Edited by Adam Cook
News.
- The Venice Film Festival is well underway, and for in-depth roundups of coverage, it's best to head over and take a look at David Hudson's Daily index. Among the films to have screened are Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master and Terrence Malick's To The Wonder (a warning: the latter was received with boos).
- Werner Herzog is—believe it or not—teaming up with The Killers (of all bands, really?) for a "live concert webcast" on September 18th. Check out the Rolling Stone article; it sounds like the Bavarian auteur will unsurprisingly be imbuing the show with his eccentricity.
- That's not all for Herzog news: characteristic of the director, he has several projects coming down the pipeline. If I understand this Indiewire report correctly, he'll be expanding on his On Death Row miniseries he did for Investigation Discovery with another series of interviews. Additionally, Herzog will be making Hate in America, a "four-part look at hate crime." Also, Herzog turns 70 today.
- New issues of Artforum and Cineaste are on the shelves now.
- James Gray's new film, commonly referred to as "Low Life", now has a proper title: Nightingale. He showed up in Telluride with a clip. When the film will get released remains a mystery.
Finds.
- Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Via everyday_i_show.
- Just try keeping up with Cinema Scope's ongoing TIFF Preview, I dare you. Rather than link to the individual pieces, head over to Cinema Scope Online and spend the day perusing.
- Ubuweb has films from the Dziga Vertov Group streaming online, including British Sounds and Tout va bien.
- Via De Filmkrant, Adrian Martin on the recently passed Stephen Dwoskin and Chris Marker, representations, he claims, of "two types of cinema, one tending more toward the body, the other emphasizing the brain":
"Stephen Dwoskin and Chris Marker, body and brain. Dwoskin, free-ranging avant-gardist for over 50 years, creating his œuvre in intimate proximity to his own, disabled body — and going all the way to the outer limits of physical (as well as psychical) pleasure and pain, in search of literal and metaphorical nakedness...Marker: always the text, written or spoken, effortlessly eloquent, a triumph of rhetoric, wit and poetic association. Words, thought, language guide everything in Marker's work, even though he was (like Dwoskin) someone with a prodigious visual (and aural) sense."
- We have two notable pieces from Dennis Lim in The New York Times. First up, an article on Lucien Castaing-Taylor and the indispensable Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard. Remeber, we have an interview with Castaing-Taylor's Leviathan co-director Véréna Paravel here in the Notebook. Secondly, Lim spoke to Joaquin Pheonix about his return to the screen and working with Paul Thomas Anderson.
- Above: Phoenix wasn't as friendly at the press conference for The Master, but Anderson and Philip Seymour Hoffman were happy to discuss their new collaboration.
From the archives.
- Above: As shared in our forum, Tag Gallagher's incredible video essay on Roberto Rossellini's The Messiah.
- Bonus! Several Herzog birthday treats: Senses of Cinema's "Great Directors" essay by David Church, an essay from Offscreen by Stefano Odorico featuring Herzog's own "Minnesota Deceleration" and finally, an interview conducted by Herzog with Harmony Korine on the heels of his feature debut, Gummo:
"Herzog: What I like about Gummo are the details that one might not notice at first. There's the scene where the kid in the bathtub drops his chocolate bar into the dirty water and just behind him there's a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall with Scotch tape. This is the entertainment of the future.
Korine: It's the greatest entertainment. Seriously, all I want to see is pieces of fried bacon taped on walls, because most films just don't do that."