Legendary film editor Thelma Schoonmaker is honoring the films of filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger with an upcoming retrospective at MoMA.
Titled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger,” the screening series is presented in collaboration with the BFI and will take place from June 21 to July 31. The program includes more than 50 films — many of which are new restorations — and was curated by conservation experts, archivists, and curators at the BFI National Archive.
Oscar-winning editor Schoonmaker will open the series on June 21 with an introduction to the new digital restoration of “Black Narcissus” (1947). Schoonmaker was married to British director Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990.
Powell and Pressburger’s cultural legacy is most notably recognized in their film “The Red Shoes” (1948), which has inspired sequences in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which Schoonmaker edited.
Titled “Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger,” the screening series is presented in collaboration with the BFI and will take place from June 21 to July 31. The program includes more than 50 films — many of which are new restorations — and was curated by conservation experts, archivists, and curators at the BFI National Archive.
Oscar-winning editor Schoonmaker will open the series on June 21 with an introduction to the new digital restoration of “Black Narcissus” (1947). Schoonmaker was married to British director Powell from 1984 until his death in 1990.
Powell and Pressburger’s cultural legacy is most notably recognized in their film “The Red Shoes” (1948), which has inspired sequences in films such as Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” which Schoonmaker edited.
- 5/1/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
The 1983 classic Risky Business is getting the Criterion Collection treatment with an upcoming 4K Uhd and Blu-ray release – and the list of special features reveals that this release will feature both the theatrical cut of the film as well as writer/director Paul Brickman’s director’s cut, which has the original, darker ending. That ending was available as a bonus feature on a previous Blu-ray release of Risky Business, but these Criterion discs will be the first to actually have a full, official “director’s cut” of the film on them.
Risky Business has the following description: A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him...
Risky Business has the following description: A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him...
- 4/15/2024
- by Cody Hamman
- JoBlo.com
Here they come again, those holiday perennials. Movies, both good and bad, that year after year find their way back into theaters, onto small screens and deep into stockings that still get stuffed with digital discs.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A Christmas Story. Love Actually. It’s a Wonderful Life, of course. A Christmas Carol, ad infinitum. Nutcracker after Nutcracker after Nutcracker.
My personal favorite, released 19 years ago, on Nov. 10, 2004, by Warner Bros., is The Polar Express from the technophile director Robert Zemeckis.
This isn’t a sentimental choice, at least not in the conventional sense. It’s just that every time the picture pops up—and its seasonal DVDs are strung merrily across the Internet, from Amazon to Target—it reminds me of an important life lesson. That is: It’s much easier not to be an editor, especially at The New York Times.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A Christmas Story. Love Actually. It’s a Wonderful Life, of course. A Christmas Carol, ad infinitum. Nutcracker after Nutcracker after Nutcracker.
My personal favorite, released 19 years ago, on Nov. 10, 2004, by Warner Bros., is The Polar Express from the technophile director Robert Zemeckis.
This isn’t a sentimental choice, at least not in the conventional sense. It’s just that every time the picture pops up—and its seasonal DVDs are strung merrily across the Internet, from Amazon to Target—it reminds me of an important life lesson. That is: It’s much easier not to be an editor, especially at The New York Times.
- 11/20/2023
- by Michael Cieply
- Deadline Film + TV
One of the most beloved movies of 1983 is “The Big Chill,” starring Kevin Kline, Glenn Close, William Hurt and Meg Tilly. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek and directed by Kasdan, the film is an ensemble comedy-drama about a group of former college friends who reunite for a weekend after one of their college friends dies. Released 40 years ago on September 28, 1983, “The Big Chill” did well at the box office, making $56 million worldwide on a budget of just $8 million. The movie marked another financial triumph for director Kasdan, whose feature debut two years earlier, “Body Heat,” did well at the box office and with critics. Read on as Gold Derby celebrates “The Big Chill” 40th anniversary.
Critics for the most part gave positive notices to “The Big Chill,” including Richard Corliss in Time Magazine, who called it “funny and ferociously smart.” Vincent Canby in The New York Times said,...
Critics for the most part gave positive notices to “The Big Chill,” including Richard Corliss in Time Magazine, who called it “funny and ferociously smart.” Vincent Canby in The New York Times said,...
- 10/3/2023
- by Brian Rowe
- Gold Derby
Given the aesthetics of A Question of Silence and its characters’ desire to uncover the motives of three women who suddenly attack and kill the male owner of a boutique, it’s understandable that Dave Kehr wrote that Marleen Gorris’s debut film “was built on a fashionable confusion of fascism and feminism.” But while much of A Question of Silence’s power comes from the steady, meticulous accrual of realistic microaggressions and outright misogyny that these women face on a daily basis, their violent act, as well as their lack of empathy or regret after the fact, is better read as purely symbolic rather than as the filmmaker’s tacit endorsement of their crime.
The film’s scenes are given a sense of verisimilitude by its on-location shooting in Amsterdam, and that raw authenticity brushes up against highly stylized sequences (shades of Rainer Werner Fassbinder) that are punctuated by moody bursts of synthesizers.
The film’s scenes are given a sense of verisimilitude by its on-location shooting in Amsterdam, and that raw authenticity brushes up against highly stylized sequences (shades of Rainer Werner Fassbinder) that are punctuated by moody bursts of synthesizers.
- 6/8/2023
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
“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
Some context might help. Between 1988 and 1997 the Baltimore-based filmmaker Rob Tregenza directed three features that amassed a small, enviable group of admirers. If it’s one thing to secure bookings at arthouses and galleries, it’s quite another for your debut film to be anointed some groundbreaking moment in American movies by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr. It is simply beyond precedent to attract the interest of Jean-Luc Godard: the two met during distribution of 1996’s For Ever Mozart and amassed enough kinship for Godard to extend favors to Tregenza’s 1997 feature Inside/Out, the sole feature he produced without directing.
What almost anyone sees of Tregenza’s work are cinematographer duties for Alex Cox (Three Businessmen) and Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies). His own films, meanwhile, struggled to endure: in all my travels he only came to attention with Godard’s passing and word of that producing credit, and...
What almost anyone sees of Tregenza’s work are cinematographer duties for Alex Cox (Three Businessmen) and Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies). His own films, meanwhile, struggled to endure: in all my travels he only came to attention with Godard’s passing and word of that producing credit, and...
- 4/11/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The John Wayne his fans know and love didn't really show up until John Ford's "Stagecoach" in 1939. Though the director and silent Western star Tom Mix saw tremendous potential in the USC football washout when they took him on as a prop boy in the mid-1920s, his screen presence was purely physical. At 6'4", the Iowa-born lad cut a formidable figure on the big screen, but he had miles to go as an actor. If you asked Ford (and many did), he was happy to tell you that Wayne needed a decade's worth of seasoning in Poverty Row Westerns before he could topline a major Hollywood production.
It was unwise to argue with the cantankerous Ford, but Wayne had a shot at undermining his mentor when Raoul Walsh cast the young man as the star of 1930's "The Big Trail," an early, wildly pricey epic that sought to...
It was unwise to argue with the cantankerous Ford, but Wayne had a shot at undermining his mentor when Raoul Walsh cast the young man as the star of 1930's "The Big Trail," an early, wildly pricey epic that sought to...
- 2/23/2023
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
To Save and Project: The 19th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation – See Screening Dates
The Museum of Modern Art announced in early December the To Save and Project: The 19th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, the latest edition of the annual festival dedicated to celebrating newly preserved and restored films from archives, studios, distributors, foundations, and independent filmmakers from around the world. Running from January 12 to February 2, 2023, this year’s program will open and close with the restoration premieres of two major silent films from MoMA’s archive: Paul Leni’s horror comedy The Cat and the Canary (1927) and Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy The
Marriage Circle (1924), respectively. To Save and Project is organized by Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Cindi Rowell, independent curator, with special thanks to Olivia Priedite, Film Program Coordinator, and Steve Macfarlane, Department Assistant, Department of Film.
The 2023 program includes the highly anticipated new version of Tod Browning’s insidious silent horror film...
Marriage Circle (1924), respectively. To Save and Project is organized by Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Cindi Rowell, independent curator, with special thanks to Olivia Priedite, Film Program Coordinator, and Steve Macfarlane, Department Assistant, Department of Film.
The 2023 program includes the highly anticipated new version of Tod Browning’s insidious silent horror film...
- 12/27/2022
- by Movies Martin Cid Magazine
- Martin Cid Magazine - Movies
Every 10 years, the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound magazine asks hundreds of film critics to name what they believe to be the 10 greatest movies of all time. From this, a master list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time is compiled. Once released, there's a brief period of effusion followed by days of rage. How could "[insert masterpiece here]" rank below so many films that are clearly inferior, or, god forbid, miss the list entirely? For some, the final list is too esoteric while others find the list too beholden to tradition. Many correctly point out that there's historically been a decided caucasian male slant.
The BFI addressed this last complaint in 2022 by expanding its scope from 846 critics to 1,639. This broadening of perspectives has resulted in what is easily the most racially and ethnically diverse list in the poll's 70-year history. Films from Ousmane Sembène ("Black Girl"), Julie Dash ("Daughters of the...
The BFI addressed this last complaint in 2022 by expanding its scope from 846 critics to 1,639. This broadening of perspectives has resulted in what is easily the most racially and ethnically diverse list in the poll's 70-year history. Films from Ousmane Sembène ("Black Girl"), Julie Dash ("Daughters of the...
- 12/2/2022
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
Amir Naderi’s 1984 “The Runner” is often lauded as the first movie to emerge from post-revolutionary Iran and for having one of the best child performances of all time with Madjid Niroumand. It’s now receiving a new restoration that will debut at Film Forum on October 28 and run through November 10, with Naderi and Niroumand appearing in person for screenings. It will then make its way around the country. Exclusively on IndieWire, watch the new trailer below.
In “The Runner,” an illiterate 11-year-old orphan (Niroumand), living alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan, survives by shining shoes, selling water, and diving for deposit bottles, while being bullied by both adults and competing older kids. But he finds solace by dreaming about departing cargo ships and airplanes and by running — seemingly to nowhere.
The movie has echoes of Vittorio De Sica’s “Shoeshine” and “The Bicycle Thief,...
In “The Runner,” an illiterate 11-year-old orphan (Niroumand), living alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan, survives by shining shoes, selling water, and diving for deposit bottles, while being bullied by both adults and competing older kids. But he finds solace by dreaming about departing cargo ships and airplanes and by running — seemingly to nowhere.
The movie has echoes of Vittorio De Sica’s “Shoeshine” and “The Bicycle Thief,...
- 10/4/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Black Tuesday (1954).Hugo Fregonese’s best films are fueled by desperation, a clean and potent but highly flammable form of energy. Just as fight-or-flight adrenaline sharpens our senses and reflexes, his filmmaking reaches heights of rigor and intensity when his characters are in the tightest spots—locked up, on the run, or under siege. Often facing death, they are also sentenced for life to be themselves: fate in his films is not a capricious external force but an expression of character. As a pensive Jack the Ripper says in Man in the Attic (1953), “There are no criminals. There are only people doing what they must do because they are who they are.”But who was Hugo Fregonese? Watching his films, it is hard not to speculate on the link between their compulsive themes of escape and restless wandering and his own refusal or inability to settle down. Born in Argentina...
- 8/31/2022
- MUBI
In the pantheon of great director-actor pairings, it is hard to match the six-film run of John Huston and Humphrey Bogart. The blustery filmmaker and his brutally handsome star confidently segued from the world-weary noir of "The Maltese Falcon" to the caustically funny misadventure of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and on to the rambunctiously romantic banter of "The African Queen." Over their first five films, Huston's style is refreshingly unfussy. He's not trying to knock the viewer out with bravura coups de cinema. Rather, he reads the emotion of his characters, and, if he's cast well, the camera always ends up in the right place, while every cut and transition flows mellifluously through to the final reel.
Huston made a lot of movies, and more than his share of stinkers, but he never misfired when collaborating with Bogie -- that is, until 1953, when they came together for the garishly cynical "Beat the Devil.
Huston made a lot of movies, and more than his share of stinkers, but he never misfired when collaborating with Bogie -- that is, until 1953, when they came together for the garishly cynical "Beat the Devil.
- 8/24/2022
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
I’m going to start by setting a scene. The head of the Moving Image Section at the Library of Congress, Mike Mashon, takes the stage at the Castro Theater to introduce a screening of Erich Von Stroheim’s ambitious debut Blind Husbands (1919) at the 25th San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It’s a full house and that’s certainly not unusual for this event. “Recently, I was watching a conversation on the Criterion Channel,” Mashon tells the crowd. “Critic/curator Dave Kehr and historian Farran Smith Nehme were discussing Raoul Walsh and one of them said that Walsh was one of the least intellectual directors. He didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body; he was just a straight-ahead guy.” Mashon pauses, timing the silence for comic impact. “So… Erich Von Stroheim.” He need say nothing more. The entire audience erupts in laughter. Mashon smiles, saying, “You know,...
- 5/18/2022
- by Daniel Kremer
- Trailers from Hell
Part-Time Wife (1930)A “dame” is another word for a woman, but not all women are dames. Embodying both the vibrancy of the Jazz Age and the cynicism of the Great Depression, dames are fast-talking, sassy, and with a hard shell to match. Dames populate the world of early-1930s Hollywood cinema, personifying the socio-economic politics and (relative) gender progressivism of the decade. An upcoming MoMA film program entitled “Dames, Janes, Dolls, and Canaries: Woman Stars of the Pre-Code Era” explores the idea of the pre-Code Hollywood dame in all of her multitudes. Organized by film writer and historian Farran Nehme along with Dave Kehr and Olivia Priedite, the program showcases an array of talent from popular early-1930s actresses like Madge Evans, Mae Clarke, and Nancy Carroll, focusing specifically on stardom, femininity, and performance. Through this dive into the representation of gender in the pre-Code era (1929 to mid-1934), we can...
- 2/1/2022
- MUBI
Three tweets that made us giggle...
Less Dune Part Two talk, more 2 Barb 2 Star talk.
— Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil) October 27, 2021
If a movie has to be watched then it isn’t a good movie
— C. Mason Wells (@cmasonwells) October 26, 2021
Let's stop making movies until we've seen all the old ones.
— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) October 26, 2021
More after the jump including Derek Cianfrance, Paul Verhoeven, and lots of Dune and Dune Part Two jokes...
Less Dune Part Two talk, more 2 Barb 2 Star talk.
— Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil) October 27, 2021
If a movie has to be watched then it isn’t a good movie
— C. Mason Wells (@cmasonwells) October 26, 2021
Let's stop making movies until we've seen all the old ones.
— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) October 26, 2021
More after the jump including Derek Cianfrance, Paul Verhoeven, and lots of Dune and Dune Part Two jokes...
- 10/30/2021
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Mimi Plauché, the artistic director of the Chicago International Film Festival, has been named Knight of the Order of Arts and Lettres from the French Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin.
Plauché will receive the honorary distinction, one of the four ministerial orders of the French Republic, at a gala event held on Sept. 13 in Chicago. She follows in the footsteps of previous American recipients including Dave Kehr, Uma Thurman and Jim Jarmusch.
Bachelot-Narquin announced the tribute to Plauché in a letter and praised the artistic director for her “contribution and commitment to cultural service.” The Order of Arts and Letters recognizes “eminent artists and writers, as well as people who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world.”
“I am so pleased that Mimi Plauché is receiving this French award that acknowledges her outstanding professional achievements as an internationally recognized programming director who throughout her...
Plauché will receive the honorary distinction, one of the four ministerial orders of the French Republic, at a gala event held on Sept. 13 in Chicago. She follows in the footsteps of previous American recipients including Dave Kehr, Uma Thurman and Jim Jarmusch.
Bachelot-Narquin announced the tribute to Plauché in a letter and praised the artistic director for her “contribution and commitment to cultural service.” The Order of Arts and Letters recognizes “eminent artists and writers, as well as people who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world.”
“I am so pleased that Mimi Plauché is receiving this French award that acknowledges her outstanding professional achievements as an internationally recognized programming director who throughout her...
- 8/24/2021
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Suzanne Desrocher was tending bar in Toronto when she noticed that the tall guy with white hair was becoming a regular. “I had spied him and thought he was some kind of an artist.” She didn’t know who he was at first. An ex-boyfriend finally made a proper introduction one night. His name was George A. Romero and he was in town making the movie Land of the Dead, then in post-production. Did Suzanne wanna come over and watch it? “I was a bit nervous about it. I’d heard he was a zombie director and that wasn’t my kind of thing, I thought it was gonna be trash. I wanted to polite,” she said with a laugh. “He shut the TV off and said, ‘What did you think?’” I told him, ‘It’s not that bad!’ He roared with laughter. I couldn’t have reviewed the film better.
- 6/9/2021
- by Scout Tafoya
- The Film Stage
The crowning achievement of a once-in-a-lifetime career, Manoel de Oliveira’s Francisca has been restored in 4K by the Portuguese Cinematheque and will (virtually) hit U.S. shores this November 13 from Grasshopper Film. In advance of that release comes a new trailer that displays this film’s sumptuous beauty—its compositional integrity, its close attention to color and shape, its stirring soundtrack.
One need not intimately know Oliveira’s filmography to experience Francisca, which often plays like a lavish Visconti epic honed to its most essential dramatic and formal pieces—or as Dave Kehr said, “as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls.” If that’s even slightly to your liking, prepare to bliss out.
Find the trailer and poster (designed by Midnight Marauder) below:
The post Francisca Trailer: Manoel de Oliveira's Masterpiece is Restored in 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.
One need not intimately know Oliveira’s filmography to experience Francisca, which often plays like a lavish Visconti epic honed to its most essential dramatic and formal pieces—or as Dave Kehr said, “as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls.” If that’s even slightly to your liking, prepare to bliss out.
Find the trailer and poster (designed by Midnight Marauder) below:
The post Francisca Trailer: Manoel de Oliveira's Masterpiece is Restored in 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 11/3/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
An alley just off Cahuenga Boulevard and south of Hollywood Boulevard is the focus of a highbrow hype campaign.
More than 120 five-star reviews so far have been posted on Google Maps in an attempt to foment interest in turning it into a historic landmark for its contribution to film's silent era. The contributors range from scholars — including USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Leonard Maltin: "This is Hollywood history come to life"; and MoMA film curator Dave Kehr: "Every self-respecting cinephile should make a pilgrimage" — to descendants like the grandson of Charlie Chaplin's cameraman ...
More than 120 five-star reviews so far have been posted on Google Maps in an attempt to foment interest in turning it into a historic landmark for its contribution to film's silent era. The contributors range from scholars — including USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Leonard Maltin: "This is Hollywood history come to life"; and MoMA film curator Dave Kehr: "Every self-respecting cinephile should make a pilgrimage" — to descendants like the grandson of Charlie Chaplin's cameraman ...
An alley just off Cahuenga Boulevard and south of Hollywood Boulevard is the focus of a highbrow hype campaign.
More than 120 five-star reviews so far have been posted on Google Maps in an attempt to foment interest in turning it into a historic landmark for its contribution to film's silent era. The contributors range from scholars — including USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Leonard Maltin: "This is Hollywood history come to life"; and MoMA film curator Dave Kehr: "Every self-respecting cinephile should make a pilgrimage" — to descendants like the grandson of Charlie Chaplin's cameraman ...
More than 120 five-star reviews so far have been posted on Google Maps in an attempt to foment interest in turning it into a historic landmark for its contribution to film's silent era. The contributors range from scholars — including USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Leonard Maltin: "This is Hollywood history come to life"; and MoMA film curator Dave Kehr: "Every self-respecting cinephile should make a pilgrimage" — to descendants like the grandson of Charlie Chaplin's cameraman ...
May 23 marks the 40th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” and while today it may be hard to dispute its masterpiece status, the Stephen King adaptation did not satisfy critics in 1980. Sure, the movie has spawned countless imitations and parodies, the sequel “Doctor Sleep,” and even an entire documentary centered on its many obsessives and their far-fetched close reads with “Room 237.” But its legacy wasn’t certain when Warner Bros. opened the movie, which went on to earn two Razzie Awards at the first ceremony in 1981. Author King has famously derided the Kubrick adaptation as “misogynistic” and “cold,” but he did give his stamp of approval for “Doctor Sleep” last year. Here’s a sample of what first reviews for “The Shining” had to say in 1980.
“Though we may admire the effects, we’re never drawn in by them, mesmerized. When we see a flash of bloody cadavers...
“Though we may admire the effects, we’re never drawn in by them, mesmerized. When we see a flash of bloody cadavers...
- 5/23/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
“If all of the people who hate ‘Ishtar’ had seen it,” Elaine May famously said, “I would be a rich woman today.” On Wikipedia’s list of the biggest box-office disasters, with losses over $100 million (at current dollar values), “Ishtar” doesn’t even rate a mention. That’s because the movie lost about $91 million — more in the range of a box-office dud like “Cats.”
But to this day, Elaine May’s 1987 comedy adventure about two floundering singer/songwriters meandering around the Sahara — played by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman — is considered one of Hollywood’s great box-office debacles, rivaled only by Michael Cimino’s studio-destroying “Heaven’s Gate,” with its loss of $126 million.
Here’s why “Ishtar” outlasted so many bigger money-losers as the poster child for a troubled belly-flop.
Media Coverage
From in front, “Ishtar” was a troubled production. One red flag went up when May (who directed the hit...
But to this day, Elaine May’s 1987 comedy adventure about two floundering singer/songwriters meandering around the Sahara — played by Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman — is considered one of Hollywood’s great box-office debacles, rivaled only by Michael Cimino’s studio-destroying “Heaven’s Gate,” with its loss of $126 million.
Here’s why “Ishtar” outlasted so many bigger money-losers as the poster child for a troubled belly-flop.
Media Coverage
From in front, “Ishtar” was a troubled production. One red flag went up when May (who directed the hit...
- 5/17/2020
- by Tom Brueggemann
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbel Ferrara's SiberiaThe Berlin Film Festival Competition lineup has finally been unveiled, revealing a roster of heavy hitters that includes Ilya Khrzhanovsky's controversial installation project Dau, Abel Ferrara's long-delayed Siberia, Hong Sang-soo's latest The Woman Who Ran, and the anticipated return of Christian Petzold, Rithy Panh, Tsai Ming-liang, Sally Potter, and Philippe Garrel. Actor, writer, and director Terry Jones, best known for his involvement in the Monty Python comedy group and for directing the 1983 Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, has died. Recommended VIEWINGGrasshopper Films has released a trailer for Pedro Costa's bold Vitalina Varela, about a woman who arrives in Lisbon from Cape Verde to attend her estranged husband's funeral. Upon its premiere at 2019's Locarno Film Festival, editor Daniel Kasman described it as "a film of fierce determination and paramount resonance.
- 1/29/2020
- MUBI
“Get out of here Anthony, or I’ll shout your bloody ears off!”
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout (1978) starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, and John Hurt screens Saturday, November 2nd at Webster University’s Moor Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave) at 7:30pm. A Facebook invite for the film can be found Here
Esteemed film critic Dave Kehr once described The Shout as “a trance thriller that beats Peter Weir on his own turf.” This surrealist horror film, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes upon its 1978 premiere, is told in flashback over the course of a cricket match taking place at a mental hospital. The narrator of these flashbacks is Charles Crossley (Alan Bates), previously a resident among Australian aborigines, who, alongside other skills, managed to pick up the ability to cut loose with a shout so extreme that it kills all who hear it. Co-starring Tim Curry, just...
Director Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout (1978) starring Alan Bates, Susannah York, and John Hurt screens Saturday, November 2nd at Webster University’s Moor Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave) at 7:30pm. A Facebook invite for the film can be found Here
Esteemed film critic Dave Kehr once described The Shout as “a trance thriller that beats Peter Weir on his own turf.” This surrealist horror film, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes upon its 1978 premiere, is told in flashback over the course of a cricket match taking place at a mental hospital. The narrator of these flashbacks is Charles Crossley (Alan Bates), previously a resident among Australian aborigines, who, alongside other skills, managed to pick up the ability to cut loose with a shout so extreme that it kills all who hear it. Co-starring Tim Curry, just...
- 10/28/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
While it sometimes comes across platitudinous and trite, one cannot stay in any conversation about arthouse film more than five minutes without hearing the phrase “auteur” tossed out. It has become a tad sterile, but, as Andrew Dudley pointed out in The Major Film Theories, it is a valid form of critical theory. So for an August Blu-ray round-up, the conversation will revolve around three classic Hollywood “auteurs” and films from each that often go overlooked. Kino Lorber released Billy Wilder’s critique of war-time Hollywood, A Foreign Affair; the Warner Archive presented John Ford’s passion project Wagon Master; and Criterion added Douglas Sirk’s first foray into widescreen Technicolor, Magnificent Obsession, to their illustrious collection. While each release is a fairly underrated title in their director’s larger filmography, a close watch unveils tricks and tropes that each respective filmmaker would later use in their more popular works.
- 8/29/2019
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
In a 2016 New York Times profile of A-list event wrangler Peggy Siegal, Alex Williams wrote, “On her way to meet an old friend, John Travolta, at her party for his new FX mini-series, ‘The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story,’ at Monkey Bar, it seemed clear that Ms. Siegal is in no hurry to leave the social pinnacle she spent a lifetime clawing to reach.” Now, after three decades, her association with accused sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has pushed the 72-year-old social hostess off that peak: Variety reports that Annapurna, Netflix, and FX have pulled their accounts.
Siegal has singular skills when it comes to mixing and matching the lists of New York’s elite movers and shakers across all social sectors — literary, media, art, finance, and entertainment. She works hard to set up lunches, dinners, screenings, and parties attended by some 800 New York-area Academy members.
However, somehow...
Siegal has singular skills when it comes to mixing and matching the lists of New York’s elite movers and shakers across all social sectors — literary, media, art, finance, and entertainment. She works hard to set up lunches, dinners, screenings, and parties attended by some 800 New York-area Academy members.
However, somehow...
- 7/23/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
In a 2016 New York Times profile of A-list event wrangler Peggy Siegal, Alex Williams wrote, “On her way to meet an old friend, John Travolta, at her party for his new FX mini-series, ‘The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story,’ at Monkey Bar, it seemed clear that Ms. Siegal is in no hurry to leave the social pinnacle she spent a lifetime clawing to reach.” Now, after three decades, her association with accused sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein has pushed the 72-year-old social hostess off that peak: Variety reports that Annapurna, Netflix, and FX have pulled their accounts.
Siegal has singular skills when it comes to mixing and matching the lists of New York’s elite movers and shakers across all social sectors — literary, media, art, finance, and entertainment. She works hard to set up lunches, dinners, screenings, and parties attended by some 800 New York-area Academy members.
However, somehow...
Siegal has singular skills when it comes to mixing and matching the lists of New York’s elite movers and shakers across all social sectors — literary, media, art, finance, and entertainment. She works hard to set up lunches, dinners, screenings, and parties attended by some 800 New York-area Academy members.
However, somehow...
- 7/23/2019
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for Peter Strickland's In Fabric, which stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a woman who purchases a haunted dress from a sinister boutique. The long awaited trailer to Hideo Kojima's new boundary-pushing video game Death Stranding, which by way of motion capture stars the likes of Norman Reedus, Léa Seydoux, Mads Mikkelsen, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Guillermo del Toro.Alien: The Play, a North Bergen High School production that features handmade costumes made of recycled materials, is now available online in its entirety. In the latest edition of the Museum of Modern Art's "How To See" series, curator Dave Kehr discusses how the nitrate prints and negatives of cinema's early days inspired audiences by expanding their perception of the world. Miranda July directs the music video for Sleater-Kinney's "Hurry On Home,...
- 5/29/2019
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (1965) is showing on Mubi from May 8 – June 6, 2019.Critics have often noted Straub/Huillet's preference for diagonals, for instance, but have underestimated the aesthetic and thematic significance of the contrast with more symmetrical composition. Scenes in Not Reconciled involving the characters' inability to reconcile past and present are most often shot in diagonals. In addition to making a simple set “vibrate with life,” Straub/Huillet's diagonal shots keep the viewer from relaxing at the point of a perspective triangle in relation to the screen. In this way they are able to vary the sense of narrative space inherent in all three-dimensional pictorial representations. Not only is the viewer not at rest as the subject for whom the composition...
- 5/9/2019
- MUBI
Cinema St. Louis presents the 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival which takes place March 8-10, 15-17, and 22-24, 2019. The location this year is Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth & Skinker boulevards.
The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...
The 11th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE and produced by Cinema St. Louis — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1930s through the 1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema. The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features seven such works: Pierre Schoendoerffer “The 317th Platoon,” Marcel Pagnol’s “The Baker’s Wife,” Olivier Assayas’ “Cold Water,” Jacques Becker’s “The Hole,” Jacques Rivette’s “The Nun,” Agnés Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” and Diane Kurys’ “Peppermint Soda.” The schedule is rounded out by Robert Bresson’s final film, “L’argent,” and two 1969 films celebrating...
- 3/12/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Above: Title lobby card for 3 Bad Men.The Museum of Modern Art in New York is in the middle of the second part of their essential series of films made by the Fox Film Corporation between 1920 and 1933. Born in Hungary in 1879 but raised in New York, William Fox (born Wilhelm Fuchs) bought his first Nickelodeon in 1904 and spent ten years as an exhibitor and distributor before setting up the Fox Film Corporation production company in 1915 in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The studio eventually moved to Hollywood and for twenty years—before merging with Twentieth Century Pictures to form 20th Century Fox in 1935—was, as MoMA says, “home to the most dazzling lineup of directorial talent in the studio era. As silent film transitioned into sound, Fox’s roster of directors included Frank Borzage, Allan Dwan, John Ford, Howard Hawks, William K. Howard, Henry King, William Cameron Menzies, F. W. Murnau,...
- 3/8/2019
- MUBI
In 2018 we've published 70 interviews whose subjects have ranged from old masters to emerging new voices, and including some unexpected conversations, including those with curators (Dave Kehr of the Museum of Modern Art), as well as archival finds (a 1971 talk with Jerry Lewis).Below you will find an index of our conversations throughout the year, listed in order of publication date.Blake Williams (Prototype)Samira Elagoz (Craigslist Allstars)F.J. Ossang (9 Fingers)Jerry LewisAndré Gil Mata (The Tree)Christian Petzold (Transit)Raoul Peck (Young Karl Marx)Ashley McKenzie (Werewolf)Penelope SpheerisTed Fendt (Classical Period)Dominik Graf (The Red Shadow)Blake Williams ("Stereo Visions")Arnaud Desplechin (Ismael's Ghosts)Ruth Beckermann (The Waldheim Waltz)Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote)Esther GarrelPhilippe Garrel (Lover for a Day)Jonas MekasJohann Lurf (★)Karim Aïnouz (Central Airport Thf)Juliana Antunes (Baronesa)Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage)Wang Bing (Dead Souls)Donal Foreman...
- 12/27/2018
- MUBI
In Fabric is a film that’s wholly retro, and not just in how writer/director (and emerging remix artist) Peter Strickland embraces ’70s Euro-horror tropes (and even judging by one commercial glimpsed on a television; a little bit of vaporwave). Rather, the director longs for a time before Amazon decimated the retail industry, one when a person’s hopes and desires hinged on a trip to that one certain shop.
The film begins with a single mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) putting out a lonely hearts ad in the newspaper, desperately needing a distraction from her ungrateful teenage son and comically micro-managing superiors at work. Looking to find the right dress for a blind date, she finds herself in a shop seemingly run by a clan of witches and one old creep; a certain red number on sale catching her eye. Though from there, it only brings her trouble; ranging from...
The film begins with a single mother (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) putting out a lonely hearts ad in the newspaper, desperately needing a distraction from her ungrateful teenage son and comically micro-managing superiors at work. Looking to find the right dress for a blind date, she finds herself in a shop seemingly run by a clan of witches and one old creep; a certain red number on sale catching her eye. Though from there, it only brings her trouble; ranging from...
- 9/9/2018
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.News We are devastated to learn that the late Theodoros Angelopoulos' home, which housed the director's archives, has burnt down amidst the Attica wildfires in Greece. It is currently unclear what has been lost in the fire. This is the house that housed the whole archives of late director Theo Angelopoulos. Everything has been burnt. A massive loss to not only modern Greek culture but world culture. pic.twitter.com/DM60QxWP6a— Konn1e (@ntina79) July 25, 2018Recommended Viewing The ever-elegant "Mandopop diva" Faye Wong reprises her cover of The Cranberries' "Dreams"—best known for its appearance in Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express—in the first episode of Phantacity, a Chinese variety show that creates "music video-worthy performances." The full episode can be viewed here. Lucrecia Martel has directed a music video for Argentine...
- 8/1/2018
- MUBI
One thing that distinguished this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato festival of rare, rediscovered or restored cinema from around the world was the air-conditioning. In previous years, the "cinephile's heaven" had seen people falling asleep at films they'd waited their whole lives to see, struck down by stifling midsummer heat. Now, even that beloved cinematic sweatbox the Jolly can cool its customers enough to mostly stave off somnolence, and if a hardboiled cinephage does pass out, it's more likely to be due to the unforgiving schedule of nine-to-midnight viewings.The doughty traveler can concentrate on seeing everything in one or two strands—retrospectives on the cinema of 1898 and 1918, the work of directors John M. Stahl, Marcello Pagliero, Luciano Emmer and Ylmaz Guney, the studio Fox, the countries China and Russia in the early thirties, and so on... or they can do as I did, sampling almost randomly from across the goodies on offer.
- 7/23/2018
- MUBI
Illustration by Yuwei Qiu.An outlier among film festivals, Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna is a lost paradise for cinephiles, comprising an apparently limitless retrospective treasure-trove. It is an outlier in the sense that there are few celebrities in attendance, there is no red carpet, no tiered delegate passes, and only a handful of very minor premieres (mostly documentaries about the old movies that otherwise dominate). All manner of movie-obsessives descend upon the city every summer, habitually exceeding the capacity of the festival's four indoor cinemas. Amidst the bustle, it is a place democratic in spirit and outwardly joyous in feeling. But the bounty in evidence on each and every page of the festival’s program puts hard-core movie buffs in a double-bind: seek out super-rarities that can only be found in the smaller, darker cinemas or bask in the glory of a canonical classic, whether rediscovered or seen, in such ideal conditions,...
- 7/23/2018
- MUBI
Film critic Dave Kehr is now a curator in the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, but in 2011 he published a reviews collection, “When Movies Mattered.” It mostly covered movies of the ’70s and ’80s, years that saw film and criticism elevated to more serious consideration. I have been thinking of his book with A24’s release of Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed.” Now in its third weekend, it’s passed the $1 million mark in just 91 theaters.
That’s promising, but it’s not the gross that interests me most. What’s compelling is the combination of critical attention and theatrical response, which represents a victory for the increasingly endangered world of specialized film.
Here’s are are some reasons why the film could mean so much more than a modest box-office success.
It doesn’t fit the mold of what gets made, or what gets audience attention.
That’s promising, but it’s not the gross that interests me most. What’s compelling is the combination of critical attention and theatrical response, which represents a victory for the increasingly endangered world of specialized film.
Here’s are are some reasons why the film could mean so much more than a modest box-office success.
It doesn’t fit the mold of what gets made, or what gets audience attention.
- 6/6/2018
- by Tom Brueggemann
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSToday is Agnès Varda's 90th birthday. In accordance, we have to re-share cléo's latest issue dedicated entirely to the auteur.Recommended VIEWINGAcclaimed French auteur Jacques Audiard has finally made his first American film, in the form of a star-studded Western. Check out the trailer below.We're equally fans of both the recording artist Mitski and filmmaker Zia Anger. Thus, we're naturally enamored by this new song and video for "Geyser," which finds Anger's usual graceful compositions and blocking further animating the gorgeous new track.Below: MoMA curator Dave Kehr shares details on the many difficulties of restoring Ernst Lubtisch's first American film, Rosita.Recommended READINGIn the event of the major Sylvia Chang retrospective at New York's Metrograph, writer Fariha Róisín has penned a lovely overview of the many talents of the master...
- 5/30/2018
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe're pleased to announce that Mubi is continuing our collaboration with Filmadrid International Film Festival to bring a section dedicated to the art of the video essay to this year's edition of the festival.Recommended VIEWINGIn celebration of the centennial of André Bazin, the original critical proponent for long takes and deep focus, Dave Kehr aptly shares this breathtaking 1-hour-long jaunt through Tokyo:
In honor of Andre Bazin's 100th birthday, here's a link to my favorite YouTube long take stylist, Guy Who Walks Around Tokyo, aka Rambalac.https://t.co/w1AXCgy7Ym— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) April 18, 2018 The trailer (now with English subtitles!) for Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest—and mighty promising—family drama, set to premiere at Cannes next month:Conversely, here's the U.S. trailer for the latest movie by another similarly hyper-productive auteur,...
In honor of Andre Bazin's 100th birthday, here's a link to my favorite YouTube long take stylist, Guy Who Walks Around Tokyo, aka Rambalac.https://t.co/w1AXCgy7Ym— Dave Kehr (@dave_kehr) April 18, 2018 The trailer (now with English subtitles!) for Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest—and mighty promising—family drama, set to premiere at Cannes next month:Conversely, here's the U.S. trailer for the latest movie by another similarly hyper-productive auteur,...
- 4/25/2018
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe great French actor Stéphane Audran has died at the age of 85. David Hudson provides a thoughtful remembrance and career overview for The Daily.Following their producer-director collaboration on Amazon's underrated Red Oaks series, 90s contemporaries Gregg Araki and Steven Soderbergh are re-teaming for a most promising new Starz series entitled Now Apocalypse. Recommended VIEWINGFilm critic and Museum of Modern Art curator Dave Kehr investigates the many aspects that compose a western, and more largely, the genre's influence, origins, legacy, and future, in this wonderful video essay:The first trailer for Under the Silver Lake, David Robert Mitchell's long anticipated (and Thomas Pynchon inspired?) follow up to It Follows:Kino Lorber is re-releasing Personal Problems, a forgotten masterwork by Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess) and an early and essential experiment in video filmmaking. Here's...
- 3/28/2018
- MUBI
The Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series continues this weekend. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.
There are two more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 16th at 7:30pm – Alphaville
A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Jean-Luc Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of the malevolent Alpha 60, a computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s beautiful daughter Natasha (Godard...
There are two more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 16th at 7:30pm – Alphaville
A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Jean-Luc Godard’s irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of the malevolent Alpha 60, a computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s beautiful daughter Natasha (Godard...
- 3/13/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAndré S. Labarthe, critic and producer of the long running Cinéastes de notre temps film series covering famed film directors, has died.In memory of André S. Labarthe, who, with Janine Bazin, created the TV series Cinéastes de notre temps, a historic, inexhaustible trove of filmed portraits of directors and interviews with them and associates (too often only seen as DVD-extra snippets): https://t.co/t7qm8AlT4b— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) March 5, 2018Following a report earlier this year, award winning director Kim Ki-duk has been further accused of sexual abuse. The actresses making said claims remain anonymous in fear of being publicly shamed, Yahoo reports.Quentin Tarantino is making moves on his controversial new project, which appears in part to concern the Manson family murders. Variety reports that Brad Pitt has joined the project alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.
- 3/8/2018
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended Viewinga stunning trailer for the 4k restoration and re-release of Legend of the Mountain (1979), an under-seen, contemplative action masterpiece by Come Drink with Me and A Touch of Zen director King Hu.Hong Sang-soo's On the Beach at Night Alone gets a wry and incisive new trailer for its imminent U.S. release. We wrote on the film in February, and later interviewed the director about it.For De Filmkrant, Notebook contributors Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin investigate in a new video essay the virtuous modulation to be found in Howard Hawks' and Barbara Stanwyck's talents in Ball of Fire.Commissioned by Renzo, Le CiNéMa Club has premiered three inspired short films from Mati Diop, Eduardo Williams, and Baptist Penetticobra all loosely interpreting the theme "Inhabit the earth".Recommended READINGIn...
- 11/8/2017
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGWes Anderson's latest experimentation in stop-motion, Isle of Dogs, gets its disturbing yet droll first trailer.Valentine, above, is a selection of intimate videos directed by Paul Thomas Anderson of Haim's live sessions of cuts from their latest album, Something to Tell You.We adore Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's most recent film, The Assassin, and highly anticipate this new restoration for his difficult to see 1987 film drama, Daughter of the Nile. Grasshopper Film has bravely made Jean-Marie Straub's 2-minute masterpiece The Algerian War! available for free on their website.Recommended Reading"I began thinking that Mothlight must begin with the unraveling of a cocoon and end with some simulation of candle flame or electric heat (as all moths whose wings were being used in the film had been collected from enclosed...
- 9/27/2017
- MUBI
When Dave Kehr reviewed director Joseph Ruben’s The Stepfather in The Chicago Tribune on the occasion of its initial theatrical release, he wrote, “Watching The Stepfather, with its near-perfect command of the entire vocabulary of filmmaking, it’s hard to believe that Joseph Ruben isn’t one of the best-known directors working today.” That was over 30 years ago, and while Kehr’s hope that Ruben would be universally recognized as one of the greats never quite came to pass, it should have — the critic was 100% correct in his assessment of Ruben’s mastery. The Stepfather was an extraordinary film, a low-budget […]...
- 9/15/2017
- by Jim Hemphill
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe are devastated by the death of performer and director Jerry Lewis this week at the age of 91, one of the 20th century's greatest—and most inspiring—artists. Dave Kehr for The New York Times has penned an excellent obituary, and it's worth revisiting Christoph Huber's 2013 coverage of the Viennale's epic retrospective of Lewis's work as an actor and a filmmaker. Last year, Adrian Curry published a selection of the international poster designs for Lewis's films.The Locarno Festival wrapped last week, with the top prize going to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing's Mrs. Fang. We were at the festival covering it day by day, including its retrospective of Hollywood genre director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past). See all the awards and read our coverage from the Swiss film festival.Recommended VIEWINGThe...
- 8/23/2017
- MUBI
Thanks be to the generous souls on Letterboxd who run the“Not Andrew Sarris” and “Not Dave Kehr” accounts with their thoughtful capsule reviews. When logging my viewing for Metrograph’s upcoming series, On Fire Island, I found reviews for Andy Warhol and Chuck Wein’s My Hustler, Frank Perry’s Last Summer, and Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances by the aforementioned critics. Stan Lopresto’s Sticks and Stones and Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand (also screening in the series) are noticeably missing professional critiques. Looking further, Last Summer is the only film of the five to receive a fair shake from a robust number of film critics and the write-ups for My Hustler and Parting Glances are more first impressions than researched arguments.
On Fire Island is programmed by Michael Lieberman, head of publicity at Metrograph, and picks up the critical slack with programming-as-criticism. The series is...
On Fire Island is programmed by Michael Lieberman, head of publicity at Metrograph, and picks up the critical slack with programming-as-criticism. The series is...
- 8/10/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
One of the quirks of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna's annual jamboree celebrating restored or rediscovered movies, is that expensive products of the Hollywood studio system can be just as obscure and hard-to-see as low-budget oddities, foreign arthouse affairs and forgotten silents from a hundred years ago. Dave Kehr's retrospective of neglected items from Universal's vaults demonstrates this clearly.James Whale always liked to say By Candlelight was his favorite of his own films, bypassing the more celebrated Frankenstein films. It's a romantic comedy of confused identities and it's no surprise that P.G. Wodehouse had a hand in the stage source.But in this movie, when a butler impersonates his master in order to seduce a wealthy lady who turns out to be a maid impersonating her mistress, all the irony of Wodehouse's inversion of traditional ideas about class has gone. All right, so George Orwell argued persuasively that Wodehouse...
- 7/6/2017
- MUBI
Bénédicte de Montlaur with Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters honoree Dave Kehr Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
On a beautiful late spring afternoon in New York, across the street from Central Park and a few blocks down from The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, Museum of Modern Art curator in the Film Department Dave Kehr was presented with the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy Bénédicte de Montlaur (dressed in Diane von Furstenberg) at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
For Films on the Green, Isabella Rossellini has chosen Jean Renoir's Elena and Her Men, starring Ingrid Bergman Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Past American recipients include Robert Redford, Paul Auster, Uma Thurman, Ornette Coleman, Jim Jarmusch, Agnes Gund, Marilyn Horne, Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, and Meryl Streep.
The 10th anniversary of Films on the Green had guest curators Wes Anderson,...
On a beautiful late spring afternoon in New York, across the street from Central Park and a few blocks down from The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue, Museum of Modern Art curator in the Film Department Dave Kehr was presented with the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy Bénédicte de Montlaur (dressed in Diane von Furstenberg) at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.
For Films on the Green, Isabella Rossellini has chosen Jean Renoir's Elena and Her Men, starring Ingrid Bergman Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Past American recipients include Robert Redford, Paul Auster, Uma Thurman, Ornette Coleman, Jim Jarmusch, Agnes Gund, Marilyn Horne, Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, and Meryl Streep.
The 10th anniversary of Films on the Green had guest curators Wes Anderson,...
- 6/17/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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