This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California.
About the films:
The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works in the United States. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set,...
About the films:
The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works in the United States. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set,...
- 9/21/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
The new online issue of the multi-lingual La Furia Umana features dossiers on Yasujiro Ozu, Peter Hutton and Monte Hellman, Bani Khoshnoudi's personal remembrance of Harun Farocki, interviews with Lav Diaz, Anthony Stern, Naeem Mohaiemen and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Amelie Hastie in Film Quarterly on Maleficent, interviews with Jem Cohen, Jill Soloway and Michael M. Bilandic, Graham Fuller on Ann Sheridan, Doug Cummings on expressionism and Karina Longworth on Marlon Brando. » - David Hudson...
- 10/1/2014
- Keyframe
The new online issue of the multi-lingual La Furia Umana features dossiers on Yasujiro Ozu, Peter Hutton and Monte Hellman, Bani Khoshnoudi's personal remembrance of Harun Farocki, interviews with Lav Diaz, Anthony Stern, Naeem Mohaiemen and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Amelie Hastie in Film Quarterly on Maleficent, interviews with Jem Cohen, Jill Soloway and Michael M. Bilandic, Graham Fuller on Ann Sheridan, Doug Cummings on expressionism and Karina Longworth on Marlon Brando. » - David Hudson...
- 10/1/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
The Newport Beach Film Festival
opens today and runs through May 3.
Bertrand Bonello will preside over the Jury for the Nespresso Grand Prize for La Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week), while João Pedro Rodrigues will be President of the Jury for the Nikon Discovery Award for Short Film. The awards will be presented on Closing Night, May 24, and, once again, here are the lineups they'll be taking in.
Nina Menkes will not only be on the International Jury at the Jeonju International Film Festival, opening today and running through May 4; she'll also be presenting her 1996 feature, The Bloody Child, one of only five films selected to represent 50 years of the Jeonju sister festival, the Viennale.
Michael Guillén previews the lineup of the International Film Festival of Panama, opening today and running through Wednesday.
"12 projects from francophone Sub-Saharan Africa have been selected for Open Doors, the Festival del film Locarno's co-production lab.
opens today and runs through May 3.
Bertrand Bonello will preside over the Jury for the Nespresso Grand Prize for La Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week), while João Pedro Rodrigues will be President of the Jury for the Nikon Discovery Award for Short Film. The awards will be presented on Closing Night, May 24, and, once again, here are the lineups they'll be taking in.
Nina Menkes will not only be on the International Jury at the Jeonju International Film Festival, opening today and running through May 4; she'll also be presenting her 1996 feature, The Bloody Child, one of only five films selected to represent 50 years of the Jeonju sister festival, the Viennale.
Michael Guillén previews the lineup of the International Film Festival of Panama, opening today and running through Wednesday.
"12 projects from francophone Sub-Saharan Africa have been selected for Open Doors, the Festival del film Locarno's co-production lab.
- 4/26/2012
- MUBI
"Style in the Movies" is the central theme of this year's TCM Classic Film Festival, opening tonight in Los Angeles with the world premiere of the new restoration of Cabaret (1972) and running through the weekend. For the AP, Lynn Elber calls up Liza Minnelli, who'll be there with Joel Grey and, if he can make it, Michael York: "Minnelli, whose turn as cabaret singer Sally Bowles captured a best actress Academy Award and cemented her young stardom, said making Cabaret was a joyful 'secret,' filmed in Munich and far away from meddling Los Angeles studio bosses. Director Bob Fosse 'got away with murder. We all did,' Minnelli said… 'We'd take chances, and the studio would send notes like, "Too cloudy. It will break up on drive-in (screens)." Fosse would read that out loud, tear it up and throw it over his shoulder — in front of the whole cast and crew.
- 4/14/2012
- MUBI
"With The Deep Blue Sea," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice, "the great British director Terence Davies returns to the postwar period — though in a sense, he has never left. Born in 1945, Davies's cinema is defined by a mixed pity and fondness for the world of yesterday, a past he seemingly finds impossible to put behind him or to do without. The era's hypocritical propriety and quivering repression has most frequently been held up for 'enlightened,' Pleasantville-style condescension, but Davies is a great historical filmmaker because he feels the period too intimately to mock its rituals and mores, knows that no progress occurs without loss."
A retrospective of Davies's work is running at New York's BAMcinématek through March 27, while Sing, Memory: The Postwar England of Terence Davies opens today at the Harvard Film Archive and runs through March 26. On March 28, The Long Day Closes (1992) opens for a week-long run at New York's Film Forum.
A retrospective of Davies's work is running at New York's BAMcinématek through March 27, while Sing, Memory: The Postwar England of Terence Davies opens today at the Harvard Film Archive and runs through March 26. On March 28, The Long Day Closes (1992) opens for a week-long run at New York's Film Forum.
- 3/19/2012
- MUBI
The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, opening today and running through March 18, turns 30 this year. "Highlights of 2012's anniversary line-up include an in-person tribute to Joan Chen, a pair of world premieres from the talents behind Colma: The Musical, and Patrick Wang's In the Family, one of the most acclaimed American indies from last year," writes Michael Hawley in an extensive overview. And Michael Guillén interviews Wang at the Evening Class.
For the Bay Guardian's Kimberly Chun, Sfiaaff "seems to be in the throes of a youth movement." More previews come from Peter Martin (Twitch) and Kelly Vance (East Bay Express).
Los Angeles. The Beauty of the Long Day: An In-Person Terence Davies Tribute happens Sunday and Monday at the Aero Theater and Doug Cummings has a preview in the La Weekly.
Seattle. In the Stranger, Charles Mudede argues (briefly) that the Dreileben trilogy, Christian Petzold's Beats Being Dead,...
For the Bay Guardian's Kimberly Chun, Sfiaaff "seems to be in the throes of a youth movement." More previews come from Peter Martin (Twitch) and Kelly Vance (East Bay Express).
Los Angeles. The Beauty of the Long Day: An In-Person Terence Davies Tribute happens Sunday and Monday at the Aero Theater and Doug Cummings has a preview in the La Weekly.
Seattle. In the Stranger, Charles Mudede argues (briefly) that the Dreileben trilogy, Christian Petzold's Beats Being Dead,...
- 3/8/2012
- MUBI
"The Romanian director Lucian Pintilie made his first film in 1965, the year Nicolae Ceausescu became general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party," writes Ao Scott in the New York Times. "Of the films he was able to complete in Romania, Reenactment [1968] stands among the exemplary works of its region and time. Subtle, difficult and brave, it represents a powerful statement of artistic honesty in a culture of official lies and evasions. Reenactment is included in a two-week retrospective that begins [today] at the Museum of Modern Art. This comprehensive program also offers American audiences a chance to sample Mr Pintilie's more recent films, among them Niki and Flo, a mordant almost-comedy from 2003 that represents a bridge — and also a battle — between the old Romania and the new. It will run for a week at MoMA, receiving a belated and welcome North American premiere." The series runs through March 12.
Los Angeles. "If...
Los Angeles. "If...
- 3/1/2012
- MUBI
Updated through 6/27.
This year's Los Angeles Film Festival, running through June 26, opens tonight with the latest from Richard Linklater, and Steven Zeitchik talks with him for the Los Angeles Times: "'It was my most difficult one to get made,' he said flatly. 'It took 12 years to happen, and even then it was tough. People can say shooting in 22 days makes a movie better. It doesn't.' … Bernie is a shaggy, idiosyncratic work, possibly the strangest yet in a career full of strangeness. Set in the small town of Carthage, Texas, it tells of an effeminate, musical-loving mortician named Bernie Tiede [Jack Black] who befriends and then commits a horrible crime against a repressed wealthy matriarch [Shirley MacLaine], leaving him to face the wrath of a local prosecutor [Matthew McConaughey]. The movie is a dramatization of an actual case — the script was based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article about Tiede, and Linklater, who attended Tiede's trial,...
This year's Los Angeles Film Festival, running through June 26, opens tonight with the latest from Richard Linklater, and Steven Zeitchik talks with him for the Los Angeles Times: "'It was my most difficult one to get made,' he said flatly. 'It took 12 years to happen, and even then it was tough. People can say shooting in 22 days makes a movie better. It doesn't.' … Bernie is a shaggy, idiosyncratic work, possibly the strangest yet in a career full of strangeness. Set in the small town of Carthage, Texas, it tells of an effeminate, musical-loving mortician named Bernie Tiede [Jack Black] who befriends and then commits a horrible crime against a repressed wealthy matriarch [Shirley MacLaine], leaving him to face the wrath of a local prosecutor [Matthew McConaughey]. The movie is a dramatization of an actual case — the script was based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article about Tiede, and Linklater, who attended Tiede's trial,...
- 6/27/2011
- MUBI
Updated through 6/7.
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
- 6/7/2011
- MUBI
On this date in...
1984: Ed told Maureen he wanted to have lots of babies on Guiding Light.
1986: Frannie had a memory about Doug Cummings on As The World Turns.
2001: Brandon Routh debuted on One Life To Live as Seth Anderson.
2008: Jack met Janet on As The World Turns.
2010: Lost aired its final episode.
Celebrating a birthday today are:
Mary Fickett (ex-Ruth, All My Children; ex-Katherine, The Edge Of Night) - 79
Joan Collins (ex-Eva, Footballers' Wives; ex-Christina, Pacific Palisades; ex-Alexandra, Guiding Light; ex-Alexis, Dynasty) - 79
Mark Arnold (ex-Robert, Scripts & Scruples; ex-Rob, One Life To Life; ex-Joe, Santa Barbara; ex-Steve, Rituals; ex-Gavin, Edge Of Night; ex-Buck, Guiding Light) - 54
Kelly Monaco (Sam, General Hospital; ex-Livvie, Port Charles) - 35
Tom Baran (Gabriel, The Omegas, ex-Casey, Scripts & Scruples; ex-Tony, As The World Turns) - 28...
1984: Ed told Maureen he wanted to have lots of babies on Guiding Light.
1986: Frannie had a memory about Doug Cummings on As The World Turns.
2001: Brandon Routh debuted on One Life To Live as Seth Anderson.
2008: Jack met Janet on As The World Turns.
2010: Lost aired its final episode.
Celebrating a birthday today are:
Mary Fickett (ex-Ruth, All My Children; ex-Katherine, The Edge Of Night) - 79
Joan Collins (ex-Eva, Footballers' Wives; ex-Christina, Pacific Palisades; ex-Alexandra, Guiding Light; ex-Alexis, Dynasty) - 79
Mark Arnold (ex-Robert, Scripts & Scruples; ex-Rob, One Life To Life; ex-Joe, Santa Barbara; ex-Steve, Rituals; ex-Gavin, Edge Of Night; ex-Buck, Guiding Light) - 54
Kelly Monaco (Sam, General Hospital; ex-Livvie, Port Charles) - 35
Tom Baran (Gabriel, The Omegas, ex-Casey, Scripts & Scruples; ex-Tony, As The World Turns) - 28...
- 5/23/2011
- by We Love Soaps TV
- We Love Soaps
"The indie Texan filmmaker David Lowery receives a double bill at the reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and while Pioneer, a 16-minute short, and St Nick, an 86-minute feature, don't provide hard answers to their mysteries, both are deeply intriguing," writes Andy Webster in the New York Times. Regarding St Nick, a "potentially stifling ambience is deflected by quiet suspense and the awe-inspiring compositions of the cinematographer, Clay Liford. Decaying rustic interiors evoke Andrew Wyeth still lifes; pastoral long shots suggest a Southwestern walkabout. And Mr Lowery seems ready for a bigger canvas."
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...
- 4/23/2011
- MUBI
Like myself, both Doug Cummings and David D'Arcy caught Jafar Panahi's Offside when it screened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff). At Film Journey, Doug Cummings characterized Offside as Panahi's "most vibrantly energetic and entertaining film to date, without compromising his social vision one iota." Doug explained that part of the film's "subversive brilliance" was that it's a highly patriotic film through characters who "are not dissenters, but rabid fans as equally committed to the sporting cause as the next person. Their only 'fault'--as suggested by one prisoner--was to be born female." At Greencine, David D'Arcy wrote: "Not to overplay the obvious metaphors, but Panahi is presenting Iranian women unveiled. Not uncovered, since they're in boys' clothes. No one's claiming that these...
- 3/15/2011
- Screen Anarchy
Pablo Trapero was born in San Justo, Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971. He wrote, directed and edited the short films Mocoso Malcriado (1993) and Negocios (1995) before directing his feature debut, the award-winning Crane World (1999), a black and white 16mm film that proved to be a breaking point in Argentine cinema and that encouraged dozens of young directors into their first features. Crane World was released internationally at Venice, harvesting awards and critical acclaim at film festivals around the world.
In 2002, his second feature El Bonaerense premiered at Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, again to critical and audience acclaim. That same year he opened his own production company Matanza Cine in Buenos Aires, from which he has produced ever since not only his own features but also those of other Argentine and Latin American filmmakers, including Lisandro Alonso, Enrique Bellande and Raúl Perrone. "Matanza", Trapero informed me when we met...
In 2002, his second feature El Bonaerense premiered at Un Certain Regard in the Cannes Film Festival, again to critical and audience acclaim. That same year he opened his own production company Matanza Cine in Buenos Aires, from which he has produced ever since not only his own features but also those of other Argentine and Latin American filmmakers, including Lisandro Alonso, Enrique Bellande and Raúl Perrone. "Matanza", Trapero informed me when we met...
- 12/26/2010
- Screen Anarchy
Video of the day. First Full Trailer for David Fincher's "The Social Network"
Video of the day. New Film by Kenneth Anger
Image of the day. Marilyn Monroe
Miriam Bale
The Game
David Cairns
The Forgotten: The Filth
The Forgotten: Lady Killer
The Forgotten: Dance of Death
The Forgotten: One Way Street
The Forgotten: Swift Boat Veterans
Doug Cummings
The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival Shifts Direction
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Independence Day"
Movie Poster of the Week: The Movie Posters of Norman Rockwell
Movie Poster of the Week: "Life During Wartime"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Betty Blue"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Summer Holiday"
Doug Dibbern
Jimmy Stewart: Angel of Death
Philippe Garrel
Quote of the day
Leo Goldsmith
Robert Flaherty Seminar 2010, Part 2: Work Forces
S. Hahn
Telling Pictures
Darren Hughes
The Details: "Les rendez-vous d'Anna" (Akerman, 1978)
Daniel Kasman
Image of the Day.
Video of the day. New Film by Kenneth Anger
Image of the day. Marilyn Monroe
Miriam Bale
The Game
David Cairns
The Forgotten: The Filth
The Forgotten: Lady Killer
The Forgotten: Dance of Death
The Forgotten: One Way Street
The Forgotten: Swift Boat Veterans
Doug Cummings
The 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival Shifts Direction
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Independence Day"
Movie Poster of the Week: The Movie Posters of Norman Rockwell
Movie Poster of the Week: "Life During Wartime"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Betty Blue"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Summer Holiday"
Doug Dibbern
Jimmy Stewart: Angel of Death
Philippe Garrel
Quote of the day
Leo Goldsmith
Robert Flaherty Seminar 2010, Part 2: Work Forces
S. Hahn
Telling Pictures
Darren Hughes
The Details: "Les rendez-vous d'Anna" (Akerman, 1978)
Daniel Kasman
Image of the Day.
- 8/1/2010
- MUBI
Doug Cummings has been in no hurry to post his annotated lists of the best of 2009 and the decade, but the wait's been worth it. His #10 on the '09 list is just now opening in some cities: Tomm Moore's The Secret of the Kells is "one of the most visually inventive and compelling animated features I've seen. Evoking the feel of illustrated manuscripts and having fun with its medieval two-dimensional representations of space, it recounts the turbulent history of the Celtic tome that many consider Ireland's greatest artistic accomplishment."...
- 3/5/2010
- MUBI
Movies are made up of images, even the bad ones. But the bad movies rarely leave any images lingering in your brain. The great films are the ones making great images. A great image is many things, by nature diffuse, and we might agree that any great image moves even when stopped still, opening its own cinematic world. Thus, The Notebook's decision to celebrate our recent decade not with a list but with this stream. Each contributor was asked to pick 1 film he or she wants to remember from the 2000s, select 1 image from that film to remember it by, and write one sentence to supplement their selection. We've done our best to craft not simply a grab bag but a cogent flow of the indelible, one image speaking to the next on a variety of registers: from film to film, between color and compositional rhymes, and, as you'll read,...
- 1/16/2010
- MUBI
Michel Ocelot‘s Azur & Asmar arrives in San Francisco adorned and bejeweled with superlatives. “The year’s most beautiful animated film!,” writes Andrew O’Hehir at Salon, “Impossibly gorgeous ... the sheer storybook rapture swept me away!” “So gloriously bright,” writes Leslie Felperin at Variety, “audiences with sensitive eyes may need shades.” And at Film Journey, Doug Cummings writes: “Sets a new bar for digital animation! Closer to a handsome storybook than a mainstream CGI film, lending the narrative a significant degree of visual enchantment.” Rather than rack the thesaurus for additional adjectives—“bewitching ensorcellments” comes to mind—I focus on Ocelot’s presentation at the film’s first screening at Landmark’s Opera Plaza. As a disgruntled aside, the beauty of this film deserved a much larger screen than the woefully inadequate Opera Plaza. The film, properly projected, should be—as Ocelot put it—“like diamonds getting into your eyes.
- 3/9/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
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