Chances are, you’ll have heard that Karina Longworth has a new book out, Meryl Streep: Anatomy of an Actor. As supplementary reading, you might turn to Charles Taylor‘s latest piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books in which he argues that “Streep now provides a higher-brow version of the kind of bald scenery chewing that Joan Crawford and Susan Hayward specialized in. But unlike those paragons of masochism, Streep doesn’t suffer or go nuts. Rather, Streep has managed to channel the tastelessness of her showboating grotesquerie into middlebrow vehicles like Doubt and [August: Osage County], which come to the screen with the cachet of acclaimed stage shows, or the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, whose cachet is political and historical. No one need be embarrassed watching a Streep performance—though, by God, she should be.”
“The universe is growing, my mind is growing, every day my creativity is growing, so I go as fast as I can.” Jason Guerrasio interviews Alejandro Jodorowsky for the Dissolve, where Noel Murray talks with Errol Morris about rescuing A Brief History of Time (2991) from limbo.
For Film Comment, Nicholas Elliott talks with Serge Bozon about Tip Top, which “may be the most enigmatic film in this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.”
In the Guardian, Veronica Horwell looks back on Derek Jarman‘s theatrical work.
David Janssen “carried one hundred and twenty episodes of the television drama The Fugitive (1963-1967) with a charisma deeply rooted in the unease, alienation, and desperation of the man on the run,” writes Imogen Smith at the Chiseler.
BOOKS
The Notebook gives us a preview of Paul Clipson‘s REEL, a “287 page book collecting approximately 15 years of drawings and notes from his job as head projectionist/av tech at SFMoMA.”
“Have I kept reading The Moviegoer because it spoke to something in me that existed before I first read it?” wonders Andrew Santella in the Atlantic. “Or am I who I am right now because I’ve been reading The Moviegoer all these years?”
Bruce Wagner’s “novels have been described (by Will Self, among others) as Hollywood satires, but he resists the term, which seems fair,” writes Matt Thorne in the Los Angeles Review of Books. “He’s not above mocking the affectations of celebrities—or even, and most amusingly, his literary contemporaries; but beneath his astringency, there lies something warmer, a celebration of yearning.” And “Wagner’s most recent book, The Empty Chair (2013), addresses spiritual yearning with a newfound sincerity.”
IN OTHER NEWS
“One of the most original and iconoclastic personalities of the New American Cinema, Jim Krell created work that is simultaneously so important, and yet so unknown, that the news that his complete works are now being archived by Anthology Film Archives constitutes a major event, closing a significant gap in experimental film history,” writes Wheeler Winston Dixon for Film International. “When screenings of his work will now appear is anyone’s guess, but the news that Krell’s original 16mm printing materials will now be safely archived is cause for a genuine sigh of relief.”
On Friday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced that Lesli Klainberg has been appointed executive director, while Eugene Hernandez is the new Deputy Director.
Criticwire‘s Sam Adams reports that SundanceNOW is shutting down its blog for the time being with plans “to relaunch editorial content in a more complementary/synergistic fashion somewhere down the road, but for now [Nick] Pinkerton, Michael Atkinson, Anthony Kaufman and cartoonist Don J. Morgan are all out a regular outlet, as is editor Eric Hynes.”
Fifteen directors “whose projects have been considered particularly promising” have been invited to Cannes for the tenth edition of Cinefondation’s Atelier.
IN THE WORKS
Jonás Cuarón has begun shooting Desierto in Baja California, reports Jeremy Kay for Screen Daily: “Gael García Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan star in the story of a cat-and-mouse game between an undocumented migrant worker and an American vigilante.”
OBITS
“Wendy Hughes, an Australian actress known internationally for her roles in My Brilliant Career and other movies, died on Saturday in Sydney,” reports Margalit Fox for the New York Times. “Ms. Hughes, who began acting on the Melbourne stage four decades ago, was, with Judy Davis, one of the actors at the vanguard of Australia’s film renaissance of the 1970s and ’80s. Known for her smoky voice, auburn hair and portrayals of emotionally complex characters, she grew so renowned at home that for years headlines in Australian news articles referred to her simply as Wendy.” Hughes was 61.
“French director Jean-Louis Bertuccelli died Friday in Paris,” reports Elsa Keslassy for Variety. “Bertuccelli was best known for Ramparts of Clay, a drama turning on a young woman from a small Algerian village who dreams of another life. It won a Jean Vigo prize and represented France in the foreign-language Oscar race in 1971.” Bertuccelli was 71.
Scott Kalvert, who directed Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg in The Basketball Diaries (1995), was only 49. Nikara Johns reports, also for Variety.
ENDNOTES
Girish Shambu presents another excellent round of links to “Lots of Reading.”
Peter Labuza‘s been writing up a storm and offers a guide to the places where you’ll find it all.
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