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NEWS
The Dead Don't Die
- Jim Jarmusch's zombie flick The Dead Don't Die will be the first film to screen at this year's Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d'Or.
- Is retiring from film directing a myth? Reportedly Béla Tarr has a new film, Missing People, set to premiere this summer in Vienna.
- Made in 1967, Raúl Ruiz's The Tango of the Widower was intended to be his debut feature, but was sadly abandoned because of funding problems. However, the film has now been restored and slated for a festival premiere, and Ruiz's widow and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento is overseeing its completion.
- Brian de Palma will be developing an English-language remake of the WWII-set French drama series, Un village français, with plans to place his adaptation during the times of the U.S. Civil War.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- A trailer narrated by Maya Angelou teases an upcoming documentary entitled Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé, following the star ahead of her historic Coachella performance. In preparation, read Fanta Sylla's article on Beyoncé's relationship to cinema and Black female film auteurs here.
- Behold, the trailer for Brian de Palma's Copenhagen crime thriller Domino. Though production troubles led him disavow the picture in 2018, we still feel a measured anticipation for the director's latest.
- The first trailer for Nicholas Winding Refn's Amazon series Too Old to Die Young stars Miles Teller as a police officer lurking a bloody, neon-tinted criminal underworld.
- We're both thrilled and baffled by this first look at Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, about an unemployed family whose son is hired by a wealthy family's estate, only to become embroiled in something far more sinister.
RECOMMENDED READING
- J. Rosenfield makes a striking comparison between the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Hideaki Anno's anime film The End of Evangelion (1997), with the latter incorporating Brakhage's scratching technique and rapid cuts.
- In an interview with Esquire, legendary filmmaker and producer Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces) reflects on his iconic career on the "frontlines of the new Hollywood revolution" and his later resistance to a changing studio system.
- Will Jennings provides an in-depth look at Buster Keaton's body and its relationship to architecture, marked by his "playful understanding of place."
- On what would have been Heath Ledger's 40th birthday, Fariha Roisin recalls growing up with Ledger in Australian television and cinema, and her mourning of his resilience and compassion.
- An illuminating recent blog post describes the process of remastering the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, shot on video, through machine learning and algorithmic resolution increasing via the application Gigapixel AI.
- For Bomb Magazine, Dana Reinoos reviews Nietzchka Keene’s newly restored The Juniper Tree, "an unduly forgotten gem of feminist world cinema."
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Harmony Korine.
- To mark the release of The Beach Bum, Harmony Korine has released a guest DJ set on NTS radio, featuring the tunes of Jimmy Buffett, Steely Dan, and Steve Miller Band.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- On the occasion of an ongoing retrospective of Věra Chytilová's cinema at BAMcinématek, we've re-published Boris Nelepo's 2017 overview of Chytilová's output and her "aesthetics of buffoonery."
- Florence Scott-Anderton provides the latest Notebook Soundtrack, a diverse mix of composer Michel Legrand’s music dedicated to his focus on melody.
- Olaf Möller's triple film festival report regards shifts in programming and gender politics across Berlin, Venice, and Rome.