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NEWS
Nadav Lapid's Synonyms.
- The 69th Berlinale has concluded. You can find the full awards here, and our favorite films plus a complete roundup of our coverage here.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- First up: Ryusuke Hamaguchi's dark romance Asako I & II gets its lively US trailer via Grasshopper Film. Watch our interview with Hamaguchi we conducted after film's Cannes premiere.
- Following its rapturous Sundance and Berlinale reception, here's the trailer for Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir.
- Angela Schanelec just received the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin for her new feature, I Was at Home, But... Here's the first clip and our review of this beautiful, fragmentary film.
RECOMMENDED READING
David Cronenberg's eXistenZ.
- The key to understanding David Cronenberg's filmography and its themes of identity, writes Christianne Benedict, is the idea that "sex is what life is. It’s what we are."
- Looking ahead, Cineuropa has compiled an overview of this year's likely Cannes contenders, from Ken Loach and Terrence Malick to Hirokazu Kore-eda and Mati Diop.
- J. Rosenfield has penned an eloquent and compelling review of Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel, with particular focus on actress Rosa Salazar, whose motion-capture performance as Alita is "a fully human creation, even in its supposed inhumanity."
- Italian avant-garde filmmaker Yervant Gianikian's Angela’s Diaries – Two Filmmakers completes a collaborative project shared by Gianikian and his partner, the late Angela Ricci Luchi, documenting years of their shared life together. We also interviewed Gianikian about the film late last year.
Steven Soderbergh filming High Flying Bird.
- In an interview with The Atlantic, Steven Soderbergh discusses the "serendipitous" conception of his latest High Flying Bird, streaming versus the theater experience, and the "clunkiness" of the Oscars.
- An ongoing retrospective of Max Ophüls's cinema continues at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this week. For TIFF's The Review, James Quandt explores the auteur's opulent style, and his "persistent themes of transience, entrapment, and destiny."
- With the public installation of Ilya Khrzhanovsky's Dau now ended in Paris, it is worth considering whether the project was worth celebrating at all. Samuel Goff investigates the turbulent working conditions and allegations of misconduct flagging the production for many years.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Sean Gilman reviews the five big releases of the Lunar New Year, including a sci-fi epic, Peppa Pig, and a genuine Hong Kong movie.
- Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s Birds of Passage is "another formidable meditation on the corrupting forces of wealth and power."
EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES
- Back in 2010, the iconoclastic Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce spoke to the late fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in an extensive, candid interview.
- In case you missed it...
Nosferatu by Japanese manga artist Suehiro Maruo pic.twitter.com/y5F7IXkEH3
— 41 Strange (@41Strange) February 18, 2019