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NEWS
- D.A. Pennebaker, best known for his cinéma vérité-style documentaries (including Don't Look Back and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) has died at the age of 94.
- Author Toni Morrison, the first black woman to win the Nobel prize in Literature, has also died, leaving behind a legacy of inimitable influence upon generations of readers. Her career was recently the subject of a documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The estate of Charlie Chaplin has made available a treasure trove of rare videos from the archives, which also features home videos like this one, entitled "Charlie Chaplin Swallows Easter Egg."
- Museum of Modern Art curator Anne Morra discusses Ida Lupino's Never Fear, Lupino's first credited directorial effort, in a new video essay.
- The official teaser for Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0, the final film of the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy—a reboot of the original series, but embedded with new mythologies.
- We somehow missed this lovely glimpse of Tom Hanks as children’s television luminary Mr. Rogers, directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?).
- Paul Thomas Anderson continues his fruitful visual contribution to the world of music videos with a further collaboration with HAIM on their latest summertime anthem (featuring Los Angeles’ New Beverly Cinema!).
RECOMMENDED READING
- A.O Scott of The New York Times reappraises Alexander Payne's high school satire Election and the oft-hated character of Tracy Flick: "She cares. She participates. She works hard. She refuses to see herself as a victim. She’s everything America celebrates in theory and, as often as not, despises in practice."
- The latest set of reviews by critic A.S. Hamrah cover a broad range of this year's releases, from Jordan Peele's Us and Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir to Anna Boden's Captain Marvel.
- Laura Poitras and nonprofit Forensic Architecture's short film Triple Chaser focuses on the involvement of arts donor Warren Kanders in the manufacturing of tear gas canisters used against civilians. Wired provides a closer look into the machine-learning behind the film's production and the evidence supporting its case against Kanders.
Nicolas Cage by Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times.
- "'I can’t pretend to know what people think or want to think about me,' he said. 'I’m not Stravinsky, I’m not Van Gogh, I’m not Monk, but these people were not understood, and my favorite artists were misunderstood.'" Nicolas Cage unfurls his prolific career and illustrious persona in an extensive interview-portrait at The New York Times.
- The Wall Street Journal investigates the negotiations behind choreographed fights which "ensure that none of the leads comes out looking like a loser," like limits on how many punches to throw or how badly beaten the (macho male) star can be.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- The newest Straub-Huillet Companion by Christopher Small focuses on the pair's film Too Early, Too Late, which is showing on MUBI from August 6 – September 4, 2019.
- Abbey Bender interviews Joan Tewkesbury, whose newly restored directorial debut Old Boyfriends is now playing at New York City's Metrograph theater.
- Ela Bittencourt examines the sexual and identity politics intertwining in an ongoing series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) entitled "Punks, Poets, and Valley Girls," featuring films from filmmakers like Bette Gordon and Lizzie Borden.
EXTRAS
- The New York Film Festival has unveiled its official poster, designed by Pedro Almodóvar, whose film Pain & Glory will be showing in the festival's Main Slate.
We've also unveiled the official poster for the 57th #NYFF, designed by Main Slate director Pedro Almodóvar, whose film PAIN AND GLORY marks his 11th NYFF appearance: https://t.co/aTozgzlG6t pic.twitter.com/iTvuwMN4Zb
— New York Film Festival (@TheNYFF) August 6, 2019
- Courtesy of Grace Barber-Plentie, an excerpt from the late Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, describing a character's (the ostracized black girl, Pecola) encounter with the destructive allure of the movies.
absolutely devastated about toni morrison's death. her section on going to the movies in the bluest eye has to be one of the best beautiful and resonant pieces of writing ever, and one i think about often pic.twitter.com/DPaxh8TQcE
— grace b-p (@gracesimone) August 6, 2019