The Noteworthy: "Making Waves", Huppert & Cattrall Look Back, "Missing Reels"

A champion for "Dumb and Dumber To", Romanian cinema at FilmLinc, Brad Stevens on the lack of respect for Jerry Lewis, & more.
Notebook
  •  Above: a sultry new poster for Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice.
  • Dumb and Dumber To has opened to unsurprisingly mixed reviews, but Farrelly brothers champion R. Emmet Sweeney makes a case for the long awaited sequel for Film Comment:

"Dumb and Dumber To is about a deep, abiding friendship that can survive any indignities. After Harry and Lloyd’s journey is over, they’ve tossed away fortunes and frittered away kidneys, but they need each other to survive. As each momentary acquaintance slinks, or runs, away, it’s up to Harry and Lloyd to forget and move on. Or as is the case for Lloyd, to think about ninjas and wake up licking the grill of a big rig. Either way they can’t live without each other. And though they could never admit it, or even form the words in their desiccated cortexes, what they have is something like love."

  • Above: the trailer for the 9th annual "Making Waves" series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which shines a spotlight on contemporary Romanian cinema. 
  • In Brad Stevens' "Bradlands" column for Sight & Sound, he writes on the lack of respect towards Jerry Lewis amongst American audiences (and unexpectedly brings in artist Matthew Barney as a point of comparison):

"Lewis and Barney share several assumptions concerning identity (which is in a constant state of flux), narrative construction, and the definition of space, and often emphasise bodies (specifically those of the directors themselves) which are transformed through disguise, costume – with a frequent recourse to transvestitism – and prosthetics, as well as being subjected to a process of degradation, distortion and destruction (usually equated with transformation). By depicting the artist/creator as an athlete demonstrating his physical mastery of architectural space and an anarchist attempting to destroy it, Lewis and Barney express a radical opposition towards contemporary capitalism."

  • Above: film critic Neil Young moderates a discussion between filmmakers Sergei Loznitsa and Cristi Puiu at the Astra Film Festival.

  • Above: for The Talkhouse Film, Kim Cattrall and Isabelle Huppert look back on their careers and 40-year long friendship.
  • We are excited to get our hands on Missing Reels, the new novel by Notebook contributor and acclaimed blogger Farran Smith Nehme. The author will be promoting the book around New York City, so if you're in the area, pay a visit—and if not, pick up the book!
  • Above: Art of the Title takes a look at Saul Bass's opening credits for Otto Preminger's Saint Joan.
  • Christoph Huber writes on some surprise visitors at the John Ford retrospective in Vienna for his Austrian Film Museum blog, "Following Film".
  • Girish Shambu has a third post looking back on the Toronto International Film Festival, this time with a good handful of "short takes".
  • For his New Yorker blog, Richard Brody writes on Robert Drew's jazz trumpeter doc portrait, David.
  • February is turning out to be a very exciting month for Criterion releases. The most surprising entry is the first hand drawn animated feature to crack the Collection: Watership Down. The others are Jean Renoir's A Day in the Country, Federico Fellini's Satyricon, Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man For Himself, and a blu-ray upgrade for Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon.
  • Above: the French poster for one of our favorite films from last year, Joaquim Pinto's What Now? Remind Me, which has just been released today in France.
  • And finally, on a sad note, the great Japanese actor Ken Takakura has passed away at the age of 83. Charles Bramesco writes on the legend for The Dissolve.

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The NoteworthyNewsPaul Thomas AndersonJerry LewisJoaquim PintoBobby Farrelly & Peter FarrellySergei LoznitsaCristi PuiuOtto PremingerSaul BassRobert DrewJohn FordKen TakakuraspotlightVideos
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