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NEWS
Above: Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ivan Reitman. (Via Arnold Schwarzenegger.)
- The prolific director and producer Ivan Reitman has died. Though best known for films like National Lampoon's Animal House, Kindergarten Cop, and the original Ghostbusters, Reitman started out by producing two early horror films by David Cronenberg: Shivers and Rapid. Though he mostly produced and directed comedies, in his later career he produced more dramatic films like Hitchcock and his son Jason Reitman's Up in the Air. His final directorial effort was 2014's Draft Day, a sports drama about the NFL. Reitman was known to take the genre of comedy very seriously, stating in 2000: "The great cliché is about how damn tough comedy is. But of course, nobody really gives that any respect."
- Michael Mann's film Ferrari has finally started its engine. Adam Driver has officially been cast as race car driver Enzo Ferrari, and Penélope Cruz will be playing his wife Laura. Mann has been pursuing this passion project for several decades. As the AV Club points out, Mann started writing the script in 1997, and later served as an executive producer on James Mangold's Ford v. Ferrari.
- Josh O'Connor (The Crown and God's Own Country) and Isabella Rossellini have been cast in Alice Rohrwacher's next feature, La Chimera. The film, which also will star Alba Rohrwacher, takes place in the world of archaeological looting. In a statement, Rohrwacher states that the film "is the final piece of a triptych on territory that I started with The Wonders and which poses a central question: what to do with the past? Is the past merely a lost world, or does it intimately concern our present?"
- For its ongoing exhibit, "In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has enlisted the help of eight American filmmakers—Janicza Bravo, Sofia Coppola, Julie Dash, Tom Ford, Regina King, Martin Scorsese, Autumn de Wilde, and Chloé Zhao—to interpret the themes of the museum's American period rooms as cinematic vignettes.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Nope, Jordan Peele's long-awaited and ominously titled follow-up to his 2019 film Us, finally has an official trailer. Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya star as two horse trainers in an isolated town that receives a terrifying visit from above.
- The teaser trailer for Adrian Lyne's erotic thriller Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas as a couple in a loveless marriage involved in "dangerous mind games." Based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith (which also happens to be one of Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn's favorite novels), Deep Water marks Lyne's first film since 2002's Unfaithful, and will be released March 18.
- The first trailer for Tyler Taormina's Happer's Comet, the director's follow-up to Ham on Rye, which will be premiering at the Berlinale Forum. Read our interview with Taormina about his feature debut Ham on Rye here.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: Dane Komljen's Afterwater (2022)
- Dane Komljen discusses his latest film Afterwater, his interest in modernist architecture, and his improvisational method of shooting. Afterwater premieres at the Berlinale this month.
- In a new interview, Sean Baker walks A24 through his expansive poster collection of more than 1,500 posters and the origins of his avid poster collecting.
- IndieWire investigates the many factors that contributed to the surprising and inspiring success of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car.
- “It’s a demanding movie. If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office." In an interview with Screen Daily, Andrew Dominik shares his thoughts on his film Blonde, the upcoming Netflix adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' novel about Marilyn Monroe (played in the film by Ana de Armas), and the possibility of an NC-17 MPAA rating.
- "People think there’s padding, but if you don’t see it on screen, it’s not there." Set medic Eloy Lara speaks with Filmmaker Magazine about his work protecting the new and aging stuntmen of Jackass Forever.
- Wellesnet has written an overview of a recently uncovered Orson Welles film, Two Wise Men: Socrates and Noah, a 1970 short film that "contains separate performances by Welles on the Greek philosopher and the biblical patriarch."
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Above: S. Pearl Sharp's Back Inside Herself (1984)
- The eighth edition of the ICA Essay Film Festival will take place from March 19 to 23. The films of this year's festival are centered around "politically engaged and collectively authored essayistic film practices," and are grouped into three programmes that explore the themes of black women's subjectivity, notions of the body, working women's rights, and more.
- From March 30 to April 19, the MoMA is celebrating the films of Larry Fessenden, director and founder of the independent New York production company Glass Eye Pix, which produced films like Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy and Ti West's The House of the Devil. The retrospective Oh, the Humanity! The Films of Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix includes more than 20 feature films that showcase Fessenden's career as a writer, director, producer, actor, cinematographer, editor, and songwriter.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- Happy belated Valentine's day from NTS Radio's Sounds on Screen series, with a mix dedicated to the sultry soundtracks of Japanese pink movies.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha introduce their film Ballad of a White Cow, which is exclusively showing on MUBI in many countries in the series Viewfinder, as well as in Festival Focus: Berlinale.
- The MUBI Podcast returns with a special episode on Andrea Arnold’s immersive and emotional film Cow, which is currently streaming on MUBI in many countries in the series Luminaries. MUBI is also showing a series of Arnold's short films, available now in many countries, and in the US in April.
- In an interview with Savina Petkova, Andrea Arnold shares her approach to the making of Cow.
- Thomas Quist writes about the Westerns of Randolph Scott and André De Toth, which give "a cluster of pictures and ideas on a centerless society."
- On the occasion of Barcelona retrospective and a new book, Maximilien Luc Proctor interviews the American experimental filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky.
- Rafaela Bassili explores how Richard Linklater's Before trilogy depicts the ways that conversation between a couple can define and redefine romance, hopes, and dreams.
EXTRAS
- Moviepass is back, this time with eyeball-tracking technology that rewards users for watching advertisements.