News.
- A new issue of one the most essential film publications, La Furia Umana, is now available online. As always, alongside a rich collection of disparate texts, the issue has separate dossiers devoted to specific filmmakers, including ones on René Vautier (edited by Nicole Brenez) and Ida Lupino with Claire Denis. The amount of must-read coverage is daunting: included, too, are homages to Chris Marker and Stephen Dwoskin, a new video by David Phelps, and much more to explore.
In this issue, our pride and joy is to be found in the monograph-length dossier on Hollywood auteur William A. Wellman, a dossier edited by Gina Telaroli and Phelps. Our editor Daniel Kasman has contributed anoverview to Wellman's filmography; Telaroli has an incredible image-based piece on Good-bye, My Lady (alongside "scraps" and "findings" pointing the way for even more coverage of this filmmaker's wide oeuvre), filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier has a new piece, J. Hoberman has lent a reprint, and you can find more contributions by a bunch of Notebook friends: Phelps (1, 2), Chris Wells, Kent Jones, Ted Fendt, Marie-Pierre Duhamel, and more. For a filmmaker critically ignored and/or undervalued, this is essential reading.
- In Moscow, several critics are picketing a Week of Iranian Film due to the continued mistreatment of filmmakers in Iran, including Jafar Panahi, while the country continues to brazenly export other aspects of their cinema as if nothing is wrong. From a statement from the picketers:
"We will protest on the opening day of the Week of Iranian Film and the Days of Iranian Culture in Moscow, to show our support for the oppressed filmmakers, raise our voices against the culture of the state-sponsored censorship in Iran and worldwide, including Russia, where the pressure has been steadily increasing. As has been widely reported, Panahi has been shortlisted for European Parliament’s Sakharov Award along with Pussy Riot."
- The New York Film Festival opened last Friday, and we've begun our coverage, starting with an interview with Brian De Palma and a reviewof Berberian Sound Studio. Stay tuned for more, and of course check back into our archives for coverage of many of the NYFF films, including the Resnais, Ruiz, Kiarostami, Haneke and more, which we wrote about at other festivals.
- We are saddened by the passing of the veteran actor Herbert Lom, who died last week at the age of 95. Best known as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, whom Peter Sellers slowly drove insane in Blake Edwards' Pink Panther series, Lom appeared in over 100 films, playing Captain Nemo, Attila the Hun, Napoleon (twice), Professor Van Helsing (opposite Christopher Lee!), and working with such directors as Carol Reed (The Young Mr. Pitt), Jules Dassin (Night and the City), Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers), and Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus). The Guardian has assembled a career overview of film clips.
- Fans of Richard Linklater who were excited to find out that he, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy were returning for a sequel to Before Sunset should check out this interview with Linklater at Vulture, where he discusses catching up with the characters ten years later for Before Midnight.
Finds.
- Via Lock the door, we're killing the beast (and a few reblogs removed), an image of Anna Karina behind the scenes of Jacques Rivette's La religieuse (1966).
- At the New York Review of Books, J. Hoberman asks "Can we speak of a twenty-first-century cinema? And if so, on what basis?" Some may recall that Ignatiy Vishnevetsky asked a similar question of cinema in his old column on the Notebook, What Is the 21st Century?
- Chris Marker, en mémoire is a collective Tumblr from the Cinémathèque française, which "invites all those – friends here and abroad, films enthusiasts and cinephiles – who so wish to give their testomonial, in the form of texts, films, photographs or collages, on what the work and personality of Chris Marker have meant to them."
- Via 50 Watts, twenty stunning Swedish posters for 1930s Hollywood films, including the above, for Death Takes a Holiday, with Frederic March looking like Dr. Mabuse!
- At Long Pauses, our friend and sometimes contributor Darren Hugheshas been posting more coverage of the films he saw this year at the Toronto International Film Festival.
- While Bong Joon-ho continues to work on his first English language production, Park Chan-wook has beaten him to the punch with Stoker, starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode. The trailer has just been released. We have a hard time believing this could be better than Aleksey Balabanov's A Stoker.
- Speaking of new trailers, Gus Van Sant seems to be moving back to mainstream storytelling with Promised Land, an oddly conventional looking movie scripted by its two male stars, Matt Damon and John Krasinski:
From the archives.
- For fans of the avant-garde, be sure to check out The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (1928), a classic of American surrealism. Reportedly made for less than $100 and heavily influenced by German Expressionism, the film is a nightmarish short about show business dehumanization, and it's available on YouTube: