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NEWS
Above: Lynn Shelton by Fred Hayes
- Filmmaker Lynn Shelton, best known as a pioneer of the mumblecore movement and as a gifted director of television (including the series Glow and Little Fires Everywhere), has died at the age of 54.
- Luca Guadagnino is set to direct a reboot of Scarface, with a shooting script written by Ethan and Joel Coen that places the story in Los Angeles.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The official U.S. trailer for Abel Ferrara's Tommaso, which will be arriving to virtual cinemas starting June 5. The film follows Willem Dafoe as an American artist in Rome. Read our interview with Ferrara regarding the film as "personal cinema" here.
- Netflix has released a trailer for Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, the story of four African-American Vietnam war veterans who return to Vietnam in search of their lost squad leader and buried treasure.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: H.D. (Courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library)
- The May-June issue of Film Comment delves into seclusion and virtual viewings in articles by Nick Pinkerton and Devika Girish, a tribute to Med Hondo by Aboubakar Sanogo, and an essential overview of the Imagist poet H.D.'s film writing by Sheila O'Malley.
- For Vulture, Michael Mann reflects on being in quarantine after a halted production of his Tokyo Vice pilot, watching Asphalt Jungle by John Huston "about three times," and what it feels like to live in a "real bizarre time."
- An eye-opening and stomach-churning investigation into the questionable sanitary conditions of Hollywood sets shines light on a "hidden peril" exposed by the current health crisis.
- Critic Vadim Rizov surveys the quickly evolving landscape of virtual theatres, which emerged as a response to cinema closures. Included are valuable insights from distributors including Grasshopper Films, Oscilloscope, and Kino Lorber regarding what might come next.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- Notebook contributor Florence Scott-Anderson continues her Sounds on Screen series over at NTS Radio with a tribute to the French filmmaking movement of Cinéma du Look.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Caspar Salmon pays tribute to the late Michel Piccoli, whose death "marks the end of an era."
- Elizabeth Sankey's Romantic Comedy (2019) is exclusively showing May 7 - June 6, 2020 on MUBI in the United Kingdom. In her introduction to the film, Sankey discusses the common desire to "connect with other people, and the thrill we feel when it happens."
- Susana Bessa reflects on the misogynistic workplace abuse depicted in Kitty Green's gut-wrenching The Assistant, which contains a "intense, humming tension" with no respite.
- For our new series One Shot, Ryan Swen focuses on a single frame from the opening sequence of Fritz Lang's Spies. The film is now showing May 19 - June 18, 2020 in the United States in the series Weimar Cinema.
- In his review of Zia Anger's live performance My First Film, Ross McDonnell writes that the film is "a creative, conceptual work that is not contrarian but utopian, a statement that is forceful and immutable, yet intimate, something exceptionally clear-eyed, and as ever with Anger, characteristically noncompliant."
EXTRAS
- Designer Jordan Bolton has made color-in versions of his delightful movie posters available, including ones for Call Me By Your Name, Princess Mononoke, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
- From Ruairí McCann, a letter from playwright Samuel Beckett to Sergei Eisenstein. The letter, however, was reportedly left unanswered.
Samuel Beckett's letter to Sergei Eisenstein, requesting admittance to the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/1Wt5Raou8i
— Ruairí McCann (@langsmonkey) May 10, 2020