Rushes | Lobbying for Los Angeles, Fall Festival Anticipation, Phoenix Bailing

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NEWS

Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974).

• With on-location filming in Los Angeles on the steep decline, Mayor Karen Bass has launched the Entertainment Industry Council, which plans to lobby the state to subsidize productions in the city.

FESTIVALS

Viet and Nam (Truong Minh Qúy, 2024).

• The Toronto International Film Festival (September 5–15) has added a number of titles to its lineup, including Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, bringing the total to 276. The Wavelengths slate will feature Truong Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, and Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias’s Pepe, among others. Festival attendees are encouraged to use this nifty tool, lest they be lost forever in the scheduling labyrinth.
• The New York Film Festival (September 27–October 14) has likewise added to its lineup, including Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements and Jean-Luc Godard’s Scénarios.

DEVELOPING

• Joaquin Phoenix has torpedoed a Todd Haynes film, dropping out of the starring role in a romantic drama, which he had brought to the director and helped to develop, five days before shooting was set to begin. The role will reportedly not be recast.
• Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers, 2023) is in talks to play Anthony Bourdain in a biopic titled Tony, directed by Matt Johnson.
• Soo Hugh (Pachinko, 2022—ongoing) will write and direct an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. 
• James Wan is developing a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which he may also direct.

REMEMBERING

Painted Faces (Corey Yuen, 1988).

• Corey Yuen has died at 72. Having come up with the Seven Little Fortunes—alongside Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung—at the Peking Opera School, the Hong Kong filmmaker directed such projects as Yes Madam (1985), Righting Wrongs (1986), and Painted Faces (1988), as well as several Jet Li vehicles, eventually crossing over to action choreography in Western productions like X-Men (2000) and The Transporter films (2002 and 2005). Yuen died in 2022, but the news had been kept private until this week at the request of his family.
• Margaret Ménégoz has died at 83. The German French producer was the head of Les Films du Losange for nearly 50 years, producing work by Michael Haneke, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Éric Rohmer, and many others.
• Connie Chiume has died at 72. The South African actress began her career on the stage in Greece, returning to her home country post-apartheid and starring in a number of television shows and films. She became recognizable to international audiences with her roles in the Black Panther films (2018 and 2022) and in Beyoncé’s Black Is King (2020).
• Kim Kahana has died at 94. The Hawaiian American stunt performer, coordinator, and educator doubled for Charles Bronson, starred in Danger Island (1968–69), and worked on such films as Cool Hand Luke (1967), Planet of the Apes (1968), and Smokey and the Bandit (1977).
• Lisa Westcott has died at 76. The British makeup artist received an Academy Award for her work on Les Misérables (2012), having also been nominated for Mrs. Brown (1997) and Shakespeare in Love (1998).

RECOMMENDED READING

Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964).

• “Now he’s still white but in a few moments he’ll go blue. Look under his eyes; look, it’s starting.” e-flux journal republishes a brief essay by Michelangelo Antonioni, who recounts a deadly scene in wartime France as a way to think about the filmmaker’s problem of seeing.
• “You know how in Hester Street there are horses coming up and down the street? The story Joan loved to tell was that they could only afford one horse, so they just painted the horse different colors.” For the Metrograph Journal, Nathan Silver conducts a career-spanning interview with Carol Kane, who stars in his forthcoming film Between the Temples (2024).
• “Once one of the most popular movies in South Africa’s history, it’s now seldom discussed.” For Slate, Dan Kois revisits the apartheid-era race comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), attempting to account for its unprecedented foreign box-office success. 
• “Like Ford or Lang, Wellman simultaneously suggests a director born at the very beginning of the movies as well as an exploratory modernist.” For The Maze, the Ignite Films’s in-house editorial venue, Scout Tafoya has edited a summer-long series on William A. Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), including contributions from Caden Mark Gardner, Gina Telaroli, and Fernando F. Croce.

RECOMMENDED EVENTS

Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962).

• New York, August 16 through 22: Film at Lincoln Center presents “Jacques Rozier: Chronicler of Summer,” a retrospective of the French New Wave director featuring all five of his features, including the premieres of several digital restorations, and a selection of his short films.
• New York, August 19 through September 1: Roxy Cinema presents “Desire and Punishment,” a series on fascism programmed by Amalia Ulman, who writes, “To me fascism is gray, claustrophobic, and heavy on the chest, like the moments before a summer storm. That very moment when the air smells bad.”
• London, August 29: The Barbican Centre presents a double bill of Jerome Hiler’s 16mm work, featuring New Shores (1971–87) and In the Stone House (2012).

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• Through August 23: Le Cinéma Club presents Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1985), a classic forerunner of the gonzo self-reflexive turn in independent documentary.
• MUBI has shared a trailer for Zia Anger’s My First Film (2024), coming to the platform September 6.
• Apple TV+ has shared a teaser for Disclaimer (2024) Alfonso Cuarón’s seven-episode miniseries starring Cate Blanchett, premiering October 11.
• Neon has shared a teaser for Steven Soderbergh’s Presence (2024), in theaters in January.

RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK

Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024. Installation view, Dia Beacon, New York, May 12, 2024–April 14, 2025. © Steve McQueen. Photograph by Dan Wolfe.

• “This is not just a work of sculpture or installation, but a continuation of McQueen’s version of expanded cinema.” Madeleine Seidel considers Steve McQueen’s latest work, Bass (2024), a site-specific installation at Dia Beacon.
• “The taxi in particular becomes a prominent player in Bombay Noir, a venue for revealing secrets, creating conspiracies, brooding over life-changing decisions, and professing love.” Soham Gadre files a Notebook Primer on Bombay Noir, a genre of 1950s Hindi cinema “unsubtly inspired by the conventions of 1940s Hollywood noir.”

WISH LIST

• Milan Records has released AraabMuzik’s original soundtrack for Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft (2023). 
• Capricci has announced a comprehensive Bluray box set of Chantal Akerman’s films, due out October 1.