Catherine Grant welcomes the return of Film Studies, the journal originally created and edited in 1999 by Ian Christie and Michael Grant. “Its original editorial advisory board was constituted by leading figures in the field, including Janet Bergstrom, Peter William Evans, Thomas Elsaesser, Simon Field, Tom Gunning, Laura Mulvey, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Steve Neale and Anthony Smith,” notes current managing editor Núria Triana Toribio. “Now in 2015, Film Studies is once again part of the stable of journals of Manchester University Press, with instructions from our editor Matthew Frost to ‘pick up where others left off.'”
The new issue is free to read; Adaptation, published by Oxford University Press, is not, but Laurence Raw tells us about two articles in the current issue that rankle him. He’s got three reasons for not reviving fidelity as a critical standard.
Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema “is a succinct book, academic in orientation, accessible in writing style,” writes Martin Stollery for Film International. The “overarching thesis is that there have been significant changes, compared to earlier films, for example the ‘safari’ cycle, where the focus in films such as Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962) and Born Free (1966) was on unspoiled, expansive African nature.”21st century films set in Africa, such as Hotel Rwanda (2004), Blood Diamond (2006) and The Last King of Scotland (2006) “run the gamut of genocide, violence, oppression and misery” and “black Africans as independent agents, collectively responsible for their own positive outcomes, rarely appear…. Another novel twist is Framing Africa’s contributors. They are not film or media scholars, but anthropologists and historians invited to write about films relating to their areas of expertise.”
An interview with Anthony Mann recorded not too long before a heart attack killed him in 1967 while he was working on A Dandy in Aspic in Berlin; via Raymond De Felitta
“Whether [Raúl] Ruiz’s working model happens to be Orson Welles or Richard Thorpe, Robert Louis Stevenson or Jorge Luis Borges, the usual strategy is to keep us shifting and guessing.” Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s posted his 2011 piece on Mysteries of Lisbon.
For BOMB, Tobias Carroll talks with Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang about their music and filmmaking (Yang has worked with, among others, Nathaniel Dorsky) and Charity Coleman talks with Masha Tupitsyn about Love Sounds.
Jaime Grijalba Gómez sends a report on this year’s Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival to the Notebook.
IN OTHER NEWS
A screenshot from Inherent Vice has been making the rounds because everyone thought the doctor at the center of it was Thomas Pynchon. As Alex Shephard reports at Melville House, Charley Morgan, “the son of M*A*S*H actor Harry Morgan, who has had bit parts in Lincoln, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Anderson’s The Master,” has delightfully blown that notion out of the water. That’s right, he’s the doctor, and besides: “Thomas Pynchon was not in Inherent Vice.”
“Test footage from Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight—photographed by two-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson—received enthusiastic applause when it was projected in 70mm anamorphic film for a full house at the Paramount Theater on Saturday at Cine Gear Expo.” Not only does Carolyn Giardina have more in the Hollywood Reporter but Jordan Raup adds this at the Film Stage: “A few years back Paul Thomas Anderson had a handful of pop-up screening for The Master in 70mm and it looks like Tarantino will go even further with his film, with plans to retrofit around 50 theaters in the U.S. to show the film in the format. Considering Panavision reworked 19 classic Ultra Panavision 70 anamorphic lenses for the production (not used since 1966′s Khartoum and now set to be employed for Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One by cinematographer Greig Fraser), it’s quite a substantial deal for exhibition.”
John Waters delivers this year’s commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design
“A new urgency is invigorating the crowdfunding campaign to finish The Other Side of the Wind after several potential matching offers were identified in Europe,” reports Ray Kelly at Wellesnet. “Thirty days remain to raise $1 million on Indiegogo to engage investors to match this revised goal. When combined, producers will have reached the original goal of $2 million needed to complete Orson Welles’s last movie.”
On a related note, at Vulture, Elon Green tells us how Welles wound up editing an explicit sex scene in 3 A.M., an adult movie Gary Graver directed in 1975 under the name Robert McCallum. You can watch a clip from the scene (1’48”) with commentary from Bilge Ebiri. As they’ll warn you, this is, of course, NSFW viewing.
FIDMarseille has announced the lineup for its 2015 edition running from June 30 through July 6.
“James Napier Robertson’s The Dark Horse, telling the story of New Zealand bipolar speed chess champion legend Genesis Potini, received the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival” and the “award for best documentary went to Jason Zeldes’s Romeo Is Bleeding, which follows Bay Area poet Donte Clark as he puts together an updated version of Romeo and Juliet.” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Kilday has the full list of winners.
Edward Norton will attend the 68th Locarno Film Festival (August 5 through 15), where he’ll receive the Excellence Award Moët & Chandon. In the Notebook, artistic director Carlo Chatrian tells us why.
GOINGS ON
New York. Mahogany (1975), directed by Motown Records founder Berry Gordy and starring Diana Ross, the film’s “gayest signifier,” as Melissa Anderson notes at Artforum, screens tonight as part of the IFC Center series Queer/Art/Film: Black Summer Nights running Mondays through August 17.
Trailer for Ridley Scott’s The Martian
Cambridge. The series Titanus, Portrait of a Studio is on at the Harvard Film Archive through August 29.
IN THE WORKS
Eugène Green is now shooting Le fils de Joseph with Mathieu Amalric, Fabrizio Rongione, Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Régnier and Dominique Blanc, reports Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa. “Written by the director, the story revolves around a young man (Ezenfis) who lives with his mother (Régnier). Having never known his father, he heads off to look for him. He finds a cynical and Machiavellian man (Amalric) who works as a publisher in Paris. After he attempts to kill him, he will then find filial love thanks to his uncle (Rongione)… According to Eugène Green, ‘It’s a very topical story, that of a child who doesn’t know his father, but I have incidentally drawn a parallel with certain incidents in the Bible in a very intuitive way. There is a mythological dimension to it, but it’s also practically a film noir. But it won’t be a classic crime film, of course.'”
OBIT
“Richard Johnson, the British actor who appeared in such films as The Haunting and The Pumpkin Eater but turned down an offer to play James Bond in the first 007 film, has died. He was 87.” Mike Barnes has more in the Hollywood Reporter.
ENDNOTES
Listening (79’34”). Peter Labuza and Victor Morton discuss this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival in the latest episode of The Cinephiliacs.
More listening (42’47”). At the Film Experience, Nathaniel Rogers, KM Soehnlein, Kristen Sales, Bill Chambers and Brian Herrera discuss the 1979 race for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Language, Uwe Boll, language
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