My First Film

Sep 25, 2017 — “During one of the meanest passages in American national politics within living memory,” writes Holland Carter in the New York Times, “we’re getting a huge, historically corrective, morale-raising cultural event, one that lasts four months and hits on many of...

Sep 7, 2017 — Joe Wright (Atonement) will direct Casey Affleck in Andrew Bovell’s adaptation of John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner, reports Variety’s Justin Kroll. “The movie will follow the life of William Stoner, a dirt-poor farmer turned academic, who emerges as an unlikely...

Sep 4, 2017 — “Some films have a heat that makes you shrink from the cinema screen,” begins the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, “After this morning’s screening of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, I had to check my eyebrows were still intact. The British-Irish director...

Aug 17, 2017 — Zhao Tao (Mountains May Depart) and Liao Fan (Black Coal, Thin Ice) are set to star in Jia Zhangke’s new film, Ash Is Purest White,” a project formerly known as “Money & Love,” reports Variety’s Elsa Keslassy. “An epic love...

Jul 20, 2017 — This year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato wrapped nearly three weeks ago now, and it’s the kind of festival that has attendees reflecting on each edition months and undoubtedly years down the line. Three especially notable pieces have appeared in just the...

Jul 19, 2017 — “Yvonne Rainer stands as one of the most influential choreographers of the past fifty-plus years,” begins Melissa Anderson in the Village Voice. “In 1962 she co-founded the Judson Dance Theater, that exalted wellspring of experimental movement; a decade later, she...

Jul 11, 2017 — Let’s begin today with the listening and viewing tips, because New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis is Peter Labuza’s guest on The Cinephiliacs (85’38”). Among the topics discussed are “her childhood movie love of watching objects without inhibition and...

Jul 8, 2017 — A number of projects in the works have been announced since Thursday’s overall roundup, and we begin with Michael O'Connell for the Hollywood Reporter: “Ava DuVernay is adapting the story of the ‘Central Park Five’ for Netflix. The multihyphenate, currently...

Jun 21, 2017 — The interview of the day, hands down, dates back half a century. Via Movie City News comes word that American Cinematographer has posted Herb A. Lightman’s interview with Alfred Hitchcock, which originally ran in its May 1967 issue. What makes...

Jun 16, 2017 — The title of the first part of Tom Paulus’s projected three-part essay for photogénie, “The Love Connection: Another Jam Session on Narrative,” references “Jam Session on Non-Narrative,” a conversation that took place between film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Ehrenstein, and...