David Fincher is sometimes accused of a smug misanthropy, as his obsessive fascination with procedure, behavior, and psychology can suggest an unfeeling smirk or a weary shake of the head at the human condition. Though The Killer does touch on some weighty themes related to death and fate, particularly in a lyrical scene where Michael Fassbender’s character has a showdown with a glamorous, nihilistic fellow assassin (Tilda Swinton), the film’s relatively slight, linear narrative seems to have permitted the director to cease his investigations for a little while. His calculating approach is instead applied in service of a straightforwardly entertaining film, and while it might not offer much in the way of originality or depth, it’s undeniably effective and refreshingly unafraid to embrace its own shallowness. In conjunction with the film’s release, we ranked all of Fincher’s features to date. David Robb
Editor’s Note:...
Editor’s Note:...
- 11/7/2023
- by Slant Staff
- Slant Magazine
This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 18: Dušan Makavejev Free Radical.
About the films:
There’s never been another filmmaker quite like Dušan Makavejev. Even in the 1960s, when all of cinema’s rules seemed to be breaking down and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were dissolving the boundary between fiction and documentary, Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald. Across these, his wild, collagelike first three films, Makavejev investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love, death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels and strongmen.
About the films:
There’s never been another filmmaker quite like Dušan Makavejev. Even in the 1960s, when all of cinema’s rules seemed to be breaking down and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were dissolving the boundary between fiction and documentary, Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald. Across these, his wild, collagelike first three films, Makavejev investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love, death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels and strongmen.
- 12/16/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 43: Agnès Varda in California.
About the films:
The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works in the United States. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set,...
About the films:
The legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career began in the 1950s and has continued into the twenty-first century, produced some of her most provocative works in the United States. After temporarily relocating to California in the late sixties with her husband, Jacques Demy, Varda, inspired by the politics, youth culture, and sunshine of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, created three works that use documentary and fiction in various ways. She returned a decade later, and made two other fascinating portraits of outsiderness. Her five revealing, entertaining California films, encompassing shorts and features, are collected in this set,...
- 9/21/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor conclude their two-part discussion of Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder.
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling...
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling...
- 6/30/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder.
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind...
About the films:
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1970, were influenced by the work of the Antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich. Collected here are five of those fascinating and confrontational works. Whether a self- conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind...
- 6/22/2015
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
"With regard to longevity and productivity, not to mention talent, the only peers of the great Spanish director Luis Buñuel (1900–83) are his contemporaries Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock," writes J Hoberman, opening a review of Román Gubern and Paul Hammond's Luis Buñuel: The Red Years 1929-1939 for the Nation. Read of the day, obviously.
More reading. Carlos Saura on the five films that have most influenced his own work (via Criterion Cast).
Ed Howard on four shorts by Maurice Pialat.
Pat Jordan for the New York Times Magazine on "How Samuel L Jackson Became His Own Genre."
For the Wall Street Journal, John Jurgensen talks with Sissy Spacek about her forthcoming memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (via Movie City News).
In Reverse Shot, David Ehrlich argues that Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) is "a vital (if imperfect) chapter of this beloved saga, as...
More reading. Carlos Saura on the five films that have most influenced his own work (via Criterion Cast).
Ed Howard on four shorts by Maurice Pialat.
Pat Jordan for the New York Times Magazine on "How Samuel L Jackson Became His Own Genre."
For the Wall Street Journal, John Jurgensen talks with Sissy Spacek about her forthcoming memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (via Movie City News).
In Reverse Shot, David Ehrlich argues that Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) is "a vital (if imperfect) chapter of this beloved saga, as...
- 4/27/2012
- MUBI
You can get a lot of living done in 80 years and few have proved it as vigorously as Alexander Kluge (site). He's got a new book out, Das fünfte Buch - Neue Lebensläufe. 402 Geschichten, a followup of sorts to his award-winning Lebensläufe, which was published almost exactly 50 years ago. Several volumes have appeared between these two memoir-like collections, earning him the Georg Büchner Prize for his literary oeuvre in 2003. Kluge's also a prolific social critic, a ridiculously active independent television producer and, of course, a filmmaker, an assistant to Fritz Lang on The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959), one of the signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto in 1962 and co-founder of the Ulm Institut für Filmgestaltung.
Outside of Germany, one of Kluge's best-known films is one of his earliest, Yesterday Girl (1966), "a quickly paced collage, a jittery, jazzy patchwork that augments its sparse central narrative with myriad diversions and non sequiturs," as Ed Howard...
Outside of Germany, one of Kluge's best-known films is one of his earliest, Yesterday Girl (1966), "a quickly paced collage, a jittery, jazzy patchwork that augments its sparse central narrative with myriad diversions and non sequiturs," as Ed Howard...
- 2/14/2012
- MUBI
An avid podcast listener (like me) could hardly stumble across better news today than this fresh item from the Zellner Bros: "Mike Plante has great taste and a vast knowledge of film. His venture Cinemad has been many wonderful things; a zine, a blog, a DVD almanac, a distributor and podcast. His latest podcast installment interviews the Zb's, hopefully we did it justice. A lot of important issues were covered from Sasquatches to Salo to Chuck Berry."
What's more, this is Cinemad's sixth podcast and, as it happens, for nearly every one of them, there's a relevant upcoming event worth noting. David and Nathan Zellner's new feature, Kid-Thing, for example, will be making its premiere at Sundance in a few weeks. As for the other five:
Nina Menkes. We've got a cinema devoted to her films even now; its virtual doors are open through July.
Azazel Jacobs. His touching...
What's more, this is Cinemad's sixth podcast and, as it happens, for nearly every one of them, there's a relevant upcoming event worth noting. David and Nathan Zellner's new feature, Kid-Thing, for example, will be making its premiere at Sundance in a few weeks. As for the other five:
Nina Menkes. We've got a cinema devoted to her films even now; its virtual doors are open through July.
Azazel Jacobs. His touching...
- 1/2/2012
- MUBI
Updated through 6/7.
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
- 6/7/2011
- MUBI
Natalie Cassidy 'splits from fiancé Adam Cottrell' after his arrest over alleged assault on former Eastenders star
Cassidy has allegedly split from her fiancé and cancelled their £50,000 white wedding planned for later this year after his arrest on assault charges.
She has also booted him of the £190,000, two-bed flat she shared with him and their seven-month-old daughter Eliza in Brouxbourne, Hertfordshire,
The news comes as the star's father claims that Cottrell 'punched a hole in a microwave oven' shortly before he was arrested on suspicion of beating the 28-year-old former Eastenders actress.
Networks talk about value of older viewers but still program to young
Unless the entertainment chiefs at the networks figure the best way to entice people over the age of 50 is to give them something young and hot to look at, it’s unclear how their new fall schedules are in sync with what their counterparts in sales are spinning to media buyers.
Cassidy has allegedly split from her fiancé and cancelled their £50,000 white wedding planned for later this year after his arrest on assault charges.
She has also booted him of the £190,000, two-bed flat she shared with him and their seven-month-old daughter Eliza in Brouxbourne, Hertfordshire,
The news comes as the star's father claims that Cottrell 'punched a hole in a microwave oven' shortly before he was arrested on suspicion of beating the 28-year-old former Eastenders actress.
Networks talk about value of older viewers but still program to young
Unless the entertainment chiefs at the networks figure the best way to entice people over the age of 50 is to give them something young and hot to look at, it’s unclear how their new fall schedules are in sync with what their counterparts in sales are spinning to media buyers.
- 5/26/2011
- by We Love Soaps TV
- We Love Soaps
Critics' Week has already begun celebrating its 50th anniversary by posting 50 video interviews with directors and actors who've seen their work debut in this section at Cannes. We're celebrating, too. In association with the 4+1 Film Festival, Mubi is presenting a retrospective of some of the greatest films first seen in Critics' Week over the past half-century. And even though the first 1000 views of each of the films will be free to you, the viewer, the rights holders will carry on receiving their duly earned revenue.
The retrospective encompasses over 100 titles in all, but please do keep in mind that rights issues can get complicated and not every film can be available in every country. That said, here's a quick overview of just some of the highlights:
Over in the Garage, a La Semaine Blogathon is already on the roll, starting with Kj Farrington's entry on Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know,...
The retrospective encompasses over 100 titles in all, but please do keep in mind that rights issues can get complicated and not every film can be available in every country. That said, here's a quick overview of just some of the highlights:
Over in the Garage, a La Semaine Blogathon is already on the roll, starting with Kj Farrington's entry on Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know,...
- 5/14/2011
- MUBI
The event of the week in film criticism is the arrival of a new issue of Senses of Cinema, featuring a transcript of a talk Tsai Ming-liang delivered last year, "On the Uses and Misuses of Cinema." Also: a collection of dispatches on movie-going from around the world, Nicholas de Villiers on Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Michael J Anderson on Ernst Lubitsch, Gabrielle Murray's interview with Catherine Breillat, Pedro Blas Gonzalez on Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944) and the omnibus film Dead of Night (1945), Joseph Natoli on Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit and Moira Sullivan on Maria Schneider — whose recent passing has prompted Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy at the House Next Door and Bilge Ebiri to revisit Last Tango in Paris; and speaking of which, you may have heard of Bernardo Bertolucci's preparing a 3D project.
- 3/19/2011
- MUBI
For all his lucid dreams. They will be remembered with Godard, Varda, Lanzmann, Straub & Huillet, Rivette, Truffaut, Garrel, and the rest of cinema, which will not be the same.
Top: From Jacques Rivette's The Story of Marie and Julien (2003); featuring Jerzy Radziwilowicz and Emmanuelle Béart; cinematography by William Lubtchansky.
* * *
"I met him only once, in 2001, when he granted me an interview that turned into a long and amicable talk at his home in Paris (concluding with directions to the nearby Poîlane bakery)." The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "[A]rguably, no cinematographer in the history of cinema has photographed a more significant set of movies.... As a cinematographer, Lubtchansky may not have brought about as manifest a technical revolution as did Gregg Toland and Raoul Coutard, but he played a crucial role in the work of the most historically-informed and classical-minded of modernist filmmakers, by infusing traditional cinematic craftsmanship with a decisively modernist spirit.
Top: From Jacques Rivette's The Story of Marie and Julien (2003); featuring Jerzy Radziwilowicz and Emmanuelle Béart; cinematography by William Lubtchansky.
* * *
"I met him only once, in 2001, when he granted me an interview that turned into a long and amicable talk at his home in Paris (concluding with directions to the nearby Poîlane bakery)." The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "[A]rguably, no cinematographer in the history of cinema has photographed a more significant set of movies.... As a cinematographer, Lubtchansky may not have brought about as manifest a technical revolution as did Gregg Toland and Raoul Coutard, but he played a crucial role in the work of the most historically-informed and classical-minded of modernist filmmakers, by infusing traditional cinematic craftsmanship with a decisively modernist spirit.
- 5/11/2010
- MUBI
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) presents the rollicking, two-man tour de force, A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. A Tuna Christmas is the sequel to the audience favorite Greater Tuna, where we welcome beloved characters like Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burris, and meet several new ones-including Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd, who wait tables and cover the drive-thru at the local Tastee Kreme. Radio Okkk news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie are there to reintroduce us to all the denizens in the third-smallest town in Texas.
- 12/6/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) presents the rollicking, two-man tour de force, A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. A Tuna Christmas is the sequel to the audience favorite Greater Tuna, where we welcome beloved characters like Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burris, and meet several new ones-including Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd, who wait tables and cover the drive-thru at the local Tastee Kreme. Radio Okkk news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie are there to reintroduce us to all the denizens in the third-smallest town in Texas.
- 11/29/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) presents the rollicking, two-man tour de force, A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. A Tuna Christmas is the sequel to the audience favorite Greater Tuna, where we welcome beloved characters like Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burris, and meet several new ones-including Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd, who wait tables and cover the drive-thru at the local Tastee Kreme. Radio Okkk news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie are there to reintroduce us to all the denizens in the third-smallest town in Texas.
- 11/26/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) presents the rollicking, two-man tour de force, A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. A Tuna Christmas is the sequel to the audience favorite Greater Tuna, where we welcome beloved characters like Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burris, and meet several new ones-including Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd, who wait tables and cover the drive-thru at the local Tastee Kreme. Radio Okkk news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie are there to reintroduce us to all the denizens in the third-smallest town in Texas.
- 11/20/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep) presents the rollicking, two-man tour de force, A Tuna Christmas by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears and Ed Howard. A Tuna Christmas is the sequel to the audience favorite Greater Tuna, where we welcome beloved characters like Vera Carp and Aunt Pearl Burris, and meet several new ones-including Inita Goodwin and Helen Bedd, who wait tables and cover the drive-thru at the local Tastee Kreme. Radio Okkk news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie are there to reintroduce us to all the denizens in the third-smallest town in Texas.
- 11/15/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
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