“Would anyone dream of telling young artists to throw away their paints and canvases because iPads are so much easier to carry?” That’s Martin Scorsese in a statement—reproduced in full at the Playlist—voicing his support for Kodak’s decision to carry on making film stock even as most of the industry goes digital. It follows a campaign headed by Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Judd Apatow, J.J. Abrams and other directors to persuade studios to “promise to buy a set quantity of film for the next several years,” as Ben Fritz reported in the Wall Street Journal last week.
IN OTHER NEWS
Austin’s Fantastic Fest has announced a first round of titles lined up for its tenth anniversary edition—”we’re calling it #FFX”—running from September 18 through 25. Highlights include the world premiere of ABCs of Death 2, “26 devilishly diabolical tales” directed by the likes of Larry Fessenden, Todd Rohal and Vincenzo Natali, and the US premieres of another omnibus, V/H/S Viral (contributors include Nacho Vigalondo and Marcel Sarmiento) and Kevin Smith’s Tusk.
At Filmmaker, writer-director Stewart Thorndike and producer Alex Scharfman explain why they’re presenting their new feature, Lyle, “updated, lesbian take on Rosemary’s Baby,” for free.
READING
Steve Marsh has conducted a lively interview with Werner Herzog for Vulture. Seriously, it’s long and fun, occasionally provocative… Recommended.
The latest question taken on by the Criticwire network: “What film director, living or dead, would you like to see try her or his hand in the current TV environment?”
“The third volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s autobiographical novel My Struggle is subtitled Boyhood,” and at Movie Morlocks, R. Emmet Sweeney does a bit of compare-and-contrasting with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.
Trailer for the Dorothy Arzner retrospective t the 62nd San Sebastian Festival (September 19 through 27)
At 3:AM, Bobbi Lurie presents “A Critique of Roberta Smith’s Critique of James Franco’s New Film Stills.”
Variety‘s Mark Fisher reviews The Trial of Jane Fonda, noting that in 1988, “the filming of romantic drama Stanley & Iris was threatened by protesting war vets still smarting from her anti-Vietnam protests 16 years earlier. Rather than play the haughty Hollywood star, she met her opponents face to face in an encounter now dramatized by Emmy-winning producer Terry Jastrow in an emotive if psychologically shallow one-act debuting at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and starring his wife and Fatal Attraction star Anne Archer.”
BOOKS
Jonathan Rosenbaum‘s posted his 1974 review of Noël Burch’s Theory of Film Practice.
At Movie Morlocks, Susan Doll talks with Laurence Knapp about the new collection he’s edited, David Fincher: Interviews.
And for the Dissolve, J.C. Gabel talks with James Harvey about his new book, Watching Them Be: Star Presence on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar.
Christopher Schobert recommends a good handful of titles at the Film Stage.
Occasioned by Glenn Kenny’s Robert De Niro: Anatomy of an Actor, Greg Cwik presents an annotated list of “De Niro’s 11 best and 10 worst performances” at Indiewire.
GOINGS ON
New York. Another piece on The Great War: A Cinematic Legacy, on through September 21, and you’ll want to read it because it’s Nick Pinkerton‘s for Artforum. “The program traces representation of the war from Griffith and DeMille—for all the innovation of their technique, still indebted to sentimental Victorian dramaturgy—to twenty-first century offerings like Joyeaux Noel (2005) and War Horse (2011) of which, come to think of it, the same might be said. There is, however, an identifiable sweet spot in MoMA’s lineup.” That’d be the 30s, and even more specifically, 1930, the year of Howard Hughes‘s Hell’s Angels, G.W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 and Niemandsland and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
Recommendations from the L: Elina Mishuris on Juri Rechinsky’s Sickfuckpeople (2013; Thursday at Anthology) and Danny King on Samuel Fuller‘s I Shot Jesse James (1949; Thursday at MoMA).
London. On Saturday and Monday, the BFI will screen Huang Jianxin‘s The Black Cannon Incident (1985) as part of its ongoing celebration of A Century of Chinese Cinema and, in his new “Kaiju Shakedown” column for Film Comment, Grady Hendrix asks:
Why does everyone ignore Huang? Because he’s a comedian.
The Fifth Generation made movies about how crappy it was to be a woman in China (Raise the Red Lantern), how dismal it was to be Tibetan in China (The Horse Thief), and how awful it was to be gay in China (Farewell My Concubine), but Huang made movies about missing marriage certificates (The Marriage Certificate), androids that attend boring meetings on behalf of party functionaries (Dislocation), and office politics (Back to Back, Face to Face). Comedy never gets the same respect as politically charged drama, but Huang’s movies were the only Fifth Generation films brave enough to depict contemporary China. While the rest of the Fifth Generation were being heralded for their courage, no one was pointing out the fact that their movies were largely set in the past, mostly in Republican, pre-Communist China, or far out in remote provinces among ethnic minorities. Huang wasn’t having it. He set his movies in Shanghai, Xi’an, and other major cities, and grounded them firmly in the present day.
IN THE WORKS
Since 2011, Richard Linklater had been “attached” to The Incredible Mr. Limpet, a remake of the semi-animated 1964 comedy starring Don Knotts. But now the Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit and Rebecca Ford are hearing that he’s leaving the project “to concentrate on That’s What I’m Talking About, a 1980s, university-set project that is akin to his cult hit, Dazed & Confused, which was set in the 1970s and set in high school.”
And, as THR‘s Lesley Goldberg reports, Linklater, producer Scott Rudin and Paramount are bringing School of Rock to Nickelodeon. The adaptation of Linklater’s 2003 hit will see a first round of 13 episodes. What’s more, “Andrew Lloyd Webber also is prepping a stage musical based on the feature film that is likely headed for Broadway and London.”
Jamie Clifton introduces an interview for Vice: “Hamilton Harris is the guy in Kids [1995] who taught every suburban teenager watching Larry Clark’s film debut how to roll a blunt. He’s also the man behind an upcoming documentary—The Kids—that charts the real stories of the individuals in the movie.”
Trailer for Altina, Peter Sanders’s doc on artist and filmmaker Altina Schinasi Miranda
“Ricky Gervais is to make a big screen outing centered around his character from the The Office, David Brent,” reports the BBC. “The film, Life on the Road, will chart Brent’s progress in the 15 years since leaving the company at the center of the hit BBC Two show.”
“Jennifer Lee, who co-wrote and directed Frozen with Chris Buck, has chosen her next project: A Wrinkle in Time.” Variety‘s Marc Graser and Dave McNary: “Lee will write the bigscreen adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s book for Disney in which children travel through time and visit strange worlds in order to find their missing scientist father.”
Jennifer Connelly will star opposite Ewan McGregor in Phillip Noyce’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, reports Josh Lasser at HitFix. Also, James Bobin is shooting Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass, a “follow-up” to Tim Burton’s 2010 film that “reunites many stars of Burton’s first film including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Also returning, at least in voice form, are Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Blue Caterpillar, Timothy Spall as Bayard, and Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit.”
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