Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook.Newsa Different Man.IATSE, Teamsters, and the Hollywood Basic Crafts unions began bargaining jointly with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after a thousands-strong rally in Los Angeles. In Variety, IATSE president Matthew Loeb discusses the union’s priorities and the threat of another strike after the current contract expires on July 31.In an open letter, Carlo Chatrian, the outgoing artistic director of the Berlinale, and Mark Peranson, the festival’s head of programming, respond to the backlash that followed the closing ceremony, at which a number of award recipients called for a ceasefire in Gaza: “This year’s festival was a place for dialogue and exchange for ten days; yet once the films stopped rolling, another form of communication...
- 3/6/2024
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe’re thrilled to introduce Notebook’s email newsletter, the Weekly Edit: a mix of our latest essays, interviews, and festival coverage, with a few archival gems to boot. Learn more and sign up here.REMEMBERINGThe Cow.This weekend brought devastating news that Dariush Mehrjui, the landmark Iranian filmmaker, and his wife and screenwriting partner Vahideh Mohammadifar were found murdered in their home. A lifelong enemy of state censorship, Mehrjui helped kick off the Iranian New Wave with his second feature, The Cow (1969), which was denied an export permit when it was originally completed. “Despite the fact that the film was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, the Pahlavi regime preferred not to have the film’s portrayal of rural Iranian village life color the nation’s desired image of modernity on the world stage,...
- 10/18/2023
- MUBI
Julien’s Auctions announced the launch of the exclusive, online charity auction Music Health Alliance Second Annual Handwritten Lyrics Auction at juliensauctions.com for advance bidding beginning Friday, October 15th, 2021 to coincide with Heal The Music Day.
The auction will start closing in real time and in lot order for live bidding at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, November 1st, 2021. Proceeds will benefit Music Health Alliance whose mission is to Heal the Music by providing access to healthcare through services that protect, direct and connect music professionals with medical and financial situations.
For the second consecutive year, the world-record breaking auction house to the stars partnered with a marquee list of the most decorated and influential singers and songwriters of all time, across the genres of pop, rock, country, folk, americana, and gospel music, who personally donated handwritten lyrics of some of their most classic and ground-breaking hits to...
The auction will start closing in real time and in lot order for live bidding at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday, November 1st, 2021. Proceeds will benefit Music Health Alliance whose mission is to Heal the Music by providing access to healthcare through services that protect, direct and connect music professionals with medical and financial situations.
For the second consecutive year, the world-record breaking auction house to the stars partnered with a marquee list of the most decorated and influential singers and songwriters of all time, across the genres of pop, rock, country, folk, americana, and gospel music, who personally donated handwritten lyrics of some of their most classic and ground-breaking hits to...
- 10/19/2021
- Look to the Stars
On the release of what was to be the late Monte Hellman’s final feature film in 2011, critic Steve Erickson noted “Monte Hellman is the ultimate outlaw filmmaker.”
A decade earlier, filmmaker-critic Kent Jones wrote that “anything written in America about Monte Hellman … cinema’s most under-appreciated great director … must be a defense.”
Decades before Jones’ astute assessment, film critic David Thomson had noted, “No system could digest the willful arbitrariness of Monte Hellman’s best films,” which is probably as clear an explanation of why Hellman made only one Hollywood Studio film in a directing career that stretched from 1959 to 2011 and included stints as Jack Nicholson’s filmmaking partner and Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut enabler-producer.
That assessment of Hellman’s importance, that notion that a defensive posture is the inevitable position of the Hellman fan and the idea that Hellman’s Hollywood Failure was his greatest success, all...
A decade earlier, filmmaker-critic Kent Jones wrote that “anything written in America about Monte Hellman … cinema’s most under-appreciated great director … must be a defense.”
Decades before Jones’ astute assessment, film critic David Thomson had noted, “No system could digest the willful arbitrariness of Monte Hellman’s best films,” which is probably as clear an explanation of why Hellman made only one Hollywood Studio film in a directing career that stretched from 1959 to 2011 and included stints as Jack Nicholson’s filmmaking partner and Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut enabler-producer.
That assessment of Hellman’s importance, that notion that a defensive posture is the inevitable position of the Hellman fan and the idea that Hellman’s Hollywood Failure was his greatest success, all...
- 4/22/2021
- by Steven Gaydos
- Variety Film + TV
This past week I happily immersed myself in the latest book by protean film critic/biographer/sometime novelist David Thomson, A Light in the Dark: A History of Movie Directors. Even as he approaches 80, the author of the invaluable Biographical Dictionary of Film editions is able to find fresh things to say about such cinematic imperishables as Hitchcock, Welles, Lang, Renoir, Bunuel, Hawks, Godard and Nicholas Ray.
Midway through the new tome, Thomson delivers his most unexpected and welcome piece, a savory appreciation of a director who, almost defiantly, is not an auteur and therefore remains somewhat taken for granted, far too much so, despite having made any number of notable films of considerable class and merit. That would be Stephen Frears, who himself will turn 80 in June.
Like such Hollywood non-auteurs as Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, Don Siegel, Henry Hathaway, Richard Fleischer and any number of others, Frears is not a writer.
Midway through the new tome, Thomson delivers his most unexpected and welcome piece, a savory appreciation of a director who, almost defiantly, is not an auteur and therefore remains somewhat taken for granted, far too much so, despite having made any number of notable films of considerable class and merit. That would be Stephen Frears, who himself will turn 80 in June.
Like such Hollywood non-auteurs as Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, Don Siegel, Henry Hathaway, Richard Fleischer and any number of others, Frears is not a writer.
- 4/21/2021
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
Hr Giger's most famous cinematic creation.
Fourth in Bloomsbury's late-Nineties series of of Movie Guides, this book features David Thomson's musings and history of the Alien franchise, as then was. This 1998 release is now perhaps more interesting as a contemporary reading of the films it covers rather than as coverage of the films itself.
Much of the content is available elsewhere, and much of it has been superseded by further developments. We have fifth and sixth movies in the franchise, Prometheus and Covenant. We've also had the quartet released under the clumsy portmanteau of quadrilogy, when any lexicographer would have perhaps suggested tetralogy if only for its pleasing similarity to teratology. Discussions of scriptwriter Joss Whedon might feature different studies of monstrousness.
Alien: Resurrection, the fourth instalment, was written by Whedon as a precursor to a fifth. The way that Fox handled that business in the looming shadow of Titanic has.
Fourth in Bloomsbury's late-Nineties series of of Movie Guides, this book features David Thomson's musings and history of the Alien franchise, as then was. This 1998 release is now perhaps more interesting as a contemporary reading of the films it covers rather than as coverage of the films itself.
Much of the content is available elsewhere, and much of it has been superseded by further developments. We have fifth and sixth movies in the franchise, Prometheus and Covenant. We've also had the quartet released under the clumsy portmanteau of quadrilogy, when any lexicographer would have perhaps suggested tetralogy if only for its pleasing similarity to teratology. Discussions of scriptwriter Joss Whedon might feature different studies of monstrousness.
Alien: Resurrection, the fourth instalment, was written by Whedon as a precursor to a fifth. The way that Fox handled that business in the looming shadow of Titanic has.
- 3/26/2021
- by Andrew Robertson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The last time I saw Bertrand Tavernier, who died yesterday in Paris at 79, was at the Cannes Film Festival nearly two years ago after the world premiere of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It was after 1 a.m. and my son Nick and I, who had been elated by the film, were walking down a largely empty Rue d’Antibes when I saw Bertrand’s unmistakable bulky frame approaching us. He was with his wife Sarah and I had seen them just a few evenings before in Paris at a gathering of friends of the late Pierre Rissient, cinema champion extraordinaire, who had worked with Bertrand championing films in the 1960s.
With just about anyone else, this would have remained just a brief nocturnal encounter. But talks with Bertrand were seldom short. To the contrary, because Bertrand was almost always a lava flow of opinion, information, insight and, for the most part,...
With just about anyone else, this would have remained just a brief nocturnal encounter. But talks with Bertrand were seldom short. To the contrary, because Bertrand was almost always a lava flow of opinion, information, insight and, for the most part,...
- 3/25/2021
- by Todd McCarthy
- Deadline Film + TV
As 2019 draws to a close, the busy cinephile can mostly be found in his or her natural habitat, the theater. However, there are lots of books to catch up with once Oscar season is finished—or, at least, dies down. Let’s start with two killer eBooks.
Read Also: The Film Stage’s 2019 Holiday Gift Gide
Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook (Seventh Row)
One of the finest film-related texts of 2019 was the Seventh Row team’s analysis of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, and this series of deep cinema exploration continues with Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook. Both eBooks are once again edited by two of the smartest, most readable writers on film art, Orla Smith and Alex Heeney. In Tour of Memories, Smith and Heeney study...
Read Also: The Film Stage’s 2019 Holiday Gift Gide
Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook (Seventh Row)
One of the finest film-related texts of 2019 was the Seventh Row team’s analysis of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, and this series of deep cinema exploration continues with Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook. Both eBooks are once again edited by two of the smartest, most readable writers on film art, Orla Smith and Alex Heeney. In Tour of Memories, Smith and Heeney study...
- 12/26/2019
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
Once upon a time, in a long-forgotten early Hollywood before David O. Selznick was the most famous movie producer of his time, the term "Selznicked" was coined to describe someone who had just lost their shirt. Such was the impact of the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Lewis Selznick, David’s pioneering movie industry father. Lewis, a Russian Jewish immigrant, was a flash-in-the-pan success during the silent era, earning and then going on to lose something like $11 million dollars in the course of a decade. In fact, one of the most powerful and longest-reigning moguls of classical Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, had a grudge against the young Selznick that would have killed most movie careers in the cradle. He warned his besotted daughter Irene that David would amount to nothing ("a bum like his father"), and refused to give the upstart a job at MGM until pressed by other colleagues. Mayer, like the rest of Hollywood elite,...
- 1/25/2019
- MUBI
Hannah Bonner May 11, 2019
Just in time for Mother's Day comes a list of the most twisted and deranged mamas to hit the big screen... with love.
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and we’re celebrating our family matriarchs at Den of Geek. We came up with a list of the most demonic, cruel, and neurotic mothers from the past 70 years in film.
Mothers have always had a macabre tinge dating as far back as Euripides’ play Medea where the titular heroine kills her own children to punish her husband Jason. Then there are the Spartans, who would throw their children off of a cliff if they were deemed too weak to be warriors. Millennia later, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude connives after marrying her son’s uncle, and Madame Bovary would later forgo her daughter and husband’s well being in exchange for flirtations and nice fabrics. Literature and history...
Just in time for Mother's Day comes a list of the most twisted and deranged mamas to hit the big screen... with love.
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and we’re celebrating our family matriarchs at Den of Geek. We came up with a list of the most demonic, cruel, and neurotic mothers from the past 70 years in film.
Mothers have always had a macabre tinge dating as far back as Euripides’ play Medea where the titular heroine kills her own children to punish her husband Jason. Then there are the Spartans, who would throw their children off of a cliff if they were deemed too weak to be warriors. Millennia later, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude connives after marrying her son’s uncle, and Madame Bovary would later forgo her daughter and husband’s well being in exchange for flirtations and nice fabrics. Literature and history...
- 5/4/2016
- Den of Geek
From My Beautiful Laundrette to The Queen and his latest, the much-praised Tamara Drewe, the director boasts a reputation for impatience as well as one of the most diverse outputs of any British film-maker. Famously interview-shy, he talks here of his dislike of agents, the glory days of the BBC, and why he is no auteur
Not liking to be interviewed probably starts with the reluctance to submit yourself to an alien, unpredictable critical gaze, but in Stephen Frears's case it has flowered into a bizarre art form. He'll answer questions in fits and starts, gnomically, in obscure one-liners or by means of silences punctuated by cigarette puffs or plaintive grunts. Always courteous and welcoming, he would just rather you didn't ask questions. "Have you got enough?" he asks at the end of a session, in the full knowledge that you haven't. So you arrange to meet him again...
Not liking to be interviewed probably starts with the reluctance to submit yourself to an alien, unpredictable critical gaze, but in Stephen Frears's case it has flowered into a bizarre art form. He'll answer questions in fits and starts, gnomically, in obscure one-liners or by means of silences punctuated by cigarette puffs or plaintive grunts. Always courteous and welcoming, he would just rather you didn't ask questions. "Have you got enough?" he asks at the end of a session, in the full knowledge that you haven't. So you arrange to meet him again...
- 8/14/2010
- by Nick Fraser
- The Guardian - Film News
Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton have joined the cast of "The Awakening" for StudioCanal and BBC Films reports Deadline.
Hall plays a paranormal investigator in post-WW1 England who sets out to debunk claims of spiritualism. She soon comes across an actual haunting in a countryside boarding school.
Nick Murphy ("Surviving Disaster and Occupation") will direct from a script he co-wrote with Stephen Volk. David Thompson will produce.
Filming kicks off in the UK in late June.
Hall plays a paranormal investigator in post-WW1 England who sets out to debunk claims of spiritualism. She soon comes across an actual haunting in a countryside boarding school.
Nick Murphy ("Surviving Disaster and Occupation") will direct from a script he co-wrote with Stephen Volk. David Thompson will produce.
Filming kicks off in the UK in late June.
- 5/12/2010
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.