“When the International Film Festival Rotterdam announced its central theme for 2014 to be a European ‘Grand Tour’ all we could think was: What Europe? Which Europe? Where Europe? Who Europe?” De Filmkrant editor Dana Linssen: “For the 2014 Slow Criticism Project we’ve invited critics and writers from [the European Union’s 36 aspirant rather than just the 28 bonafide member] nations to write a guest column in this wonderful euro-English that is our lingua franca about the state of cinema in their country.” And you’ll find links to all these pieces lined up on the right side of her column.
“In [Philippe] Garrel, we find both the recurrent motifs and their perpetual refreshing; both the obsessive repetition of certain situations, images or scenarios, and their uncanny overlap and blurring,” write Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin in a piece accompanying their new video essay at the Notebook, All Tomorrow’s Parties. “What emerges is the guiding idea of a ritual or ceremony of return, giving a special, underlying logic to Garrel’s work.”
Clayton Dillard at the House Next Door on Theorizing Art Cinemas: Foreign, Cult, Avant-Garde, and Beyond: “As evidenced by the title of David Andrews’s latest book, his scope entails both offering an evolved definition of ‘art cinema’ and explaining how said definition must relate to numerous cinemas, be they traditionally labeled cult, mainstream, avant-garde, or art. The plurality in ‘cinemas’ is of utmost importance, since one of Andrews’s primary objectives is to dismantle the lines between legitimate and illegitimate art cinemas, explaining how there is and always has been a considerable overlap between these various incarnations.”
Evolution of the Dolly Zoom from Vashi Nedomansky.
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, Michael Smith posts an African-American cinema primer.
Steve McQueen talks with Kanye West for Interview.
The latest post at photogénie comes from Vanity Celis: “Coming of Age in the Postmodern Age. The Imaginarium of Chan-wook Park’s Stoker.”
Peter Bogdanovich has opened up the fifth and final box of cards on which he kept notes on the films of George Cukor that he saw between 1952 and 1970.
IN THE WORKS
Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy reports that Vincent Cassel has just signed on to two future projects. He’ll team up with Salma Hayek to headline Matteo Garrone’s followup to Reality, The Tale of Tales: “The English-language film will shoot in Italy during the spring. Garrone’s most ambitious project to date, the period fantasy is based on three tales from Giambattista Basile’s [The Pentamerone].” The second film is Maïwenn’s Rien ne sert de courir, about which very little is known, evidently.
“Miles Teller, who is drawing praise for his work in Sundance’s opener Whiplash, may have found his next project: Dan Aykroyd in the John Belushi biopic, which is being directed by Steve Conrad.” Borys Kit has more in the Hollywood Reporter.
From FilmmakerIQ: ‘The History of Cutting – The Birth of Cinema and Continuity Editing”
AWARDS
“For the past six years, every feature film chosen by the Producers Guild of America for its top honor has gone on to win the best-picture prize at the Academy Awards,” notes the AP. “Sunday night, Steve McQueen’s historical epic 12 Years a Slave and Alfonso Cuarón‘s space odyssey Gravity tied for the guild’s highest honor.” The tie’s unprecedented, case you were wondering.
ENDNOTES
Listening (98’41”). In the newest episode of The Cinephiliacs, Peter Labuza talks with Noah Isenberg about his new book, Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins, and Ulmer’s Ruthless (1948).
Meantime, the Film Doctor‘s got a fresh round of “indie links.”
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