Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSBreak no.1 & Break no.2..The lineups for select sections of the 2024 editions of the Berlinale and International Film Festival Rotterdam have been unveiled, with films from Panorama, Forum, Forum Expanded, Generation, and Berlinale Special announced for the former, and the Tiger and Big Screen competitions at the latter. In Berlin, so far, we are excited by the prospect of new films by Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) and Jérémy Clapin (I Lost My Body), whereas in Rotterdam, we have our eye on new work by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich and Lei Lei. As the year comes to a close, the Best of 2023 lists keep coming. Sight & Sound shared the seventh edition of their always-interesting poll of the best video essays of the year,...
- 12/20/2023
- MUBI
Film scholar, author and obituary writer who addressed some of cinema’s big themes in his work
The film scholar Ronald Bergan, who has died aged 82 after suffering from urosepsis, wrote a number of biographies that revealed a considerable understanding of the cinema both in front of and behind the camera. Key to their success was the passion they conveyed and a prose style that kept the reader simultaneously entertained and informed. He was also a university lecturer and a prolific journalist, notably with obituaries for this newspaper from Jim Backus, the voice of Mr Magoo in 1989, onwards.
He addressed big themes: in his book The Coen Brothers (2000) he took the view that even if Ethan Coen saw a style as just an agglomeration of decisions made along the way, a film such as the brothers’ first, Blood Simple (1984), is postmodernist in the way that it “alludes to 1940s film...
The film scholar Ronald Bergan, who has died aged 82 after suffering from urosepsis, wrote a number of biographies that revealed a considerable understanding of the cinema both in front of and behind the camera. Key to their success was the passion they conveyed and a prose style that kept the reader simultaneously entertained and informed. He was also a university lecturer and a prolific journalist, notably with obituaries for this newspaper from Jim Backus, the voice of Mr Magoo in 1989, onwards.
He addressed big themes: in his book The Coen Brothers (2000) he took the view that even if Ethan Coen saw a style as just an agglomeration of decisions made along the way, a film such as the brothers’ first, Blood Simple (1984), is postmodernist in the way that it “alludes to 1940s film...
- 7/28/2020
- by Clive Hirschhorn
- The Guardian - Film News
Ginger Rogers in The Major And The Minor will be available on Blu-ray September 24th From Arrow Academy
From one of Hollywood s most acclaimed auteurs, Billy Wilder, comes the charming comedy classic The Major and the Minor.
Legendary actress and dancer Ginger Rogers (Monkey Business) stars as Susan Applegate, a struggling young woman who pretends to be an 11-year old girl in order to buy a half-price train ticket. Fleeing the conductors, she hides in the compartment of Major Philip Kirby. The Major believes Susan is a child and takes her under his wing, but when they arrive at the military academy where Kirby teaches, his fiancée (Rita Johnson) grows suspicious of Susan’s ruse…
Co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett (Hold Back the Dawn), The Major and the Minor assumes the guise of a light romance narrative in order to cleverly explore themes of identity and deception. Wilder...
From one of Hollywood s most acclaimed auteurs, Billy Wilder, comes the charming comedy classic The Major and the Minor.
Legendary actress and dancer Ginger Rogers (Monkey Business) stars as Susan Applegate, a struggling young woman who pretends to be an 11-year old girl in order to buy a half-price train ticket. Fleeing the conductors, she hides in the compartment of Major Philip Kirby. The Major believes Susan is a child and takes her under his wing, but when they arrive at the military academy where Kirby teaches, his fiancée (Rita Johnson) grows suspicious of Susan’s ruse…
Co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett (Hold Back the Dawn), The Major and the Minor assumes the guise of a light romance narrative in order to cleverly explore themes of identity and deception. Wilder...
- 8/22/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe Cannes Film Festival has announced its official poster, a tribute to the late Agnès Varda. The poster depicts Varda on the set of her very first feature, La pointe courte (1955). We are saddened by the news that the brilliant Swedish actress Bibi Andersson died at the age of 83. Best known for her remarkable turns in The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona, Ronald Bergan provides a thorough obituary of the timeless artist for The Guardian.Recommended VIEWINGThe first teaser for J.J. Abrams conclusion to the new Star Wars trilogy, Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker. We published an extensive 5-part dialogue conducted last year that wrestles with George Lucas's much contested prequels.Kino Lorber's trailer for the re-release of Frank Simon's The Queen (1968), a documentary about the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest,...
- 4/17/2019
- MUBI
Ronald Bergan’s excellent obituary of John Gavin devotes just one sentence to the ambassadorship in Mexico that followed his acting career. I was there at the time too, and it looked as if it would lead to greater things.
Gavin made a great splash when he arrived in 1981 – a film star, a Latino with a Mexican mother, bilingual in Spanish, married to a glamorous actress, what not to like. The fact that like Ronald Reagan, who had appointed him, he had made his political start as president of the Screen Actors Guild was interpreted by observers as a clear pointer to presidential ambition. It was not lost on them, nor very probably on Gavin, that he was a better actor, better looking, better known, had a much better education and, unlike Reagan, had seen active service. Add to that he was a youthful 50 and brimming with self-confidence.
Continue reading.
Gavin made a great splash when he arrived in 1981 – a film star, a Latino with a Mexican mother, bilingual in Spanish, married to a glamorous actress, what not to like. The fact that like Ronald Reagan, who had appointed him, he had made his political start as president of the Screen Actors Guild was interpreted by observers as a clear pointer to presidential ambition. It was not lost on them, nor very probably on Gavin, that he was a better actor, better looking, better known, had a much better education and, unlike Reagan, had seen active service. Add to that he was a youthful 50 and brimming with self-confidence.
Continue reading.
- 4/3/2018
- by Keith Morris
- The Guardian - Film News
Robyn Karney, who has died of cancer aged 77, was a writer on film and a literary editor. She had comprehensive knowledge of the cinema, and in the early 1980s edited the popular Octopus Books series of Hollywood studio histories. She co-wrote the Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide (1988, with Ronald Bergan) and was the compiler of Who’s Who in Hollywood (1993).
Perhaps her biggest project was as editor-in-chief of the Chronicle of the Cinema (1997; updated as Cinema, Year by Year), launched by Esther Williams at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. She loved being in the Us and, for instance, spent many months in Santa Fe working on Victoria Price’s 1999 book about her father, Vincent Price.
Perhaps her biggest project was as editor-in-chief of the Chronicle of the Cinema (1997; updated as Cinema, Year by Year), launched by Esther Williams at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. She loved being in the Us and, for instance, spent many months in Santa Fe working on Victoria Price’s 1999 book about her father, Vincent Price.
- 1/31/2018
- by Linda Goldsmith
- The Guardian - Film News
BUCHAREST -- The future of Romanian cinema, riding high on a wave of recent international successes, dominated talk at an inaugural round-table event titled Romanian Film Today.
Held Feb. 29-March 4 in Bucharest, the confab saw panelists discuss how to avoid taking Romanian filmmaking up a blind alley.
"What worries me is that all films are looking back ... they're all set in the past," said panelist Ronald Bergan a critic, film historian and contributor to U.K. newspaper the Guardian. "I think it is time for Romanian cinema to confront its present. The whole point about all New Waves in cinema history is that they were contemporary."
Mihai Fulger, Romanian film critic for the local weekly Observator Cultural, disagreed. "There is a great danger to judge not the value of the film, but the international recognition," Fulger said. "One of the best films made after 1989 -- the contemporary family short drama 'Alexandra' by Radu Jude -- did not make it to Sundance, Cannes or Berlin because it does not present the social realities that festival selectors want to see."
A glimpse of the future of Romanian cinema was seen at a special presentation of the country's latest short features -- "The Boxing Lesson" by Alexandru Mavrodineanu, "Alexandra" by Radu Jude and "Late" by Paul Negoescu -- all of which deal with contemporary issues.
Held Feb. 29-March 4 in Bucharest, the confab saw panelists discuss how to avoid taking Romanian filmmaking up a blind alley.
"What worries me is that all films are looking back ... they're all set in the past," said panelist Ronald Bergan a critic, film historian and contributor to U.K. newspaper the Guardian. "I think it is time for Romanian cinema to confront its present. The whole point about all New Waves in cinema history is that they were contemporary."
Mihai Fulger, Romanian film critic for the local weekly Observator Cultural, disagreed. "There is a great danger to judge not the value of the film, but the international recognition," Fulger said. "One of the best films made after 1989 -- the contemporary family short drama 'Alexandra' by Radu Jude -- did not make it to Sundance, Cannes or Berlin because it does not present the social realities that festival selectors want to see."
A glimpse of the future of Romanian cinema was seen at a special presentation of the country's latest short features -- "The Boxing Lesson" by Alexandru Mavrodineanu, "Alexandra" by Radu Jude and "Late" by Paul Negoescu -- all of which deal with contemporary issues.
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