Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.
NEWS
Oleg Sentsov.
- Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, whose film Gamer was previously shown on MUBI in December of 2018, has been released from imprisonment in Russia following a prisoner exchange.
- Today, September 18, 2019, is Art House Theater Day, "an annual celebration of art house and indie theaters." The official Art House Theater Day website has provided a service that helps art-house movie enthusiasts find nearby locations to celebrate and support their local theaters.
- New details have emerged regarding Angela Schanelec's upcoming feature, Music, an adaptation of the Oedipus myth that follows a young boy from Greece to London.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING.
- Todd Haynes's latest, Dark Waters, delves into a legal battle between an attorney and a chemical company that connects a series of mysterious deaths to forty years of poisoned water.
- The international trailer for Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden, about a young writer caught between love and politics. Read our review from Venice here.
- An official look at Francis Ford Coppola's restored and re-edited The Cotton Club Encore, which includes previously unseen footage. The film will first premiere at the New York Film Festival, then in theaters on October 11.
- A24's sentimental and dreamy trailer for Trey Edward Shults's Waves, about an African-American family who faces a life-changing tragedy. From TIFF, correspondent Kelley Dong notes that the film is "protective to a fault by packaging pain in premature hope."
- Eric Notarnicola's Mister America follows a fictionalized Tim Heidecker as he beats a murder charge and campaigns to be District Attorney of San Bernardino County. The film is an extension of Heidecker and fellow comedian Gregg Turkington's absurdist comedy web series about two movie reviewers, On Cinema at the Cinema.
- Filmmaker Leigh Ledare has made his film The Task, which follows a three-day gathering of participants and psychologists as they study their own "self-made social structure," publicly available. In his review from True/False 2018, editor Daniel Kasman writes that the film "is [...] clearly one of the year’s most powerful films, provocative in the best of ways."
RECOMMENDED READING
Mathieu Demy, Agnès Varda, and Rosalie Varda in 1972.
- "...[E]very day I talk about her, I talk about her films, I renegotiate deals for them, so I feel like she is here.” Rosalie Varda, daughter of Agnès Varda, discusses the continuation of her mother's legacy.
- Boluwatife Akinro and Joshua Segun-Lean consider Disney's remake of The Lion King and Americocentrism depictions of Africa in the global black diaspora.
- For The Guardian, filmmakers including Barry Jenkins, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Steve McQueen, and Lucrecia Martel, choose the "best movies of the century so far."
Behind-the-scenes of Jennifer's Body.
- Director Karyn Kusama and 4:3 look back on her film Jennifer's Body on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, from its mismanaged marketing, its director's cut, and how the film's reception by female critics countered its feminist inception.
- Tank Magazine has published an excerpt from Chantal Akerman's My Mother Laughs (translated by Daniella Shreir), which follows the filmmaker as she "returns to Brussels to care for her sick mother."
- Girish Shambu delves into Su Friedrich's invaluable resource, Edited By, a web resource devoted to the hidden histories of film editors.
- MUBI contributor Christina Newland investigates the reverberating legacy of Shauna Edwards, a Native American aspiring model and actress in early-60s Hollywood who murdered her abusive husband. "She was robbed of the chance even to be unremarkable on our screens, [...] just because she had the misfortune to marry a monster."
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- TIFF 2019 has come to an end, and you can find all of our coverage, top picks, and correspondences here.
- "It seems impossible to talk about Isabelle Adjani without mentioning her eyes." Abbey Bender unfurls the many tragic heroines of Isabelle Adjani.
- The co-director of For Sama tells us about his favorite cinema and the most memorable movie-going experience of his life.
- Christina Newland takes a look at how the career of Antonio Banderas has slyly played with Hollywood archetypes.
EXTRAS
- Ugandan video jockey VJ Emmie, who also provides the narration for our recent favorite Crazy World, puts his spin on Buster Keaton's classic short film Cops.
- The near forgotten Michael Mann produced, 2002 TV show Robbery Homicide Division is now on YouTube in full. Following Ali, this is one of his early forays into his contentious use of digital photography.