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NEWS
Stan Lee, 1922 - 2018.
- Marvel Comics & Marvel Studios legend Stan Lee has died at the age of 95. The Hollywood Reporter provides a thorough remembrance of the man and his legacy.
- Last month, we sadly announced that the Wachowski sisters have closed their production offices, but we're elated that Jupiter Ascending has been adapted as a five-part ballet, entitled A Dark and Lonely Space!
- Francis Ford Coppola will be launching an organic marijuana business named The Grower's Series, or colloquially, "Coppola Cannabis." A longtime winery owner, Coppola states that "Wine and cannabis are two ancient and bounteous gifts of Mother Nature, linked by great care, terroir and temperateness. Expertise making one applies to the other."
Wes Anderson & Juman Malouf.
- Wes Anderson has made his debut as a museum curator, alongside Human Malouf, for Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum.
- Speaking of Andersons, here's the first set images of Paul W.S. Anderson's Monster Hunter, the director's latest video game adaptation, starring Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, rapper T.I., and Ron Perlman, among others:
First Set Images of Hollywood's Monster Hunter Movie pic.twitter.com/PHMarQoneH
— AllGamesDelta (@AllGamesDelta_) November 12, 2018
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- A fuller, richer trailer for Roma takes us deeper into Alfonso Cuarón’s vision of 1971 Mexico City. From our review of the film by Daniel Kasman: "Cuarón makes Roma an homage to the cloistered and distanced existence of the rich during national (social, political) tumult, to the safety such an environment provides for a minority of lower class workers, and how this redoubt thereby lends the blinkers of the rich to those poorer than themselves."
- A new trailer for Mia Hansen-Løve's Goa-set Maya features Roman Kolinka as a war journalist on sabbatical. However, at TIFF we noted that the film possesses a "slack, somewhat eventless, aimless quality."
- A stunning black-and-white music video for Mitski's "Washing Machine Heart", featuring the musician wandering a space of sculptures, longing for intimacy. Directed by one of our favorite artists in the field: Zia Anger.
RECOMMENDED READING
Orson Welles's unfinished The Deep
- Though The Other Side of the Wind is now available on Netflix, a number of other Orson Welles projects remain abandoned. For Vulture, Bilge Ebiri provides a guide to each of these titles and their rocky productions.
- For Hollywood Reporter, David Wiener writes on the troubled history of adapting Ralph Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings film into a live-action series. The "what could have been" includes a Led Zeppelin-led soundtrack, and Mick Jagger as Frodo.
- Despite the immediate upset caused by the closing of FilmStruck among cinephiles, Flavorwire's Jason Bailey argues that not only for the short but also for the long-term, we must still "fight for the art that matters."
Katharine Hepburn in Christopher Strong
- In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, writer and podcast host (You Must Remember This) Karina Longworth pairs her new book Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood with 10 must-see titles featuring the women romantically linked to Hughes throughout his storied career, from Katherine Hepburn to Ida Lupino. And over at The Atlantic, Sophie Gilbert has written an inspiring profile on Longworth's prolific career in film criticism, which is "a fascinating illustration of how much media has changed over the past 20 years."
- The Earth Dies Streaming, a collection of essays by the critic A.S. Hamrah, will be released this week. n+1 has provided an excerpt of the book, consisting of short pieces written on films made between 1916–2002.
- Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi, whose film Border premiered at both TIFF and Cannes this year, lists his top 10 films for the Criterion Collection. At the top is Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, described by Abbasi as "one of the most beautiful movies ever made."
- In his latest blog post, graphic artist Josh Holtsclaw shares Pixar's design inspirations for Brad Bird's Incredibles 2, from the houses of architect Albert Frey to the hypnotic films of experimental animator Oskar Fischinger.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Last year, China's preeminent art-house director Jia Zhangke founded a new film festival in his home province, intending it to be a gateway for art and independent cinema in China. Daniel Kasman reports on the second Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival.
- Shunji Iwai's Last Letter "feels like a culmination of a story Iwai has been telling for over 20 years," writes Sean Gilman, in the latest entry in his Contemporary Chinese Cinema column.
- Can one find a fresh point of entry to Xavier Dolan's films? Tom Quist re-considers Dolan as an abstract expressionist, defined by a "love of splashy, colorful compositions" and a "world of surfaces."
- Rupleena Bose reports from the Mumbai Film Festival, noting "the disparity in screening venues and theatres where films from around the world ideally should be available throughout the year as well."
EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES
- A fresh poster for Edgar G. Ulmer's B-movie classic Detour, designed by Jennifer Dionisio.
