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NEWS
Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014).
- A Russian court has sentenced the Ukrainian-born film producer Alexander Rodnyansky (Leviathan, 2014; Loveless, 2017) to eight and a half years in prison in absentia for anti-war statements, which the state characterizes as “fakes” motivated by “political hatred.”
- The documentary Undercover: Exposing the Far Right was pulled on short notice from the BFI London Film Festival due to safety concerns for staff and audience members, though it is not clear if a credible threat was made.
- Thousands of artists from across the cultural industry have signed a statement to artificial-intelligence companies, which reads in its entirety: “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.” Film-world signatories include Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, and Rosario Dawson.
- The British government is considering an “opt-out” clause for artists who do not consent to their work being used to train AI models. Ed Newton-Rex, who drafted the above statement, remarked, “If a government really thought this was a good thing for creators then it would create an opt-in scheme.”
DEVELOPING
- Luca Guadagnino is set to direct a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho from a script by Scott Z. Burns. Lionsgate chair Adam Fogelson calls the director “the perfect visionary to create a whole new interpretation of this potent and classic IP.”
- Tom Holland and Matt Damon will reportedly star in Christopher Nolan’s “top secret” next film, slated for a summer 2026 release.
REMEMBERING
South Pacific (Joshua Logan, 1958).
- Mitzi Gaynor has died at 93. The American actress was a star of Hollywood musicals, from There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) to South Pacific (1958), before undertaking a series of television specials and a long-running Las Vegas nightclub residency. A colorful anecdote attaches itself to Gaynor’s career: She received top billing on The Ed Sullivan Show the night of The Beatles’ second American television appearance, after which John, Paul, George, and Ringo asked for her autograph. Before the show, they had borrowed her hair dryer.
- Dick Pope has died at 77. The British cinematographer was a longtime collaborator of Mike Leigh’s and recently lensed the director’s latest, Hard Truths (2024). His credits also include Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (2006), Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2008) and Bernie (2011), and Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn (2019).
- Alvin Rakoff has died at 97. The Canadian director worked mostly for British television, where he gave Sean Connery his first leading role in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1957), cast a young Alan Rickman as Tybalt in Romeo & Juliet (1978), and directed Laurence Olivier in A Voyage Round My Father (1982).
- Aaron Kaufman has died at 51. The American filmmaker directed several documentaries, including Superpower (2023), and was the longtime producing partner of Robert Rodriguez.
RECOMMENDED READING
Murdering the Devil (Ester Krumbachová, 1970).
- “Their meetings take place in her bachelorette pad, which is made up of a sitting/dining room…a spacious, well-appointed kitchen that will see much action in the course of the movie; and a small bedroom that will be entirely neglected.” For the Metrograph Journal, Nick Pinkerton introduces Murdering the Devil (1970), Ester Krumbachová’s lone directorial effort and a gem of the Czechoslovak New Wave.
- “The most glamorous [part of my childhood] was my father, and the most challenging was my mother.” For Interview, Michael Feinstein sits down for a rare on-the-record conversation with Liza Minnelli.
- “After playing Lydia Tár, where could she go except straight to Angela Merkel?” For The New Republic, Adam Nayman ponders Cate Blanchett’s unlikely turn as a character modeled on the German chancellor in Guy Maddin’s Rumours (2024), codirected with Evan and Galen Johnson.
- “Queer takes an often self-consciously repellent text and turns it into a tragic fantasy about the loneliness of unreciprocated gay love.” For Sight and Sound, Jessica Kiang reviews Luca Guadagnino’s latest.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
The Gold Dagger Romance (Tsui Hark, 1978).
- Hong Kong, through December 29: M+ presents Tsui Hark, the Free-Spirited Trailblazer, a program of twelve of the director’s films—including his first wuxia, The Gold Dagger Romance (1978), thought by some to have been lost—and a conversation with Tsui and Sylvia Chang.
- London, October 27: Close-Up Film Centre presents Wojciech Has’s The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), which features, as Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer writes, a “constant reordering of the film along multiple dimensions: its narrative’s structure, its characters’ psychologies, and the viewer’s apprehension of its continuity.”
- San Francisco, October 24 through November 3: The 28th Annual Arab Film Festival features 50 films from the Arab world screening in venues throughout the Bay Area.
- New York, October 25 through 31: Film at Lincoln Center presents a new restoration of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), “a sensuous tour de force.”
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- A24 has released a trailer for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024), which prominently features Sebastian Pardo’s elegant title design. The film hits theaters in December.
- Warner Bros. has released a trailer for Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 (2024), which looks to be equal parts unlikely and exhilarating. The film, which Eastwood has said will be his last, is set for a November 1 release.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
Rumours (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, 2024).
- “When I hired him as an assistant, the first job I gave him was to assemble a barbeque. I hate putting things together.” Ryan Akler-Bishop speaks with Guy Maddin about working with codirectors, avoiding allegory, and learning a new filmmaking vocabulary to make Rumours.
- “I’m trying to make non-judgmental films, right? So if I have a gritty font it would be judging, in a way, so I wanted to do something that would juxtapose it intentionally.” Adrian Curry interviews Sean Baker, director of Anora (2024), about his favorite typeface.
- “As he fills his books with people responding to divergent motivations, Shaw explores how small yet profound conflicts can inform the course of our lives.” Alex Dueben responds to the compelling ensemble-cast digressions of Blurry, Dash Shaw’s new graphic novel.
- “For me, the basic principle of fiction is accepting the idea of being in another world with a different set of rules. And you want to believe, because you want to travel.” Jordan Cronk sits down with Miguel Gomes to discuss Grand Tour (2024), a film that, Cronk writes, “nimbly traverses time, space, and the cinematic unconscious, calling less on the viewer’s knowledge than their imagination to reconcile its many allusions and anachronisms.”
- Who’s going home with the William Friedkin Award for Most Harrowing Drive? Find out in our Fall Festival Ballots, in which our trusted critics evaluate the season’s offerings along several matrices.
WISH LIST
- COUSIN Collective and Light Industry are accepting preorders for Temporal Territories: An Anthology on Indigenous Experimental Cinema, a first-of-its-kind collection the editors hope can be “something like a celebration, a point along your path that fosters conversations and connections, as it shows some of the different ways that different Peoples are thinking about and making work as Indigenous artists and scholars.”