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NEWS
- Disney has announced that Barry Jenkins will helm the live-action The Lion King sequel, which reportedly includes "Mufasa's origin story."
- Speaking of sequels, Chinese authorities have approved the production of a project written by Wong Kar-wai, curiously titled Chungking Express 2020. The synopsis states that at least a portion of the film will take place in 2036, where "young Xiao Qian and May are unwilling to be held back by genetic partnerings, and insist on finding their own ‘destiny’.”
- Festival season persists: The Cannes Film Festival will be hosting a three-day "Special Cannes" event in October that will feature the screening of four Official Selections, in-competition short films, and the Cinéfondation’s school films.
- This year's San Sebastian Film Festival concluded with the sweep of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature Beginning, which received four of seven jury prizes.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Until October 1, the Hungarian University of Theatre and Fine Arts (SZFE) is presenting the rare opportunity to watch Béla Tarr's 1979 recently rediscovered student film Cinemarxisme (with English subtitles!).
- On October 8, the Wexner Center for the Arts will be premiering this year's Cinetracts program, a virtual series showcasing "short films that speak to the year’s events made by filmmakers from around the world," from Charles Burnett and Su Friedrich to Sheilah and Dani ReStack and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
- A24's official trailer for Lee Isaac Chung's Minari, which stars Steven Yeun as the patriarch of a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm.
- The official trailer for Yulene Olaizola's Tragic Jungle, which takes place in a mysterious tropical forest between Mexico and Belize. The film premiered at this year's Venice and San Sebastian Film Festivals, and is soon to premiere at the New York Film Festival.
- A first look at Darius Marder's Sound of Metal, about a metal drummer whose hearing loss leads him to a sober house for the deaf and learn to adapt to his changing circumstances. Read our review of the film, which premiered at last year's TIFF, here.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: William Greaves on CUNY TV in 1994.
- Su Friedrich and Louise Greaves's new and essential website dedicated to William Greaves contains a treasure trove of essays, video interviews, a comprehensive filmography, bibliography, and links to stream Greaves's body of work.
- Issue 84 of Cinema Scope includes an interview with Nicolás Pereda on his new feature Fauna, Alex Ross Perry on Hopper/Welles, and Michael Sicinski's career overview of Ulrike Ottinger.
- For The New York Times, Nancy Meyers introduces her short film Father of the Bride Part 3 (ish), a semi-sequel and discusses the process of "remote filmmaking," from Zoom location scouting to FaceTime costume styling.
- Film Quarterly has released a special dossier entitled "Documenting Conspiracy and Conning in the Age of Misinformation," which features investigations into the digital reconstruction of Sean Young in Blade Runner 2049, the ethics of filming and representing Elizabeth Holmes, and the Fyre Festival's relationship to the streaming era.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- A Pure Person, a tribute album to Taiwanese musician Lim Giong's iconic track from Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo (that plays as Shu Qi runs across a tunnel), will be released on October 15. The album introduces "new melodic and philosophical interpretations" of Lim's original song, including one by Alex Zhang Huangtai of Christopher Makoto Yogi's August at Akiko's.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- For his latest Notebook primer, Jeremy Carr introduces readers to the inventive and inimitable oeuvre of Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
- Sara Merican reflects on the power of place in King Hu's stunning films Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. MUBI's series Wuxia Dreams: A King Hu Double Bill is showing in the United Kingdom.
- In conjunction with a streaming retrospective by New York's Metrograph, Adina Glickstein investigates the career of Ulrike Ottinger, the pioneering but oft-overlooked member of New German Cinema.
- Florence Scott-Anderton's new Soundtrack Mix is dedicated to the "vitality and experimentation of sound design and music in the films of the L.A. Rebellion."
- "In his projection of humanity as a well-oiled machine, of which we are but little gears propelling in place to save the world, Nolan supposes that there are only lives that cross and lives that pass by." Kelley Dong reviews Christopher Nolan's time-travel thriller Tenet.
- Our coverage of the New York Film Festival continues with Doug Dibbern on the sensuality of Viktor Kossakovsky's Gunda and Tsai Ming-liang's Days, and Michael Sicinski's overview of the feature films screening in this year's Currents program.
EXTRAS
- From Robert Smith, an urgent request for video copies of A Clockwork Orange, Driller Killer, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and "maybe a couple of others (...) in the splatter-cannibal she-devil vein."