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Frank Ocean: musician, visual-album releaser, list-making cinephile. Following on the heels of his latest album finally being made available to the eager public, Ocean has revealed his 100 favorite films. Originally posted on Genius, which has a breakdown of how movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “Eyes Wide Shut” made their way into his lyrics (“I’m feeling like Stanley Kubrick, this is some visionary shit/Been tryna film pleasure with my eyes wide shut but it keeps on moving”), the list contains a mix of familiar favorites (“Annie Hall,” “The Royal Tenenbaums”) and comparatively obscure arthouse fare (“Woyzeck,” “Sonatine”). Avail yourself of all 100 below.

“Atl”

“Un Chien Andalou”

“Blue Velvet”

“Barry Lyndon”

“Battleship Potemkin”

“Eraserhead”

“Chungking Express”

“Raging Bull”

“The Conformist”

“Bicycle Thieves”

“Taxi Driver”

“A Clockwork Orange”

“Mean Streets”

“Gods of the Plague”

“Persona”

“Mulholland Drive”

“Happy Together”

“Fallen Angels”

“Apocalypse Now”

“The Last Laugh”

“Pi”

“Full Metal Jacket...

After a few delays, Frank Ocean‘s Channel Orange follow-up, Blond, has now arrived and, with it, not only an additional visual album, but Boys Don’t Cry, a magazine that only a select few were able to get their hands on. (Although, if you believe the artist’s mom, we can expect a wider release soon.) In between a personal statement about his new work and a Kanye West poem about McDonalds, Ocean also listed his favorite films of all-time and we have the full list today.

Clocking at 207.23 hours, as Ocean notes, his list includes classics from Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog, Akira Kurosawa, Ridley Scott, Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergei Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau, Luis Buñuel, and more.

As for some more recent titles, it looks like The Royal Tenenbaums...

The new issue of Cinema Scope is out, with Miguel Gomes on the cover and a conversation about Arabian Nights inside. Also, articles on Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin, László Nemes's Son of Saul, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour, Andrew Cividino's Sleeping Giant, Patricio Guzmán, Marcel Broodthaers, Albert Serra, Joyce Wieland, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road and more. Also in today's roundup: The return of Carol Reed's The Third Man with Orson Welles, new work from Ben Rivers, a screening of the special triptych version of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome—and more. » - David Hudson...

The new issue of Cinema Scope is out, with Miguel Gomes on the cover and a conversation about Arabian Nights inside. Also, articles on Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin, László Nemes's Son of Saul, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour, Andrew Cividino's Sleeping Giant, Patricio Guzmán, Marcel Broodthaers, Albert Serra, Joyce Wieland, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road and more. Also in today's roundup: The return of Carol Reed's The Third Man with Orson Welles, new work from Ben Rivers, a screening of the special triptych version of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome—and more. » - David Hudson...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Above: Bound to get taken offline by the time you read this, hurry up and watch Star War Wars: All 6 Films At Once (Full Length)Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory visit the famed closet of the Criterion Collection and recount their experiences encountering Godard's Weekend and films by Antonioni.At the invaluable chrismarker.org, Chris Marker's short film 2084 (1984) has been remixed.At its premiere at the Berlinale, Queen of the Desert, Werner Herzog's long-awaited return to epic filmmaking, garnered an unfortunate, uneven response. Now the full trailer for the film is out, and we hope it grows in our estimation upon re-viewing. As a recap, read impressions from Daniel Kasman and Adam Cook, as well as our interview with long-time Herzog cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger about working on the film.

From the Oakland Tribune, Monday, April 28, 1958. Article text:

Brussels, Belgium, April 28: A New York art film director yesterday was awarded second prize in the international experimental film competition and four other Americans won lesser awards.

The $5,000 prize went to Len Lye, New York, for his film “Free Radicals.”

The $10,000 first prize went to Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica for their Polish film “Dom” (House).

Hilary Harris, New York; Francis Thompson, New York; Stan Brakhage, Denver, Colo., and Kenneth Anger, a San Franciscan who lives in Paris won medals.

Nearly half of the 133 films entered were from the United States. There were some boos in the World’s Fair Auditorium when Belgian Interior Minister Pierre Vermeylen announced the results. An international jury studied the films for a week before deciding.

Underground Film Journal notes: This was the 2nd edition of the Brussels Experimental Film Festival.

The film for which Kenneth Anger...

August 2013 -

The cast of characters in writer/director Curtis Harrington’s autobiography Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business (Drag City Incorporated, www.dragcity.com) is nothing short of amazing. A partial list of featured and supporting players includes avant-garde pioneer Kenneth Anger, director James Whale, Jean Cocteau, Shelley Winters, Robert Bresson, Forrest (Forry) Ackerman, Christopher Isherwood (who punched Harrington), Stanley Kubrick, Debbie Reynolds, Roger Corman and the cast of Charlie’s Angels. To call his CV eclectic is something of an understatement, and it’s doubtful that any other major or minor Hollywood figure’s career moved as Harrington’s did: from the resolutely experimental to the realm of low brow American television drama of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Born and raised in California, Harrington was entranced by movies, art and literature at an early age. Among his early accomplishments,...

This week’s Must Read: Making Light of It has posted another one of its wonderful filmmaker profiles, this time for Marie Menken.Here’s a new site to take notice of: The Avant-Garde Film Index, which does exactly what its name implies, indexing experimental, avant-garde and underground films. The site appears to be in its very early stages, but we wish them the best of luck and we’ll keep our eye on it as it grows into the essential resource we’re sure it’ll become.At the Chicago Reader, Ben Sachs interviewed filmmaker Lori Felker about a program of films by Robert Nelson that screened over the weekend at the Gene Siskel Film Center.The Tucson Weekly profiles the Arizona Underground Film Festival, which is going on right now and is having its biggest year ever, especially focusing on the film The Exhibitionists.For the next couple of months,...

Trailer for The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol 1,

released by Fantoma in 2007

Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer was born on this day in 1927 and if you pay him a call at his official site, you'll find a biographical overview he's got to relish. In 2003, Maximilian Le Cain, writing for Senses of Cinema, cut straight to the chase in his opening paragraph: "Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention."

Then: "Whatever one's view of this belief may be,...

Craig Baldwin's Mock Up On Mu is the first example I've seen of his brand of Bruce Conner-influenced experimental cut-up narratives. I get the impression this one differs from most in featuring original material amid the found footage: this is only partially successful, and I wonder if it was necessary. The archive film has such iconic quality, culled as it is from Hollywood movies, documentaries, educational films etc., all bringing their payload of memories and associations to the story, so that no newly-shot material can compete. Also, Baldwin, an exponent of "film povera," or "poor cinema," can't afford production values even on a par with the Prc Z-movies he quotes and misquotes. Still, the fact that all the actors in the specially staged scenes are unconvincingly dubbed is a nice touch: it helps make them feel as contrived and out-of-time as the rest of his jumble of footage.

Chicago – Few films have conveyed the sensation of an out-of-body experience quite like “Enter the Void,” the latest feature from French filmmaker Gaspar Noé, who continues to be one of the most controversial and innovative filmmakers in modern cinema. When his characters get high, their souls float through space, an experience skillfully depicted by Noé, despite the fact that he’s never experienced it himself.

“I’ve tried for many years to have an out-of-body experience and I’ve never managed to have any,” Noé admits.

The son of an Argentine painter, Noé first gained notoriety with his 1991 short, “Carne,” which was later followed by two features that garnered equal amounts of acclaim and outrage at international festivals. “I Stand Alone” (1998) and “Irreversible” (2002) confronted deeply disturbing subject matter with an almost animalistic intensity, while allowing audiences to reflect on the repercussions of their epically intimate tragedies. Noé’s nihilistic worldview is apparent throughout his work,...

Gaspar Noé is no stranger to controversy, as 2002's "Irreversible" -- and, specifically, its nine-minute single-take depiction of violent rape -- firmly established his reputation as a boundary-pushing provocateur. Almost a decade later, he returns to feature filmmaking with this week's extravagant "Enter the Void," a similarly audacious work about a teenage drug dealer's (Nathaniel Brown) post-death experiences as a ghost watching over his stripper sister (Paz de la Huerta) in neon-lit Tokyo.

Utilizing multiple points of view, immersing itself in extended "2001"-style drug hallucinations, and offering up a mélange of sex, violence, spirituality, philosophy and one unbearably harrowing car crash sequence, it's a film that risks being silly in search of the sublime, and thus provokes unlike anything else this cinematic awards season will have to offer. Shortly after introducing the longer original version of the film at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, Noé spoke about the reasons for creating different cuts,...

The characters in Nicolas Winding Refn's films remind one of the famous tale of the scorpion and frog. They're trapped by compulsive behavior, often against their better natures. A small-time drug dealer in "Pusher" (1996), the director's breakthrough debut, seems to go further and further into debt the more he tries to pay back a brutal gangster. In "Pusher 3" (2005), that same brutal gangster, trying to find some normalcy in his middle age, is sucked into a whirlpool of harrowing violence. In "Bronson" (2008), real-life British prison inmate Charlie Bronson is constantly on the search for a fight, even though it only results in him becoming even more confined; he fights, therefore he is.

The characters in "Valhalla Rising," the director's new hallucinatory Viking epic, are no different. These warriors cannot shed themselves of the violence, madness and paranoia that define their world. The Danish director responsible for this brutal and...

First the history, then the list:

In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.

Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.

The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.

Filmmaker Curtis Harrington: 1926-2007.

Our Friend Curtis Harrington

by Jon Zelazny

Curtis Harrington was born in Los Angeles in 1926. He made short films as a teenager, graduated from USC, and began his Hollywood career in the 1950’s. By the end of the decade, he was directing: independent films, studio pictures, made-for-tv movies, and episodic TV. He completed his last short film in 2002, and died in 2007 at the age of 80.

I knew Curtis well in his final years, as did writer-producer Dennis Bartok, the former head programmer of L.A.’s famed American Cinematheque.

Dennis Bartok: I think the most interesting aspect of Curtis’s career is that he was really the only filmmaker to successfully transition from the avant-garde scene of the late 1940’s to directing Hollywood feature films. And when you see how distinctive his movies are, you wish he could’ve made more… but when you...

Kenneth Anger's crazy, gorgeous, disturbing films almost landed him in jail. The avant-garde pioneer talks Simon Hattenstone through all his demons

The gallery is so tiny I think I've walked into somebody's front room. A 10-minute film plays on a loop. Weirded-out rock stars who look like Mick Jagger, or who are Mick Jagger, preen, strut and do their late-1960s satanic thing. White dots form a pyramid on a black background, naked boys lounge on a sofa, marines jump from a helicopter. There's a cat, a dog, an all-seeing Egyptian eye, people smoking dope out of a skull. A synthesiser makes an unbearable noise. There are no words, no story.

Around the screen, in London's Sprüth Magers gallery, a bunch of 21st-century trendies and stoners are watching this film, called Invocation of My Demon Brother, in awe, their ages ranging from late teens to late 80s. Next door,...

The 48th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is another exciting celebration of underground film past and present, featuring two retrospectives of two master filmmakers and dozens of short films and features from some of the most gifted talents working today.

For the retrospectives, first, Kenneth Anger will be in attendance at the festival for two programs of his classic work, including Fireworks and Scorpio Rising. Plus, for the first Anger screening, the filmmaker will be joined on-stage by film critic Dennis Lim for a discussion of his work and career. The second retrospective is of the work of the late Chick Strand, who sadly passed away in 2009. Strand’s Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966) will actually open the entire festival, then there will be two retrospective screenings of her work, the first of which will be presented by film scholar Irina Leimbacher.

The rest of the Aaff lineup reads like a...

Opening in the UK today is Bronson, director Nicolas Winding Refn’s violently surreal screen biography of notorious British thug Michael Petersen. Adopting the name Charles Bronson, after the Death Wish movie star, for his bare-knuckle fighting persona, Petersen has spent most of his adult life in prison solitary confinement.

Refn’s nihilistic tribute, with nods to Stanley Kubrick and Kenneth Anger, has provoked a huge controversy and much critical acclaim, with actor Tom Hardy (from Lethal Dose, Minotaur, The Killing Gene and Star Trek: Nemesis) attracting stunning reviews for his fearless, raw and powerful lead performance. At the London premiere, Refn (pictured) introduced Hardy on stage with the words “My Aleister Crowley.” Afterward, the director (whose credits also include Fear X and the Pusher trilogy) gave Fango the exclusive on what he meant.

“I’m a massive fan of filmmaker Kenneth Anger,” explains the Danish filmmaker, who’s currently...