Martin Scorsese’s up to so much these days we need to catch up with it all in a Scorsese-only entry here. First, a bit of breaking news from Jeff Labrecque at EW: “Andrew Greene, who worked with notorious broker Jordan Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, is suing Paramount Pictures and the producers of The Wolf of Wall Street, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way, for $25 million because he claims the Oscar-nominated film defames his reputation.”
“You can’t make pictures in order to be liked by everybody—or rather, you can, but it doesn’t interest me,” Scorsese tells Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir, who’s asked him about the controversy that Wolf‘s kicked up. “No one in the industry, from Jordan Belfort to anyone who was involved in the most recent financial meltdown, seems to be terribly sorry about what they did. On top of that, they all had a lot of fun along the way—in fact, you could say that having fun is the only thing they knew how to do.”
With Masterpieces of Polish Cinema rolling on to over thirty theaters in the U.S. and Canada, O’Hehir naturally also asks Scorsese about the series he’s presenting: “Anyone who hasn’t seen The Saragossa Manuscript by Wojciech Has should definitely check it out. It’s a wild, hallucinatory experience. It had a real cult following back in the ‘60s and ‘70s—Jerry Garcia was a huge fan. You should also see Pharaoh by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, a historical epic set in ancient Egypt—three years in the making and a truly mesmerizing picture.”
Nearly two weeks ago now, two video essays began making the rounds, both addressing the women in Scorsese’s work. “Nelson Carvajal and Max Winter’s takes the dialectical approach, contrasting the way women are both abused and idealized,” notes Sam Adams at Criticwire, while “Dina Fiasconaro’s plays like a brief for the prosecution.”
Press Play VIDEO ESSAY: Women In The Works Of Martin Scorsese from Nelson Carvajal.
The Representation of Women in Martin Scorsese Films from Dina Fiasconaro.
Meantime, Robert De Niro has recently reiterated his hope that he’ll be working with Scorsese again—and Al Pacino as well—on The Irishman, based on Charles Brandt’s novel I Heard You Paint Houses. De Niro: “It’s about a guy who… confessed that he killed (Jimmy) Hoffa and Joe Gallo. I’m gonna play that character. That’s something I’m looking forward to very much… I think it will (happen)… we’re really working toward making it happen.”
What won’t be happening, reports Cain Rodriguez at the Playlist, is a remake of Taxi Driver along the lines of Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions. But of course, Silence, based on Shusaku Endo’s novel, is still on and will feature Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Ken Watanabe.
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