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NEWS
Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991).
- Former talk show host and current digital media emperor Conan O’Brien will host the 97th Academy Awards. He has previously hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards and the White House Correspondents dinner, twice apiece, as well as the Fifth Annual NFL Honors ceremony in 2016.
- Director Todd Haynes is set to head the jury of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in February. Haynes’s feature film debut, Poison (1991), won the festival’s Teddy Award.
- The UK arthouse theater chain Curzon Cinemas has been sold to the New York investment company Fortress for $5 million as part of a foreclosure auction of assets owned by Cohen Realty Enterprises. The Curzon group reportedly believes that Fortress is “more likely to invest and to nurture long-term growth” than Cohen, but the landlord of their flagship Curzon Mayfair cinema wants to redevelop it as a “cinema-slash-dining venue” under different management.
DEVELOPING
- Josh O’Connor is set to co-star opposite Emily Blunt in Steven Spielberg’s new untitled film penned by David Koepp. Slated to be released in May 2026, it would be Spielberg’s first summer release since The BFG (2016).
- Aaron Sorkin is attached to write and possibly direct a film for Warner Bros. about Al Schwimmer, an American aeronautics engineer who smuggled military planes and munitions into Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, violating a UN arms embargo to equip the Israeli Air Force, which immediately set about bombing civilians in Egypt. Schwimmer would later found the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, which continues to supply the Israel Defense Forces.
RECOMMENDED READING
Committed (Sheila McLaughlin and Lynne Tillman, 1984).
- “What most distinguishes Committed from Frances—and from nearly all biopics, so clamorous and hectic, trying to cram a whole noteworthy life into two hours—is its investment in subdued moments with little or no talking.” For 4Columns, Melissa Anderson writes an appreciation of Sheila McLaughlin and Lynne Tillman’s Committed (1984), an experimental biopic of actress Frances Farmer.
- “If Disney’s Pinocchio (1940) is a film about Kantian morality, it is also one about free thought, proper child-rearing, the dangers of lying, quack doctors, children being kidnapped and enslaved, becoming a real boy, homophobic panic, biblical punishment, and menswear.” For n+1, Reed McConnell analyzes the recent vogue for the Pinocchio story among Guillermo del Toro, Robert Zemeckis, Matteo Garrone, and Jordan Peterson. (Mind the paywall.)
- “But his genius lies in his ability to translate his vision of the world into purely cinematic experiences that honor the flatness and rectangular shape of the screen, in his dexterity moving fluidly between abstraction and representation, and in the nonstop inventiveness he achieves with such limited means.” For Screen Slate, David Schwartz pays tribute to the late avant-garde filmmaker and SUNY Binghamton professor Vincent Grenier, whose work was recently featured in a program at Anthology Film Archives.
- “Their relationship embodies the pitfalls and promises of Toronto: the comfort of familiarity, pitted against the pull of what exists beyond one’s hometown.” For the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ariella Garmaise considers Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara (2024), a portrait of the “placeless city” of Toronto.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, 1959).
- New York, through December 11: The Museum of Modern Art presents “The Complete Robert Frank” in conjunction with the gallery exhibition Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue and the installation Robert Frank’s Scrapbook Footage.
- London, November 27 through 28: The Tate Modern presents “Video on Screen: The Early Years in Europe,” a two-day program dedicated to pioneering video work produced in Europe between 1960-1980.
- Toronto, November 28: MUBI presents “Bette Gordon, USA,” a screening of six of the director’s experimental short films, programmed by Saffron Maeve to accompany her recent profile of Gordon in these pages.
- London, November 28: The Barbican presents a screening of Zhang Yimou’s One Second (2020) in conjunction with the release of Jie Lie’s new book Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China. The following day, Lie will be in conversation with Dr. Kiki Tianqi Yu for an illustrated lecture about her book at the Queen Mary University of London.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- ArtReview presents Kamal Aljafari’s latest short film, UNDR (2024), which uses archival aerial footage to examine how surveillance dominates the visual discourse around Palestine.
- A24 has released a trailer for Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (2024), in US theaters on March 7.
- Roadside Attractions has released a trailer for Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl (2024), starring Pamela Anderson.
- Netflix has released the first teaser for The Leopard, a six-part miniseries adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 epic novel. Instead, why not revisit Luchino Visconti’s 1963 classic with Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale?
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024).
- “Cavani, through her elegantly crafted refusal of respectability, destabilizes the culturally sanctioned borders of suffering rather than policing them.” Kerosene Jones looks at Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974) with fresh eyes on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
- “May only knew how to be herself—whether as a novice grasping for footing in the dark or as an authoritarian genius unwilling to compromise her vision.” Kat Sachs reviews Miss May Does Not Exist, a new biography of Elaine May.
- “Megalopolis is something of a movie-paradox; it’s a vision of the future haunted by the past.” For his latest Current Debate column, Leonardo Goi surveys the critical reaction to Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024).
- “Though the film is full of bravura set pieces, the opening credits sequence encapsulates Kon’s mastery of animated transitions.” Dan Schindel reads into a single transition from Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006) in this week’s One Shot.
WISH LIST
Bushman (David Schickele, 1971).
- Other Parties will soon release David Schickele's Bushman (1971) on Blu-ray in a limited edition of 300 copies.
EXTRAS
- Friends of actress and former member of Andy Warhol’s Factory Sally Kirkland have started a GoFundMe to defray the cost of urgent medical care.