The new Cinema Scope is out and this time around a very generous selection of articles from the print version is online as well. But just as you leaf through a new New Yorker to binge on all the cartoons before settling in with the articles, you’ll want to turn first to the CS 2013 top ten. The results of the poll of contributors aren’t much surprise to CS editor Mark Peranson (#1: Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake), but neither will it be a much of a surprise to many of us that it’s a damn fine list indeed.
Yesterday, Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. broke the news that IFC Films will be releasing Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood on July 11. The film’s “somewhat unprecedented as a cinematic gesture, wearing its formal concept so casually that it can be an overwhelming experience precisely for the disconcertment it provokes,” writes Gabe Klinger, who takes a look at “12 aspects of it—one for each year that the film covers—that attempt to explain what Linklater and his collaborators might be up to.”
Also in Issue 58: Jordan Cronk argues that Corneliu Porumboiu “has proven most consciously attuned to both the limitations and nascent theoretical potentialities of the new Romanian cinema.” As for Paolo Sorrentino, for Michael Sicinski, “it becomes less and less plausible when certain tastemakers insist on forwarding him as a going concern.” Plus Adam Nayman on wrestlers as actors, Quintín on José Campusano, Max Nelson on Amit Dutta, Max Goldberg on Stephanie Barber, Andréa Picard on Provenance (2013), “artist-filmmaker Amie Siegel’s most recent and most ambitious multi-film project,” Chuck Stephens on Thanatopsis (1962), “20th-century Renaissance man Ed Emshwiller’s 16mm cine-dance classic,” Julian Carrington on Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Blake Williams on Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin and Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s “Global Discoveries on DVD” column.
A new trailer for Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition
Then there are the festival reports: Calum Marsh on Rotterdam, Robert Koehler on the Berlinale and Shelly Kraicer on the winner of the Golden Bear, Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice: “Although it’s a bit facile to say surreal is the new real in China today, it’s hard to contest that [Diao Yinan and Jia Zhangke] (and [other directors] like them, such as Ning Hao, Feng Xiaogang, and Jiang Wen) have hit upon a winning strategy by mobilizing genre-cinema style to do the work of social realism, that traditionally privileged mode of ‘serious’ art cinema in China ever since the classic era of ’30s leftist Shanghai cinema.”
As it happens, two more reports on this year’s Berlinale have just gone up, Yaron Dahan‘s in the Notebook and Giovanni Vimercati‘s for Film Comment.
MORE READING
Catherine Grant‘s posted an entry on the concept of cinematic découpage, rounding up scholarly writing from far and wide.
Writing for Criterion, Thomas Elsaesser notes that, among other things, Bergman’s Persona (1966) is “cinema about cinema—a point that Bergman makes clear with his six-minute prologue montage sequence—which is one of the reasons it is such an irresistible challenge for writers.”
Maya Deren “may not be a name that’s often bandied about by my fellow horror film enthusiasts,” writes Kimberly Lindbergs, introducing a gallery of images at Movie Morlocks suggesting that she ought to be.
A New, Must-See Script Analysis eBook in Multimedia from Jennine Lanouette.
Imogen Smith at the Chiseler on The Crimson Kimono (1959): “What saves [Sam] Fuller’s language and his style from seeming risibly overheated is this constant sense that he wants more from words and images than they can give, more from the senses than they can provide.”
Carson Lund‘s just posted a roundup of notes on ten films.
IN OTHER NEWS
Wong Kar-wai‘s The Grandmaster won seven Asian Film Awards on Thursday, including best picture, best director and best actress for Zhang Ziyi, reports Patrick Frater for Variety. “The only other film to win multiple prizes on the night was India’s The Lunchbox. It earned best screenplay for writer-director Ritesh Batra and best actor for Irfan Khan.”
“German Alpine Western The Dark Valley is this year’s front-runner for the German Film Academy Awards, the Lolas, receiving nine nominations, including for best picture.” The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Roxborough: “Another period drama, Edgar Reitz’s Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision, garnered six Lola nominations, including ones for best film and best director.”
Matthew Sorrento, the new Interview Editor at Film International, is looking for quality submissions from experienced writers. Get in touch.
GOINGS ON
Silver Spring, Maryland. The AFI Silver Theatre is celebrating Vivien Leigh’s 100th through April 17.
A Tribute to the 80s from Ian Edgar.
The Crime Films of Yoshitaro Nomura, a five-film retrospective, runs from April 1 through 5 at the Bradford Film Festival and from April 18 through 23 at the ICA in London. Writing for Sight & Sound, Alexander Jacoby notes that Nomura’s “police thrillers combine the stylistic and narrative economy of Hollywood with a subtle attention to Japanese social realities and the pictorial and symbolic qualities of Japanese landscapes.”
IN THE WORKS
“Director Kim Farrant (Naked on the Inside) will commence filming this week in Sydney, Broken Hill and Canowindra, Australia, for the Irish-Australian co-production Strangerland, starring Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes and Hugo Weaving,” reports Naman Ramachandran for Cineuropa. “The film is a mystery drama about a couple whose lives unravel after their two teenage children go missing in the harsh Australian desert.”
ENDNOTES
Listening (45′). Tina Hassannia and Amir Soltani have launched a new podcast, Hello Cinema, dedicated to films from Iran.
What’s opening this weekend? Besides Noah, that is. See the Critics Round Up entries on The Raid 2, Sabotage, It Felt Like Love and Divergent.
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