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NEWS
Above: Casting board Polaroids from Heat (1995). (Courtesy of Michael Mann)
- Michael Mann's debut novel is titled Heat 2, which is both a prequel and sequel to his 1995 classic crime thriller. Co-written with novelist Meg Gardiner, Heat 2 will be published on August 9 through the HarperCollins-based Michael Mann Books imprint.
- Jonas Mekas 100! is a program dedicated to honoring the influential critic, writer, and filmmaker Jonas Mekas. The events of the program are currently underway and are taking place worldwide, from Sweden to Taiwan, with a focus on "[expanding] global recognition of his work."
- Bong Joon-ho is moving forward with his next English-language film, an adaptation of Edward Ashton's upcoming science fiction novel Mickey7, with Robert Pattinson set to star. The book is about a "disposable employee" on a space colony base who refuses to be replaced by a clone.
- Bruno Dumont is shooting his new film, L'Empire, about extraterrestrial knights who land in a village on the Opal Coast. The cast includes Virginie Efira, Adèle Haenel, Fabrice Luchini, and Lily-Rose Depp.
- San Francisco's 100-year-old Castro Theater is getting a "major makeover [...] as a live events venue with music, comedy, film and more." For local cinephiles, the restructuring signals a worrying shift away from a focus on repertory programming and other film-centric events.
- M. Night Shyamalan's international competition jury for the Berlinale now includes filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, filmmaker Anne Zohra Berrached, producer Saïd Ben Saïd, writer and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and actress Connie Nielsen.
- Film programmer Melissa Lyde has announced a crowdfunding campaign for Alfreda’s Cinema, which is working towards becoming "the only micro-cinema in Brooklyn to operate under the leadership of a Black woman with a mission to screen films that celebrate Black and non-Black people of color."
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The trailer for Josephine Decker's The Sky is Everywhere, a colorful adaptation of the YA novel by Jandy Nelson. The film arrives on Apple TV+ on February 11, which happens to be Valentine's Day weekend.
- The Novelist's Film, the latest film by Hong Sang-soo, stars Kim Min-hee as a novelist whose excursion across town includes meeting a filmmaker, walking in the park with an actress, and drinking.
- Fox Maxy's film San Diego is currently playing on the Seen Journal website through February 8. In a profile by Cassie Da Costa, the Indigenous (Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians and Payómkawichum) filmmaker discusses his drive to make longer and more challenging films, stating: "This is something I’m just going to make for me—and if nobody watches it, fine." Maxy is also this year's Sundance 2022 Merata Mita Fellow.
- Just two years after the release of Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio, Guillermo Del Toro is making his animated feature debut with a stop-motion adaptation of the fairytale that will premiere on Netflix in December. Del Toro has been working on the project since 2008, stating in 2018 that "No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio." Unlike Robert Zemeckis's Tom Hanks-starring live-action remake of Disney's Pinocchio, which is coming to Disney+ later this year, Del Toro's version of Pinocchio takes place during the rise of fascism in 1930s Italy.
- Christine Haroutounian's World is playing in the newest Exquisite Shorts program, where "short films [are] curated by filmmakers, for filmmakers." Selected by filmmaker Ryan McGlade, Haroutounian's film follows a young woman who moves to a village in Armenia to take care of her bedridden mother.
- From March 3 to 31, the program Other Modernisms, Other Futures: Global Art Cinema 1960-80 will be playing at the Barbican. This program brings to the fore modernist art cinema from countries outside of Europe and North America, such as Sara Gómez's De Cierta Manera and Marlen Khutsiev's July Rain.
RECOMMENDED READING
Todd Haynes' Poison (1992)
- Erik Piepenburg of the New York Times takes us back to the "Barbed-Wire Kisses panel" of 1992, a Sundance panel that catalyzed the genesis of New Queer Cinema. Piepenburg interviews several of the panelists, including B. Ruby Rich, Todd Haynes, and Isaac Julien, about the influence of that day's call to arms 30 years later.
- Writer James Kenney has shared a rollercoaster of a story about discovering Peter Bogdanovich's final feature, the rom-com Squirrel to the Nuts, which was bowdlerized and refashioned into She's Funny That Way.
- Sukhdev Sandhu writes on the soulful films of Márta Mészáros, now showing at Film at Lincoln Center.
- The celebration of Hungarian cinema continues with Steve Macfarlane's interview with Nyika and Dávid Jancsó about their father Miklós Jancsó, as well as the significant aesthetic and philosophical differences between Jancsó and Mészáros, who were once married.
- In an interview with the L.A. Review of Books, Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini discuss their vision for the independent magazine and book publishing house Fireflies Press.
- Hilton Als's profile of Apichatpong Weerasethakul for the New Yorker is a perceptive investigation of the metaphysical and political elements interwoven throughout Apichatpong's oeuvre.
- Published by Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Issue 17 of Comparative Cinema features the dossier Color Contrast: Chromatic Connections in Cinema, about color and its absence.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Ana Katz introduces her film The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet. The film is showing exclusively on MUBI in many countries in the series The New Auteurs.
- For Movie Poster of the Week, Adrian Curry shares several idiosyncratic posters for the films of Márta Mészáros.
- Glenn Heath Jr. appraises the distinctive genre films and television work of French filmmaker Julien Leclercq.
- Jason Tai Liwag writes on the life and career of influential Filipino screenwriter Ricky Lee.
- Vinh Nguyen encapsulates the power of Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1993 masterpiece Three Colors: Blue in a single shot.
- Patrick Holzapfel's Full Bloom column continues with a meditation on the African Baobab in Fad'jal by Safi Faye.
EXTRAS
- For the wine connoisseurs and Paul Giamatti fans, Christopher Ingraham presents the findings of a recent study on the effect of Giamatti's seconds-long tirade against Merlot in the 2005 movie Sideways on the price of Merlot in California.
- On a Chinese streaming site, the ending of Fight Club has been edited to claim that the police were successful in apprehending Tyler Durden and saving civilians from the bombs placed across the city.
- From James L. Neibaur on Twitter, news that some kind soul has restored Buster Keaton's tombstone in Los Angeles.