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NEWS
Charlie Chaplin in The Pilgrim (1923).
- Happy New Year! Thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, all copyrighted American works from 1923 have entered the public domain, legally allowing for re-publication and re-use. This includes Cecil B. DeMille's silent version of The Ten Commandments, and Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim.
- Two legends, directors Ringo Lam and Mrinal Sen, have passed away past week. Lam was a trailblazing member of the Hong Kong New Wave in the 1980s, while Mrinal Sen helped to usher in a new wave of filmmaking in India alongside Satyajit Ray.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Actor-comedian turned auteur Jordan Peele has swiftly produced his followup horror film to his unanimously celebrated Get Out. Here's the ambiguous yet stirring first trailer for Us.
- Janus Films have gracefully restored Jackie Chan's death defying Police Story films, in which he brilliantly stars, directs, and choreographs.
- Here's a curious one: designer Bryan Boyer has crafted a new device which revises how we watch movies. Dubbed the "VSMP" or, "Very Slow Movie Player," it slows films down from 24 frames per a second to 24 frames per hour. See it in action in the video below.
- A TV-spot trailer for the forthcoming PBS documentary My Country No More, which focuses on the many communal, economic, and political consequences of oil drilling in rural North Dakota.
RECOMMENDED READING
Film Comment's January-February 2019 issue.
- Film Comment's first issue of the year features a reflection on nonfiction cinema in 2018, and an interview with Fabrice Aragno on the making of Jean-Luc Godard's The Image Book.
- Lists, lists, and more lists! Even Barack Obama has thrown his hat in the ring. We're thrilled and a bit overwhelmed, but are especially interested in those from feminist journal Another Gaze, the 52 directors surveyed on IndieWire, and the numerous lists by critics, filmmakers, and more gathered by the Toronto Film Review. Meanwhile, Kristin Thompson instead chooses to look back 90 years ago, compiling a list of the ten best films of 1928.
- Audiences in China are blaming a viral marketing campaign for misleading them to see Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night, which many assumed to be a romantic comedy and not a 3D film with a 55-minute long take.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- The Notebook's annual Fantasy Double Features poll tasked writers with pairing their favorite new films of 2018 with older films seen in the same year, to form a snapshot of the year's viewings. The list mania continues with MUBI's team of curators selecting their favorite films of 2018.
- A previously lost, newly translated interview with the great German-Hollywood auteur Fritz Lang.
- Caspar Salmon investigates Cary Grant's screen image, and with it, the presence and influence of queerness in old Hollywood.
- Michael Sicinski reflects on a year of "deeply resistant" experimental filmmaking.
EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES
- "To Learn About the World," "Rock Generation," "No More Rock," these are just a few terrible examples from an extensive list of alternative titles Universal suggested to George Lucas for his film American Graffiti...
George Lucas’ American Graffiti was almost called... pic.twitter.com/qxXX7dAnfe
— Peter Sciretta (@slashfilm) December 28, 2018