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Bruce Logan, the special effects pioneer and cinematographer whose credits include Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and blowing up the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, has died. He was 78.

Logan died on April 10 in Los Angeles after a short illness, his wife, Mariana Campos-Logan, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

In an Instagram post, Logan’s daughter, Mary Grace Logan, paid tribute to her late father: “Before CGI ruled the screen, there were visionaries who lit the future by hand. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Tron, my dad didn’t just work on movies—he made magic. A rebel with a camera, a pioneer with a story, and my personal hero.”

During a five decade career, starting in Britain and then in Hollywood, Logan worked with directors like Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Robert Wise, John Frankenheimer, William Friedkin, George Lucas, Jonathan Demme,...

Once upon a time in late night television, it was customary for talk shows to fill up their couches as the evening's episode progressed. The first guest would do their segment and then move down a spot on the adjacent couch, making room for the next guest to yap with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett or whoever. What with the barnacle presence of sidekick Ed McMahon, Carson's couch could get especially crowded some nights. Sometimes this got tense (like the time Burt Reynolds inexplicably went after "Double Dare" host Mark Summers on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"); sometimes it was chaotic comedy bliss (which is what happens when you ask Carson to rein in the irrepressible duo of Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters); and sometimes it was just plain surreal.

This tradition started to fade out of fashion in the 1980s when "Late Night with David Letterman" introduced its one-guest-at-a-time approach.

Fred Roos, casting director for landmark films such as “American Graffiti” and who went on to have a close relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, including producing best picture winner “Godfather Part II” and “Apocalypse Now,” died Saturday in Beverly Hills. He was 89.

Roos was both casting director and executive producer on Coppola’s most recent film “Megalopolis” which premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival. Last year, Coppola posted a photo of Roos with Adam Driver on Instagram and thanked him for his work on the long-gestating epic.

Roos was instrumental in helping stars including Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Carrie Fisher and Richard Dreyfuss get their early notable roles.

His long collaboration with Coppola as producer or co-producer included “The Conversation,” “One From the Heart,” “The Outsiders,” “Rumble Fish,” “The Cotton Club,” “The Godfather Part III,” “Tetro,” “Youth Without Youth” and “Tucker: The Man and His Dream.”

Roos was not credited,...

Italian indie producer Vivo Film has boarded André Ristum’s action drama “Tecnicamente Dolce” (“Technically Sweet”), based on a screenplay by Italian legend Michelangelo Antonioni, teaming with Gullane Filmes, Brazil’s biggest independent film production house.

The news comes as “Carnival Is Over,” the awaited thriller drama by “Narcos” director Fernando Coimbra, whose “A Wolf at the Door” was one of the standout Brazilian feature debuts of the last decade, has now entered post-production, shaping up as one of the big arthouse titles to hit festivals from Brazil next year.

Featuring Leandra Leal (“A Wolf at the Door”), Pêpê Rapazote (“Narcos”) and Irandhir Santos (“Tropa de Elite 2”), “Carnival” is a Brazilian-Portuguese co-production that teams Gullane with Fado Filmes, Videodrome, Globo Filmes and Telecine, in association with Tc Filmes. France’s Playtime has started to pre-sell the film.

“This movie is our main title for next year. This is the...

On the run from a ruthless Las Vegas casino owner and his fixer, Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) hits the road and winds up everywhere from the New Mexico desert to Kenosha dive bars in “Poker Face,” using her unerring ability to spot a lie to solve the murders she routinely stumbles into. Peacock’s mystery-of-the-week series did take advantage of the New Mexico sun to shoot Episode 2 and some exterior sequences, but ironically once Charlie hits the road, landing in a new two every week, “Poker Face” itself stayed rooted in upstate New York. That left the burden of turning the Hudson Valley into different states with production designer Judy Rhee.

Rhee disguises the series’ home base into convincing facsimiles of the Southwest, the Rockies, the Midwest, and beyond, but she had little time to do it. “It was actually less than two weeks; it was every 10 days that we were shooting [a new episode],” Rhee told IndieWire.

While Quentin Tarantino claims that he could have directed Wes Craven's Scream, the director's comments on the classic meta-slasher prove that he didn't know how to handle the story. While Quentin Tarantino has made some legendary contributions to genre cinema, the director is not known for his chops in the horror genre. Tarantino's only full-blown horror movie, the slasher Death Proof, is a weird mash-up of a road trip movie and tense cat-and-mouse thriller that is typically considered the less successful of Grindhouse's two divergent genre experiments and a less essential Tarantino effort more broadly.

Despite this, Tarantino claimed in a 2015 Vulture interview that he would have considered directing 1996's original Scream and didn't care for Wes Craven's take on the movie. While Scream's killer Stu Macher, with his meta-motive of wanting to emulate famous horror movie villains, could have been a classic Tarantino character, Tarantino's...

Éric Baudelaire on Une Fleur À La Bouche and When There Is No More Music to Write, and Other Roman Stories: “These two flower stories were sort of overlapping in my mind subconsciously, but it wasn’t a conscious thing.”

In my conversation with Eric Baudelaire, the director of When There Is No More Music to Write, and Other Roman Stories also screened) and A Flower In The Mouth (Une Fleur À La Bouche) co-written with Anne-Louise Trividic, starring Oxmo Puccino and Dali Benssalah, we discussed his work with editor Claire Atherton, music historian Maxime Guitton connecting him to composer Alvin Curran, a Luigi Pirandello play, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Robert Musil and Young Törless (Der junge Törless).

Éric Baudelaire with Anne-Katrin Titze on When There Is No More Music To Write, And Other Roman Stories: “The flower vendor in Rome has been a subject of preoccupation for me since 2017 …”

From Paris,...

The opening credits sequence of “The Good Fight” is so distinctive that even the location where it all began can’t quite shake it.

When Lawson Deming and an assembled crew returned to Quixote Studios in Los Angeles to film the show’s latest round of exploding objects, they arrived to find there was still proof of their last visit, lodged in a spot high above them.

“When we walked onto the stage, we hadn’t been there in two years. We still saw bits of debris embedded in the ceiling from the last time we’d been there. That stuff goes everywhere,” Deming said.

For anyone who’s taken the plunge on the Paramount+ original since its 2017 premiere, that will be a familiar sentiment. A show channeling the rage and bewilderment of a half-decade of uncertainty has found the perfect 100-second encapsulation of all those swirling emotions in a...

The late American indie film auteur Monte Hellman was fond of a quote from Jean Cocteau that poetically summed up the fate of any real work of art: “A work of art should also be ‘an object difficult to pick up.’ It must protect itself from vulgar pawing, which tarnishes and disfigures it. It should be made of such a shape that people don’t know which way to hold it, which embarrasses and irritates the critics, incites them to be rude, but keeps it fresh. The less it’s understood, the slower it opens its petals, the later it will fade.”

Cocteau’s dictum certainly applies to Hellman’s 1971 film, “Two-Lane Blacktop.” It opened its petals 50 years ago today and still confounds not only the critics but its fans and friends, including the film’s unit publicist Beverly Walker, whose groundbreaking campaign for the film included getting Esquire magazine...

One of the greatest auteurs in cinema history, Michelangelo Antonioni, passed away fourteen years ago––on the same day of Ingmar Bergman’s death, no less––but it’s no question his body of work endures. It’ll now get further life as one of his unproduced scripts is being turned into a feature film.

Variety reports that Technically Sweet, a project the Italian master had planned to direct between 1970’s Zabriskie Point and 1975’s The Passenger, is being produced by Brazil’s Gullane and Italy’s Similar. Set in Sardinia and the Amazon jungle, the film follows a journalist who suffers an existential crisis on a sudden holiday, embarking on a complex relationship with an enigmatic girl as he becomes further detached from life.

When the director gave up on making it in the 1980s, the script was handed over by Antonioni to his assistant director Jirges Ristum, but...

Written when the Italian legend was at the height of his powers, the screenplay for Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Technically Sweet,” which he planned to shoot between “Zabriskie Point” and “The Passenger,” looks set to be finally brought to the big screen.

Set in Sardinia and the Amazon jungle, “Technically Sweet” is set up at Brazil’s Gullane, the shingle behind Netflix’s upcoming “Senna” series, and Italy’s Similar, headed by Match Factory founder Michael Weber and Simone Gattoni and Laura Buffoni.

Antonioni finally gave up on shooting “Technically Sweet” in the 1980s, entrusting it to his A.D., Jirges Ristum, who died at an early age before shooting the film. It will be now be directed by Ristum’s son André Ristum. Enrica Antonioni, the director’s widow, will serve as associate producer.

Antonioni spent two years between 1970’s “Zabriskie Point” and 1975’s “The Passenger” trying to make “Technically Sweet.

Slowly but surely, the world is emerging from one of the darkest challenges most of us will ever experience. But it will still be some time before we return to full normality, and there are some things we will have to live without for some time yet. With summer upon us, thoughts naturally turn to music festivals, but most of 2020’s events were cancelled long ago. Instead, let’s take a look in the rear view mirror to a time when it all began.

It’s 50 years since Woodstock, Glastonbury and the Summer of Love. This was a time when the movies and the music were interwoven in a way that you just don’t see today. Having said that, not everything has changed for the worse in the past half a century. Today, if you want to relive those years with a mellow smoke, you can place your order online.

As 2019 draws to a close, the busy cinephile can mostly be found in his or her natural habitat, the theater. However, there are lots of books to catch up with once Oscar season is finished—or, at least, dies down. Let’s start with two killer eBooks.

Read Also: The Film Stage’s 2019 Holiday Gift Gide

Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook (Seventh Row)

One of the finest film-related texts of 2019 was the Seventh Row team’s analysis of Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, and this series of deep cinema exploration continues with Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook. Both eBooks are once again edited by two of the smartest, most readable writers on film art, Orla Smith and Alex Heeney. In Tour of Memories, Smith and Heeney study...

When I think about the American New Wave, I’m always traveling through the vast open roads of North America, its forever-changing landscapes and mythical American dreams, with all its bittersweet promise. Sonically speaking, I’m in that space, too. So much of the New Hollywood cinema is vast Americana; Death Valley and desert-hot gas stations, the ultimate nihilistic road movie. But so much of it is everywhere else too; sleek Manhattan apartment blocks, the old Wild West, and the outer regions of space. In my head it’s a mixtape of philosophical and artistic ideas, one of cinema’s counter-culture melting pots where more questions are raised than answered and the plot is not driven by a desire for resolution.This mix was dreamed up as a mixtape: driving across state lines, re-adjusting the radio station on the dashboard as the trip moves further towards a destination that is unknown.

When a big, prestigious, internationally celebrated arthouse filmmaker, hoisted by his acclaim, gets the chance to make a “crossover” movie somewhere other than his native country, it tends to seem like a great idea on paper, yet often doesn’t work out so well. Examples of this time-honored phenomenon range from Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” to Ingmar Bergman’s “The Touch” to Wim Wenders’ “Hammett” to Asghar Farhadi’s recent “Everybody Knows” — movies in which you can hear the voice of the filmmaker, though not nearly as vividly as you did in the films that made his crossover possible. But “The Truth,” the first movie written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (“Shoplifters”) outside his native Japan, doesn’t fall into that more-mainstream-yet-lesser trap.

“The Truth,” which Kore-eda shot with a French crew, is set in Paris, and it’s one of those dramas in which a beloved, larger-than-life movie-star diva — in this case,...

A while back, struggling with the frustrating task of year-end list-making, I jotted down a top ten of the scenes I enjoyed the most from the year. Scenes, not films–for as the task soon made clear, the alternative ranking did not necessarily reflect the top ten features I had begun curating way too early for its own good. The list expanded, and eventually turned into a tradition of sorts: a means to patch together, remember and celebrate some of the year’s best moments in film. Minor spoilers abound, and there’s no guarantee as to whether the order will stay the same after subsequent viewings. But at the time of writing, these are the 18 moments from 2018 I will be treasuring in the months and years to come, and here’s to a 2019 blessed with new great films, and plenty more scenes to marvel at.

18. “Does it matter?” in...

The director, who died of a heart attack in 1985 at age 70, filmed The Other Side of the Wind between 1970 and 1976, gathering over 100 hours of footage that was never close to being fully assembled … until now. With funding from Netflix, we now have a 124-minute feature that still feels tantalizingly unfinished, though editor Bob Murawski and his expert team worked from Welles’ annotated script. It is clearly a labor of love for everyone involved in this rescue mission. (You can find the fascinating tale of how the film was pieced together...

The following essay was produced as part of the 2018 Nyff Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the 56th edition of the New York Film Festival.

Orson Welles’ long-incomplete film “The Other Side of the Wind” has been a topic of fascination and intrigue for decades, billed as Welles’ final feature, and one that, like other projects before it (including “Moby Dick” and “Don Quixote”), had consistently been deemed unfinished. But after years of work from trusted collaborators following Welles’ death in 1985, “The Other Side of the Wind” is now complete, soon to be distributed on the streaming service platform Netflix, and has already made the festival rounds from Venice to Telluride to the recent New York Film Festival.

Beyond Welles acolytes, the film is also of interest because of its interwoven content and form, and a conceit that sees various cameramen following an older,...

With his Vidal-Buckley documentary “Best of Enemies” and this year’s smash hit about Fred Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” filmmaker Morgan Neville has proven himself a keenly sensitive, artful showman when surveying a career through archival footage and fresh interviews. He knows how to re-light the flame of a life, and that’s quickly apparent in his deeply entertaining and illuminating Orson Welles documentary “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead.”

With impish respect, it chronicles the tortuous journey of Welles’ most notoriously unfinished-in-his-lifetime last movie, “The Other Side of the Wind.”

For cinephiles, it’s a high-calorie, clip-and-interview-laden feast of biography, insight, and gossip. Add to that the bonus that — unlike the dashed promise felt after absorbing “Jorodorwsky’s Dune” that the cinema gods were robbed — in this case there’s a finally completed “Wind,” assembled in recent years, also going out through Netflix. to...

There’s a powerful scene in the newly released film Chappaquiddick in which an exasperated, wheelchair-bound Joe Kennedy fiercely slaps his son, Ted. The monomaniacal old man is in a rage that Senator Ted, groomed to be the next Kennedy president, now faces ruin for driving his car off a bridge, thus drowning a young girl.

The question is, how many filmgoers will witness this riveting moment; as with most mid-budget dramatic films, Chappaquiddick, though superbly crafted, will battle it out this weekend with John Krasinski’s potential genre sleeper A Quiet Place, the racy comedy Blockers, or the returning Ready Player One. While the movie distributed by Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios relates an important chapter in a great family saga, it lacks the scale and depth (and marketing campaign) required to make a dent in today’s marketplace. At 100 minutes, filmgoers may feel that it plays more like...

BAMcinématek pays screen tribute to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright - True West: Sam Shepard on Film Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sam Shepard, who died on July 27, 2017 at the age of 73, will be honored by BAMcinématek in New York with True West: Sam Shepard on Film.

Wim Wenders' Don’t Come Knocking and Paris, Texas (BAFTA Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Shepard); Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar nomination for Shepard's portrayal of Chuck Yeager); Graeme Clifford's Frances; Daniel Petrie's Resurrection; Terrence Malick's Days Of Heaven; Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, co-written by Shepard; Robert Altman's adaptation of Fool For Love; Robert Frank's Me And My Brother (text by Shepard, poems by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky); Shirley Clarke's video of Shepard's Tongues performed by Joseph Chaikin, and Far North, directed by Sam Shepard will be screened.

Many of MGM’s productions were scraping bottom in 1958, yet the studio found one more acceptable western vehicle for their last big star still on contract. Only-slightly corrupt marshal Robert Taylor edges toward a showdown with the thoroughly corrupt Richard Widmark in an economy item given impressive locations and the sound direction of John Sturges.

The Law and Jake Wade

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 86 min. / Street Date September 12, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark, Patricia Owens, Robert Middleton, Henry Silva, DeForest Kelley, Henry Silva, Burt Douglas, Eddie Firestone.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Written by William Bowers from a novel by Marvin H. Albert

Produced by William B. Hawks

Directed by John Sturges

As the 1950s wore down, MGM was finding it more difficult to properly use its last remaining big-ticket stars on the steady payroll, Cyd Charisse and Robert Taylor. Cyd...

The working title for Lucasfilm's upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi movie has been revealed by Omega Underground to be "Joshua Tree". The other previous working titles for other recent Star Wars productions include "Space Bears" for The Last Jedi and "Red Cup" for Han Solo movie.

Why is the name "Joshua Tree" important to the Star Wars franchise? Because it could be hinting at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. This could be one of the possible shooting locations for the film and that location also served as the shooting location for some of the Tatooine scenes that were shot for the original trilogy.

So, obviously, fans are speculating that the upcoming Obi-Wan movie will take place on Tatooine. Personally, I just assumed that's where the film would take place anyway! I figured that we might see the story of how Obi-Wan got there and that we would see Obi-Wan's first...

Chicago – He was a true renaissance man, but his unassuming persona would conceal that lofty designation. Sam Shepard was a playwright, actor, author, screenwriter and director of countless important stage and screen works. Shepard died on July 27th, 2017, of complications due to Lou Gehrig’s Disease (Als). He was 73.

Sam Shepard, American Storyteller

Photo credit: File Photo

He was born Samuel Shepard Rogers III in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and graduated high school in California. After a brief stint in college, he started his career in a traveling theater repertory company. After landing in New York City, he dropped the Rogers from his name and began to work Off Broadway. He won six Obie Awards for his stage writing, and began his screen career by penning “Me and My Brother” (1968) and “Zabriskie Point” (1970). His had a love connection with rocker Patti Smith, which led to the collaborative play “Cowboy Mouth” (1971). He...

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actor who suffered from Als died at his home.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor Sam Shepard has died from Als. He was 73.

Shepard died on July 27 at his home in Kentucky surrounded by family. “The family requests privacy at this difficult time,” Chris Boneau, the spokesman for the family, said.

Shephard won the Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for his play Buried Child and received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for his role as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

His final on-screen appearance came in 2015 on the Netflix drama Bloodline. As an actor his screen credits include Days Of Heaven, Resurrection, Frances, Country, Fool For Love, Crimes Of The Heart, Baby Boom, Steel Magnolias, Bright Angel, Defenseless, Hamlet, The Notebook, Black Hawk Down, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Brothers, Mud, August: Osage County, Cold in July, Midnight Special, In Dubious Battle, and You Were...

Accomplished playwright and actor Sam Shepard has died, Et can confirm. He was 73 years old.

Shepard died at his home in Kentucky on July 27 of complications from Als, and was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, Chris Boneau, spokesman for the family, said on Monday. Shepard is survived by his children -- Jesse, Hannah and Walker Shepard -- and his sisters, Sandy and Roxanne Rogers.

Funeral arrangements remain private, and plans for a public memorial have not yet been determined.

Pics: Stars We've Lost In Recent Years

"The family requests privacy at this difficult time," Boneau said in a statement.

Shepard found incredible success as both a playwright and as an actor. He won a Pulitzer Prize for drama for his 1979 play, Buried Child, and wrote 40 plays over the course of his career. He also wrote the screenplays for Zabriskie Point; Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas; and Robert Altman's Fool for Love, a film...

Director, playwright, and actor Sam Shepard has passed away at the age of 73. BroadwayWorld first reported the news this morning.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff.” He was also the author of forty-four plays, as well as several books, including short stories, essays, and memoirs. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play “Buried Child.”

As BroadwayWorld notes, “Shepard’s plays are chiefly known for their bleak, poetic, often surrealist elements, black humor and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society.”

In 2009, he received the Pen/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist. Shepard was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. Shepard was also a dedicated teacher of the arts,...

Sam Shepard, the award-winning and prolific actor and playwright who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Right Stuff (1983) and won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Buried Child in 1979, has died. The news was broken by Broadway World, and a representative of Shepard’s family tells The New York Times that Shepard died from complications of Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 73.

Born in 1943 under the name Samuel Shepard Rogers III, Shepard adopted his stage name shortly after moving to New York in the early 1960s, where he first gained renown on the Off-Off-Broadway theater scene. He wrote his first screenplay, Me And My Brother, in 1968, followed by the screenplay for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point in 1970. His film career began in earnest in the late ‘70s, when he took on the lead role in Terrence Malick’s Days Of ...

“Visual geometry” might not be the first phrase that comes to mind when thinking of Michelangelo Antonioni, but a new video essay published by Fandor makes a strong argument for it being among the Italian master’s essential tools. (Well, that and Monica Vitti, of course.)

Read More: Why ‘Mulholland Drive’ Is the Most Essential Film David Lynch Will Ever Make — Watch

The minute-long video offers a brief rundown of Antonioni’s recurring visual motifs, from showing characters looking through windows (“L’Avventura,” “The Passenger”) and walking through doorways (“The Mystery of Oberwald,” “Identification of a Woman”) to being shown through fences (“Red Desert,” “Zabriskie Point”) and traversing vast landscapes (“La Notte,” “Blowup”). It also takes note of his geometric compositions, namely his frequent use of straight, vertical and converging lines.

Read More: ‘American Gods’ Review: Bryan Fuller Paints a Beautiful, Bloody, and Unblinking Portrait of American Duality

“Creating depth,...

Gas-s-s-s – Or – It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It.

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen/ 79 min. / Street Date October 18, 2016 / Gas-s-s-s / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Elaine Giftos, Robert Corff, Cindy Williams, Bud Cort, Ben Vereen, Tally Coppola, Lou Procopio.

Cinematography: Ron Dexter

Film Editor: George Van Noy

Original Music: Country Joe and the Fish

Written and Produced by George Armitage

Directed by Roger Corman

Roger Corman finally accepted himself as an iconic filmmaker for this, his final show for A.I.P.. Barely released and long considered a failure, Gas-s-s-s – Or – It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It sees Corman and his writer associate George Armitage attempting a Mad magazine- like amalgam of all the counterculture trends of the late 1960s. That tactical mistake becomes eighty minutes of unfocused and unfunny satire. Armitage’s script and dialogue might occasionally hit some serendipitous notes,...

A recent video essay on the collaborations of Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti failed to mention their final film — a rather embarrassing error that, I admit, can make some sense when the work in question has failed to pierce the canon in virtually any way. But what if that’s still not half enough? What if it’s a major step forward in cinematographic expression and one of the most visually pleasurable films ever made?

I could, but, thankfully, Scout Tafoya has updated his series, “The Unloved,” with a video essay on that 1980 picture and Zabriskie Point, another underappreciated Antonioni effort that’s probably just some little nudge away from becoming a favorite of many cineastes. More than a worthwhile bit of critical discourse, this piece benefits from its moving images. The allure of Antonioni’s cinema can be difficult to summarize in just about any form when their mood...

The Notebook is the North American home for Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian's blog. Chatrian has been writing thoughtful blog entries in Italian on Locarno's website since he took over as Director in late 2012, and now you can find the English translations here on the Notebook as they're published. The Locarno Film Festival will be taking place August 2 - 12.If I think back to my earliest memories of the cinema, one fact—along with the names of certain films—leaps to mind. Or rather, not a fact, but a sensation. A sensation that fades into a hazy memory. At the movies I laughed at the twists and turns of bodies that could transpose acrobatic moves into everyday life, and at other bodies, too, ones that really were made of rubber, or seemed to be. Bodies that could be bent out of shape and absorb incredible falls, shocks and...

As the Sundance Film Festival’s groundbreaking and technology-facing New Frontier section kicks off its second decade in existence, the 2017 edition of the section boasts its most stacked and varied programing picks yet. The full slate includes “story worlds” in Augmented Reality headsets, projection-mapped acrobatics, a Vr beauty salon producing neuroscience data via the internet of things and a host of socialized, interactive and immersively haptic Vr story experiences.

The rest of the lineup includes live performances, a feature film and augmented reality experiences built to complement 22 Vr experiences and 11 installations, showcased between three venues in Park City. The Claim Jumper will host 10 immersive installations focused on cross-disciplinary story construction, while the Vr Palace will feature 17 Vr experiences alongside an additional installation and the Vr Bar will offer a lineup of mobile Vr. Two New Frontier projects are part of the Festival’s New Climate program, which highlights the environment and climate change.

Top brass at the Park City jamboree announced on Thursday 20 virtual and augmented reality presentations and 11 installations.

The eleventh New Frontier programme includes storyworlds in Augmented Reality headsets, and a Vr beauty salon producing neuroscience data.

Established Vr artist Chris Milk and Aaron Kobli are behind Life Of Us, while immersive journalist Nonny de la Peña will premiere Out Of Exile: Daniel’s Story.

New Frontier will be staged at three Park City venues: Claim Jumper will host ten immersive installations; the Vr Palace will feature 17 Vr experiences alongside an additional installation; and the Vr Bar will offer a line-up of mobile Vr.

Three projects are part of the festival’s New Climate programme highlighting the environment and climate change.

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer and chief curator, New Frontier, said: “In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also...

Top brass at the Park City jamboree announced on Thursday 20 virtual and augmented reality presentations and 11 installations.

The eleventh New Frontier programme includes storyworlds in Augmented Reality headsets, and a Vr beauty salon producing neuroscience data.

Established Vr artist Chris Milk and Aaron Kobli are behind Life Of Us, while immersive journalist Nonny de la Peña will premiere Out Of Exile: Daniel’s Story.

New Frontier will be staged at three Park City venues: Claim Jumper will host ten immersive installations; the Vr Palace will feature 17 Vr experiences alongside an additional installation; and the Vr Bar will offer a line-up of mobile Vr.

Three projects are part of the festival’s New Climate programme highlighting the environment and climate change.

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer and chief curator, New Frontier, said: “In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also...

Top brass at the Park City jamboree announced on Thursday 20 virtual and augmented reality presentations and 11 installations.

The eleventh New Frontier programme includes storyworlds in Augmented Reality headsets, and a Vr beauty salon producing neuroscience data.

Established Vr artist Chris Milk and Aaron Kobli are behind Life Of Us, while immersive journalist Nonny de la Peña will premiere Out Of Exile: Daniel’s Story.

New Frontier will be staged at three Park City venues: Claim Jumper will host ten immersive installations; the Vr Palace will feature 17 Vr experiences alongside an additional installation; and the Vr Bar will offer a line-up of mobile Vr.

Three projects are part of the festival’s New Climate programme highlighting the environment and climate change.

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer and chief curator, New Frontier, said: “In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also...

Top brass at the Park City jamboree announced on Thursday 20 virtual and augmented reality presentations and 11 installations.

The eleventh New Frontiers programme includes storyworlds in Augmented Reality headsets, and a Vr beauty salon producing neuroscience data.

Established Vr artist Chris Milk and Aaron Kobli are behind Life Of Us, while immersive journalist Nonny de la Peña will premiere Out Of Exile: Daniel’s Story.

New Frontiers will be staged at three Park City venues: Claim Jumper will host ten immersive installations; the Vr Palace will feature 17 Vr experiences alongside an additional installation; and the Vr Bar will offer a line-up of mobile Vr.

Three projects are part of the festival’s New Climate programme highlighting the environment and climate change.

Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer and chief curator, New Frontier, said: “In an era that has recalibrated economies, redefined social realms and rewired the connection between the individual and the world, we must also...

Marlon Brando put his all into this impassioned, expertly acted and crafted VistaVision western spectacle. Has it been overlooked because of the scarcity of quality presentations? Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Pina Pellicer, Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens are unforgettable, as are the Big Sur locations. One-Eyed Jacks Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 844 1961 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date November 22, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Pina Pellicer, Larry Duran, Sam Gilman, Míriam Colón, Timothy Carey, Margarita Cordova, Elisha Cook Jr., Rodolfo Acosta, Joan Petrone, Joe Dominguez, Tom Webb, Ray Teal, John Dierkes, Philip Ahn, Hank Worden, Clem Harvey, William Forrest, Mina Martinez. Cinematography Charles Lang. Jr. Film Editor Archie Marshek Original Music Hugo Friedhofer Written by Guy Trosper, Calder Willingham from the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider Produced by Frank P. Rosenberg Directed by Marlon Brando...

Ten years ago I attended the Lone Pine Film Festival for the first time. It was the 17th annual celebration in 2006 of a festival dedicated to the heritage of movies (mostly westerns, but plenty of other genres as well) shot in or near the town of Lone Pine, California, located on the outer edges of the Mojave Desert and nestled up against the Eastern Sierra Mountains in the shadow of the magnificent Mt. Whitney. The multitude of films that could and have been celebrated there were most often shot at least partially in the Alabama Hills just outside of town, a spectacular array of geological beauty that springs out of the landscape like some sort of extra-planetary exhibit, a visitation of natural and very unusual formations that have lent themselves to the imaginations of filmmakers here ever since near the dawn of the Hollywood filmmaking industry.

In writing about the...

Exclusive: Dunn had been head of BFI’s video unit from 2008 after starting out at the Tartan Video label.

Hollywood Classics has hired the British Film Institute’s head of video publishing Sam Dunn as its new managing director.

London-based classic film specialist Hollywood Classics is under new management after parent company Metrodome went into administration in August.

The company was among Metrodome assets acquired my Brighton-based independent film distributor 101 Films in a deal brokered by administrators.

Dunn replaces John Ramchandani who left Hollywood Classics in September to create a new international sales arm for classics distributor Park Circus.

Former BFI staffer Dunn brings with him 17 years of experience in the video library business. He started out at the Tartan Video label, where he was involved in brands such as Asian Extreme, before becoming head of BFI Video in 2008.

In that role, he changed the focus of the label to include more British titles and launched the Flipside...

This fall semester I started taking an Italian language class two evenings a week with my daughter, and Thursday night I was looking to decompress after our first big quiz. (Scores haven’t been revealed yet, but I think we did just fine.) So I started rummaging through my shelves and came across the Warner Archives DVD of Francesco Maselli’s A Fine Pair (1968), an ostensibly breezy romantic caper comedy which reteams Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale, a pairing their public was presumably clamoring for after their previous outing together in Blindfold (1965), a Universal programmer written and directed by Phillip Dunne, the screenwriter of, among many other notable movies, How Green Was My Valley. I’ve had a mad crush on Claudia ever since I first saw her in Circus World (1964) with John Wayne when I was but a youngster, and I always welcome the chance to visit movies of...

Cannes head will be live-narrating his archive film Lumière! at the festival.

Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux was a guest of the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) this weekend but his visit was not connected to his role as the head of the biggest and most glamorous festival in the world.

Double-hatted Frémaux was in town instead as managing director of France’s Institut Lumière in Lyon, devoted to the work of cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière and film heritage in general, which he oversees when not preparing Cannes.

He flew into Toronto do a live narration of his film Lumière! pulling together some 100 short films shot by the Lumière brothers from 1895 to 1905, which are rarely shown on the big screen today.

He spearheaded the film, producing alongside compatriot director Bertrand Tavernier (who is president of the Institut Lumière), to mark the 120th anniversary of cinema in France in 2015.

“Louis Lumière and his operators shot nearly...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Martin Scorsese talks about the making of The King of Comedy with Vanity Fair‘s Simon Abrams:

I didn’t really understand where I stood in relationship to the film, the story, Rupert Pupkin, and Jerry Langford, too, until I was in the process of making the film—the shooting, the editing. I don’t think I necessarily liked what I found. What I mean is: I saw myself in Rupert, on the surface, as somebody that came from that appreciation of early television of the 50s—particularly New York variety comedy shows. Steve Allen, Jack Paar. These personalities were so vivid and so strong that they became something very new to me.

What was that Godard (or Griffith) line, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and…”? Lana Del Rey’s latest music video, “High by the Beach,” has just dropped, and it’s got a kind of Zabriskie Point-era Antonioni meets Andy Sidaris thing going on, with lovely handheld camerawork, a trendily minimal beachside house location (“no” production design is the new production design) and a blast of a finish.

What was that Godard (or Griffith) line, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and…”? Lana Del Rey’s latest music video, “High by the Beach,” has just dropped, and it’s got a kind of Zabriskie Point-era Antonioni meets Andy Sidaris thing going on, with lovely handheld camerawork, a trendily minimal beachside house location (“no” production design is the new production design) and a blast of a finish.

Celluloid is alive and kicking at the American Cinematheque this month, where a heavenly program of 35mm films will be presented across the various series happening at the Aero and Egyptian theaters. Friday launches the slate with the unlikely double bill of Pasolini's revelry of human suffering "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom' and Russ Meyer's exploitation classic "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Throughout the month you can brush up on your Jacques Tati with film prints of "M. Hulot's Holiday," "Mon Oncle," "Traffic" and "Playtime," which looks gorgeous on a big screen. There's also a David Fincher double feature, with "Seven" and "Panic Room," as well as Antonioni's often maligned but visually dazzling "Zabriskie Point," featuring that epic Pink Floyd soundtrack. Read More: Quentin Tarantino Spoils La Cinephiles with New Beverly's June Program Here's the full list of 35mm prints...

Exclusive: Hollywood Classics to re-release banned 1930’s film.

Hollywood Classics is to re-release Tod Browning’s controversial classic Freaks in UK cinemas this June.

Browning’s 1932 film about a travelling “freak show” circus was completed in 1931 but disastrous test screenings forced studio MGM to make extensive cuts .

The original version was considered too shocking and exploitative to be released, and no longer exists.

The final 59-minute cut was released to international audiences but was rejected by the BBFC in the UK until 1963 when it received an X-rating.

The film, whose cast was made up of carnival sideshow performers with real deformities, charts a love triangle between a wealthy dwarf, a gold-digging aerialist, and a strongman; a murder plot; and the vengeance dealt out by the dwarf and his fellow circus performers.

Eponymous characters include The Living Torso, Bearded Lady, Human Skeleton, Half Boy and Stork Woman.

While director and producer Browning was given considerable leeway by MGM...

The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their third piece, they will discuss Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up.

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Landon’s Take:

The cultural impact of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up would be very difficult to overemphasize. Upon release, Andrew Sarris referred to the film as “a mod masterpiece” and ‘Playboy’ critic Arthur Knight went so far as comparing the film to Hiroshima mon amour, Rome Open City, and Citizen Kane in its potential influence on filmmaking. The film was also a massive hit worldwide and the tenth highest grossing film in the United States in 1966 – a memento of a brief window in time in which an art film by an Italian auteur could also do boffo box office. And, having been denied a seal by the Production Code Administration, Blow Up...

Australian actor Rod Taylor has died of natural causes at the age of 84, People reports. The veteran leading man was best known for starring alongside Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, though he also appeared in The Time Machine, Zabriskie Point, and Falcon Crest, as well as voicing a dog in Disney's 101 Dalmatians, over the course of his 50-year career. Taylor kept working regularly into his 60s, with roles in Murder, She Wrote and Walker, Texas Ranger; his final role was playing Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds.

Film actor who excelled in tough-guy roles but had a softer side

Rod Taylor, who has died aged 84, was a movie star of some magnitude who never achieved superstar status. He co-starred with Doris Day (twice), Jane Fonda, Rock Hudson and John Wayne; had leading roles in films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds, 1963) and Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point, 1970); and starred in the perennially popular science-fiction classic The Time Machine (1960). Yet, at the height of Taylor’s career, 20th Century Fox turned him down for the astronaut role in Planet of the Apes (1968), giving it to Charlton Heston, because they considered him a bigger box-office name.

Perhaps Taylor, handsome and with the build of a rugby forward, missed top billing because he was rarely able to demonstrate his flair for playing light comedy, having been too frequently called upon to be stolid and macho – traits that nevertheless made...