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NEWS
Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep
- Two exciting stories involving two forerunners of the L.A. Rebellion: Charles Burnett is set to direct the film Steal Away, about the escape of former slave-turned-politician Robert Smalls; while Julie Dash will be helming Lionsgate's Angela Davis biopic.
- GammaRay and Celestial pictures will be hosting a Shaw Brothers movie marathon on Twitch that will continue from February 4 to February 8. The globally-streaming marathon includes 44 full-length features from the Shaw Brothers’ catalog, so make sure to clear your calendars!
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The release of Harmony Korine's long awaited follow-up to his lightening-in-a-bottle movie Spring Breakers is finally near. Here's a new trailer for the Miami-set, Matthew McConaughey-starring odyssey.
- A lovely miniature play with form: the U.S. trailer for Hong Sang-soo's Hotel by the River. Meanwhile, we are currently running a retrospective of Hong's films in the UK entitled Solving Puzzles: The Cinema of Hong Sang-soo.
- Canada's most divisive director Xavier Dolan returns with a sweeping trailer for his star-studded drama, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.
- On the other end of the spectrum of Québécois cinema: an appropriately eerie trailer for Denis Côté's Ghost Town Anthology.
- One of the great duos of contemporary cinema, director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng discuss their latest collaboration, the experimental documentary Your Face, with the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
RECOMMENDED READING
Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence & Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts III
- Haley Joel Osment, the singular star of The Sixth Sense and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, also voices Sora, the central character of the beloved video game franchise Kingdom Hearts. In a new interview, shedding rare light on the subject of voice acting for video games, Osment recalls the pivotal moment when he joined the game's cast, and his time spent acting in the game as an "eternal teenager" from the ages of 12 to 30.
- Just when you thought list season was over there's Senses of Cinema with their invaluable 7-part world poll, which even features several Notebook contributors gathering and extrapolating upon their favorite films and discoveries of last year.
John Water's Female Trouble
- Karyn Kusama's top ten list gathers portraits of nightmares within social hierarchies, from Todd Haynes's Safe to John Waters's Female Trouble.
- On his blog, Craig Keller has translated nine excerpts from a conversation between Jean-Luc Godard, Dmitry Golotyuk, and Antonina Derzhitskaya, which took place during the initial inception of The Image Book.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos discusses the (Academy Award-nominated!) The Favourite on the latest edition of Film Society of Lincoln Center's Close-Up podcast.
- The great, underrated American director Patrick Wang discusses his latest film, the two part The Bread Factory, with filmmaker Christopher Jason Bell on his wonderful independent cinema podcast Indie Beat.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Jean-Luc Godard further discusses his latest opus in this exclusive translation of his extensive interview with Débordements.
- We're at International Film Festival Rotterdam taking in the wide range of cinema offered at this unique, all-encompassing festival. Daniel Kasman relays his findings thus far.
- The complicated, dialoguing politics of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Inside Man are unfurled by Leonardo Goi.
EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES
- Yoko Ono shares an old memory of the late Jonas Mekas, who she met while part of the Fluxus art collective in the 1960s. Mekas also filmed Ono and John Lennon's "Bed-Ins for Peace" in 1969.
Enjoying tea and toast and eggs for breakfast with our old friend Jonas Mekas, at the Montreal Bed-In in the summer of 1969 pic.twitter.com/EEU9Q3gJa0
— Yoko Ono (@yokoono) January 24, 2019
- A sneak peak at Kiyoshi Kurosawa's mysterious Japan-Uzbekistan co-production, entitled The End of The Earth.
PR poster of new movie "Tabi no owari Sekai no hajimari" starring Maeda Atsuko, Kase Ryo, Sometani Shota & Emoto Tokio; to be shown in cinemas during early summer 2019 pic.twitter.com/f8iGlLbWMg
— Chiaki (@doramaworld) January 28, 2019