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Tony McNamara was a voracious reader as a kid growing up in a rural town outside Melbourne, Australia. But he never once considered becoming a writer. “I was always failing English,” he says. “I couldn’t get my head around grammar. Still can’t.”

And yet today, McNamara, 56, is the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind some of the most sharp-witted, intricately verbal projects of the past five years, including 2018’s “The Favourite,” for director Yorgos Lanthimos; the 2020 Hulu series “The Great,” with Elle Fanning; and 2021’s “Cruella,” starring Emma Stone. Most recently, McNamara reunited with Lanthimos and Stone for “Poor Things,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a rapturous reception and opened in limited release on Dec. 8. It tells the fantastical story of Bella Baxter (Stone), a Victorian woman transplanted with an infant’s brain who launches on an odyssey of sexual and intellectual self-discovery.

The common thread in all...

“Poor Things” marks a radical shift for Yorgos Lanthimos. The director gained global acclaim with the microbudget “Dogtooth” in 2009; by 2018, he scored 10 Oscar nominations and one win for star Olivia Colman with the $15 million “The Favourite” ($95 million worldwide). With Venice Golden Lion winner “Poor Things,” he has a $35 million budget, critical acclaim, and another crack at multiple Oscars.

Based on the 1992 novel by Scottish artist and author Alisdair Gray, screenwriter Tony McNamara (“The Favourite”) focused the narrative on young Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman reanimated by scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who placed her own baby’s brain into her skull.

Lanthimos loved Gray’s book and in 2009 traveled to Scotland to meet the author and plead his case for adaptation. Around 2015, Irish producers Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures optioned the rights with Film4, Lanthimos’ longtime backer.

“We were all in. Yorgos was so passionate about it,...

Barbie director Greta Gerwig names the movies that inspired her live-action adaptation of the popular Mattel doll. The upcoming movie, co-written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, will star Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken as they explore the real world. The comedy will also star Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp, and Hari Nef as different versions of Barbie, while Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa, and John Cena also play different versions of Ken.

Speaking to Letterboxd, Gerwig started to list 29 movies that inspired her to make Barbie, but the number went up to 33 by the time her interview ended. Here are the movies that she listed below:

Splash The Wizard of Oz An American in Paris Singin' in the Rain The Red Shoes A Matter of Life and Death Oklahoma Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown His Friday Girl...

Greta Gerwig, director of the highly anticipated Barbie film, reveals the influences, inspirations, and references she used in her creation.

In an interview with Letterboxd, Gerwig shared a watch list of 29 must-see films integral to her shaping of the Barbie world. The films spanned genres and decades and revealed a broad palette of influences on everything from set design to tone. Gerwig described the Barbie film as a "movie driven by music, but not a musical," much in line with John Badham's 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, a key inspiration. However, this did not stop the Academy Award-winning director from including ten musicals on her list: Grease (1978), Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935), Oklahoma! (1955), All That Jazz (1979), The Red Shoes (1948), Singin' in the Rain (1952), An American in Paris (1951), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Related:Greta Gerwig Reveals the Real-Life Inspiration for Barbie

A Watchlist for Barbie...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai)

The Eric Andre persona is best understood by his popular late-night Adult Swim series, succinctly titled The Eric Andre Show. In every episode Andre’s irreverent and self-destructive behavior leads him to trash his set, causing bodily harm, and torturing a slew of celebrities that range from Jimmy Kimmel to the Real Housewives of Atlanta. Andre is the equivalent of a magic mushrooms trip: wildly confusing, incoherent, sometimes causing one to burst at the seams with ecstatic comedic moments. Andre’s energy finds the perfect vessel in Bad Trip, his first starring role with a script he wrote with frequent collaborator and director Kitao Sakurai.

Ace Italian cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, who was instrumental to the making of masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” and Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord,” but also worked in Hollywood and was an Oscar nominee for Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz,” has died. He was 97.

Rotunno, who was nicknamed Peppino, died on Sunday in his Rome home, his family announced without disclosing the exact cause.

Born in Rome on March 23, 1923, Rotunno started his remarkable six-decade career as a still photographer at the Italian capital’s Cinecittà Studios in 1940 before being recruited in 1942 to serve as a newsreel cameraman with the Italian army where he cut his teeth as a cinematographer.

In 1943 at age 20, with World War II still raging, Rotunno was hired as an assistant Dp by Roberto Rossellini for the 1943 war film “L’Uomo dalla croce” (The Man with a Cross), a drama about a military chaplain.

After the war,...

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No matter how convenient our digital lives are, there’s still something special about physical media — especially when it’s so beautifully and thoughtfully curated by the Criterion Collection.

Each of Criterion’s releases takes an exemplary film, from auteur classic to Hollywood blockbuster and everything in between, and includes a slew of special features — commentary tracks, restored film transfers, essays about its importance in the cinematic pantheon — that help “deepen the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the art of cinema.”

While there are literally hundreds of important classic and contemporary...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Joining in the international celebration of Federico Fellini's 100th birthday, Criterion is thrilled to announce Essential Fellini, a fifteen-Blu-ray box set that brings together fourteen of the director's most imaginative and uncompromising works for the first time. Alongside new restorations of the theatrical features, the set also includes short and full-length documentaries about Fellini's life and work, archival interviews with his friends and collaborators, commentaries on six of the films, video essays, the director's 1968 short Toby Dammit, and much more.

The edition is accompanied by two lavishly illustrated books with hundreds of pages of notes and essays on the films by writers and filmmakers, as well as dozens of images of Fellini memorabilia. Essential Fellini is a fitting tribute to the maestro of Italian cinema!

Fifteen-blu-ray Special Edition Collector's Set Features

New 4K restorations of 11 theatrical features, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks for...

Classic movie buffs with $200 to burn, take note: The Criterion Collection has announced “Essential Fellini,” a box set of 14 films from legendary film director Federico Fellini.

The Blu-Ray set, which will release on November 24,will include several features, including 4K restorations of 11 of the films, as well as uncompressed monaural soundtracks for each title. Most of the director’s most celebrated films will be included in the box set. The 14 films are: “Variety Lights” (1950), “The White Sheik” (1952), “I Vitelloni” (1953), “La Strada” (1954), “Il Bidone” (1955), “Nights of Cabiria” (1957), “La Dolce Vita” (1960), “8½” (1963), “Juliet of the Spirits” (1965), “Fellini Satyricon” (1969), “Roma” (1972), “Amarcord” (1973), “And the Ship Sails On” (1983), and “Intervista” (1987).

Here’s Criterion’s announcement of the news:

One hundred years after his birth, Federico Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. The Italian maestro is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane.

On the day their gorgeous Agnès Varda box set arrives, The Criterion Collection has announced details on their next director collection. In celebration of his 100th birthday this year, Federico Fellini will be receiving a 15-disc box set featuring fourteen of his films, set for a release on November 24, 2020.

Titled Essential Fellini, the release features new restorations of the theatrical features, as well as short and full-length documentaries about Fellini’s life and work, archival interviews with his friends and collaborators, commentaries on six of the films, video essays, the director’s 1968 short Toby Dammit, and much more. It also includes two illustrated books with hundreds of pages of notes and essays on the films by writers and filmmakers, plus memorabilia. Check out a list of films and special features below.

List of Films

Variety Lights (1950)The White Sheik (1952)I Vitelloni (1953)LA Strada (1954)Il Bidone (1955)Nights Of Cabiria (1957)LA Dolce Vita...

Moviegoing Memories is a series of short interviews with filmmakers about going to the movies. Agnieszka Holland's Mr. Jones is Mubi Go's Film of the Week of February 7, 2020.Notebook: How would you describe your movie in the least amount of words?Agnieszka Holland: It is a story of a young courageous Welsh journalist who wanted to report the atrocity of the famine orchestrated by Stalin in Ukraine in 1933.Notebook: Where and what is your favorite movie theater? Why is it your favorite?Holland: Lots of my favorites are not existing anymore. I always liked the small theatres, the one screen or two screen theatres. One in Warsaw I really like is called Muranów. In Paris it was Cinema Rex, which I like—it’s a huge cinema, but I’m not sure if it’s open now. And I like some American cinemas in different cities, but they are also closed.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

City of Tiny Lights (Pete Travis)

Small-time private detective Tommy Akhtar (Riz Ahmed) has all the swagger of a hard-boiled snoop: leather jacket on his shoulders and cigarette in his mouth, leaning against London architecture in the darkened night. His office resides above some shops, he makes friendly with local convenience store owner Mrs. Elbaz (Myriam Acharki), and asks new clients where they found him because he’s not advertising in the paper.

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This July will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Saturday, July 1 Changing Faces

What does a face tell us even when it’s disguised or disfigured? And what does it conceal? Guest curator Imogen Sara Smith, a critic and author of the book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City, assembles a series of films that revolve around enigmatic faces transformed by masks, scars, and surgery, including Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966).

Tuesday, July 4 Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Premature* and Ten*

Come hitch a ride with Norwegian director Gunhild Enger and the late Iranian master...

The OrnithologistIt’s one thing to watch a film festival unfold and take the films as they come when they come, on their own individual merits. It’s another to look back at them as part of a bigger picture, tracing connections made in invisible ink that may not be apparent at the time. That’s one way to look at the competitive selection of Locarno in 2016. As usual, yes, Locarno did take risks very few other A-list festivals would, and it still gets away with stuff other events can’t. (Let’s pause here to remember that Filipino auteur du jour Lav Diaz only went on to the main Berlin line-up after winning the Golden Leopard two years ago.) If getting away with it means tripping over itself occasionally (and in my short time of attending Locarno there have been stumbles, believe me), I’m absolutely fine with it.

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1916 Disaster epic super producer Irwin Allen is born. (More on him this afternoon)

1919 Stage legend Uta Hagen is born. Though she only ever makes three movies, she originates Tony winning roles on stage that later win Oscars for movie stars (The Country Girl and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Also the co-author of "Respect for Acting" and a reknowned acting teacher with 70s legends Pacino & De Niro as students

1928 Oscar winning composer Richard M Sherman (of Sherman Brothers fame) is born. Jason Schwartzman plays him in Saving Mr Banks (2013) about the making of Mary Poppins (1964)

1942 Anne Frank receives a diary for her 13th birthday. She does not live much longer during the horrific events of The Holocaust but The Diary of Anne Frank becomes a key text of the 20th century. The George Stevens film adaptation (of the Pulitzer winning play of the same name by the screenwriters) released in 1959 receives 8 nominations including Best Picture and takes home three Oscars

1946 Oscar-nominated costume designer Maurizio Millenotti is born in Italy. Credits include: Otello, Hamlet (1990 version), Malèna, The Passion of the Christ and Federico Fellini's And the Ship Sails On.

1962 Three bank robbers escape from Alcatraz. The story becomes the Clint Eastwood picture Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

← 1967 The Supreme Court strikes down anti-miscenegation laws banning interracial marriage in the Loving v Virginia case. This year's Oscar hopeful Loving (2016), starring Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton tells the Loving story. There's also a movement to make June 12th, "Loving Day," an official Us holiday for celebrating multiracial families. Sadly the movie isn't opening today for this anniversary so we'll have to wait months to see it. Perhaps the 50th anniversary next year, after the story is more widely known with the movie, will help add momentum.

1985 Dave Franco is born

1992 Housesitter with Steve Martin, Goldie Hawn and Dana Delany hits theaters

2010 Slow burning hit "Bulletproof" peaks on the Us charts nearly a year after its release. Two years later Beca deploys it to fuck up Aubrey's stale act in Pitch Perfect (2012)...

How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2014?

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...

Animator/illustrator Simone Massi's poster for the 70th Venice International Film Festival, which is held at the Lido from August 28 to September 7, is inspired by the cinema of Theo Angelopoulos and Federico Fellini. The festival is directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta. Massi's poster recalls a frame from Angelopoulos' "Eternity and a Day" (1998), starring Bruno Ganz, as a man seen from behind waves his arms at a boat which, in the distance, is carrying a child and a rhinoceros. The image also makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to last year’s poster (which was inspired by Federico Fellini’s 1983 film, "And the Ship Sails On") and thus marks both continuity and a break with the past. Once again, the coordinated visual identity and image of the Venice Film Festival were given to Milan's Studio Graph.X, based on the drawings by Massi.

Screenwriter and poet who co-scripted films with Fellini, Antonioni and Tarkovsky

The Italian poet, novelist and screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who has died aged 92, brought something of his own poetic world to the outstanding films he co-scripted with, among others, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Francesco Rosi, but also many non-Italian directors including Theo Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky. Perhaps his most creative contribution was to Fellini's colourful account of life in a small coastal town in the 1930s, Amarcord (1973), of which he was truly co-author, because the film reflected their common experiences growing up in Romagna.

The two were born in the region a couple of months apart – Fellini in Rimini and Guerra in Santarcangelo, in the hills above the Adriatic resort, the son of a street vendor father.

Guerra's own "amarcord" ("I remember" in dialect) is scattered over many books of poetry and short stories. He first started writing...

Versatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clerics

The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".

I...

One of the most important Italian screenwriters in cinema history is set to be the subject of a new art exhibition in Moscow.

According to The Voice Of Russia, screenwriter/playwright/poet and painter Tonino Guerra will be the subject of a new exhibition opening just in time to celebrate his 90th birthday. The exhibition will display 25 paintings, ceramic tiles, and also furniture that the author made himself. Regarding his screenwriting work, he is best known for working with the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini.

Those who know the Criterion Collection will also know this name quite well. He wrote the screenplays for L’avventura, Amarcord, And The Ship Sails On, L’eclisse, and the upcoming release, Red Desert. He’s a 6 time Oscar winer, 8 time Golden Palm winner, and just an all around legend within the world of film.

While I am quite sad that this will...

James Gray (Two Lovers) remembers going to see Walter Murch talking about his groundbreaking sound and editing work on The Conversation. John Landis (An American Werewolf in London) remembers seeing the original King Kong, a "life-changing experience." Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging) remembers seeing an obscure Bette Davis movie with a packed house. Rian Johnson (Brick) one time just simply walked in without even knowing what was playing (it turned out to be Fellini's And the Ship Sails On). Those four, plus six other directors, shared their feelings with the Los Angeles Times on the uncertain fate of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and especially its beloved Bing Theater.

But some of the others aren't in the mood for reminiscing. John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) says, "seeing a film like How Green Was My Valley and Duel in the Sun on the wide screen is a whole other thing.