Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.
NEWS
- Two legends lost this week: actress Jeanne Moreau at 89 and playwright, screenwriter and actor Sam Shepard at 73. That's Moreau, above, with director Michelangelo Antonioni on the set of the great La notte (1961).
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- "What brings you to us?" Good question—we know next to nothing about Darren Aronofsky's new film mother! other than that it stars Jennifer Lawrence. The first teaser trailer doesn't help much, but we wish we were attending the Venice Film Festival to catch the premiere.
- We're intoxicated by the punk-noir trailer for F.J. Ossang's new film, 9 Doigts (9 Fingers), which is premiering later this week at the Locarno Film Festival.
- Fun of a different kind can be found in the trailer the Coen brothers-scripted, George Clooney-directed Suburbicon. It's headed to Venice as well.
- If you enjoyed MUBI's recent retrospective of filmmaker Philippe Garrel and were particularly intrigued by his late '60s film, L.A.'s Cinefamily has a new series for you, dedicated to the miraculously made Zanzibar films.
- Since we're film dorks, we love talking about aspect ratio—creative uses of, as well as sins against. A fun take on the subject's possibilities can be found in Charlie Lye's video essay on Sergei Eisenstein's theory of "the dynamic square" and the yet-to-be-fulfilled vision of cinema using various frames within the frame.
- Another ace trailer from Cinefamily is for a documentary on the brilliant and highly influential (if remarkably unknown) electronic music and sound effects work of Suzanne Ciani, A Life in Waves.
RECOMMENDED READING
Zama
- We've been noting a lot of films soon-to-premiere at Venice later this month, but none is so eagerly anticipated by us than Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel's return to movie-making after 2008's The Headless Woman (read our interview with the filmmaker about that gem). Her new film is called Zama, and Martel spoke to Terremoto recently before its premiere:
That something we have in a bag or a pocket can document images and sound allows us to imagine that more people will access the production of an audiovisual discourse. Sadly, history shows us having low-cost pens is not enough to create writers. You have to find ways of preventing single, exclusionary visions from being established. Homogeneity is the enemy. Our existence is short, absurd and highly mysterious. We need everyone because we do not know where we’re going.
- Regular Notebook readers will know we love Australian critic Adrian Martin—so much so, in fact, we asked him to contribute to the publication. For fans like us, Martin has just unleashed a treasure trove in the form of a new website hosting all his past reviews.
- Finally, at Criterion Imogen Sara Smith writes on the actresses of film noir and the fates of the femme fatales:
Women in the postwar era faced shrinking options and stifling constraints; film noir lets us see them pacing their cells and calculating how to make the most of their slender leverage. But in noir, everyone’s power, however fatal it may first appear, is dwarfed by the force of bad choices and indifferent fate. The real dichotomy is, perhaps, not between good and bad women—or tough and not-so-tough guys—but between those who know this and those who haven’t found it out yet.