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NEWS
- The death of the great John le Carré reminds us of the power of secrets—the oldest of narrative devices. Thankfully, there’s a brand new festival launching, focused entirely on secrets. SPYFLIX will showcase stories from classic espionage and hacking adventures to thrillers, investigative documentaries, true crime, and detective stories. SPYFLIX is accepting submissions (for awards with cash prizes) now through February 28th, 2021, and will start screenings April 18th, 2021. (For more on secrets, see our report on Rotterdam's spy-themed retrospective.)
- The Sundance Film Festival has announced its 2021 lineup, which includes the latest Sion Sono, Theo Anthony, Christopher Makoto Yogi, and Ana Vatz.
- The country submissions for International Feature Film at the 2021 Academy Awards—currently scheduled for April next year—are keeping us on our toes. Beginning, which will be coming to MUBI next year, is Georgia's submission, and Jallikattu, a bold genre favorite from our Toronto coverage last year, has been announced as the entry from India,
- Olivier Assayas' and A24's TV adaptation of his 1996 film Irma Vep has casted Alicia Vikander in the main role. Vikander, following the footsteps of Maggie Cheung from the original film, will play American actress who arrives in Paris to star as Irma Vep in a remake of the silent film Les vampires (1915).
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Metrograph Pictures presents the trailer for Tsai Ming-liang's newly restored Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a minimalist and meditative film that's "too multifaceted to collapse into a simple valentine to the age of pre-VOD cinephilia."
- The official trailer for Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, which stars Frances McDormand as a woman who embarks across America as a modern-day nomad. (Read our review from the film's world premiere.)
- HBO's meditative new show Painting with John is all about actor and musician John Lurie, who's best known for his roles in and original scores for Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law and Stranger than Paradise. The show follows Lurie as he works at his desk, "honing his watercolor techniques and sharing what he’s learned about life."
- Azazel Jacobs' French Exit, which had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, pairs Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges as a mother and son who move to Paris after losing their fortune.
- MUBI's trailer for Peter Strickland's new ASMR-themed short film, Cold Meridian, which is now showing.
RECOMMENDED READING
- In a new profile for the New York Times, Frederick Wiseman shares his thoughts on being in Paris (editing the sound mix for City Hall) during a national lockdown, City Hall as an "implicit comparison" to the White House, and his latest project, a screenplay partly adapted from Sophia Tolstoy's diaries.
- The Winter 2020 issue of Film Quarterly includes a dossier on the New Brazilian Cinema, and a special focus on Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles's Bacurau.
- "Women still don’t own superheroes, of course, but are superheroes even worthy of them?" Soraya Roberts digs into the history of the female-led superhero movie, a journey that connects the tumultuous release of 1984's Supergirl to 2020's Wonder Woman 1984.
- For Vulture, Bilge Ebiri has an intimate, career-spanning conversation with Francis Ford Coppola, who discusses oddities in his filmography like Jack and Gardens of Stone and whether he misses having the "power and clout" he did in the 1970s.
- The New York Times has also published an insightful, essential look into the career of Anand Patwardhan, India's leading documentarian, and his fight against government censorship.
- Critic and programmer Steve Macfarlane reviews Archive Books' Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts of the 1960s, a comprehensive new book about the postwar Japanese avant-garde. Archive Books has also made the first chapter of the book available to read on their website.
- From the UCLA Film & Television Archive's blog, Dr. Shirley Jennifer Lim writes about some little-known insights uncovered from Anna May Wong's archives, including My China Film (1936), a documentary film that Wong directed and produced, which follows her one and only trip to China.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- Composer Takashi Inagaki's Music for the films of Takashi Ito contains newly transferred and remastered film scores from prolific avant-garde filmmaker Ito's collaborations with Inagaki, which began in the late 1970's with Spacy. The special edition of the triple album also includes drawings and writings on the films by Ito.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- Kelley Dong reviews David Fincher's Mank, the filmmaker's story of Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, directed for Netflix.
- Peter Strickland introduces his short film Cold Meridian, which is exclusively showing on MUBI starting December 11, 2020 in the Luminaries series.
- Adrian Dannatt welcomes us to the sadly unknown life of a most extraordinary figure: the jazz critic, filmmaker, and sexologist Ernest Borneman.
- On the 20th anniversary of Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader, Jessica Moore examines the film's representational politics and its feminization of camp.