Each winter, we invite Notebook contributors to take part in our unique twist on the year-end poll. Rather than tally their favorite new releases from the year, they’re asked to creatively pair a new release with an older film they watched for the first time that year: a “fantasy double feature.” We’re delighted by the range of responses this year; this year’s doubles offer up inspired combinations of moving-image art that might otherwise slip through the cracks.We invite you to plunge into this collective viewing scrapbook, which captures our writers at their most imaginative, adventurous, and thoughtful—maybe it'll motivate you to test some of these out (or come up with your own) over the holidays.We hope you enjoy the read, and find our sixteenth year appropriately sweet!{{notebook_form}}Paul AttardNEW: Skinamarink + Old: Room Film 1973Homebound horror films shrouded in darkness, ones that transform...
- 12/23/2023
- MUBI
True, the title of writer-director Brett Morgen’s documentary about David Bowie, Moonage Daydream, refers to the song of the same name from Bowie’s classic 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. But it could also be said to describe the feeling that Morgen inspires with the impressionistic way that he renders the life and art of the glam-rock icon on screen. Even more so than in Cobain: Montage of Heck, his 2015 film about Kurt Cobain, Morgen is less interested in factual biography than in eliciting a sense of the man as an artist and personality.
The means by which Morgen accomplishes his goal are startling to behold. For the film, the David Bowie Estate gave Morgen access to a wealth of rare recordings, films, drawings, and journals, and he hasn’t shied away from showing off that access on screen. Moonage Daydream...
The means by which Morgen accomplishes his goal are startling to behold. For the film, the David Bowie Estate gave Morgen access to a wealth of rare recordings, films, drawings, and journals, and he hasn’t shied away from showing off that access on screen. Moonage Daydream...
- 10/1/2023
- by Kenji Fujishima
- Slant Magazine
This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival is set to take place from September 7th through the 17th, and yesterday they invited film fans to guess which ten movies they’ll be screening in their Midnight Madness lineup this year. The hints were the titles of ten movies that could be compared to the films in the lineup in some way. They were Trey Parker’s Orgazmo, Geoff Murphy’s Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Jimmy Wang Yu’s Fantasy Mission Force, Charles Martin Smith’s Trick or Treat, Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead, Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar, Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf, and Theodore J. Flicker’s Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. Now TIFF has announced the full lineup for both their Midnight Madness and Discovery programmes, and...
- 8/3/2023
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.
It can be a dispiriting experience, I’ve learned, to emerge from the Cannes Film Festival and reenter a world where original cinematic achievements barely have room to breathe. Last week, I was sifting through new work from Jonathan Glazer and Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the south of France while “The Little Mermaid” dominated the U.S. box office — and came home from the festival to find that for most people, this costly live-action simulation of a 30-year-old property was all the movies had to offer the world at the moment.
But a funny thing just happened at the multiplex. I don’t exactly buy into the fan-based hysteria proclaiming “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” as the greatest superhero movie ever, but the innovations of this newly released animated sequel extend well beyond its overstuffed multiverse plot.
It can be a dispiriting experience, I’ve learned, to emerge from the Cannes Film Festival and reenter a world where original cinematic achievements barely have room to breathe. Last week, I was sifting through new work from Jonathan Glazer and Nuri Bilge Ceylan in the south of France while “The Little Mermaid” dominated the U.S. box office — and came home from the festival to find that for most people, this costly live-action simulation of a 30-year-old property was all the movies had to offer the world at the moment.
But a funny thing just happened at the multiplex. I don’t exactly buy into the fan-based hysteria proclaiming “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” as the greatest superhero movie ever, but the innovations of this newly released animated sequel extend well beyond its overstuffed multiverse plot.
- 6/3/2023
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
“Time is all we have and every second that ticks away is one less second we’re alive,” Kenneth Anger told an interviewer from The Guardian 16 and a half years before his death this May at the age of 96. “The sands of time are going through the hourglass but it doesn’t frighten me.”
If Woody Allen’s Zelig was found rubbing elbows with the storied and famous of the ’20s and ’30s, starting in the 1950s Anger was for some decades more than a match for him. His legacy is poised between the pathbreaking cinematic auteur who made such avant-garde shorts as “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” (1954) and “Scorpio Rising” (1963) and the purveyor of at times fictionalized Hollywood scandal in the sensational and frequently updated “Hollywood Babylon” (1959).
He was not immune from his own brushes with dark history — the very bikers he incorporated in some of his middle-period work...
If Woody Allen’s Zelig was found rubbing elbows with the storied and famous of the ’20s and ’30s, starting in the 1950s Anger was for some decades more than a match for him. His legacy is poised between the pathbreaking cinematic auteur who made such avant-garde shorts as “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” (1954) and “Scorpio Rising” (1963) and the purveyor of at times fictionalized Hollywood scandal in the sensational and frequently updated “Hollywood Babylon” (1959).
He was not immune from his own brushes with dark history — the very bikers he incorporated in some of his middle-period work...
- 5/24/2023
- by Fred Schruers
- Indiewire
When approaching Stan Brakhage’s vast filmography, an attentive viewer will, unwillingly and perhaps unknowingly, become familiar with him as a person. But he’s also a figure who is irreducible to one, or even just a few, of his best-known films: there’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959), in which his first wife gives birth on camera. There’s also Mothlight (1963), a four-minute short where Brakhage taped insects and grass trimmings onto a roll of film, a technique that he would revisit two decades later for The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981), an equally rustic and tactile effort. There’s the myriad of works where Brakhage would hand-paint directly onto the celluloid, turning a film strip into an oil canvas, like The Dante Quartet (1987) and Panels for the Walls of Heaven (2002), two of his finest achievements in that regard. While most of these share technical particulars—shot on 16mm, projected at 24 frames per second,...
- 3/10/2023
- MUBI
In this interview, cinematographer Tyler Graim tells us about the filmmaking process behind his film – Bad Press, which won a Special Jury Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. One of his conclusions: The story and characters are more important than the camera and lenses.
BTS of Bad Press. Picture: Dp Tyler Graim Winning a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2023
The film Bad Press plot: When the Muscogee Nation suddenly begins censoring their free press, a rogue reporter fights to expose her government’s corruption in a historic battle that will have ramifications for all of Indian Country. Bad Press won a Special Jury Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Tyler Graim is the Dp and a Producer on the project. We interviewed Graim on the making of Bad Press. His insights are below.
Bad Press
The story and the characters were more important than what lenses or lighting I wanted to use.
BTS of Bad Press. Picture: Dp Tyler Graim Winning a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2023
The film Bad Press plot: When the Muscogee Nation suddenly begins censoring their free press, a rogue reporter fights to expose her government’s corruption in a historic battle that will have ramifications for all of Indian Country. Bad Press won a Special Jury Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Tyler Graim is the Dp and a Producer on the project. We interviewed Graim on the making of Bad Press. His insights are below.
Bad Press
The story and the characters were more important than what lenses or lighting I wanted to use.
- 3/9/2023
- by Yossy Mendelovich
- YMCinema
There’s a documentary aspect to every film, whether it’s a home movie, a commercial or even the glossiest tentpole: The images and sounds capture transient moments that memorialize people, animals, places. They give permanence to the impermanent. But imagine a world in which those films have disappeared — as an estimated 80 percent of silent films and half of sound films already have. In the robust and incisive Film: The Living Record of Our Memory, Inés Toharia, a documentarian specializing in film preservation, invites us to consider the ways movies have become essential to the human experience.
The director spends quality time with a few well-known filmmakers and many of the “backstage people,” as one interviewee puts it, who devote their energies to safeguarding a vast array of moving images from the ravages of time, neglect and climate, not to mention obsolescence in the wake of ever-evolving formats and technology.
The director spends quality time with a few well-known filmmakers and many of the “backstage people,” as one interviewee puts it, who devote their energies to safeguarding a vast array of moving images from the ravages of time, neglect and climate, not to mention obsolescence in the wake of ever-evolving formats and technology.
- 3/5/2023
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Tom Luddy, the understated co-founder and artistic director of the Telluride Film Festival who championed world cinema, spotlighted overlooked gems and saluted legends during his near half-century run with the event, has died. He was 79.
Luddy died peacefully Monday in Berkeley, California, after a long illness, Telluride senior vp public relations Shannon Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger said in a statement. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a sphinx-like quality that took a little time to get around, for some.
“But once you knew him, you were welcomed into a kingdom of art, history, intelligence, humor and joie de vivre that you knew you couldn’t be without. He made life richer. Magical. He...
Luddy died peacefully Monday in Berkeley, California, after a long illness, Telluride senior vp public relations Shannon Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger said in a statement. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a sphinx-like quality that took a little time to get around, for some.
“But once you knew him, you were welcomed into a kingdom of art, history, intelligence, humor and joie de vivre that you knew you couldn’t be without. He made life richer. Magical. He...
- 2/14/2023
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Many cinematographers have close relationships with directors, but the bond forged between director of photography Karim Hussain and filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg is particularly intimate. “We’re friends and neighbors, so the visual style for ‘Infinity Pool’ was literally developed in my living room,” Hussain told IndieWire. Hussain and Cronenberg have been working together since Cronenberg’s 2012 debut “Antiviral,” and “Infinity Pool” represents the full fruition of the experiments that began with that film — experiments in disorientation, subjective point of view, and finding a way to create an analog mood using digital technology.
In “Infinity Pool,” married American tourists James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are staying at a posh resort in an unnamed foreign country when James is involved in a car accident and discovers the local justice system: Anyone found guilty of a crime is either executed or can pay a hefty fee to watch their double created...
In “Infinity Pool,” married American tourists James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are staying at a posh resort in an unnamed foreign country when James is involved in a car accident and discovers the local justice system: Anyone found guilty of a crime is either executed or can pay a hefty fee to watch their double created...
- 2/11/2023
- by Jim Hemphill
- Indiewire
Finds a Man Waking Up Next to His Wife’s Corpse Streaming Now on Amazon Prime Video Soon to Debut on All Major VOD Platforms “From director Steve Balderson (Firecracker) comes a visually poetic experience in pure cinema in the tradition of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Stan Brakhage.” — Santa Fe New Mexican “Dripping …
The post Steve Balderson’s Haunting, Poetic Festival Favorite Alchemy Of The Spirit Now Available on Prime Video & VOD appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.
The post Steve Balderson’s Haunting, Poetic Festival Favorite Alchemy Of The Spirit Now Available on Prime Video & VOD appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.
- 1/25/2023
- by Adrian Halen
- Horror News
When I first saw the trailer for "Skinamarink" I felt strangely exhilarated. The whole thing looked unreasonably terrifying, but there was something about the visual style that was so intriguing I almost didn't realize how unsettled I was. Its static chiaroscuro and grainy, off-kilter framing gave it this vividly ominous sense, like some cursed home video dredged from a decrepit suburban basement.
Director Kyle Edward Ball's indie horror has since gained significant attention, even before its theatrical release in 2023. Having leaked online due to a technical glitch during its run at the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, the film took on an almost mythical aspect, becoming what Variety called, "The internet's new cult obsession." TikTokers and YouTubers alike latched onto Ball's distressing fever dream of a film, posting videos with titles like "Tik Tok Tried To Warn Me About This Movie."
While the trend escalated and its sensationalist language intensified,...
Director Kyle Edward Ball's indie horror has since gained significant attention, even before its theatrical release in 2023. Having leaked online due to a technical glitch during its run at the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival, the film took on an almost mythical aspect, becoming what Variety called, "The internet's new cult obsession." TikTokers and YouTubers alike latched onto Ball's distressing fever dream of a film, posting videos with titles like "Tik Tok Tried To Warn Me About This Movie."
While the trend escalated and its sensationalist language intensified,...
- 1/14/2023
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
For five years, Canadian filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball’s YouTube channel “Bite-Sized Nightmares” has been showcasing shorts full of fuzzy video, distorted sound, and an emphasis on creepy vibes rather than storytelling. His debut feature Skinamarink became an unlikely cult hit at Fantasia last summer, especially when a copy leaked to torrent networks. The buzz it has received may surprise many people once they actually see it, because not only is it far from a conventional horror film, it’s barely a narrative. Ball is steeped both in YouTube analog horror and avant-garde cinema.
Rather than emphasizing narrative, Skinamarink evokes the consciousness of Kevin (Lucas Paul), a terrified four-year-old boy roaming around a house in the middle of the night. He and his sister discover that their parents have disappeared, while the home’s geography has been rearranged, eliminating doors and windows. On a TV, cartoons from the 1930s play,...
Rather than emphasizing narrative, Skinamarink evokes the consciousness of Kevin (Lucas Paul), a terrified four-year-old boy roaming around a house in the middle of the night. He and his sister discover that their parents have disappeared, while the home’s geography has been rearranged, eliminating doors and windows. On a TV, cartoons from the 1930s play,...
- 1/13/2023
- by Steve Erickson
- The Film Stage
This post contains spoilers for "Vertigo."
Alfred Hitchcock liked to make things weird, and not just on-screen. He made things beyond weird for Tippi Hedren in "The Birds" and generally made a lot of actors uncomfortable, to say the least. He also managed to make some excellent films, with as sinister an aura as the man himself seemingly possessed. And believe it or not, part of his filmmaking prowess came from an ability to maintain an almost childlike approach.
There's something important about having a child-like perspective on art. Stan Brakhage wrote about it in his 1963 cinematic manifesto "Metaphors On Vision," in which he talks about an "eye unruled by the man-made laws of perspective." It sounds a bit pompous but the basic idea is anything but. Approaching something without any pre-conceived notions of what that thing should be can lead to real artistic achievement. In the case of Hitchcock,...
Alfred Hitchcock liked to make things weird, and not just on-screen. He made things beyond weird for Tippi Hedren in "The Birds" and generally made a lot of actors uncomfortable, to say the least. He also managed to make some excellent films, with as sinister an aura as the man himself seemingly possessed. And believe it or not, part of his filmmaking prowess came from an ability to maintain an almost childlike approach.
There's something important about having a child-like perspective on art. Stan Brakhage wrote about it in his 1963 cinematic manifesto "Metaphors On Vision," in which he talks about an "eye unruled by the man-made laws of perspective." It sounds a bit pompous but the basic idea is anything but. Approaching something without any pre-conceived notions of what that thing should be can lead to real artistic achievement. In the case of Hitchcock,...
- 12/11/2022
- by Joe Roberts
- Slash Film
When director Brett Morgen began his acclaimed David Bowie documentary, “Moonage Daydream” (Neon), he had no idea where the journey would take him. His goals were rather narrow: “I was hoping to create a theme park ride [in IMAX] around my favorite musical artist, something that would be intimate and sublime and experiential,” he told IndieWire.
“But the film became something much deeper and richer, which I didn’t expect to encounter,” he added, “because prior to starting the film, I only listened to David’s music — I hadn’t really listened to his interviews. So the film became more life affirming than I anticipated.”
It became a kaleidoscopic, mind-blowing journey about the chameleon of rock, built around Bowie as narrator (culled from pre-existing material), performer, and philosopher about the transience of life and the promise of the new millennium. The ambitious doc is interspersed with concert footage, interviews, music, Stan Brakhage-inspired animation,...
“But the film became something much deeper and richer, which I didn’t expect to encounter,” he added, “because prior to starting the film, I only listened to David’s music — I hadn’t really listened to his interviews. So the film became more life affirming than I anticipated.”
It became a kaleidoscopic, mind-blowing journey about the chameleon of rock, built around Bowie as narrator (culled from pre-existing material), performer, and philosopher about the transience of life and the promise of the new millennium. The ambitious doc is interspersed with concert footage, interviews, music, Stan Brakhage-inspired animation,...
- 9/13/2022
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
Hong Kong immigrant filmmaker Wayne Wang is best known for films like his indie breakout “Chan Is Missing” or his break into Hollywood filmmaking with Amy Tan’s “Joy Luck Club” adaptation. But he stoked controversy in 1990 when his crime drama “Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper Is Expensive” earned an X rating from the then-mpaa.
Its distributor rejected that rating and released it unrated, with critics including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert applauding that decision and praising its merits as greater than the sum of its controversies. Still, the film’s graphic footage, while politically motivated, subverts audience expectations of sex and violence.
Structured around a neo-noir set-up — smoky rooms, mob bosses, and a femme fatale abound — “Life Is Cheap” melds guerrilla docu-fiction with political urgency. Not to mention the vivid imagery courtesy of Dp Amir Mokri, who has since worked on films including the “Transformers” and “Bad Boys” franchises.
Its distributor rejected that rating and released it unrated, with critics including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert applauding that decision and praising its merits as greater than the sum of its controversies. Still, the film’s graphic footage, while politically motivated, subverts audience expectations of sex and violence.
Structured around a neo-noir set-up — smoky rooms, mob bosses, and a femme fatale abound — “Life Is Cheap” melds guerrilla docu-fiction with political urgency. Not to mention the vivid imagery courtesy of Dp Amir Mokri, who has since worked on films including the “Transformers” and “Bad Boys” franchises.
- 8/30/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
A decade after setting the course for modern experimental documentary filmmaking with the pioneering nautical ethnography Leviathan, directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor have taken another deep dive into uncharted territory with De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a radical cinematic immersion into the far reaches of the human body. Shot at a number of Parisian hospitals over the course of five years, the film takes an unflinching look at various surgical procedures as they’re carried out by doctors in startlingly routine, occasionally lighthearted fashion.Armed with specially made digital cameras, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor examine the operations from both inside and outside the body, moving through vistas of torn flesh and splayed muscle tissue to interior views of the many tracts, tubes, and cavities comprising the greater upper body. Filmed so intimately as to be rendered abstract, the images—in a manner reminiscent of both Leviathan and the more recent somniloquies...
- 7/17/2022
- MUBI
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
A 4K restoration of Three Colors: Blue begins its run.
Japan Society
A 35mm print of Mothra screens this Friday.
Roxy Cinema
Wings of Desire, Rosemary’s Baby, The Assassination of Jesse James, and Get Crazy play on 35mm through the weekend.
Film Forum
As 35mm print of Diva and new restoration of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie continue, “Mifune Redux” brings the great collaborations between Mifune and Kurosawa.
Bam
1974’s One Way or Another, the first feature directed by a Cuban woman, has been restored.
Anthology Film Archives
“Let’s Talk About Sex” begins its run while Essential Cinema has Stan Brakhage.
Museum of Modern Art
One of the year’s great retrospectives looks at deep cuts of Shochiku Studios, while a gender and horror retrospective is underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
George A. Romero...
Film at Lincoln Center
A 4K restoration of Three Colors: Blue begins its run.
Japan Society
A 35mm print of Mothra screens this Friday.
Roxy Cinema
Wings of Desire, Rosemary’s Baby, The Assassination of Jesse James, and Get Crazy play on 35mm through the weekend.
Film Forum
As 35mm print of Diva and new restoration of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie continue, “Mifune Redux” brings the great collaborations between Mifune and Kurosawa.
Bam
1974’s One Way or Another, the first feature directed by a Cuban woman, has been restored.
Anthology Film Archives
“Let’s Talk About Sex” begins its run while Essential Cinema has Stan Brakhage.
Museum of Modern Art
One of the year’s great retrospectives looks at deep cuts of Shochiku Studios, while a gender and horror retrospective is underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
George A. Romero...
- 7/7/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
“Moonage Daydream” feels, first and foremost, like a montage of media criticism encompassing the entire 20th century, all of it laser-focused through a single pinhole: the dynamic David Bowie. , the documentary by Brett Morgen (“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) is about feeling your way through a chaotic world with Ziggy Stardust as your anchor. It’s a fitting encapsulation of the many “he taught me it was Ok to be weird” sentiments in the wake of Bowie’s death. But despite the quasi-religiousness of such refrains, the film by no means avoids painting the late pop icon as distinctly human, whether through his insecurities, or the way his perspective on love would eventually evolve.
The doc features a treasure trove of archival footage and zero contemporary talking heads. It is immediately positioned as an exploration of Bowie’s rise to global fame in the early ’70s, told from the perspective of that same era,...
The doc features a treasure trove of archival footage and zero contemporary talking heads. It is immediately positioned as an exploration of Bowie’s rise to global fame in the early ’70s, told from the perspective of that same era,...
- 5/24/2022
- by Siddhant Adlakha
- Indiewire
Mark Jenkin’s 2019 film Bait had the rare distinction of being a genuine out-of-the-blue discovery, featuring heavily on UK critics’ year-best lists after a modest arthouse release by the BFI. The black-and-white film’s experimental style was emphasized in all its press coverage, nodding to avant-garde auteurs like Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman and Guy Maddin — all directors who are interested in the literal grain of film and video. Throw in post-synch sound, and you have a film more likely to screen to two people and a dog at a smoky underground 1960s cine-club than win a BAFTA.
For all its formal intricacies, though, Bait had a very traditional narrative, being the story of a Cornish fisherman who sees his village becoming gentrified after selling his house to a couple of rich out-of-towners. Enys Men,...
For all its formal intricacies, though, Bait had a very traditional narrative, being the story of a Cornish fisherman who sees his village becoming gentrified after selling his house to a couple of rich out-of-towners. Enys Men,...
- 5/20/2022
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Filmmakers Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley discuss the movies that inspired their latest film, Strawberry Mansion.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
Strawberry Mansion (2022)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary
The Neverending Story (1984)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary
Pretty Woman (1990) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary
Barton Fink (1991)
Being There (1979) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review
Salesman (1969)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Eraserhead (1977) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary
The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Rushmore (1998)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Beetlejuice (1988) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Axelle Carolyn’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s trailer commentary
Honey I Shrunk The Kids (1989)
Re-Animator (1985) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
Strawberry Mansion (2022)
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary
The Neverending Story (1984)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary
Pretty Woman (1990) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary
Barton Fink (1991)
Being There (1979) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review
Salesman (1969)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Eraserhead (1977) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary
The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Rushmore (1998)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Beetlejuice (1988) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – Axelle Carolyn’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s trailer commentary
Honey I Shrunk The Kids (1989)
Re-Animator (1985) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review...
- 3/1/2022
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Peter Tscherkassky's Train Again is showing exclusively on Mubi in most countries starting March 3, 2022 in the series Brief Encounters.Again A TRAINIt all began with a wonderful piece of found footage—as is so often the case with my films. Train Again was inspired by a 5-minute roll of 35mm film that a friend had discovered at a flea market and thoughtfully passed my way. It consisted of commercial rushes for our state-owned railway, presenting ten to twelve takes of a train emerging from a tunnel in the distance, gradually approaching and finally reaching the camera which in turn pans with the train as it speeds past and disappears into the distance—at the opposite end of the frame.Aside from the pan, the takes bear an unmistakable similarity to the Lumière brothers' L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat: What begins as a long shot of a...
- 2/28/2022
- MUBI
Our annual tradition of Fantasy Double Features asks the year's Notebook contributors to pair something new with something old, with the only requirement being the films have to have been freshly seen this year.Part diary of memorable viewing during 2021, part creative prompt to think about how cinema's present speaks to its past (and vice versa), the 14th edition of our end of year poll weaves between theater-going and home-viewing so seamlessly as to suggest that early pandemic impediments from last year are now quite normal. Yet clearly that hasn't stopped us from watching, being delighted by, and thinking about movies, and the wonderful combinations below are testaments to the dynamic, idiosyncratic, and interactive vitality of moviegoing wherever and however its being practiced.CONTRIBUTORSJett Allen | Paul Attard | Jennifer Lynde Barker | Susana Bessa | Michael M. Bilandic | Ela Bittencourt | Johannes Black | Joshua Bogatin | Alex Broadwell | Celluloid Liberation Front | Lillian Crawford | Adrian Curry...
- 1/13/2022
- MUBI
The November 12, 1958 edition of The Village Voice featured the first installment of the column “Movie Journal” by Jonas Mekas.
“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?
Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.
As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.
Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...
“Movie Journal” would become what the Underground Film Journal would argue was the most significant organizing tool of avant-garde cinema created by Jonas, even more so than the Film-makers’ Cooperative and the Anthology Film Archives he helped found. But what was the column like before it gained such notoriety?
Well, we don’t have to guess. The book collection Movie Journal doesn’t start reprinting Jonas’s columns until 1959, but the entire archives of the Voice are online.
As a weekly publication, the Voice only published twelve “Movie Journal” columns in 1958. The Underground Film Journal has read all twelve and extracted what films Jonas reviewed each week; as well as made notes of significant avant-garde film happenings.
Jonas reviewed only a few avant-garde films those first two months, including Maya Deren...
- 11/28/2021
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDario Argento's Dark GlassesFollowing his appearance in Gaspar Noé's Vortex, Dario Argento returns to directing with Dark Glasses, his first feature since Dracula 3D (2012). Starring Asia Argento and Andrea Zhang, the thriller follows a serial killer, a blind sex worker, and a 10-year-old Chinese boy in Rome's Chinese community. John Woo is also set to make a return to Hollywood with Silent Night, a "no dialogue" action film about a father (played by Joel Kinnaman) who seeks to avenge his son's death. Film Labs, a "worldwide network of artist-run film laboratories," now has a new website! The website includes more than 500 films made at artist-run film labs from Vancouver to South Korea, as well as technical resources and distribution information. Dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and filmmaker Wakefield Poole has died. A pioneer of the gay pornography industry,...
- 11/3/2021
- MUBI
Credit: Desdemona DallasIn a 1948 article, The Slow Motion of Sound, Jean Epstein envisions a radical path for the future of film sound. With the fire of a manifesto, he diagnoses that since its inception, the soundtrack had been bound to “old forms of speech and music,” and “would reveal nothing to us of the acoustic world but what the ear had itself been used to hearing for as long as one could remember.” But the essay comes at a turning point. Epstein cites improving recording technology as heralding the potential for a “deeper and more accurate realism,” one that might puncture toward and reveal inner worlds and other occulted currents—“The voices of consciousness, the old repeated melodies of memory, the screams of nightmares and the words no one ever uttered.” He advocates a sonic magnification through slowing time to a granular, microscopic scale: one that would reveal in a thunderstorm an “apocalypse of screams,...
- 9/3/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Julia Ducournau at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale / Getty Images)Cannes has come to a close with the Palme d'Or win of Titane, making Julia Ducournau only the second woman to win the prize in the festival's history. Check out the rest of this year's winners here. Following Cannes, we're looking ahead to fall festival season: San Sebastian's lineup includes the latest by Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Terence Davies; and Locarno has added films by Charlotte Colbert and Russian Gleb Panfilov to its now-complete roster. The Museum of the Moving Image's First Look Fest has also announced its full program, which will showcase films by Claire Simon, Lina Rodriguez, James Benning, and more, as well as the world premiere of Ken Jacob's 3D film, Double Wow. The much-anticipated lineup for this...
- 7/21/2021
- MUBI
For decades, the three Oscar shorts prizes — live action, animated and especially documentary — have confounded those who watch the awards. Shorts were all but impossible to see and subject to a different set of rules. That was until ShortsTV came along to distribute the nominees, but even then, at the qualification stage, virtually every other category had to play theatrically, whereas the shorts didn’t, causing some to question whether they even belonged in the Oscar telecast at all. And then the pandemic hit: In 2020, hardly any features opened in cinemas, whereas short films enjoyed more exposure than ever, thanks to the rapidly expanding number of streaming platforms that carried them — from Netflix to Paramount Plus to outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times. Suddenly, the doc shorts category seems more accessible and relevant than ever.
When it comes to topicality, it’s hard to beat Sophia Nahli Allison...
When it comes to topicality, it’s hard to beat Sophia Nahli Allison...
- 4/23/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
“Om Dar-b-Dar” is a true cult-classic that deserves to be counted among the best films that India has ever produced. In an attempt to carve out his own place in the vast landscape of Indian cinema, auteur Kamal Swaroop managed to create a timeless masterpiece that has no real predecessors in the country’s cinematic tradition but is now seen as an endlessly influential masterpiece which has inspired contemporary directors like Imtiaz Ali and Anurag Kashyap on their own filmmaking journeys. Due to complications with the relevant authorities, “Om Dar-b-Dar” was not commercially released in the country at the time but it achieved critical acclaim at foreign film festivals and even earned the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie in 1989.
One of the most impressive things about “Om Dar-b-Dar” is that it resists any restrictive categorisations. It is extremely easy to label it with dismissive tags like a ‘coming-of-age’ film,...
One of the most impressive things about “Om Dar-b-Dar” is that it resists any restrictive categorisations. It is extremely easy to label it with dismissive tags like a ‘coming-of-age’ film,...
- 3/29/2021
- by Swapnil Dhruv Bose
- AsianMoviePulse
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Michael Apted by Andrew H. Walker. Filmmaker Michael Apted, best known for an eclectic filmography that includes Coal Miner's Daughter, The World is Not Enough, and the Up documentary series, has died at 79. In his obituary, Peter Bradshaw writes that the Up series, Apted's epic masterpiece, "had an incalculable effect on [...] the thinking of the British progressive left – as it asked us to ruminate on the inescapability or otherwise of class, and what narratives were possible for working people."Recommended VIEWINGAbove: John Gianvito's Her Socialist Smile (2020). John Gianvito's Her Socialist Smile, one of the best films of 2020, is now playing at the National Gallery of the Arts' website. Read our review of the film by Michael Sicinski here.To commemorate avant-garde filmmaking titan Stan Brakhage's birthday on January 14, Re:voir will be...
- 1/13/2021
- MUBI
The Anthology Film Archives has delivered a treat to Martin Scorsese fans by making Jonas Mekas’ 2005 documentary “Notes on an American Film Director at Work: Martin Scorsese” available to stream for free on Vimeo. The late filmmaker Mekas was granted intimate access to record Scorsese behind the scenes as he directed “The Departed,” his crime thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson. “The Departed” is notable not only for winning Best Picture but for winning Scorsese his long overdue Oscar for Best Director.
“I was asked to make a five to ten minute film about Marty to introduce his retrospective. As it happened, Marty was shooting ‘The Departed’ at that time. I asked him if I could follow him for a week or two, and he said yes,” Mekas once said of the film. “So that’s how this film happened. Sebastian, my son, joined me with a second camera.
“I was asked to make a five to ten minute film about Marty to introduce his retrospective. As it happened, Marty was shooting ‘The Departed’ at that time. I asked him if I could follow him for a week or two, and he said yes,” Mekas once said of the film. “So that’s how this film happened. Sebastian, my son, joined me with a second camera.
- 5/14/2020
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe on-demand success of Trolls: World Tour, and subsequent comments made by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, has led to a significant development in the friction between studios and cinemas: AMC Theatres announced it will no longer play any Universal movies. The ongoing dispute speaks to the many changes likely to take place as response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Recommended VIEWINGThe Walker Art Center has made available more than 60 "in-depth portraits of directors, actors, writers, and producers who were celebrated in the Walker Cinema at pivotal moments in their careers." This abundant archive includes Bong Joon-ho, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Stan Brakhage, Julie Dash, and even Tom Hanks. Grasshopper's official trailer for Dan Sallitt's Fourteen, which stars Tallie Mehdel and Norma Kuhling as two long-time friends in New York. Read our review of the film here.
- 5/6/2020
- MUBI
As organizations have had to temporarily shut their doors due to the ongoing pandemic, it has given a more pertinent reason to look into their archive to see what treasures have been behind closed doors. The Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center, which has hosted masterclasses and film series in their Walker Cinema since 1990, has a wealth of riches in this regard and they are now posting never-before-published discussions from their archive.
Ranging from a talk earlier this year, just days after Bong Joon Ho made history with Parasite at the Oscars, the list also includes extensive conversations with Leos Carax, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog (with Roger Ebert), Jane Campion, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jim Jarmusch, Stan Brakhage, and more. It’s a fascinating collection of newly published discussions, and there’s also much more to dig into when it comes to their archive, available here.
For those looking for...
Ranging from a talk earlier this year, just days after Bong Joon Ho made history with Parasite at the Oscars, the list also includes extensive conversations with Leos Carax, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnès Varda, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog (with Roger Ebert), Jane Campion, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jim Jarmusch, Stan Brakhage, and more. It’s a fascinating collection of newly published discussions, and there’s also much more to dig into when it comes to their archive, available here.
For those looking for...
- 4/30/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Slipknot performed a six-song set for BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show at Maida Vale Studios in London, with videos of two tracks now available online.
The set, recorded last month for air on February 9th, included “Unsainted,” “Psychosocial,” “The Devil in I,” “Duality,” “Disasterpiece” and “Wait And Bleed.”
“Welcome to the weirdest gig we’ve ever played,” frontman Corey Taylor noted before the performance of “Unsainted.” The full Rock Show episode, which you can listen to here, includes an interview with several band members and additional music.
Last week,...
The set, recorded last month for air on February 9th, included “Unsainted,” “Psychosocial,” “The Devil in I,” “Duality,” “Disasterpiece” and “Wait And Bleed.”
“Welcome to the weirdest gig we’ve ever played,” frontman Corey Taylor noted before the performance of “Unsainted.” The full Rock Show episode, which you can listen to here, includes an interview with several band members and additional music.
Last week,...
- 2/10/2020
- by Emily Zemler
- Rollingstone.com
Rather than make a traditional video for their five-minute song “Nero Forte,” Slipknot have made a 20-minute surrealistic short film to give you the heebie-jeebies.
You can fill your time watching bugs gestate and creep around, office insulation blow from open vents, and the band members themselves perform as a nine-man drum line. If you’re looking for a more straightforward clip for the We Are Not Your Kind single, “Nero Forte,” skip to 8:27 (or visit YouTube) to see Corey Taylor and his masked compatriots bellow about “animosity” and...
You can fill your time watching bugs gestate and creep around, office insulation blow from open vents, and the band members themselves perform as a nine-man drum line. If you’re looking for a more straightforward clip for the We Are Not Your Kind single, “Nero Forte,” skip to 8:27 (or visit YouTube) to see Corey Taylor and his masked compatriots bellow about “animosity” and...
- 1/14/2020
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Film at Lincoln Center
Bong Joon-ho’s “The Bong Show” is underway, with a mixture of his own films and work by Imamura, John Boorman, Clouzot and more.
Museum of Modern Art
“To Save and Project,” a highlight of any given year, has returned. The first weekend includes work by Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, and George A. Romero.
Film at Lincoln Center
Bong Joon-ho’s “The Bong Show” is underway, with a mixture of his own films and work by Imamura, John Boorman, Clouzot and more.
Museum of Modern Art
“To Save and Project,” a highlight of any given year, has returned. The first weekend includes work by Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, and George A. Romero.
- 1/9/2020
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
When German filmmaker Eckhart Schmidt’s 1982 romantic shock thriller “The Fan” plays the prestigious Thessaloniki Festival this year, it’s a culmination of the film’s long multi-decade road back from critical disdain and commercial obscurity as well as a sweet vindication for the obstreperous octogenarian film artist and critic.
The Munich-based Schmidt’s iconoclastic career has taken him down a long and winding road from his first feature films in the ’60s, through a long stint as an outspoken film critic and successful television producer, entertainment arts documentarian, Bavarian film funds executive and back again to his first love as narrative filmmaker. In the past few years, he has directed nearly a dozen feature films. He was first noted in Variety in 1967 when his feature film directing debut, “Jet Generation,” was about to premiere in Germany.
When “Jet Generation” premiered, it was the height of the Swinging ‘60s in Europe.
The Munich-based Schmidt’s iconoclastic career has taken him down a long and winding road from his first feature films in the ’60s, through a long stint as an outspoken film critic and successful television producer, entertainment arts documentarian, Bavarian film funds executive and back again to his first love as narrative filmmaker. In the past few years, he has directed nearly a dozen feature films. He was first noted in Variety in 1967 when his feature film directing debut, “Jet Generation,” was about to premiere in Germany.
When “Jet Generation” premiered, it was the height of the Swinging ‘60s in Europe.
- 10/25/2019
- by Steven Gaydos
- Variety Film + TV
With the passing of Jonas Mekas in January of this year, 2019 started with a significant loss to the film community and to film history. Mekas the filmmaker, artist, and person was a monumental figure in the realm of experimental and alternative cinema. His biggest legacy, however, was his dedication to film preservation. This is what makes the loss more difficult to process, in an age where the distribution of tangible physical media is being replaced with large conglomerate corporations who stream movies for unannounced durations and snatch them away forever without warning. Smaller films and bold experimental works are being relegated to a select few reparatory cinemas only in major cities, and specialized streaming services like Mubi and the Criterion Channel. Jonas Mekas believed in cinema, especially avant-garde cinema, as an indispensible part of the greater culture. He believed it was an art that should be just as established in...
- 9/27/2019
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Museum of the Moving Image
“Grit and Glitter: Before and After Stonewall” begins this weekend with the likes of Teorema and Portrait of Jason.
“See It Big! Action” brings Three the Hard Way and Set It Off.
A series on 21st-century Latin-American sci-fi cinema continues with White Out, Black In on Sunday.
A 40th-anniversary celebration...
Museum of the Moving Image
“Grit and Glitter: Before and After Stonewall” begins this weekend with the likes of Teorema and Portrait of Jason.
“See It Big! Action” brings Three the Hard Way and Set It Off.
A series on 21st-century Latin-American sci-fi cinema continues with White Out, Black In on Sunday.
A 40th-anniversary celebration...
- 6/21/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
In the past decade, Hong Kong has seen a growing number of first-time or emerging filmmakers. To help young filmmakers build a long-term sustainable career and to meet the needs of an increasingly diversified audience culture and film industry, the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hkac) sees a pertinent need to assist filmmakers to expand their professional and personal horizons, enrich their crafts, network and get recognised on local and international levels.
In 2019, coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential breeding grounds for accomplished filmmakers, the Hkac presents New Waves, New Shores: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 50 Meets Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong-based film critic, journalist and curator, Clarence Tsui, is the Hkac’s guest curator of the film screening series and will conduct discussion panels and workshops under this programme.
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 06.06.2019 – 23.06.2019
Schedule...
In 2019, coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential breeding grounds for accomplished filmmakers, the Hkac presents New Waves, New Shores: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 50 Meets Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong-based film critic, journalist and curator, Clarence Tsui, is the Hkac’s guest curator of the film screening series and will conduct discussion panels and workshops under this programme.
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 06.06.2019 – 23.06.2019
Schedule...
- 6/2/2019
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
With the U.S. release of Pasolini, the premiere of his new documentary The Projectionist at Tribeca, his new narrative film Tommaso bowing at Cannes, production underway on his next narrative film Siberia (also led by Willem Dafoe), and a MoMA retrospective winding down for Abel Ferrara, it’s been a busy year for the director–but don’t call him prolific.
“I don’t know how prolific we’ve been,” he told Nick Newman in a recent wide-ranging conversation. “What’s happening now is the end result of five years, so it’s not like we kicked back for three, four years, now, all of a sudden—no. We finished Pasolini, we finished Welcome to New York. Two films back-to-back. I don’t know what prolific means. You know what I’m saying?”
To celebrate his don’t-call-it-prolific streak, today we’re highlighting his favorite films of all-time, as...
“I don’t know how prolific we’ve been,” he told Nick Newman in a recent wide-ranging conversation. “What’s happening now is the end result of five years, so it’s not like we kicked back for three, four years, now, all of a sudden—no. We finished Pasolini, we finished Welcome to New York. Two films back-to-back. I don’t know what prolific means. You know what I’m saying?”
To celebrate his don’t-call-it-prolific streak, today we’re highlighting his favorite films of all-time, as...
- 5/31/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Chuck Smith at The Bowery Hotel on Barbara Rubin: "I think Walt Disney fascinated her all the time and fairy tales." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Through interviews with Jonas Mekas, Amy Taubin, Gordon Ball, Richard Foreman, J Hoberman, Ara Osterweil, Rosebud Feliu-Pettet, Debra Feiner Coddington, and illustrated by film clips, and photographs, Chuck Smith is in search of answering questions such as, who is Barbara Rubin and why haven't you heard about her?
Chuck Smith on Barbara Rubin friend Amy Taubin, seen here with Richard Gere and Oren Moverman: "She's in Michael Snow's Wavelength, the legendary experimental film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Barbara Rubin And The Exploding NY Underground, with an original score by Lee Ranaldo, resurrects the filmmaker and instigator to take her place as a vital interconnected thread for the likes of Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Federico Fellini, Lenny Bruce, and many others.
Through interviews with Jonas Mekas, Amy Taubin, Gordon Ball, Richard Foreman, J Hoberman, Ara Osterweil, Rosebud Feliu-Pettet, Debra Feiner Coddington, and illustrated by film clips, and photographs, Chuck Smith is in search of answering questions such as, who is Barbara Rubin and why haven't you heard about her?
Chuck Smith on Barbara Rubin friend Amy Taubin, seen here with Richard Gere and Oren Moverman: "She's in Michael Snow's Wavelength, the legendary experimental film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Barbara Rubin And The Exploding NY Underground, with an original score by Lee Ranaldo, resurrects the filmmaker and instigator to take her place as a vital interconnected thread for the likes of Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Federico Fellini, Lenny Bruce, and many others.
- 5/19/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Metrograph
Before Asako I & II opens next week, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi is given his first U.S. retrospective.
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki follow-up Hyenas continues screening.
Lilya 4-Ever and Sidney Lumet’s King play on 35mm, while an Antonioni-Loach double-bill is presented by Rachel Kushner this Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
The master...
Metrograph
Before Asako I & II opens next week, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi is given his first U.S. retrospective.
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki follow-up Hyenas continues screening.
Lilya 4-Ever and Sidney Lumet’s King play on 35mm, while an Antonioni-Loach double-bill is presented by Rachel Kushner this Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
The master...
- 5/10/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe Dead Don't DieJim Jarmusch's zombie flick The Dead Don't Die will be the first film to screen at this year's Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d'Or. Is retiring from film directing a myth? Reportedly Béla Tarr has a new film, Missing People, set to premiere this summer in Vienna.Made in 1967, Raúl Ruiz's The Tango of the Widower was intended to be his debut feature, but was sadly abandoned because of funding problems. However, the film has now been restored and slated for a festival premiere, and Ruiz's widow and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento is overseeing its completion. Brian de Palma will be developing an English-language remake of the WWII-set French drama series, Un village français, with plans to place his adaptation during the times of the U.S. Civil War.
- 4/10/2019
- MUBI
Under Childhood is a monthly column on children’s cinema—movies about and for kids. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?— Stan Brakhage, Metaphors On Vision (1960)1“Under childhood,” as borrowed from the title of Brakhage’s 1967-1970 Scenes From Under Childhood. “Under” as in to be under a spell, like that of a boy puppet who can think and feel, but remains limited to wooden limbs. “Childhood” is a mushier construct held together by malleable building blocks. What is a child? The easiest answers offered by the world are psychiatric or legal: A “child” has twenty baby teeth and a brain that will not fully develop until around age 25, cannot drive or vote until such-and-such age in whatever country. But what is the world to a child? The answers lie in the realm of cognitive development, where...
- 1/24/2019
- MUBI
Jonas Mekas, a towering figure in New York’s avant-garde film scene and a pioneering force for film preservation, died today at age 96. His death was announced by Anthology Film Archives, the still-active archive and theater he cofounded in Manhattan’s East Village 48 years ago.
“Jonas passed away quietly and peacefully early this morning,” Anthology Film Archives wrote in a statement posted on Instagram today. “He was at home with family. He will be greatly missed but his light shines on.”
Director and friend Martin Scorsese said, in a lengthy statement released today (read it below), said, “Jonas Mekas did and meant so much to so many people in the world of cinema that you’d need a day and a night to just begin. He was a prophet. He was an impresario. He was a provocateur in the truest and most fundamental sense – he provoked people into new ways...
“Jonas passed away quietly and peacefully early this morning,” Anthology Film Archives wrote in a statement posted on Instagram today. “He was at home with family. He will be greatly missed but his light shines on.”
Director and friend Martin Scorsese said, in a lengthy statement released today (read it below), said, “Jonas Mekas did and meant so much to so many people in the world of cinema that you’d need a day and a night to just begin. He was a prophet. He was an impresario. He was a provocateur in the truest and most fundamental sense – he provoked people into new ways...
- 1/23/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Beginning in the early 1960s, one of the main venues where audiences could watch underground films outside of New York City was the midnight movie screening series called Underground Cinema 12.
The origins of Underground Cinema 12 were related by one of its founders, Mike Getz, to the Alternative Projections historical project. Getz was the manager of the Cinema Theater in Hollywood, California when he was approached by John Fles, who had been holding alternative cinema screenings around Los Angeles, such as in the Jewish and Ukrainian cultural centers.
Fles had the idea to run a regular midnight movie screening series in an actual movie theater, which Getz quickly agreed to host. The Cinema Theater typically ran foreign films and independent cinema, so screening underground films at midnight seemed like a good match. Initially, the series was called Movies ‘Round Midnight and it premiered on Columbus Day 1963 with a screening of Jack Smith‘s Flaming Creatures,...
The origins of Underground Cinema 12 were related by one of its founders, Mike Getz, to the Alternative Projections historical project. Getz was the manager of the Cinema Theater in Hollywood, California when he was approached by John Fles, who had been holding alternative cinema screenings around Los Angeles, such as in the Jewish and Ukrainian cultural centers.
Fles had the idea to run a regular midnight movie screening series in an actual movie theater, which Getz quickly agreed to host. The Cinema Theater typically ran foreign films and independent cinema, so screening underground films at midnight seemed like a good match. Initially, the series was called Movies ‘Round Midnight and it premiered on Columbus Day 1963 with a screening of Jack Smith‘s Flaming Creatures,...
- 1/20/2019
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This documentary examines how Maya Deren shaped the course of avant-garde filmmaking in the United States through works such as the iconic Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and other films. Filmmaker Martina Kudlácek interviews those who knew Deren personally and features excerpts from her films as well as examining her unfinished work documenting Haitian voodoo rituals.
Starring: Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Alexander Hammid, Katherine Dunham...
Starring: Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Alexander Hammid, Katherine Dunham...
- 10/21/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In the Summer 1961 edition of Film Quarterly, Stan Vanderbeek was the first person to refer to experimental filmmaking as the “underground.” A filmmaker himself, Vanderbeek was frustrated that his work and the films of his peers — such as Stan Brakhage, Hilary Harris, Robert Breer and Robert Frank — was not being considered as serious art by the broader cinematic culture.
Eventually, the term “underground film” would become part of the regular movie vernacular, but was it adopted slowly or quickly after its first appearance in 1961?
Jonas Mekas‘s “Movie Journal” column in the Village Voice was the main organ promoting experimental and avant-garde cinema in the early 1960s. A survey of the column from that time period has shown that Mekas did not use the term “underground film” very frequently.
At approximately the same time of the Film Quarterly issue, Mekas devoted a column on May 4, 1961 to three filmmakers. Mekas began the column with:
Stan Vanderbeek,...
Eventually, the term “underground film” would become part of the regular movie vernacular, but was it adopted slowly or quickly after its first appearance in 1961?
Jonas Mekas‘s “Movie Journal” column in the Village Voice was the main organ promoting experimental and avant-garde cinema in the early 1960s. A survey of the column from that time period has shown that Mekas did not use the term “underground film” very frequently.
At approximately the same time of the Film Quarterly issue, Mekas devoted a column on May 4, 1961 to three filmmakers. Mekas began the column with:
Stan Vanderbeek,...
- 10/14/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Stan Vanderbeek was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the experimental film scene, churning out primarily collage films featuring original footage cut up with found imagery.
At the same time, he was also a prodigious film theorist, producing articles on film theory in much the same way he made his films — by combining original writing with text and images created by others. One of Vanderbeek’s most famous articles is “The Cinema Delimina” published in the Summer 1961 edition of Film Quarterly (vol. Xiv no. 4), in which he is the first person to use the term “underground” to refer to what was then mostly referred to as “experimental cinema.”
To be clear, though, Vanderbeek actually did not use the exact term “underground film.”
The gist of the article appears to be Vanderbeek arguing that experimental films should be considered as something better than...
At the same time, he was also a prodigious film theorist, producing articles on film theory in much the same way he made his films — by combining original writing with text and images created by others. One of Vanderbeek’s most famous articles is “The Cinema Delimina” published in the Summer 1961 edition of Film Quarterly (vol. Xiv no. 4), in which he is the first person to use the term “underground” to refer to what was then mostly referred to as “experimental cinema.”
To be clear, though, Vanderbeek actually did not use the exact term “underground film.”
The gist of the article appears to be Vanderbeek arguing that experimental films should be considered as something better than...
- 9/30/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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