Edited by Adam Cook
News.
- La Furia Umana's first print issue (their 15th online) is now shipping all over the world. Much of the content is available online (excluded are 24 "love letters" from filmmakers to their favorite artists), but we're excited to get our hands on this nearly 300-page tome. Among the table of contents: a handful of pieces on Roberto Rossellini including one by Toshi Fujiwara on Voyage to Italy, Celluloid Liberation Front provides one article among several on Joseph H. Lewis, Emmanuel Herbulot on the intersection between Michelangelo Antonioni and Edward Ruscha, a selection of reviews (which I'm proud to be a part of), and far too much more to mention here.
- More from Berlin: news of their "Forum Expanded" section, which includes various exhibits by visiting artists, including one by Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, which leads into our next piece of news...
- Cinema Scope unveiled their top ten of 2012, topped by Paravel and Castaing-Taylor's Leviathan.
- Two of Martin Scorsese's most talked about unrealized projects are his long awaited passion project Silence and his all-star crime picture The Irishman. Some semi-concrete news has emerged regarding both, as Scorsese's work on The Wolf of Wall Street winds down. Firstly, Scorsese plans to make Silence his next project and has started holding auditions. Secondly, Scorsese, along with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci took over the Tribeca Film Centre's stage to do a live reading of The Irishman.
- Speaking of Pacino, the actor will be reuniting with Brian De Palma in a film about Joe Paterno entitled Happy Valley.
Finds.
- Cinema Guild's trailer for Raúl Ruiz's beautiful Night Across the Street.
- Another noteworthy trailer, that unfortunately can't be embedded, is for the omnibus film Historic Centre, featuring shorts by Pedro Costa, Victor Erice, Manoel de Oliveira and Aki Kaurismaki.
- Last week, we had the audio from Leos Carax's cheeky speech accepting an award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; this week we have Joaquin Phoenix's written acceptance he submitted to the London Critics' Circle for being awarded their Best Actor honor. Here's a portion of the statement:
"I struggle with the idea of winning awards for acting. Stating I'm Best Actor for something as subjective as film seems strange to me. To the uninitiated it implies I'm solely responsible for the creation and implementation of the character. I am not. I suppose that's why we thank our colleagues. There are those who you all know such as Paul Thomas Anderson, to whom I am eternally grateful – a man who has persistently searched for the truth. I am fortunate to have been under his guidance."
- Above: via LaFamiliaFilm, John Carpenter's favorite Westerns.
- On his blog, Steve Shaviro shares his thoughts on Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty:
"We are immersed into an overwhelming environment in Zero Dark Thirty, just as we are in all of Bigelow’s films. But in this case, the environment is the numbingly anonymous one of Big Data, of the numbingly repetitious accumulation of “information” (whether by torture, surveillance, physical search, or collation of records), and of instantaneity (the annihilation of duration) mediated through video screens and telecommunications technologies."
- Above: a choice image (capped from Leo McCarey's Wrong Again, 1929) from the wonderful Tumblr dedicated to slapstick cinema, Pratfall Elegy.
- Tom Conley on the forthcoming Raoul Walsh retrospective taking place at the Harvard Film Archive:
"...Contrary to many of the so-called pantheon directors, Walsh is never sanctimonious: no homilies, no morals, no great lessons to be imparted, no aura for the duration of a viewing. Film as film."
- Above: a video message from Martin Scorsese occasioned by the unprecedented exhibit on his career currently on display at the Deutsche Kinemathek. A must watch for his heartfelt nod to Michael Ballhaus.
From the archives.
- Above: Akira Kurosawa interviewed by Nagisa Oshima (part 1 of 8).