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NEWS
Above: Bertrand Mandico's After Blue (Paradis sale).
- The lineup for the 2021 Locarno International Film Festival includes Piazza Grande screenings of Michael Mann's Heat and Gaspar Noé's Vortex, and the latest by by Bertrand Mandico, Axelle Ropert, Abel Ferrara, Salomé Lamas and more.
- The great filmmaker and actor Robert Downey Sr. has passed on at age 85. His incredible filmography includes Babo 73 (1964), Sweet Smell of Sex (1965), Chafed Elbows (1966), No More Excuses (1968), Putney Swope (1969), Pound (1970), and Greaser's Palace (1972).
- In an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast, Quentin Tarantino announced that he has purchased Los Angeles' Vista Theatre, emphasizing that though the theatre will screen both new and old movies, it will be "only film [...] the best prints."
- Screenwriter and filmmaker Clare Peploe has died. Though best known for her screenplays for Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged and La Luna, Peploe also directed the romance-comedy films High Season (1987), Rough Magic (1995), and The Triumph of Love (2001).
- Richard Donner, director of blockbusters such as Superman, The Goonies, and the Lethal Weapon series, has also died.
- In the third episode of the MUBI Podcast: Encuentros, made in co-production with La Corriente del Golfo, filmmakers Albertina Carri and Camila José Donoso defend the principles of disobedience, unlearning and transgression. The filmmakers discuss the urgency to reinterpret film genres like pornography and documentary to portray socially rejected desires, move away from traditional hierarchies between director and characters, and reclaim cinema as a free and collective experience. Even without meeting one another in person, they share a profound reflection about the questions that have arisen for both of them in the feminist movement and how these have influenced their own filmmaking process. To listen to this episode and subscribe on your favorite podcast app, click here.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The UCLA Film & Television Archive is hosting a free screening of Lizzie Borden's newly-restored Working Girls (1986) through July 11. A live Q&A with Borden will take place on Thursday, July 8 at 4 p.m. (PT) on Zoom.
- A first teaser clip for Todd Haynes's feature documentary debut The Velvet Underground, screening out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year.
- A new trailer for In Front of Your Face, the 26th feature by Hong Sang-soo. The film is set to show in Cannes' new auteur-focused Cannes Premiere section. The film stars Lee Hye-young as an actress with a secret who meets a younger director to discuss her return to acting.
- Also premiering in the Cannes Premiere section is Charlotte Gainsbourg's Jane par Charlotte, a documentary about the director's complex relationship to her mother.
- An international teaser for Valdimar Jóhannsson's haunting film Lamb. Set to premiere in this year's Un Certain Regard section, the film stars Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snær Guðnason as a childless couple that discovers a mysterious newborn on their farm.
- A clip from Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Cannes competition title Lingui, the Sacred Bonds, which follows a mother and her pregnant daughter who seek an abortion in a country where the act is legally and morally condemned.
- An official trailer for Leo Scott and Ting Poo's Val, a documentary about the "mercurial and misunderstood" actor that includes footage shot by Kilmer himself. Produced by A24, Val will be premiering at Cannes, then released by Amazon Prime on August 6, 2021.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: Leos Carax (Courtesy of Cannes Critics' Week).
- "I remember having liked a film screened that year, also in black & white: Stranger Than Paradise, by Jim Jarmush. Had the feeling that this was a real film, whereas mine was pretending to be one." Over at the Cannes Critics' Week website, Léos Carax recalls the premiere of his first film, Boy Meets Girl, at the Critics' Week in 1984.
- BFI has gathered memories of the late pioneering Black British filmmaker Menelik Shabazz by his friends and colleagues.
- From The Ringer, an oral history of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, featuring interviews with James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Edward Furlong, and Joe Morton.
- A brief summary of Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux's first Cannes press conference includes insights on this year's global female-majority jury led by Spike Lee, the larger official selection, Covid tests, and more.
- In a profile by E. Alex Jung on Vulture, actress Jennifer Coolidge guides us through her haunted house and discusses her roles in films like Best in Show, Legally Blonde, the American Pie films, and the idea that her characters are drag queens.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- The latest episode of the MUBI Podcast took a deep dive into the success of the Mexican melodrama Yesenia in the Soviet Union. Accompanying the episode is film professor and historian Masha Salazkina's personal remembrance of what it was like to see international films while growing up in the USSR.
- In their latest column, Jennifer Lynde Barker writes on collage animation's combination of critique and satire, and the symbolic images of late capitalism and globalization in Lewis Kahr's Circumstantial Pleasures, which is exclusively showing in many countries in the Undiscovered series.
- In one hug and one shot, Still Processing director Sophy Romvari encapsulates Stephen Cone's compassionate 2011 feature The Wise Kids. Romvari's Still Processing and the series Awakenings: Three By Stephen Cone are playing on MUBI in many countries.
- As a year of online festivals winds down, Matt Turner reports on some stand-out films from Visions du Réel and CPH:DOX 2021.
- Madeleine Wall writes on the Insoumuses, a collective of independent filmmakers including Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig, whose films are featured in the series Sex, Truth, and Videotape: French Feminist Activism.
EXTRAS
- John Carpenter has announced new box sets for Halloween I, Halloween II, and Halloween III, made in collaboration with Shout Factory. Each set includes 4K and Blu-ray copies of the film, as well as an exclusive poster and a 7" vinyl. It also goes well with Spooky Pinball's Halloween pinball machine, available for sale this week.
