REFLECTIONS ON FILM CULTURE

DAILY | “L’Affaire Rappaport” and More

Moving Places

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s ‘first and most ambitious book’

The entirety of Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s Moving Places: A Life at the Movies, originally published in 1980, can, of course, be purchased, but also accessed online. Calling it “my first and most ambitious book,” Rosenbaum has begun posting Moving Places in installments at his own site, an invaluable archive of his writing from November 1957 through the present.

Ever since Mark Rappaport went public with an open call for help from the international film community last September, we’ve known that Boston University professor Ray Carney would eventually have to respond—especially since October, when Jon Jost posted a petition signed by over 1200 supporters, several prominent filmmakers among them. To back up, Rappaport claims that Carney has been holding, at Rappaport’s request, digital video masters and other materials vital to his work, and now that Rappaport has asked Carney to return them, Carney has demanded $27K in exchange. Extortion? Many see it that way, but not, of course, Ray Carney. Half a year on, he’s set up a new blog, ostensibly to “Defend Academic Freedom of Expression” but also to address what he calls “L’Affaire Rappaport.” Arguing that he’s been a victim of a “cyber-bullying campaign,” Carney turns the tables, accusing Jost and Rappaport of “Blackmail. Extortion.” Rappaport was going to “trash” those materials, Carney claims, but, as “arguably the world’s expert on his films,” he spent “tens of thousands of dollars” preserving them, and he aims to keep them. Responding in a forum at MUBI, Rappaport argues that Carney has no right to them. Jost has chimed in as well: “Mr Carney: return Rappaport’s materials, and do yourself a favor and seek some help.”

The latest issue of Interiors analyzes the architecture of Pete Docter’s Up (2009).

Cinematographer Christopher Doyle always gives an entertaining interview, and he doesn’t let Artinfo‘s Sam Gaskin down, calling Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi “a fucking insult to cinematography.”

Speaking of insults, Cinephilia & Beyond has posted studio execs’ notes on a preview screening of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982): “This picture gets duller every time we see it.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter‘s Eric J. Lyman, legendary composer Ennio Morricone will never work with Quentin Tarantino again after his experience on Inglourious Basterds (2009). QT, he claims, “places music in his films without coherence.” At any rate, Celluloid Liberation Front has a new piece in Film International: “Re-Birth of a Nation or Why Django Has More to Say about Contemporary America than the Other ‘Historically Accurate’ Films.”

Omer Syed has been collecting “Brilliant Quotes by Great Directors,” and so far, he’s got batches from David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick.

The Chicago Reader‘s J.R. Jones and Ben Sachs meet up with bartender Joe Heinen for a good round of John Ford trivia.

Badlands

Terrence Malick’s debut feature

Festivals. Tulsa World reports that Terrence Malick is “the first guest curator for the Philbrook Museum of Art’s ‘Films on the Lawn’ this summer.” His selections: John Huston‘s Beat the Devil (1953), Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve (1941), Ben Stiller’s Zoolander (2001), and Malick’s own Badlands (1973).

With the Sun Valley Film Festival on through tomorrow, Michael Guillén talks here in Keyframe with Christian Lybrook, part of the team behind Crawlspace (2011) and The Seed (2013).

Twitter was launched in 2006, but really only became a thing during the 2007 edition of SXSW. So it’s hardly a surprise that SXSW has more followers than any other festival in the world. Blake‘s got the rankings of the top 18 at the Museum of Cinema.

In the works. Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr.‘s been busy breaking one story after another over the past few days. Fresh off his directorial debut, Safety Not Guaranteed, Colin Trevorrow’s been picked by producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley and executive producer Steven Spielberg to direct Jurassic Park 4. As for Spielberg, he’s abandoned his Moses epic, Gods and Kings, which “puts Warner Bros. in a bind because of the rival Moses project, the Adam Cooper/Bill Collage-scripted Exodus, which is gathering steam at Fox, with Ridley Scott looking to mobilize that as soon as he completes The Counselor.” So Warner’s courting Ang Lee as a replacement; he may have his hands full, though, making “his television directorial debut with FX‘s high-profile drama pilot Tyrant, from Homeland executive producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff and Six Feet Under alum Craig Wright,” as Deadline‘s Nellie Andreeva reports. Back to Fleming and two more potential matches: David Fincher and Gone Girl, a thriller about a woman who disappears on her fifth anniversary, and Tom Hooper and a Freddie Mercury biopic written by Peter Morgan and starring Sacha Baron Cohen.

For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow @KeyframeDaily on Twitter and/or the RSS feed. Get Keyframe Daily in your inbox by signing in at fandor.com/daily.

Did you like this article?
Give it a vote for a Golden Bowtie

0

Keyframe is always looking for contributors.

"Writer? Video Essayist? Movie Fan Extraordinaire?

Fandor is streaming on Amazon Prime

Love to discover new films? Browse our exceptional library of hand-picked cinema on the Fandor Amazon Prime Channel.