REFLECTIONS ON FILM CULTURE

Daily | LFU 20, Cronenberg, Furie

King Vidor

King Vidor

The fifth edition of La Furia Umana on paper has been out for a while, and today, the 20th online edition’s gone live. There’s a bit less in English this time around, but still. Besides Toni D’Angela‘s opening editorial, you’ll find Eirik Frisvold Hanssen on “the comedic collaborations of King Vidor and Marion Davies” and more on Vidor from Sudarshan Ramani; Michael Guarneri on Wang Bing’s Feng Ai – ‘Til Madness Do Us Part (2013) and his interview with the director; Stefan Ramstedt on Jean-Claude Rousseau’s Saudade (2012); Kim Nicolini on David O. Russell’s American Hustle (2013); and Christine Dériaz and Claudia Siefen on Austrian avant-garde cinema.

B. Ruby Rich introduces the new issue of Film Quarterly—and remembers Stuart Hall.

Via Catherine Grant, SYNOPTIQUE has a new issue devoted to the Centenary of Indian Cinema.

“For the last year and a half, I have been writing the first book on filmmaker Sidney J. Furie, a manuscript that is both biography and monograph.” At Filmmaker, Daniel Kremer tells a “Cinematic Detective Story” about his search for Furie’s A Cool Sound from Hell, “shot in Toronto in 1958 and released in England in 1960 shortly after Sidney’s arrival there.” It tells “the story of a small Canadian branch of the Beat Generation, starring Anthony Ray, one of the lead actors in John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959) and the son of Nicholas Ray.”

James Slaymaker in the Notebook on Cosmopolis (2012): “I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that in adapting DeLillo’s novel about the spread of finance capital, Cronenberg made a movie that’s equally about the rise of digital filmmaking.”

Missing Bela from Ian Magor.

King of New York [1990] is a signature film for Ferrara and the fusion of crime with horror produces a singularly unique genre film that is more vampire than gangster, perhaps finding an iconographic connection with films like The Addiction [1995],” writes Omar Ahmed.

At Film International, James Knight revisits Godard‘s Weekend (1967).

BLU-RAY/DVD

In the New York Times, J. Hoberman reviews Bill Morrison and Bill Frisell’s The Great Flood and Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass‘s Visitors, “two monochromatic, wordless, nonnarrative features that opened theatrically this year and are now available for home viewing.” They “aren’t so much avant-garde as anachronistic—although it is that anachronism, the notion of a silent cinematic symphony, that makes them seem avant-garde.”

Howard Hampton for Criterion: “If you are seeing A Hard Day’s Night (1964) for the second, fifth, or fortieth time, you’re bound to catch some perfect detail—a brazen incongruity, sneaky delight, or intangible grace note—you missed on the first, fourth, or thirty-ninth go-round.”

The “Movie of the Week” at the Dissolve is Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951).

At Movie Morlocks, R. Emmet Sweeney considers Dust Be My Destiny (1939), “a curious artifact in John Garfield’s brief, brilliant career.”

TV

Adam Cook in the Notebook: “The third season of Louie found the show tonally expanding, moving away from comedy into drama; the fourth season has continued that evolution while also completely breaking down conventional structural ideas of what can be done on television.”

Interiors: a special issue on Her

Gary J. Shipley at Bright Lights: “Possible solutions to any locked-room mystery come under ten general headings, all at work in True Detective, and all of them are self-defeating and ultimately defy the power of detection to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.” And the Film Doctor‘s posted a terrific roundup on True Detective.

“Were it not for its boyish, entrepreneurial spirit, Silicon Valley might be too depressing to bear.” John Magary (The Mend) at the Talkhouse Film on Mike Judge’s series.

INTERVIEWS

You’ll have heard about David Hochman‘s with Gary Oldman. At Vulture, Brennan Carley presents a history of “Men Saying Dumb Things in Playboy Interviews.” But Cinephilia and Beyond is emphasizing the many not-at-all dumb things Oldman’s said.

Diagonal Thoughts has posted Ron Burnett‘s 1978 conversation with Johan Van Der Keuken—plus a bit more from Robert Daudelin in 1974.

At Thompson on Hollywood, Meredith Brody talks with Anita Monga about programming the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

IN OTHER NEWS

Twitch‘s Todd Brown reports that Dario Argento has fallen and “sustained injuries to his head, back, neck and ribs and though discharged from hospital is under doctor’s orders to rest until the end of July and is at home with a personal assistant caring for him.” Argento is scheduled to be in Locarno in August, a guest of the the Titanus Retrospective at the 67th edition of the festival running August 6 through 16.

Yesterday, Locarno announced that Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip will see its international premiere in the Concorso internazionale (Tribeca has just picked up North American rights), while Joel Potrykus’s Buzzard will screen in the Concorso Cineasti del presente.

Outfest, running from July 10 through 20, will be presenting its 18th Achievement Award to James Schamus.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, whose 49th edition runs from July 4 through 12, will be presenting its highest honor to Mel Gibson.

The video essay’s contextualized in “The Use of an Illusion: Childhood cinephilia, object relations, and videographic film studies” by Catherine Grant and Christian Keathley in photogénie

Photogénie has launched its first call for cinephiliac moments.

“Argentine director Lisandro Alonso will be the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s 2014 Filmmaker in Residence,” reports Brent Lang.

Also from Variety, Dave McNary: “Adopt Films has acquired all U.S. rights to the 2014 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep.”

GOINGS ON

New York. This week’s recommendations from the L: Jeremy Polacek on Michael Curtiz’s Angels With Dirty Faces (1938; through Sunday at the IFC Center), Mark Asch on Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977; Sunday at the Museum of the Moving Image), Elina Mishuris on Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951; Saturday at MOMI), Samantha Vacca on Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running (1972; Saturday, MOMI), Dan Sullivan on Manfred Kirchheimer’s Stations of the Elevated (1981; Friday at BAMcinemaFest), Joseph Neighbor on James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984; Friday and Saturday at the IFC Center) and AJ Serrano on John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982; Friday at the Nitehawk).

Chicago. Tomorrow at the Nightingale: I Think You Deserve Everything: Recent Work by Malic Amalya.

IN THE WORKS

“Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton are in negotiations to join George Clooney in Hail Caesar!, the Hollywood-set period comedy being made by Joel and Ethan Coen.” Borys Kit and Rebecca Ford for the Hollywood Reporter: “Caesar tells the comedic tale of Eddie Mannix, a fixer who works for the Hollywood studios in the 1950s.”

“Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz will write and direct a Starz cable series, The Girlfriend Experience, based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film.” Filmmaker‘s Scott Macaulay has details.

“For Agnieszka Holland, the idea of making a big-screen adaptation of Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, one of the most famous figures in contemporary Polish literature, initially seemed like a very tall order,” but as Dorota Hartwich reports at Cineuropa, she has a screenplay and a first round of backing.

Director Gorav Kalyan, Nonetheless Productions and the Global Center for Advanced Studies have launched an IndieGoGo campaign for Badiou: A Life.

Luke Evans and Elizabeth Moss have joined the cast of Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, reports Variety‘s Leo Barraclough.

OBITS

Cancer took Małgorzata Braunek yesterday. The Polish actress and Zen Buddhist was 67. She worked with Andrzej Wajda and with Andrzej Żuławski, to whom she was married for a time. Their son, Xawery Żuławski, born in 1971 (the year The Third Part of the Night was released), has himself become and actor, screenwriter and director.

Peter de Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn, a documentary by Ethan Reid, screened just a couple of weeks ago at Sheffield Doc/Fest and its subject passed away over the weekend at the age of 89. Brian Robinson, writing for the BFI, notes that “his audiences were usually small groups of friends or he would regularly turn up at parties and show his films with a cassette recorder. He had a Zelig-like range of acquaintance and knew William Burroughs, Andy Warhol and a host of others. He had a diverse taste in music and chose soundtracks from Miles Davis to Messiaen to accompany his films. De Rome’s playful vision of gay life has no real counterpart. There is none of the obligatory punishment or suicide which the cinema seemed to demand of the limited range of gay subjects then available on film.”

“One of the UK’s top stunt men, Terry Richards, who starred in more than 100 films including Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark has died aged 81,” reports the BBC. “He played the Cairo Swordsman in the first Indiana Jones film, famously trying to goad Harrison Ford into a sword fight only to be shot dead.”

ENDNOTES

Listening (36’20”). “The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, Chapter 1” is the latest episode of Karina Longworth‘s You Must Remember This.

More listening (75′). Brian Knappenberger (The Internet’s Own Boy) and Doug Block (112 Weddings) are Adam Schartoff‘s guests on Filmwax Radio.

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