Gil Cates—the film and TV producer best known for overseeing a record 14 Academy Awards telecasts in the span of 18 years—died yesterday, a few weeks after undergoing heart surgery.
If you searched for English-language news of Leon Cakoff's death two Fridays ago at the age of 63 due to complications after a melanoma diagnosis soon after it happened, you would have found only a translated press release. By the time two notices appeared the following Monday—one on MUBI, one on this site—the release was what they leaned on. The lack of writing seemed strange considering who he was.
You may ask, "Who was he?" For starters, he was Manoel de Oliveira's recent co-producer, and the producer of anthology films featuring segments by directors such as Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Tsai Ming-Liang, and Wim Wenders. He was a partner in UniBanco Arteplex, a large Brazilian art-house theater chain. He was, as critic Amir Labaki put it, the only major Brazilian film personality "to write, edit books, produce, direct, act, distribute, and exhibit movies." Above all, he was the founder of the São Paulo International Film Festival (Mostra), the most recent annual edition of which began this past Thursday, less than a week after his death.
You might not have heard of the festival. That's not because it's new: The Mostra is entering its 35th year. It's the largest festival in Brazil, and one of the largest in Latin America. This year's edition alone features around 300 titles. Continue Reading »
At the Q&A following the press screening of My Week with Marilyn, director Simon Curtis said he fell in love with the two Colin Clark memoirs the script is based on because of the insights they provided into Marilyn Monroe. A funny thing must have happened on the way to Film Forum though. Either those insights just didn't make it into the screenplay or else Curtis knows a lot less about Hollywood's Lady of Perpetual Sorrow than I had thought was possible for any reasonably well-educated citizen of the developed world.
Michelle Williams's Marilyn is a thinking, feeling human being, but My Week with Marilyn's script is so banal ("I'm not a goddess. I just want to be loved like a regular girl," the poor girl has to say) that she relies almost entirely on body language and facial expressions to convey Monroe's essence. Viewed from a distance or with dark glasses on, she looks remarkable like her, especially when she recreates the funny little dance Monroe's character performs to amuse herself when she's left alone for a bit in The Prince and the Showgirl, the god-awful romantic comedy Monroe was filming under the direction of her co-star, Laurence Olivier (brayed by Kenneth Branagh), during the week of the movie's title. Continue Reading »
The 49th New York Film Festival kicks off tonight with the North American premiere of Roman Polanski's Carnage. For the House's ongoing coverage, click here, and for Slant Magazine's coverage, click here.
Some musings by the Self-Styled Siren on four films playing at the festival.
Betty Ford, the outspoken and much-admired wife of President Gerald R. Ford who overcame alcoholism and an addiction to pills and helped found one of the best-known rehabilitation centers in the nation, died Friday in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 93.
Also on Friday: For the last time, the engines of a space shuttle roared, the ground rumbled, and the shuttle Atlantis rose off the launching pad and disappeared into the clouds.
Over the weekend, 29-year-old James Hackemer, an Iraq war veteran, died after falling from the Ride of Steel roller coaster at Darien Lake Theme Park in Syracuse, New York.
For MUBI, our own Kurt Shulenberger lays out his crisis of faith, admitting to loving video games but not necessarily liking the fact that he does.
David Bordwell responds to the prospect opened up by Manohla Dargis.
Michelle Bachmann compares gay marriage to Pearl Harbor.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Opening a new phase in a race to define the direction of their party, the leading Republican presidential candidates gathered Monday night for the first time to begin drawing distinctions among themselves in a vibrant competition to be seen as sufficiently conservative for primary voters, but electable enough to defeat President Obama.
A disabled boy's death exposes a system in disarray.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
For MUBI, Daniel Kasman, David Phelps, and Dan Sallitt talk silent Naruse.
Surprise victory in New York invigorates Democrats looking to 2012.
This is not a Sarah Palin event:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
From Cannes, the critics are digging Woody Allen's latest. We'll see, later today, if they're right.
There are reports that Sarah Palin may have done some good things as governor.
For Film Comment, David Bordwell wonders why cinephiles and academics can't just get along.
Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the Rooftop Films summer series launches this Friday.
Via MUBI, a blast from the critical past: Erich von Stroheim's review of Citizen Kane.
Emmanuel Lubezki discusses how film is an important aspect of Terrence Malick's cinema.
A video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz on Terrence Malick's Badlands:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Arnold Schwarzenegger terminates marriage to Maria Shriver.
Oh man, Rob Marshall's new film is going to be a total eyesore.
Meanwhile, Paul Thomas Anderson will begin shootingThe Master, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, in June.
For MUBI, our own Fernando F. Croce reviews Robert Redford's The Conspirator and John Ford's The Prisoner of Shark Island.
Below, a tribute to cinema's greatest unsung hero:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Classified assessments of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison obtained by The New York Times give the fullest public picture to date of the prisoners held there.
Elvis Mitchell has been terminated as Movieline's chief film critic.
On Sunday, we lost French star Marie-France Pisier (a few links from our friends at MUBI) and Glory and Tombstone screenwriter Kevin Jarre (click here from the Los Angeles Times obit).
Larry Kramer wants to know why this generation of gay men is so apathetic while he's still so angry.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, a Republican douche wants foster children to know their place.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
An excerpt from J. Hoberman's upcoming An Army of Phantoms.
Matt Zoller Seitz on the songs that belong to the movies.
British filmmaker Charles Jarrott, who directed Richard Burton, Geneviève Bujold, Anthony Quayle, and Vanessa Redgrave to Oscar nominations, died on Saturday. He was 83.
For The Rumpus.net, Whit Coppedge recalls a scrambled object of desire.
For The Guardian, Hadley Freeman on the dark comedy of Werner Herzog.
Nasa scientist claims evidence of extraterrestrial life.
For MUBI, Daniele Rugo interviews Juliane Lorenz, director of the Fassbinder Foundation.
Below, 36 Hichcock death scenes all at once:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Links for the Day: Midnight in Paris Early Raves, Emmanuel Lubezki Interview, Cinephiles vs. Academics, & More
by Ed Gonzalez on May 11th, 2011 at 11:40 am in Links for the Day
From Cannes, the critics are digging Woody Allen's latest. We'll see, later today, if they're right.
There are reports that Sarah Palin may have done some good things as governor.
For Film Comment, David Bordwell wonders why cinephiles and academics can't just get along.
Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the Rooftop Films summer series launches this Friday.
Via MUBI, a blast from the critical past: Erich von Stroheim's review of Citizen Kane.
Emmanuel Lubezki discusses how film is an important aspect of Terrence Malick's cinema.
A video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz on Terrence Malick's Badlands:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
Tags: Badlands, Citizen Kane, David Bordwell, Emmanuel Lubezki, Erich von Stroheim, Film Comment, Matt Zoller Seitz, Midnight in Paris, Mubi, Rooftop Films, Sarah Palin, Terrence Malick, The Atlantic, Woody Allen
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