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RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- From the Criterion Collection, an excerpted clip from B. Ruby Rich's overview of pioneering female (and openly gay) filmmaker Dorothy Arzner's career and feminist reshaping of the woman's-picture.
- A trailer for Les Blank's recently restored Chulas Fronteras, which documents the lives of the Norteño musicians from the Texas-Mexican border and the social protests of their songs.
RECOMMENDED READING
On the set of Eyes Wide Shut.
- Indiewire has gathered an invaluable set of reflections on the state and the future of moviegoing from the perspective of exhibitors.
- Bilge Ebiri delves into the oral history of the notorious orgy scene from Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, from its lengthy planning period to a more improvised shoot.
- Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, Paul Schrader, and more, have published a letter in response to a string of violent attacks by far-right fascists against the Rome-based collective Cinema America. Connecting the event to the protests of May 1968 and the cancellation of the Cannes Film Festival, Paul Schrader notes that "we’re having a battle that we had over 50 years ago, when cinema was at the forefront of politics."
- For The Outline, Nathan Smith explores the Chucky franchise's primary concern with consumerism and consumption: "Chucky was literally made to be merchandised; he’s all our fears about the soullessness of mass production come to life."
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- In Katharina Wyss's Sarah Plays a Werewolf (now showing from July 2 – July 31, 2019 in MUBI's Debuts series), "all the world is a stage, and the teenage girl is merely a player." Read Kelley Dong's Close-Up.
- Albert Serra discusses the conception and production of Liberté, his no-holds-barred depiction of sexual debauchery over the course of a night in 1774.
- Ari Aster's Midsommar is a film in which "the spark of talent [is] placed in service of empty form," writes Lawrence Garcia.
EXTRAS
- We are in awe of what now appears to be an on going, healthy competition between cinema's most agile artists.
what the fuck, pic.twitter.com/iJqn1nYDf9
— Davis. (@realdaveimboden) July 1, 2019
- Furthermore: the legendary Donnie Yen.
"Chirrut feeling the force + Ip man’s steady aim + no plastic bottle = the universe strongest." pic.twitter.com/Y9wrw9bpOy
— Jenn Ravenna (@JennRavenna) July 3, 2019
- Per author Darran Anderson, a look at Angola's modernist theaters, which writer Samuel Goff says derive from the work of Portuguese architects in the late colonial period.
Modernist cinemas of Angola https://t.co/l3iXKlPfYk pic.twitter.com/IpzQkMz5Bf
— Darran Anderson (@Oniropolis) July 2, 2019