The Noteworthy: Interiors, Zona, and Shots in the Dark

This week we highlight a unique film journal, a couple of recent Q&As and a review of a new book on Andrei Tarkovsky's _Stalker_.
Notebook

Edited by Adam Cook

 News.

  •  A new-ish film journal has grabbed our attention. Interiors is a unique online monthly publication that hones in on a different film each issue, and focuses on the architecture in a particular scene and its expressive qualities. For example, the elevator in Drive, the apartment from Contempt, and in their timely latest edition, which dropped over the weekend, the bank in The Dark Knight. Be sure to give their work a look. They're also in the business of making nifty art prints.
  • With this new Nisimazine Special focusing on the East of the West Competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the official publication of Nisi Masa presents its third edition of the Special Series, a complementary addition to their Film Journalism Workshops for young critics.
  • Early reviews of The Dark Knight Rises have surfaced and if you're a critic who plans to give the film a negative review, watch your back. Whether you're a fan of the film(s) or not, there's no denying Christopher Nolan has a particular knack for revealing the worst in fanboy culture. Look for our own thoughts on the film and its filmmaker in the Notebook sometime soon.

Finds.

  • Via Film Society Lincoln Center, a Q&A with the filmmakers and cast of Ruby Sparks:

  • In Film Comment, Chuck Stephens takes a look at the brief Hollywood career of Beverly Michaels.
  • In his blog for The New Yorker, Richard Brody finds connections between Anne Frank, her house, and cinema.
  • "A half-dozen festival highlights" from Girish Shambu, who blogs about his "total film festival experience" at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna.
  •  Jacob Mikanowski writes in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Zona, a book from Geoff Dyer, who takes a meticulously detailed look at Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker—a film he has maintained a meaningful thirty year relationship with:

    "...He describes the film from start to finish, scene by scene, take by take. Dyer intersperses his narration with digressions on topics as far-ranging as Rilke, hallucinogens, contemporary photography, and discount ice cream. The result is something between a commentary, a tribute, and an autobiography. "
  • From Eigagogo, an interview with Japanese film director Kazuhiko Hasegawa, who spent his career as a screenwriter and assistant director with Nikkatsu before making films of his own.

From the archives.

  • We're not looking very far into the past for this week's retro-highlight, but Jim Emerson's intelligent deconstruction of Nolan's film grammar (or lack thereof) seems like an ideal choice:

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Tags

The NoteworthyNewsPreston SturgesAndrei TarkovskyMichelangelo AntonioniKenneth LonerganChristopher NolanPeter GreenawaySergei EisensteinVideos
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Notebook is a daily, international film publication. Our mission is to guide film lovers searching, lost or adrift in an overwhelming sea of content. We offer text, images, sounds and video as critical maps, passways and illuminations to the worlds of contemporary and classic film. Notebook is a MUBI publication.

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