The Look

Aug 30, 2017 — “Can there be any clearer signal of reality warping as we hurtle toward imminent apocalypse than the fact that Alexander Payne has made a life-affirming film?” asks Jessica Kiang at the Playlist. “Venice opener Downsizing takes the long road getting...

Aug 23, 2017 — We’re opening today’s entry with the “goings on” items because today’s must-read comes from Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. He assures us that he’s “not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been waiting most of my life to see...

Aug 18, 2017 — In this unsparing drama, Mike Leigh captures the grim mood of Thatcher’s England through the frustrations of a working-class London family.

Aug 7, 2017 — The big news to catch up with here is the launch of Film Critic: Adrian Martin, “almost 20 years, on and off, in the making.” Adrian Martin has been writing essential film criticism for four decades now, and what’s collected...

Jul 31, 2017 — Broadway World has broken the sad and startling news that “playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director Sam Shepard has passed away. Shepard, who had been ill with ALS for some time, died peacefully on July 27 at his home in...

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 24, 2017 — In Issue 13 of Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, editors Loretta Goff and Caroline V. Schroeter “bring together eight articles from around the world that interrogate the representation of race, ethnicity and identity on screen.”Kenta McGrath writes about...

Jul 19, 2017 — Todd Haynes will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor, the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, on August 7. The festival will also screen Haynes’s 1991 film Poison (image above). Jean-Marie Straub will receive his Pardo d’onore Manor on August 11.For...

Jul 17, 2017 — The Venice International Film Festival, whose seventy-fourth edition will run from August 30 through September 9, has announced that, on September 1, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford will each be presented a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. This will happen...

Jul 17, 2017 — “Martin Landau, the tall, intense, sometimes mischievously sinister actor best known for his role in the television series Mission: Impossible and his Oscar-winning portrayal of Bela Lugosi in the film Ed Wood, died Saturday in Los Angeles,” reports Anita Gates...