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NEWS
- The acrimonious legal battle between producer Paulo Branco and director Terry Gilliam over the rights to The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has reached a perilous stage, and it's beginning to look pretty bad for the dream project of the beleaguered auteur, who a French court has ruled no longer owns the film.
- American philosopher Stanley Cavell has died at the age of 91. As Charles Petersen wrote for n+1 in a 2013 profile, "Cavell was among the first philosophers to take film seriously"—and few who have encountered his writing on cinema haven't looked at the art in a new way. We heartedly recommend Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- After a stint in Hollywood resulting in far-flung films ranging from The Time Traveler's Wife and RED to Insurgent, German director Robert Schwentke has returned to his native country to make The Captain, a sharply provocative drama of a soldier's intoxication with power in the last days of World War II:
- French actress and director Marie Rivière has kindly provided a video (and English subtitles) of a delightful Q&A after a screening her 1986 masterpiece The Green Ray, in which she starred and whose script she collaborated on with director Eric Rohmer:
- We are big fans of Creed, and the Rocky saga at large, and thus we can't help but be excited for the sequel to Ryan Coogler's film, which reunites the original's perfect cast:
RECOMMENDED READING
- Do critics matter? Do film reviews matter? What perspectives on film are valuable and needed—and why? In a great think piece for the L.A. Times, critic Justin Chang reflects on the last two weeks of tumultuous online debate about the diversity deficiencies of contemporary mainstream film writing.
- At The Ringer, Adam Nayman revisits the "meta-blockbusters" of summer 1993: John McTiernan's Last Action Hero and Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.
- For Sight & Sound, Albertine Fox profiles the Soundwalk Collective's exploration of the busy, baroque soundscapes of Jean-Luc Godard's archives in their new EP.
- LUX Curator Maria Palacios Cruz considers the guiding motifs in the mysterious work of experimental filmmaker Laida Lertxundi, and her latest evocative film Words, Planets. (We interviewed Lertxundi earlier this month.)
- Like so many others, we're continually transfixed by the beauty and strangeness of Mickey Rourke. Christina Newland explores the actor's tender sincerity and his complicated career for The Outline.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- Waxwork Records creates some of the most coveted vinyl editions of movie soundtracks, and has delightfully announced that they're bringing their meticulous care to a "green marbled vinyl" release of Michael Abels' score for Get Out.