Edited by Adam Cook
News
- Happy 105th birthday, Manoel de Oliveira!!!
- The latest in end-of-year lists comes from The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who selects Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street and Terrence Malick's To The Wonder as tied for the best film of 2013. Click here to see the rest of the list and Brody's final words on the year in cinema. Fandor has a couple cool takes on the top ten list: one by Adrian Martin on the "Best Confrontations" in cinema this year, and Aaron Cutler on the "Great Film Restorations."
- The Los Angeles Film Critics Association has trouble choosing, in this tie-filled list of 2013 award winners.
- A new film journal, Fireflies, "that celebrates the work of filmmakers, dead and living, whose films have the ability to change lives," is looking for submissions on Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pier Paolo Pasolini for its inaugural issue.
Finds.
- For Interview Magazine, Colleen Kelsey talks to Philippe Garrel:
"KELSEY: Your films are also very naturalistic. When you work with your actors, do you give them much direction or a finalized script? How do you work with them?
GARREL: I know very well that parts of the films are naturalistic, but I try to avoid that. As for the rapport between the actors, I have returned to written scenes with partly improvised dialogue in written situations. In writing my last film, Jealousy, I began to let the actors improvise. There was dialogue for them in order to learn their roles, to define the situations well, but I let them improvise parts of scenes. Now, as when I made films that were too autobiographical, the problem is how to escape naturalism. If you tell a strictly true story, because the way you are telling it is false, it creates naturalism. We improvise as well, and we end up capturing more of real life. There are gushes of unconscious attitude in the situation. But at the same time, I also become a naturalist. And to become a naturalist is something I avoid, in fact. It is fake life—that is the problem. It is because we are familiar with situationnisme, and the critique of the spectacle, et cetera, which is a very fair criticism. People who have no life, and who watch this fake life on a screen—it's a very alienated situation. And that's what situationnisme is about.
But I'm not able to completely escape naturalism. It's very difficult to escape from naturalism without being too dry. That's what I try to do in my cinema—escape naturalism and do films that are, at the same time, realistic but have a lot of fantasy. It's very difficult in cinema to get away from what life is about, from real life. The way the actors work has to be realistic—you can't do Baroque acting—so it's very complicated. And, we're human beings, so we're not perfect. I'm trying to do something different, but it's a complicated question."
- Above: an excerpt from Gina Telaroli's Tumblr piece on Stromboli and The Bridges of Madison County.
- For Film Comment, Olaf Möller writes on the Rome Film Festival and lists his ten favorites.
- Also for FC, Scott Foundas reviews David O. Russell's American Hustle:
"Everyone gets a little bit lost in their own delusions in American Hustle, and there’s something endearing about that, because those delusions are, by and large, so modest. Coming at the end of a year flush with portraits of amoral climbers short-circuiting their way to the top (Pain & Gain, The Counselor, The Wolf of Wall Street), Russell’s movie seems almost quaint in its depiction of loan sharks swindling suburban schmoes for a few grand, and politicians taking low-five-figure bribes—penny-ante stuff in the era of Bernie Madoff and the Wall Street bailout. Even junior G-man Richie just wants to make a name for himself in the Bureau, to do something important, and to feel movie-star cool—a sentiment driven home by the unforgettable sight of the character pleading his case to mom in their outer-borough kitchen, while a cascade of plastic curlers set his naturally straight hair into tightly coiled ringlets. The clothes may make some men, but in American Hustle, it’s all about the hair."
From the archives.
- Above: this past Monday was John Cassavetes' birthday, and Cinephilia and Beyond commemorated the day with this piece written by Jim Jarmusch (excerpted from Tom Charity's John Cassavetes: Lifeworks):
“There’s a particular feeling I get when I’m about to see one of your films — an anticipation. It doesn’t matter if I’ve seen the film before or not (by now I think I’ve seen them all at least several times) I still get that feeling. I’m expecting something I seem to crave, a kind of cinematic enlightenment. As a film fan or as a filmmaker (there isn’t really a clear dividing line for me anymore) I’m anticipating a blast of inspiration. I want formal enlightenment. I need the secret consequences of a jump-cut to be revealed to me. I want to know how the rawness of the camera angles or the grain of the film material figures into the emotional equation. I want to learn about acting from the performances, about atmosphere from the light and locations. I’m ready, fully prepared to absorb ‘truth at twenty-four-frames-per-second.’
But the thing is this: as soon as the film begins, introduces its world to me, I’m lost. The expectation of that particular enlightenment evaporates. It leaves me there in the dark, alone. Human beings now inhabit that world inside the screen. They also seem lost, alone. I watch them. I observe every detail of their movements, their expressions, their reactions. I listen carefully to what each one is saying, to the frayed edges of someone’s tone of voice, the concealed mischief in the rhythm of another’s speech. I’m no longer thinking about acting. I’m oblivious to ‘dialogue.’ I’ve forgotten the camera. The enlightenment I anticipated from you is being replaced by another. This one doesn’t invite analysis or dissection, only observation and intuition. Instead of insights into, say, the construction of a scene, I’m becoming enlightened by the sly nuances of human nature.
Your films are about love, about trust and mistrust, about isolation, joy, sadness, ecstasy and stupidity. They’re about restlessness, drunkenness, resilience and lust, about humor, stubbornness, miscommunication and fear. But mostly they’re about love and they take one to a far deeper place than any study of ‘narrative form.’ Yeah, you are a great filmmaker, one of my favorites. But what your films illuminate most poignantly is that celluloid is one thing and the beauty, strangeness and complexity of human experience is another.
John Cassavetes, my hat is off to you. I’m holding it over my heart.”