Up the Academy

Jul 28, 2017 — One of the wittiest chroniclers of modern American life, Albert Brooks talks with filmmaker Robert Weide about how he arrived at the concept for Lost in America. Also: a few words from James L. Brooks.

Jul 27, 2017 — Venice International Film Festival director Alberto Barbara has presented the lineup for the seventy-fourth edition (August 30 through September 9) at a press conference in Rome. I’ve gathered notes and trailers.CompetitionAi Weiwei’s Human Flow. From the Hollywood Reporter’s Tatiana Siegel:...

Jul 15, 2017 — “The film’s tag line was ‘They share the same body . . . but hate each other’s guts!’ I was told that the timing was a coincidence, but even before the film began it was clear that this was a...

Jun 10, 2017 — On Wednesday, Martin Scorsese, in partnership with the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO, officially launched the African Film Heritage Project. The Film Foundation, founded and chaired by Scorsese, will take part in the restoration of fifty African films....

May 31, 2017 — New York. The BAMcinématek series Varda in California opens today and runs through June 13. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody recommends Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969): “Filming this docu-fiction in Los Angeles in June, 1968, the week...

May 17, 2017 — Welcome to the first entry of the Daily at the Criterion Collection. For those of you who don’t know me, since 2003 I’ve been gathering links to essential—or simply fun—reading, news stories, and items of interest into a sort of...

Jul 7, 2016 — In honor of the director, we look back at his quintessentially American narratives.

Apr 27, 2016 — In Phoenix, Christian Petzold sets his nuanced melodrama of postwar German-Jewish identity within a starkly realist aesthetic, making newly fascinating use of his enduring interest in the tensions between the real and the artificial.

Oct 2, 2014 — The following is a chapter on The Innocents from cinematographer Freddie Francis’s memoir, The Straight Story from “Moby Dick” to “Glory.” It is reproduced here courtesy of Scarecrow Press. The last picture I worked on as a cinematographer in my...

Jun 5, 2014 — The following is excerpted from an interview with Red River editor Christian Nyby that critic Ric Gentry conducted in 1991.