsaw-puzzle narrative structure to the stunning deep-focus camera work of Gregg Toland—that have ensured that Citizen Kane remains fresh and...
Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane (1941) will be available on 4k and Blu-ray October 19th. A 4-disc 4K Uhd+Blu-ray Combo and a 3-blu-ray Edition will both be available.
In the most dazzling debut feature in cinema history, twenty-five-year-old writer-producer-director-star Orson Welles synthesized the possibilities of sound-era filmmaking into what could be called the first truly modern movie. In telling the story of the meteoric rise and precipitous fall of a William Randolph Hearst–like newspaper magnate named Charles Foster Kane, Welles not only created the definitive portrait of American megalomania, he also unleashed a torrent of stylistic innovations—from the jigsaw-puzzle narrative structure to the stunning deep-focus camera work of Gregg Toland—that have ensured that Citizen Kane remains fresh and...
- 8/31/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Son of the White Mare (1981)Pioneering Hungarian filmmaker Marcell Jankovics has died. Known for his fantastical and folkloric animations, Jankovics' films like Johnny Corncob (1973) and Son of the White Mare (1981) helped place Hungarian animation on the map. Last year, Jankovics discussed his recently re-released Son of the White Mare with Christopher L. Inoa. Amazon has bought MGM for $8.45 billion. Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, has announced plans to reimagine MGM's "treasure trove of [intellectual property]," which includes 12 Angry Men, Basic Instinct, and Raging Bull. Cristian Mungiu will be the Jury President for this year's International Critics' Week at Cannes. The festival's lineup is set to be announced on June 7. Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese has started production on his next film, supported by the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund.
- 6/2/2021
- MUBI
Above: TimeCalling 2020 a strange year for films is a polite understatement. In a matter of weeks, the pandemic changed moviegoing (and movie-watching) as we knew them: cinemas closed, blockbusters were postponed, festivals turned digital, all while the theatrical window shrunk, and streaming platforms became the ultimate destination for an ever-growing number of releases. Which is why browsing through the “Best Films” lists of this annus horribilis is such an eye-opening experience. It is not to weigh the consensus around this or that title that one turns to them, but to question how the changes in our viewing habits may influence the kind of films we’ll watch and talk about moving forward. “As usual,” Eric Kohn contends at IndieWire, “anyone who thinks this was a bad year for movies simply didn’t see enough of them.” Despite these dire challenges and the uncertainty of the future, the cinema remained very much alive throughout the year,...
- 12/16/2020
- MUBI
David Fincher’s “Mank,” a drama set in the Hollywood of the 1930s and ’40s and focusing on “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, has found itself embroiled in an argument that began when Fincher was only 8 years old. It’s a battle whose combatants included film critic Pauline Kael, director Peter Bogdanovich and Orson Welles himself.
At issue is the question of how much Welles contributed to the “Kane” script, for which he and Mankiewicz are both credited. Welles’ critics say the screenplay was almost entirely Mankiewicz’s creation, with the director-actor-producer trying to seize writing credit from the man who actually did the work. Welles’ supporters say that Mankiewicz and Welles simultaneously wrote first drafts, which Welles then turned into the final script, largely without input from Mankiewicz.
“Mank” does not adhere strictly to either viewpoint, and much of the film is devoted more to the California gubernatorial election...
At issue is the question of how much Welles contributed to the “Kane” script, for which he and Mankiewicz are both credited. Welles’ critics say the screenplay was almost entirely Mankiewicz’s creation, with the director-actor-producer trying to seize writing credit from the man who actually did the work. Welles’ supporters say that Mankiewicz and Welles simultaneously wrote first drafts, which Welles then turned into the final script, largely without input from Mankiewicz.
“Mank” does not adhere strictly to either viewpoint, and much of the film is devoted more to the California gubernatorial election...
- 12/9/2020
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Wonder Woman 1984. Warner Bros announced the surprising decision this week to have its entire 2021 theatrical slate—which includes Dune, Wonder Woman 1984, and even Clint Eastwood's Cry Macho—on the streaming service HBO Max for each film's first month of release, in addition to a concurrent theatrical release. In other seismic shifts in cinema history, Kodak has sadly discontinued its color internegative stock, a decision that will no doubt have long-term consequences. As John Klacsmann points out on Twitter, this is "the most used stock when preserving 16mm experimental film." Recommended VIEWINGCo-organized with the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (Tfai) and Taiwan Cinema Toolkit, Anthology Film Archives is presenting a must-see, free series of Taiwanese b-movies, a realm of cinema containing "the down-and-dirty genre films that proliferated in the late 1970s and...
- 12/9/2020
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe 49th annual New Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf) has been rescheduled from March to December 9-20, with films slated to premiere in the Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema. The line-up includes Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s The Cloud in Her Room, Maya Da-Rin's The Fever, and Alexander Nanau’s Collective. Lynne Ramsay, who last directed You Were Never Really Here, will be adapting Steven King's psychological horror novel The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, about a young girl who becomes lost in the woods. Recommended VIEWINGAbel Ferrara's new documentary, Sportin' Life, which premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in August, has gone an unusual premiere route, streaming first through Indiewire (currently unavailable), and now at The Film Stage. Shot by Sean Price Willaims, the documentary follows Ferrara as he...
- 11/18/2020
- MUBI
Olaf Möller is a film programmer and critic, as well as a Professor in the Department of Film, Television and Scenographyat Aalto University in Finland. He regularly collaborates with prestigious film magazines such as Sight & Sound, Cinema Scope, Mubi Notebook, Eye for Film and Film Comment, among others. He is considered one of the most authoritative voices of film history and criticism, along with Jonathan Rosenbaum, Laura Mulvey or David Bordwell. He has curated cycles and retrospectives for festivals such as Rotterdam, the Viennale or Locarno, and was a member of the Selection Committee of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Möller is the author of numerous publications, including Fragmentos de búsqueda (2013), focusing on the cinema of Thomas Heisse, Romuald Karmakar (2013), about the German filmmaker, or Geliebt und Verdrängt: Das Kino der jungen Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis 1963/ Loved and repressed: the cinema of the young Federal Republic of Germany from...
- 11/3/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Drive-in movies are back, and it took the deadly Covid-19 virus to resurrect them. With cinemas closed and large public gatherings not a good idea no matter what some bikers, party-types and comb-over presidents might think, some adventurous souls have met with success in recent months by rejuvenating the largely dead-and-buried American pastime of drive-in moviegoing.
Adapting to strictures designed to maintain safety guidelines for social distancing and non-physical contact transactions, a few entrepreneurs and drive-in operators have made a go of it this summer with a variety of programming approaches. It’s an open question whether or not this will trigger a long-term resurrection of an institution that reached its peak in the late 1950s, when more than 4,000 drive-ins dotted the United States map. I should think not, for a variety of reasons.
But for the moment, the newly resurrected drive-ins are providing a good excuse to get out...
Adapting to strictures designed to maintain safety guidelines for social distancing and non-physical contact transactions, a few entrepreneurs and drive-in operators have made a go of it this summer with a variety of programming approaches. It’s an open question whether or not this will trigger a long-term resurrection of an institution that reached its peak in the late 1950s, when more than 4,000 drive-ins dotted the United States map. I should think not, for a variety of reasons.
But for the moment, the newly resurrected drive-ins are providing a good excuse to get out...
- 8/25/2020
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNext year's Sundance Film Festival has received permission from the Park City Council to be seven days rather than 11. The festival will also have limited capacity in theatres to address public health concerns. Recommended VIEWINGEvery Thursday in August, MoMa is streaming selections of historic films from its collection in a series titled Film Vault Summer Camp. In episode 1, collection specialist Ashley Swinnerton introduces The Flying Train and Great Actresses of the Past.In a new video essay for Little White Lies, Luís Azevedo explores the role of kitchens in the films of Pedro Almodóvar.From Netflix, the official trailer for Charlie Kaufman's psychological thriller I'm Thinking of Ending Things, adapted from the bestselling novel by Iain Reid. Recommended READINGAbove: Ja'Tovia Gary by JerSean Golatt for the New York Times. For the New York Times,...
- 8/17/2020
- MUBI
Mubi's series The Inimitable Image: An Amit Dutta Retrospective is showing summer and autumn 2020 in India.Above: NainsukhBlinking is a matter of rhythm, and so is staring—rhythms perhaps more crucial to cinema than to any other medium. By withholding perspective, or by rendering it immobile, blinking and staring introduce duration to a cinematic frame, allowing the camera to grasp the very tactile rhythm of its own gaze and that of its object. Amit Dutta’s is a cinema that is built around such rhythms, around the purely ocular movement of the eye, where gazing is everything—it is the source of both meaning in the story and of truth, if there is one. The rhythm of his cinema alternates between rapid disturbances, like in the tilt of a head, and long stretches of stillness where a landscape, such as sloping mountain road, is introduced even before it is inhabited by characters.
- 8/11/2020
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe U.S. poster for Albert Serra's provocative Liberté, which will make for some very pleasant at-home viewing when it opens at Film Society of Lincoln Center's Virtual Cinema on May 1st. Read our interview with Serra here.The Venice Film Festival has announced plans to proceed with this year's festivities in September despite health concerns, and that further plans will be unveiled in May. Recommended VIEWINGThe official international trailer for Gerardo Naranjo's Oaxaca-set Kokoloko, which follows "a would-be girl soldier ready to do anything to escape reality, and her lover who would kill for her." It is Naranjo's first film since 2011's Miss Bala.Recommended READINGAbove: Oscar Isaac, Willem Dafoe, and Paul Schrader on the set of The Card Counter. In a new interview with Vulture, Paul Schrader shares his thoughts on the future of movies,...
- 4/22/2020
- MUBI
Spending time with filmmaker Kaori Oda, you often hear her reminding herself to thank those who have helped her. In a director's comment, Oda states that showing her debut feature, Aragane (2015) is her way of repaying the generosity of the Bosnian miners who showed her their work. Experiencing her films which so far have all been shot, edited and (except for one short film) sound-designed by Oda herself, Oda is clearly a gifted artist but it seems just as true that her work is made to be a gift to the people she worked with. Her gifts are deservedly being recognized. One notable collaborator is her mentor Béla Tarr, who she studied under at the Hungarian filmmakers' short-lived film school, film.factory. Aragane was made during her time at the film school in Sarajevo and since its release, Oda has drawn other heavyweight fans including Apichatpong Weersathakul, and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.
- 3/5/2020
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSMartin Scorsese and Paul Schrader in 1973.Martin Scorsese will be executive producing Paul Schrader's upcoming The Card Counter, a casino-set thriller starring Tiffany Haddish, Oscar Isaac, and Willem Dafoe, marking the pair's fifth collaboration. Though we're a little late, we're thrilled by news that the Safdie Brothers have teamed up with comedian Nathan Fielder to pen a half-hour pilot for Showtime. The story reportedly stars Fielder and Benny Safdie in the tale of a curse that threatens the marriage of a couple on a Hgtv show. Recommended VIEWINGMetrograph's official trailer for the 4K restoration of Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong, a portrait of nihilistic youth in the city. Abel Ferrara's surreal Siberia stars Willem Dafoe as an isolated man who ventures into "dreams, memory and imagination in an attempt to find his true nature.
- 2/26/2020
- MUBI
From VancouverFilm.Net, here is the Vancouver Film Production Update for March 2020, including "Arcadia", "Kung Fu", "Omens" and a whole lot more:
Feature
10-31
Local Production Company: 10-31 Productions Canada Ltd.
Producer: Eli Roth, Roger Birnbaum, Raynor Shimabukuro, Jonathan DuBois
3/2/2020 - 4/8/2020
Arcadia
Local Production Company: Gramercy Film Productions Inc.
Producer: Cecil O'Connor, Pat Crowley
Director: Colin Trevorrow
2/24/2020 - 3/6/2020
Ellington
Local Production Company: Swan Song BC Productions Inc.
Director: Ben Cleary
5/11/2020 - 7/10/2020
Lou
Local Production Company: Big Indie Lou Canada Inc.
Producer: JJ Abrams, Jonathan Cohen
Director: Anna Foerster
5/11/2020 - 7/2/2020
Mixtape
Local Production Company: Gjln Film Productions Inc.
Producer: Gil Netter, Jim Wedaa
Director: Valerie Weiss
4/20/2020 - 6/5/2020
Umma
Local Production Company: Umma Productions BC Inc.
Producer: Matt Black, Jonathan Schwartz, Zainab Azizi
Director: Iris K. Shim
4/6/2020 - 5/26/2020
Untitled Graham King Project
Local Production Company: Cold Hut Production Ulc.
Producer: Nan Morales
Director: Nora Fingscheidt
2/3/2020 - 4/9/2020
New Media Feature
Bonfire
Local Production Company: No Clocks Productions Ltd.
Feature
10-31
Local Production Company: 10-31 Productions Canada Ltd.
Producer: Eli Roth, Roger Birnbaum, Raynor Shimabukuro, Jonathan DuBois
3/2/2020 - 4/8/2020
Arcadia
Local Production Company: Gramercy Film Productions Inc.
Producer: Cecil O'Connor, Pat Crowley
Director: Colin Trevorrow
2/24/2020 - 3/6/2020
Ellington
Local Production Company: Swan Song BC Productions Inc.
Director: Ben Cleary
5/11/2020 - 7/10/2020
Lou
Local Production Company: Big Indie Lou Canada Inc.
Producer: JJ Abrams, Jonathan Cohen
Director: Anna Foerster
5/11/2020 - 7/2/2020
Mixtape
Local Production Company: Gjln Film Productions Inc.
Producer: Gil Netter, Jim Wedaa
Director: Valerie Weiss
4/20/2020 - 6/5/2020
Umma
Local Production Company: Umma Productions BC Inc.
Producer: Matt Black, Jonathan Schwartz, Zainab Azizi
Director: Iris K. Shim
4/6/2020 - 5/26/2020
Untitled Graham King Project
Local Production Company: Cold Hut Production Ulc.
Producer: Nan Morales
Director: Nora Fingscheidt
2/3/2020 - 4/9/2020
New Media Feature
Bonfire
Local Production Company: No Clocks Productions Ltd.
- 2/26/2020
- by Unknown
- SneakPeek
Taking place alongside Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Slamdance Film Festival is also a thrilling place for discovery of new talent, having featured work from the likes of Bong Joon Ho, the Safdies, Steven Soderbergh, Ari Aster, Jeremy Saulnier, Sean Baker, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ana Lily Amirpour, Christopher Nolan, and more. As we look towards this year’s 26th edition, one of the titles on our radar is Majnuni, directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Kouros Alaghband, who was mentored by Béla Tarr and the film came out of his unique film school.
Set during the night within a war-torn Sarajevo, the enigmatic feature debut follows a man who stalks a broken family on a path to his old love. “Dreamlike and haunting, Majnuni periodically reminds me of Holy Motors by Leos Carax. It is intriguing, provocative, and beautiful as well as puzzling,” said Jonathan Rosenbaum.
“I met my lead actor,...
Set during the night within a war-torn Sarajevo, the enigmatic feature debut follows a man who stalks a broken family on a path to his old love. “Dreamlike and haunting, Majnuni periodically reminds me of Holy Motors by Leos Carax. It is intriguing, provocative, and beautiful as well as puzzling,” said Jonathan Rosenbaum.
“I met my lead actor,...
- 1/23/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGJonathan Glazer's The FallA surprise new short from Jonathan Glazer, entitled The Fall, dropped on BBC Two with little introduction on Sunday night, exposing viewers to 7 minutes of mob violence. “The day I saw a picture of the Trump sons grinning with a dead leopard,” Glazer says, was the inspiration for the harrowing visual centerpiece of the film. The official U.S. trailer for Ken Loach's drama Sorry We Missed You, about a man who decides to be his own boss, only to fall into a harsh and unrelenting gig economy. Diao Yinan returns with The Wild Goose Lake, which follows a gangster and a call-girl on the run from the police. Read our review of the film here. Recommended READINGDennis Hopper, "Peter Fonda (With Tripod)" (1966)On The Guardian, an exclusive look...
- 10/31/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAvant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky has provided a new ident for Mubi that displays his "sensory and tactile view on cinema." The ident features strips of film negative overlapping and whirring to the sounds of a passing train. Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for Clint Eastwood's Richard Jewell, based on the true story of a security guard falsely accused of planting a bomb at the 1996 Olympics. An investigation into the "real fake cameras" used to create Toy Story 4, which emulates a variety of camera lenses, from anamorphic to spherical. The elusive Roger Avary, co-writer of Pulp Fiction and director of The Rules of Attraction, returns from a long hiatus with what looks to be a delightful crime romp complete with Crispin Glover as a fake Frenchman-assassin.Mati Diop's Atlantics, which follows a woman...
- 10/9/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSTerrence Malick's A Hidden Life.The various lineups for Cannes 2019 have been announced: the Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, and the separate but simultaneous events, the Directors' Fortnight, Critics' Week, and Acid.Stephen Chow has confirmed that he will be directing the follow-up to his 2004 film Kung Fu Hustle, in which he also starred as the lead character. Recommended Viewinga tense and harrowing trailer for Ava Duvernay's When They See Us, a miniseries that follows the plight of the Central Park Five, five boys falsely accused of brutally raping a jogger. The series, which spans from 1989 to 2014, also marks another collaboration between Duvernay and cinematographer Bradford Young.Flying Lotus and David Lynch come together for the song "Fire is Coming," off of Flying Lotus's new album Flamagra. The music video, which...
- 4/24/2019
- MUBI
A rarely-seen queer film, starring Sandra Bernhard and a young Rose Byrne, will finally see the light of day. In a partnership with NewFest, New York’s Quad Cinema will show the film on the big screen for the first time since its release. Experimental filmmaker and queer film historian Jenni Olson lent a rare 35 mm print from her personal collection, and will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion. Bernhard is not set to appear.
Released in 1994, “Dallas Doll” is Australian filmmaker Ann Turner’s loose riff on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Teorema,” with Bernhard in the Terence Stamp role. She plays an American golf pro who, on a trip to Australia, begins seducing her way through a bourgeois family and country-club set. The film received mixed reviews during its limited theatrical run, including from Bernhard herself, who made no secret of her feelings. She distanced herself from the film in interviews,...
Released in 1994, “Dallas Doll” is Australian filmmaker Ann Turner’s loose riff on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Teorema,” with Bernhard in the Terence Stamp role. She plays an American golf pro who, on a trip to Australia, begins seducing her way through a bourgeois family and country-club set. The film received mixed reviews during its limited theatrical run, including from Bernhard herself, who made no secret of her feelings. She distanced herself from the film in interviews,...
- 1/22/2019
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Stars: Joseph Cotten, Tim Holt, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead, Orson Welles | Written by Orson Welles, Booth Tarkington (novel) | Directed by Orson Welles
Aka the film that Orson Welles made after Citizen Kane, and which has become synonymous with studio interference. Perhaps an hour of footage was slashed and burned, hence the 90-minute version we are left with. Though, even without the full vision of Welles, it’s a cracking piece of cinema.
On the surface The Magnificent Ambersons is a simple story of youthful jealousy and impudence. It’s the early 20th century, and the western world is on the cusp of an automobile revolution. 20-year-old George (Tim Holt) doesn’t see it as such – he just sees an opportunistic businessman named Eugene (Joseph Cotton) trying to seduce his lonely mother, Isabel (Dolores Costello).
George has no great ambitions of his own. What use are ambitions when he...
Aka the film that Orson Welles made after Citizen Kane, and which has become synonymous with studio interference. Perhaps an hour of footage was slashed and burned, hence the 90-minute version we are left with. Though, even without the full vision of Welles, it’s a cracking piece of cinema.
On the surface The Magnificent Ambersons is a simple story of youthful jealousy and impudence. It’s the early 20th century, and the western world is on the cusp of an automobile revolution. 20-year-old George (Tim Holt) doesn’t see it as such – he just sees an opportunistic businessman named Eugene (Joseph Cotton) trying to seduce his lonely mother, Isabel (Dolores Costello).
George has no great ambitions of his own. What use are ambitions when he...
- 12/13/2018
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
The series Claude Chabrol, maître de suspense is showing on Mubi from October 6 – November 13, 2018 in the United States.The career of Claude Chabrol is as slippery as it is prolific. He started as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, which catalyzed his legacy as a director of over fifty films. Throughout those decades, his works frequently received lukewarm reception with unpredictable highs and lows: one recurring adjective that appears in appraisals of his filmography is “uneven”1. Because he seemingly “lacked the formal experimentation of Godard, and his chilly, precise style was easily overshadowed by Truffaut’s delirious romanticism,”2 Chabrol became, in the words of Jonathan Rosenbaum, the “most neglected filmmaker of the French New Wave.”3 Here, there are three domains of overlooking: There is the critical “neglect” of Claude Chabrol, shadowing his supply of rocky genre fare. Then, the thematic...
- 10/18/2018
- MUBI
True confession #1: I’m going to dress up as Laurie Strode on “Halloween.” Let’s just say Jamie Lee Curtis and I are of an age. Grey hair? Check. Glasses? Check. Jeans, boots and jacket? No problem. And I’ve got a good-size kitchen cleaver, if not a rack of semi-automatics. That’s Strode’s new weapons arsenal, stacked and ready to wreak revenge on Michael Myers after he escapes from a mental hospital after 40 years.
Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, first made her name with John Carpenter’s “Halloween” in 1978, when she was 19, followed by Rick Rosenthal’s “Halloween 2,” also written and produced by Carpenter and his producing partner Debra Hill. True confession #2: I worked on that film as a young press agent at Maslansky/Koenigsberg, followed by Carpenter’s “The Fog” and “Escape from New York” (also co-written by Hill).
Read More:...
Curtis, the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, first made her name with John Carpenter’s “Halloween” in 1978, when she was 19, followed by Rick Rosenthal’s “Halloween 2,” also written and produced by Carpenter and his producing partner Debra Hill. True confession #2: I worked on that film as a young press agent at Maslansky/Koenigsberg, followed by Carpenter’s “The Fog” and “Escape from New York” (also co-written by Hill).
Read More:...
- 10/16/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Filmmaker Paul Greengrass gets most of his credit for visual innovations behind the camera. It’s his work on the Bourne series that film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum chose as an exemplar of a dominant style in contemporary Hollywood filmmaking, “intensified continuity,” an aesthetic that prioritizes visceral shocks over all story, logic or character matters. But that […]
The post ’22 July’ Review: Paul Greengrass Tackles a Different Kind of Terrorism appeared first on /Film.
The post ’22 July’ Review: Paul Greengrass Tackles a Different Kind of Terrorism appeared first on /Film.
- 10/9/2018
- by Marshall Shaffer
- Slash Film
Cannes — John Malkovich and Russell Smith’s L.A.-based Mr. Mudd has boarded “Brando,” the next film from Spain’s Manuel Martín Cuenca, a director who has grown into one of Spain’s preeminent auteurs.
Gonzalo Sálazar-Simpson’s Madrid-based production house Lazona Films and Martín Cuenca’s own label La Loma Blanca produce the project from Spain. Julio and Carlos Fernández’s Spanish mini-major Filmax will distribute in Spain a project which marks maybe Martín Cuenca’s most international yet: an English-language road movie described as being “in the best traditions of U.S. independent cinema,” Filmax said in a statement Wednesday.
Also handling international sales on “Brando,” Filmax has been introducing the title to buyers at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“This is my most personal and ambitious project,” said Martín Cuenca. He added that the film “will allow me to explore a different kind of love...
Gonzalo Sálazar-Simpson’s Madrid-based production house Lazona Films and Martín Cuenca’s own label La Loma Blanca produce the project from Spain. Julio and Carlos Fernández’s Spanish mini-major Filmax will distribute in Spain a project which marks maybe Martín Cuenca’s most international yet: an English-language road movie described as being “in the best traditions of U.S. independent cinema,” Filmax said in a statement Wednesday.
Also handling international sales on “Brando,” Filmax has been introducing the title to buyers at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
“This is my most personal and ambitious project,” said Martín Cuenca. He added that the film “will allow me to explore a different kind of love...
- 5/16/2018
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
The Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series concludes this weekend. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.
There are three more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 23rd at 7:00pm – Le Samourai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trenchcoat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, “Le samouraï” is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American...
There are three more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 23rd at 7:00pm – Le Samourai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trenchcoat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, “Le samouraï” is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American...
- 3/19/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Raúl Ruiz frequently remarked that he was the perfect person to adapt Marcel Proust’s vast set of novels Remembrance of Things Past (or, more literally, In Search of Lost Time) to the screen because, having reached the end of reading the entire work, he instantly forgot it all. He was joking, of course, but his jest disguised a serious method. The only way to convey Proust on screen, in Ruiz’s opinion, was to approach it not as a literal condensation of multiple characters and events, but as a psychic swirl of half-remembered, half-forgotten fragments and impressions—full of uncanny superimpositions and metamorphoses. “‘The best way to adapt something for film,” he summed up, “is to dream it.” Ruiz’s dreaming was always accompanied by extensive, meandering, seemingly eccentric research. In the case of Time Regained, he plunged (as he revealed in a splendid, lengthy interview with Jacinto Lageira...
- 2/9/2018
- MUBI
This is Part Three in a series about Chicago’s Experimental Film Coalition; and covers their annual experimental film festival. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.
In addition to their monthly screenings, the Coalition founded what was initially called either the Festival of Experimental Film or the Experimental Film Festival. The first one was most likely in 1984. By 1987 it was called the Onion City Film Festival, which it has been called ever since. The Coalition ran Onion City annually until 2001 when it was taken over by Chicago Filmmakers, and continues to run to this day.
1984
Of the first Experimental Film Festival, the dates it ran and the exact list of films that screened are not known as of this writing. However, filmmaker Paul Glabicki lists that his film, Film-Wipe-Film won a Jury Award.
1985
For the second Experimental Film Festival, again the dates and films screened are not known.
In addition to their monthly screenings, the Coalition founded what was initially called either the Festival of Experimental Film or the Experimental Film Festival. The first one was most likely in 1984. By 1987 it was called the Onion City Film Festival, which it has been called ever since. The Coalition ran Onion City annually until 2001 when it was taken over by Chicago Filmmakers, and continues to run to this day.
1984
Of the first Experimental Film Festival, the dates it ran and the exact list of films that screened are not known as of this writing. However, filmmaker Paul Glabicki lists that his film, Film-Wipe-Film won a Jury Award.
1985
For the second Experimental Film Festival, again the dates and films screened are not known.
- 12/31/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
- 11/25/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended Viewinga stunning trailer for the 4k restoration and re-release of Legend of the Mountain (1979), an under-seen, contemplative action masterpiece by Come Drink with Me and A Touch of Zen director King Hu.Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone gets a wry and incisive new trailer for its imminent U.S. release. We wrote on the film in February, and later interviewed the director about it.For De Filmkrant, Notebook contributors Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin investigate in a new video essay the virtuous modulation to be found in Howard Hawks' and Barbara Stanwyck's talents in Ball of Fire.Commissioned by Renzo, Le CiNéMa Club has premiered three inspired short films from Mati Diop, Eduardo Williams, and Baptist Penetticobra all loosely interpreting the theme "Inhabit the earth".Recommended READINGIn...
- 11/8/2017
- MUBI
In the cinema of Steven Spielberg, to say nothing of the cinema of science fiction, of Hollywood, and of practical effects, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is a landmark, like the silhouette of a small mountain in the night skyline. Spielberg’s Duel (1971), carried over from television to movie theaters, was a wisp of a story elevated by its visual dynamism. His theatrical debut, The Sugarland Express (1974), was another 70s American road movie, notable today for the way it combines the appealing grit of the New Hollywood (and of Duel) with a much warmer, more charitable view of America and its culture. It contains the director’s first broken family unit—a key theme in his career—and was his first film scored by John Williams, even if it has almost none of the Williams trademarks. Jaws (1975) was the breakout smash, a lurid bucket-of-blood movie turned into a light day-at-the-beach movie,...
- 9/10/2017
- MUBI
Above: Soviet poster for The Enchanted Desna (Yuliya Solntseva, Ussr, 1964). Artist: Grebenshikov.Nine years ago I was asked to participate in a film blogger thread about personal cinematic Holy Grails, and as my number one choice I selected, without hesitation, Yuliya Solntseva’s The Enchanted Desna (1964), a film I thought I might never see in any format, let alone on 70mm. But this weekend, dreams will indeed come true as New York’s Museum of the Moving Image plays Solntseva’s Ukrainian Trilogy in 70mm and 35mm. Solntseva (1901-1989) was an actress of note (she starred in the title roles of Aelita: Queen of Mars and The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom in 1924) who, upon the death of her husband, the great Aleksandr Dovzhenko, in 1956, turned to directing to realize his unfinished scripts. The result, by all accounts, are among the most poetic and magical of films.You can read...
- 8/25/2017
- MUBI
When George Romero died at the age of 77, he was in the process of developing more zombie movies with the insightful Diy ethos that first put him on the map nearly 50 years ago with “Night of the Living Dead.” The horror community has embraced Romero over the years, and as the decades wore on, he went from being one of the genre’s most exciting contributors to its preeminent guru. Here’s an overview of the factors that contributed his legacy.
The Modern Zombie Movie
While the initial concept of zombies dates back to a mix of African and Haitian folklore, George A. Romero cemented the modern vision with his seminal 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead.” While the word “zombie” is never uttered in the film, his spin on the lurching undead forever changed pop culture. The director cemented this legacy with five more films in the “Night of the Living Dead” series,...
The Modern Zombie Movie
While the initial concept of zombies dates back to a mix of African and Haitian folklore, George A. Romero cemented the modern vision with his seminal 1968 classic “Night of the Living Dead.” While the word “zombie” is never uttered in the film, his spin on the lurching undead forever changed pop culture. The director cemented this legacy with five more films in the “Night of the Living Dead” series,...
- 7/17/2017
- by Eric Kohn and William Earl
- Indiewire
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero: Filmed mostly on the streets in newly-liberated territory, Roberto Rossellini’s gripping war-related shows are blessed with new restorations but still reflect their rough origins. The second picture, the greater masterpiece, looks as if it were improvised out of sheer artistic will.
Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)
1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.
Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Original Music: Renzo Rossellini
Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...
Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy
Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)
1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96
Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.
Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.
Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma
Original Music: Renzo Rossellini
Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...
- 6/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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