Edited by Adam Cook
- Above: Transformers: The Premake. A new video essay by Kevin B. Lee on the production of Michael Bay’s new Transformers film, fan viral marketing, the Chinese film market, and Hollywood as occupation.
- In the latest episode of the podcast The Cinephiliacs, Peter Labuza talks to Michael Koresky of Reverse Shot.
- Above: a stunning trailer for the new Steven Soderbergh-directed miniseries, The Knick, starring Clive Owen.
- Also from Soderbergh, published on his website, a transcribed conversation with the late Gordon Willis:
"Q: How were you different when you came out of it as a cinematographer? Did you find yourself having to think in much larger strata about what you were doing?
A: Right. Well, the answer to that is, yes. I'm a minimalist in the way I think. So when I look at something, I usually start eliminating things as opposed to adding things. And not that I give any great thought to that, it's just the way I am. But the answer to the question is, yes. Generally after that, when I did things, it--I always have a tendency to think about one thing, which is a total picture. It's, oh, when you make this cut, how does it reflect to that cut? You do this, how does it reflect on not only the next cut but ten cuts up the way, and then finally the whole movie?"
- Above: via Adrian Martin, writer Siegfried Kracauer's 1933 press pass.
- Our ambassador to contemporary French film criticism, David Davidson, has posted some translations of recent takedown blurbs from Cahiers du cinéma.
- Above: "Clever Minimalist Posters Turn Famous Movies into Paper Art". Click here to see more.
- For film critics: Michael Pattison offers some advice on how to the most of film festivals.
- Above: John Williams conducts the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as they play a piece from his score for E.T.
- For Movie Morlocks, R. Emmet Sweeney writes on Anthony Mann's The Man From Laramie:
"he Man From Laramie is a brutally violent film, and Mann claims to have pushed the Stewart and his character to his limit: 'That [film] distilled our relationship. I reprised themes and situations by pushing them to their paroxysms. So the band of cowboys surround Jimmy and rope him as they did before in Bend of the River, but here I shot him through the hand!.' The Man From Laramie is a gorgeous paroxysm, one that depicts suffocating, doomed intimacy in the open air. It features one of Stewart’s finest performances, pitched between his natural gentle demeanor, seen in his guarded flirtation with the Waggoman niece (Cathy O’Donnell), and blinkered, self-destructive rage, whenever his physical boundaries are violated. He is a docile animal except when cornered, when he attempts to carve his own fate out of others’ flesh."