The new November/December 2014 issue of Film Comment features Vivian Sobchack admiring “the complex multidimensionality” of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and Howard Hampton suggesting that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, “for all its bravado and wit, stands or falls apart on Katherine Waterston’s slender shoulders.”
Paul Dallas talks with cinematographer Fabrice Aragno about working with Jean-Luc Godard, most recently, of course, on Goodbye to Language, though he talks a bit about Film socialisme as well.
Philippe Garnier: “Arguably Robert Mitchum’s best Western, The Wonderful Country has been enjoying a reevaluation of late… Robert Parrish’s 1959 Technicolor picture is striking for its massive, physical beauty.”
Plus: Nicolas Rapold on Alice Rohrwacher‘s The Wonders, Robert Greene‘s Actress and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook; Farran Smith Nehme on Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher; Robert Horton on Tommy Lee Jones’s The Homesman; Graham Fuller on Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game; Olaf Möller on Dominik Graf’s Beloved Sisters; Violet Lucca on Ana Lily Amirpour‘s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night; Eric Hynes on James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything; Max Nelson on the Dardennes’ Two Days, One Night; Jared Eisenstat on Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild; festival reports and more.
MORE READING
Scott Roxborough introduces the Hollywood Reporter‘s Indie Film Director Roundtable featuring Susanne Bier, Claudio Fah, Israel Horovitz, Gabe Ibanez and Gabe Polsky.
And THR‘s Tim Appelo recounts the highlights of the AFI Fest Indie Contenders Panel, which featured Kristen Stewart, Marion Cotillard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, Michelle Monaghan, Damien Chazelle, J.C. Chandor and Bill Hader.
Aki Kaurismäki on Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s posted his 1995 piece for Film Comment on Henri Langlois, “the unruly and passionate founder/gatekeeper of the Cinémathèque Française [who] spent his life railing against state bureaucracies, and most of his legacy would be unthinkable without this sustained resistance.”
At the Chiseler, Derek Davis argues that Jacques Tati‘s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (19530 “hinges on humanity, in its broadest sense, which is why it works so deliciously.”
Writing for the New Republic, Toby Litt argues that David Cronenberg’s debut novel, Consumed, is “a subtler and more interesting work” than either Cosmopolis (2012) or this year’s Maps to the Stars.
Christopher Nolan‘s listed his top ten Criterion releases.
GOVERNORS AWARDS
The Academy presented its Governors Awards this weekend, and all four recipients were interviewed in the run-up to Saturday’s ceremony. “I intend to work until the day I die,” Hayao Miyazaki tells Mark Schilling. “I retired from feature-length films but not from animation.”
Also in Variety, Kevin Noonan introduces his interview with Jean-Claude Carrière: “Known for his numerous collaborations with Luis Buñuel, including co-writing films such as Belle de jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Milky Way, the French screenwriter earned a reputation for crafting and adapting surreal, seemingly impossible projects. That reputation culminated in his work with English theatre and film director Peter Brook to create a nine-hour stage version in 1985 and five-hour film adaptation in 1989 of the epic Sanskrit poem The Mahabharata. Already an Oscar winner for his 1962 short Heureux Anniversaire, Carrière discussed his long career, working with Buñuel and not knowing what an Oscar was.”
Andrew Barker‘s met with Harry Belafonte, whose acceptance speech is, as Sharan Shetty puts it at Slate, “an eloquent, utterly absorbing account of Hollywood’s racial history and his own hopes for the industry”:
And the Telegraph‘s posted Michael Sheldon‘s 2004 interview with Maureen O’Hara, who, for all her work in such classics as How Green Was My Valley (1941), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and The Quiet Man (1952), had never won an Oscar.
GOINGS ON
New York. Kelly Reichardt will introduce a screening of Penny Allen’s Property (1978) tomorrow at Light Industry.
Anthology presents a second program of films and videos by Vincent Grenier this evening. “Watching and re-watching two dozen of them in a short span of time,” writes Tony Pipolo for Artforum, “I was struck by their modesty and simplicity, virtues that make it easy to overlook their concomitant beauty and observational acuity.”
The World of My Father, an exhibition of photographs by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is on view at the Tina Kim Gallery through December 13.
Los Angeles. Tonight at REDCAT: The “second installment of The Black Radical Imagination is a collection of short films and videos about communing with the spiritual realm as a historical practice and point of collective memory.”
Austin. The Chronicle‘s Marc Savlov previews From the Islands: Contemporary Filipino Films, the Film Society series opening tomorrow and running through December 18.
Toronto. Van Damme vs. Seagal happens at TIFF Lighthouse tomorrow evening:
And the Toronto International Short Film Festival rolls out on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Vienna. Thomas Heise. The Complete Works, a retrospective at the Austrian Film Museum, opens tonight and runs through December 3.
IN THE WORKS
Wes Anderson has suggested that “he may return to the world of stop-motion for his next picture,” reports the Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth. “Even more, he said that the story would be divided into episodes, not unlike Vittorio De Sica‘s The Gold of Naples.”
For the Los Angeles Times, Lauren Raab and Oliver Gettell have confirmed rumors that Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass are reunited for another Bourne movie.
And then, via Martin Schneider at Dangerous Minds, Larry Charles (Seinfeld, Borat) tells the story (9’13”) of an HBO slapstick comedy series created by and starring Bob Dylan—which, obviously, never got off the ground. Dylan, by the way, is evidently a big Jerry Lewis fan.
OBIT
From the Hollywood Reporter: “Michael Lennick, the documentary filmmaker whose credits included the award-winning 10-part series Rocket Science and Doctor Teller’s Very Large Bomb,” has died at 61 “from an aggressive brain tumor.” Lennick worked on the special effects in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly and, back in the early 80s, “co-created and co-wrote and directed All Night Show for Toronto’s MTV47, which ran for 302 episodes.” That show’s “influences can be felt in late-night shows hosted by the likes of David Letterman.”
ENDNOTES
At Hyperallergic, Benjamin Sutton spotlights Art in Film, “which gathers memorable instances of art in cinema and television. Unlike the blog Art in the Movies, which offers analysis of films’ portrayals of artists and the art world, Art in Film is strictly image-based. The site has been around for two years, and includes classics like the Miguel Calderón paintings from The Royal Tenenbaums and Ferris Bueller’s visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as more obscure fodder like the hideous approximation of a Mannerist rendering of The Last Supper from Bad Boys 2.”
Listening (97’47”). Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip) is Peter Labuza’s guest on The Cinephiliacs.
voicesonfilm 3 – Movie vs. Sight and Sound from voicesonfilm
Viewing. Via Catherine Grant, a new site: “Using direct interviews with filmmakers, historians and analysts, voicesonfilm offers the viewer the unique privilege of personal insight, comment, knowledge and memoir.”
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