Edited by Adam Cook
News.
- LOLA, one of our favorite film journals, has released some content from their third issue. The articles include a piece by Dana Linssen on the film Nadine, among others, and the nature of feminist cinephilia. Also, you shouldn't miss this collective approach (part one of two) to Holy Motors.
- More cinephilic delight: the full version of the Flemish film journal Photogénie is now online, featuring Tom Paulus on Olivier Assayas, Sarah Keller on Jean Epstein, and an interview with Girish Shambu.
- Birthdays: Hayao Miyazaki turned 72 on the 5th (speaking of which, check this out) and Jean-Marie Straub turned 80 yesterday (David Hudson has collected some related material).
Finds.
- "Happy New Years", Apichatpong-style: a brief short entitled 2013.
- Above: new images from Hong Sang-soo's new film, Nobody's Daughter Haewon, set to debut in Berlin next month.
- Via Moving Image Source, filmmaker Miguel Gomes writes on Manuel Mozos and the film Xavier:
"As I see it, Manuel is the one great Portuguese filmmaker who has been denied the international acclaim he is due; but I am not alone in feeling strongly for him and his films."
- Above: David Bordwell hosts a guest post by James Udden, who visits the set of Hou Hsiao-hsien's highly anticipated feature, The Assassin:
"The budget, currently reported at between US$12 and 14.5 million, had to be raised from various sources. Above all, though, it took time for Hou’s team to master all of the period details of the Tang dynasty. When it comes to mise-en-scène, no stone is left unturned. In fact, just about every stone, and everything else, is at some point toyed with by Hou himself."
- R. Emmet Sweeney on the First Look series at the Museum of the Moving Image, which he describes as "a relatively youthful version of the New York Film Festival...an attempt to clue its audiences in to the possible future of the medium." Don't forget to also read Fernando F. Croce on the program, here in the Notebook.
- Rebecca Keegan and John Horn on the increasing running-time of movies:
"Daily life may be swinging toward two-minute YouTube videos and brutally succinct tweets, but there’s still one place where time practically stands still: the multiplex. Extra-long films have proliferated this holiday season, a consequence of “final-cut” directors who wield near unilateral control over their films’ running times and digital filmmaking tools that allow for longer and repeated takes."
- Above: the Swedish poster for Safety Last!. Head over to 50 Watts for more Swedish posters for Hollywood movies.
- Richard Brody isn't buying into the Haneke hype, and is not taking too kindly to the award-sweeping Amour:
"In Haneke’s film, the style is the premise for the setup: the willful exclusion of the characters’ inner life (yes, there is a dream sequence and a brief fantasy—both generic) throws the burden of interpretation on viewers. It’s Haneke’s usual strategy: to make viewers complicit with morally dubious deeds while keeping his own hands resolutely clean."
- Above: via This Must be the Place, Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of Accattone.
- For the AFC, François Reumont interviews Caroline Champetier, the cinematographer of Holy Motors who has worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Lanzmann and Xavier Beauvois among others.
- Two pieces by Jacques Rancière on Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, translated by Stoffel Debuysere, can be found on Diagonal Thoughts. Firstly, an article on Return of the Prodigal Son - Humiliated, and, secondly, a transcripted lecture on Workers, Peasants.
From the archives.
- Above: via Cinephillia & Beyond, Satyajit Ray's sketches of Chaplin, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Vittorio De Sica, Sergei Eisenstein, and D.W. Griffith.