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NEWS
Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992).
- The Cinema for Gaza Auction has raised over $100,000 so far for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). The auction, which features such donations as a bedtime story read by Tilda Swinton and MUBI’s entire catalog of Blu-rays, closes April 12.
- As SAG-AFTRA lobbies for legal limits on digital replicas of actors, IATSE negotiates for “some of the spoils of artificial intelligence” as part of their next contract.
- Across the US, historic cinemas are being restored (and sometimes repurposed) by celebrities, foundations, and unlikely corporations.
CANNES
- Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, much-ballyhooed Megalopolis (2024) will premiere in competition at Cannes, while the first part of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga (2024) will premiere out of competition.
- Andrea Arnold will receive the honorary Golden Coach award from Directors’ Fortnight, which calls her an “avid explorer of the fringes of society” and “a dynamiter of social film codes.”
IN PRODUCTION
- After rumors, false reporting, and retractions (including our own), Aubrey Plaza has officially been cast in John Water’s Liarmouth, an adaptation of his 2022 novel, which is still seeking funding.
- Léa Seydoux will star alongside Josh O’Connor in Luca Guadagnino’s Separate Rooms, an adaptation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s 1989 novel.
REMEMBERING
Dinosaurs (Michael Jacobs and Bob Young, 1991–1994).
- David Barrington Holt has died at 78. The English-born designer and engineer was the longtime manager of the Jim Henson Company’s Creature Shop, with film and television credits including Dinosaurs (1991–1994), Jack Frost (1998), and The Country Bears (2002).
- Edgar Burcksen has died at 76. The Dutch-born editor had credits on Die Hard 2, The Hunt for Red October (both 1990), and Joeren Krabbé’s Left Luggage (1998), as well as the pilot of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992), for which he received an Emmy.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- A24 has released a trailer for Annie Baker’s Janet Planet (2023), in theaters on June 21, soundtracked by the symphonious vocal stylings of The Roches.
- Warner Bros. has released a teaser trailer for Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), in theaters October 4, in which Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga seem poised to play Fred and Ginger by way of Arkham Asylum.
RECOMMENDED READING
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude, 2024).
- “I often feel that cinema is behind TikTok. It’s not familiar with these expressions of life.” For the New York Times, Beatrice Loayza profiles Radu Jude, whose Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2024) combines layers of workplace indignities and exploitation, a Ceaușescu-era propaganda film, and Ilinca Manolache’s bravura social-media performance in chauvinist drag.
- “A hotel employee approaches me and asks about the penguin.” For The Baffler, Andrew Norman Wilson dishes about the material conditions of the emerging (read: starving) moving-image artist with irritable bowel syndrome.
- “After a moment, I realized that the soldiers were actors and the barricades were props.” For the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino profiles Park Chan-wook ahead of the television premiere of The Sympathizer.
- “I’ll send you the link for my last two nightmares.” For the Film Stage, Sean Price Williams and Luke Rathborne speak with the prolific Robert Morin on the occasion of “Quebec-Core,” a series running at New York’s Anthology Film Archives through April 19.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Bumpkin Soup (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1985).
- New York, through May 4: Gladstone Gallery presents *****, a new video by Arthur Jafa, in which the artist recasts the climactic scene of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) with Black actors, per Paul Schrader’s original screenplay.
- New York, April 19 and 20: Japan Society presents a two-film tribute to Directors Company, the short-lived independent production firm headed by Kazuhiko Hasegawa.
- London, April 25 through 27: Tate Modern and Open City Documentary Festival present a three-day program around Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening (2024) “exploring sonic practices and how they relate to sirens and emergency signals.”
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
A Grin without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977).
- “The people and the light are sordid, the moon and the cops are imperial, the sordid and the imperial together are colonial.” In an excerpt from Eternal Current Events, a new translation of Chris Marker’s early writing for the magazine Espirit, the future film essayist presents three snapshots of police brutality.
- “Streisand has never been sparkier or pricklier than she is in the films she directed, clearly relishing the opportunity to play the kind of vintage Hollywood roles we are always told they just don’t make like they used to.” Occasioned by the release of Barbra Streisand’s doorstop memoir, Kayleigh Donaldson considers the actress-singer-icon’s work behind the camera.
- “Everything happens on set. When you have your costume on, when you feel the tension, when you don’t have time to question yourself—that’s the best moment for one to create.” Leonardo Goi speaks with Quentin Dupieux about Yannick and Daaaaaalí! (both 2023), the latest instances of the French surrealist’s madcap creative spree.
- “Gálvez ultimately subverts the visuals of the heroic western in a dramatic, fictional plot that brazenly omits a hero.” Sanoja Bhaumik gives an appraisal of Felipe Gálvez Haberle's revisionist western, The Settlers (2023).
WISH LIST
- Hat & Beard Press presents In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Jonathan Rosenbaum Reader, a compendium of film, literary, and jazz criticism drawn from throughout the renowned writer's six-decade career.
EXTRAS
- Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has returned to professional wrestling, and, as IndieWire’s Christian Zilko writes, “Hollywood could learn a lot from The Rock’s latest heel turn.”