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Tár writer/director Todd Field discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary

Tár (2022)

Man With A Movie Camera (1929)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Big Parade (1925)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Crowd (1928)

Star Wars (1977)

The Servant (1963)

Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Figures In A Landscape (1970)

M (1931)

M (1951)

I Am Cuba (1964)

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)

The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

The Sting (1973)

The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Thelma And Louise (1991)

Murmur Of The Heart (1971)

The Silent World (1956)

Opening Night (1977)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...

The only Soviet film to ever win the coveted Palme d’Or, Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (1957), gets a loving 2K restoration on its re-release to Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection. The first of three superb collaborations between Georgian-born Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky is also the first Soviet cinema narrative to deal with post-wwii sentiments and arrived during the brief Soviet thaw in the late 1950s thanks to the death of Stalin in 1953. Kalatozov was the most notable Soviet director of his generation, his third union with Urusevsky being 1964’s I Am Cuba, the zenith of their visual semantics which influenced a number of Soviet filmmakers.…...

The Mark Lanegan Band’s new single, “Letter Never Sent,” is a dusky, synth-laden New Wave number on which Lanegan sings about “painful reflection,” “sad introspection” and skulls in close proximity to tire irons. The melody and incessant drum machine makes it sound deceptively upbeat, and it all leads up to a mysterious chorus, “You could send me a letter, a letter never sent.” The song will appear on the group’s upcoming album, Somebody’s Knocking, due out October 18th.

The New Wavey vibe seems like a new direction...

For some, Rian Johnson is the director of the acclaimed hit Looper, which proved he was ready for the big league budget of Star Wars directing. But for others, Rian Johnson is one of the keepers of classic cinema, both in taste and style. Like Lucas before him, Johnson is an old school filmmaker working in a contemporary blockbuster setting. Rian Johnson is a perfect fit for Star Wars, and I’ll detail why in great, painful lengths. Rian Johnson is exactly what Star Wars needs right now.

On October 30th, 2012 Disney announced they were acquiring Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and that there would be new Star Wars films every two to three years (that’s since changed). Just barely a month before, Rian Johnson’s film Looper was released wide in September to wide critical acclaim and instantly embraced by fans as a modern sci-fi classic. The first question in...

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.

Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilovic)

Near the beginning of Evolution, there’s a shot that hangs underwater, showing a seemingly harmonious aquatic eco-system that’s glimpsed just long enough to create the sense of something that, while somewhat familiar, is distinctly outside the human world. This fleeting image though shows the promise of the film Evolution could’ve been. – Ethan V. (full review)

Where to Stream: Netflix

Fire at Sea and...

While the film that had the most direct influence on the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode VIII is certainly J.J. Abrams‘ The Force Awakens, director Rian Johnson has shared some key inspiration when it comes to the tone and themes of his upcoming sci-fi sequel. While he previously stated two inspirations for the Star Wars saga’s next installment, that list has expanded, thanks his talk at Star Wars Celebration Europe.

The list includes six titles that Johnson encouraged the story group of Lucasfilm to watch before filming began, a thematic lookbook that features a mixture of beloved classics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai and lesser-known gems such as 1943’s Sahara. However, Twelve O’Clock High still stands as Johnson’s top pick for most influential. The most recent film on this list is from 1960, suggesting Johnson’s cinematic influences are less peer-based than deeply embedded in a more classical style.

Star Wars Celebration Europe is now officially over and everyone can start counting down the time until Star Wars Celebration Orlando begins. Before we get to next year hear are the top 5 most important things to come out of Swce.

1. Star Wars Rogue One is not a traditional Star Wars movie

It is safe to say with the trailer, sizzle reel, and an interview from the cast is that this movie does not have a happy ending to it. Expect a lot of casualties in this movie. A lot more speculation has come about since the panel for Rogue One finished. The biggest buzz came from Mads Mikkelson who confirmed that he is playing Galen who is Jyn Erso’s father. He also revealed that his character is a scientist who has created something that was initially to be beautiful and amazing. So now it starting to make sense that...

Director Rian Johnson recently wrapped production on Star Wars: Episode VIII and this weekend he showed up at Star Wars Celebration to talk a little bit about the movie and he revealed a few new details.

We really don’t know much about what is going to happen in Episode VIII aside from some rumors that have hit the internet, and we all know how rumors can go. They could turn out to be legit they could turn out to be false, we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, Johnson offered some solid intel on the film revealing that the story will pick up right where Star Wars: The Force Awakens left off. He says:

“This is going to start right where the last one left off. It was a break from tradition.”

We’ve never seen a Star Wars pick up right where they previous film left off before,...

0:00 – Intro 8:45 – Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows 45:50 – Headlines: Ghostbusters Day, Daniel Craig Undecided About Next Bond Movie + Casting Rumours 59:00 – Other Stuff We Watched: The Great Outdoors, The Money Pit, Alice in Wonderland, Witness to Murder, The Wrong Man, Letter Never Sent, Neighbors 2: […]...

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Episode VIII is due out in time for the Star Wars 40th anniversary. Here's what we know so far, plus a bit of speculation about its events.

Nb: The following contains potential spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and speculation about Episode VIII. 

"In the middle act of a movie or a book or anything else,  not much happens. It sort of evolves the story, makes the plot more complicated." - George Lucas on The Empire Strikes Back

Disney may have had a lot riding on Star Wars: The Force Awakens - essentially, the future of an entire franchise - but next year's Episode VIII brings potentially nail-biting risks of its own. It will, after all, have to follow on from the success of The Force Awakens - currently the third biggest film of all time in terms of ticket sales - and will also draw...

This is the first letter in the first series of what will be an ongoing installment of correspondences between Scout Tafoya and Veronika Ferdman on the topic of Soviet cinema. Each series will be organized around a theme—director, genre, time period, mood or more whimsical connectors such as color or season. In short, the writers reserve the right to let Soviet cinema be their muse and guide the orientation of the letter writing. For this inaugural dispatch from the celluloid wonders of the Soviet bloc the subject can best be described as love in a time of discontent.Dear Veronika,I’m excited to be writing to you about the many, many undiscovered, unsung gems hiding in the vast canon of Russian cinema. There’s so much to cover that it’s frankly a little overwhelming to me. A whole world of movies I’ve never heard of just waiting to be watched.

L’Avventura

Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, and Tonino Guerra

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Italy, 1960

Michelangelo Antonioni’s enigmatic and brilliant L’Avventura is one of the benchmarks for international art cinema, a somewhat disputable designation that was, nevertheless, very much in vogue at the time of its release. Take the 1960 Cannes Film Festival for example, where L’Avventura debuted to one of the event’s most divisive responses, with initially more boos than cheers greeting this affront to conventional film narrative and form. Yet, this was also the year of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (the Palme d’Or winner), Chukhray’s Ballad of a Soldier, Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent, and Buñuel’s The Young One, to name just a few of the other titles at the festival, where, ultimately, L’Avventura came away with the Jury Prize (shared with Ichikawa’s...

If you look carefully at J.J. Abrams in his video released last week, in which he teased a new and improved X-Wing, there is a slight tremor in his voice. He reveals very little information, keenly aware of the Sith Lord studio exec’s open hand pointed directly at Abrams’s neck.

So much of the upcoming Star Wars production has been cloaked in secrecy, and that does not look to be changing anytime soon. But at least Rian Johnson — who was recently tapped to direct Episode VIII and oversee Episode IX — is good humored about it.

In a podcast interview for Filmspotting’s 500th episode, set to air this weekend, Johnson assured fans that Lucasfilm did not hire him because of his skills.

Johnson jested:

“I can only assume it was a clerical error, like in the movie Brazil. There’s a Brian Johnson out there who is really mad.

"Star Wars: Episode VII" still feels light years away from its December 2015 release, but that doesn't mean that Rian Johnson, just picked to write and direct its sequel, "Episode VIII," isn't already conducting research for his film.

In an interview taped for the Filmspotting podcast, Johnson chatted about his childhood love of the "Star Wars" movies, revealed the cinematic influences he plans on including in the flick, and discussed his unlikely selection as the newest member of the "Star Wars" filmmakers club.

"The thought of it made me so completely joyfully happy," Johnson said of agreeing to the offer to direct "Episode VIII." "I wanted to to play in this world, of literally the first movie my dad put me in the car to see."

The "Looper" director also joked that with his less-well-known pedigree, it must have been "a clerical error" that saw him land the gig, adding, "There's...

Just a brief word or two from Rian Johnson, who is developing Star Wars: Episode VIII - and possibly IX - at Lucasfilm...

Disney/Lucasfilm has thus far this year announced three new directors for Star Wars movies. Josh Trank and Gareth Edwards are each going to be doing standalone spin-off films. But it's Looper helmer Rian Johnson who will be picking up from Jj Abrams and putting Star Wars: Episode VIII - and possibly Star Wars: Episode IX - together.

Chatting to the Filmspotting Podcast, Johnson admitted his absolute delight at landing the Star Wars job. "The thought of it made me so completely joyfully happy. I wanted to to play in this world, of literally the first movie my dad put me in the car to see".

Admitting that he's early in the process of making his new film, Johnson is currently hard at work at Lucasfilm, and...

Russian movie star Tatiana Samoilova dead at 80; known as ‘the Russian Audrey Hepburn,’ Samoilova was best remembered for Cannes winner ‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (photo: Tatiana Samoilova in ‘The Cranes Are Flying’) Russian film star Tatiana Samoilova, best remembered for playing the female lead in Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 romantic drama The Cranes Are Flying, died of heart complications at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital late night on May 4, 2014 — the day the Leningrad-born (now St. Petersburg) actress turned 80. Samoilova, who had been suffering from coronary heart disease and hypertension, had been hospitalized the previous day. The daughter of iconic stage and film actor Yevgeny Samoilov, among whose credits was the title role in a 1954 production of Hamlet and several leads in highly popular movies made during World War II, Tatiana Samoilova studied ballet at Moscow’s prestigious Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko music theater. Beginning in 1953, she took acting lessons for three years...

Amazon is having a massive sale on Criterion Collection titles, virtually all of them listed at 50% off and I have included more than 115 of the available titles directly below along with a selection of ten I consider must owns. Titles beyond my top ten include Amarcord, Christopher Nolan's Following, David Fincher's The Game, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and The Killing, Roman Polansk's Rosemary's Baby, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited and plenty of Terrence Malick. All the links lead directly to the Amazon website, so click on through with confidence. Small Note: By buying through the links below you help support RopeofSilicon.com as I get a small commission for the sales made through using these links. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your support. Top Ten Must Owns 8 1/2 (dir. Federico Fellini) 12 Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet) The 400 Blows (dir.

Amazon is having a massive sale on Criterion Collection titles, virtually all of them listed at 50% off and I have included more than 115 of the available titles directly below along with a selection of ten I consider must owns. Titles beyond my top ten include Amarcord, Christopher Nolan's Following, David Fincher's The Game, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and The Killing, Roman Polansk's Rosemary's Baby, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited and plenty of Terrence Malick. All the links lead directly to the Amazon website, so click on through with confidence. Small Note: By buying through the links below you help support RopeofSilicon.com as I get a small commission for the sales made through using these links. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your support. Top Ten Must Owns 8 1/2 (dir. Federico Fellini) 12 Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet) The 400 Blows (dir.

Amazon.com are in the midst of offering the last of their DVD and Blu-ray sales deals for the holiday weekend and for Cyber Monday they seem to be doing something special for lovers of the Criterion Collection.

The prestige label offers its classic film titles on Blu-ray at a retail price of $40 and usually sell online for $35. Every now and then Barnes & Noble will hold half price sales with titles going for at least $20. Today, Amazon is selling various key ones for $18 and $21 a piece.

Amongst the titles on offer there's film classics like "8 1/2," "12 Angry Men," "The 39 Steps," "Antichrist," "Being John Malkovich," "Black Narcissus," "Blow Out," "Brazil," "Carlos," "Charade," "Che," "Cronos," "Days of Heaven," "Diabolique," "The Darjeeling Limited," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "The Game," "Godzilla," "Hunger," "In the Mood for Love," "The Last Temptation of Christ," "M," "Night of the Hunter," "Paths of Glory," "Rashomon," "The Red Shoes,...

Just when you thought there couldn't be anymore deals this year Amazon goes and lowers their prices on several of their Criterion Blu-ray titles, many of which are priced at $17.99 including personal must owns such as Seven Samurai, Stagecoach, 12 Angry Men, Diabolique, The Thin Red Line, The Wages Of Fear, The Great Dictator, The Night of the Hunter, Rashomon, 8 1/2, Last Year at Marienbad and a major favorite of mine... Breathless. There are even some titles available for preorder such as Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Christopher Nolan's Following along with recently released titles such as Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, David Fincher's The Game and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. I have broken the titles up into a few categories below based on my personal taste so sort through and give 'em a look and see if you can save a little money on some titles you've been wanting to add to your collection.

Letter Never Sent Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov Written by Grigori Koltunov, Valeri Osipov and Viktor Rozov Starring: Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Tatyana Samoilova, Vasili Livanov, Yevgeny Urbansky There's something to be said about Criterion's boutique releases and their in-depth extras and fancy packaging, but it's the curatory nature of the label that allows for the discovery of some great films that might not have otherwise come across your blu ray/DVD player. I went into Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent blindly (outside of some knowledge about his films Soy Cuba and The Cranes Are Flying) and was absolutely blown away. As a fan of survival-thrillers, the classic man against nature story had me hooked and the filmmaking on display is absolutely mindblowing. The film opens as four people -- three geologists and a guide -- are left in the Siberian Taiga. It's spring time and they're searching for diamonds. Their mission...

Letter Never Sent takes the relatively simple premise of four geologists sent into the taiga wilderness of Siberia to search for diamonds and uses it as the perfect stage for a character study in pride, loyalty, love, and loss. Where it differentiates from most character-driven stories is in its stunning depiction of a forest fire and the cinematography that shows the world crashing down in flames around the protagonists. Director Mikhail Kalatozov and his three-time cinematographer collaborator Sergei Urusevsky manage to preserve the inherent fear that the red, orange, and yellow flicker of flame triggers in a human being, and let it function as a catalyst as the scientist’s confidence erodes in the face of falling trees and endless smoke. Kalatozov pushes the visual boundaries of what most people expect from a black and white film, and the result is something truly awe-inspiring.

Read more...

0:00 - Intro 4:15 - Review: The Hunger Games 49:40 - Review: The Raid: Redemption 1:11:00 - Headlines: 2012 Hot Docs Line-Up Announced, New Chevy Chase / Dan Aykroyd Comedy, Disney to Lose $200 Million on John Carter, Ninja Turtles to be Motion Captured?, Cosmopolis Trailer 1:35:15 - Other Stuff We Watched: Pleasantville, Act of Valor, The Muppets, The Deer Hunter, Letter Never Sent, The Sweatbox, The Announcement, Espn 30 for 30, Game Change, The Running Man, Celebrity Apprentice 2:22:20 - Junk Mail: Modern Gladiator Movies, Missing Categories at the Oscars, Melancholia Snubbed at the Oscars, Movies Where the Supporting Actor is Better than the Lead, No New Content Nightmare, Who Would Win The Hunger Games? 2:37:00 - This Week's DVD Releases 2:39:55 - Outro

Film Junk Podcast Episode #363: The Hunger Games and The Raid: Redemption by Filmjunk on Mixcloud

» Download the MP3 (74 Mb) » View the show notes...

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV

Ratings (out of five): **** 1/2

In one of the opening shots of Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent, four Soviet explorers struggle wordlessly through a throng of birch trees in the middle of a Siberian hinterland. The hand-held camera lurches along with the adventurers as they push on, hip-deep in water and dragging their gear behind them on rafts. There’s something about this scene – the close-up, shaky images of desperate characters fighting against a cold, indifferent nemesis – that instantly recalls George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In fact, much of Letter Never Sent’s man-vs.-nature conflict plays like a horror film. Here the relentless boogeyman doesn’t wield an axe but fire and ice.

The bare-bones plot involves a geological expedition into Russia’s unforgiving taiga. A team of four surveyors has been sent on a third and final mission to find diamonds,...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I only received a DVD copy for review and the only feature available on it is the David Fincher commentary, which I already covered at length. However, even I am considering picking up the Blu-ray for this one.

 

Carnage I seem to have liked this movie more than most people (read my review here), but I'm not sure it's worth buying. I became immediately obsessed with it when it first arrived as a screener late last year and watched it three times, but I may have already gotten my fill.

 

Battle Royale (Blu-ray) I only reviewed the single-disc Blu-ray version of Battle Royale, which you can read here, and have heard the sequel is terrible so I'm not sure how worth it buying the box set is. However, the box set does come with the theatrical and extended cut of Battle Royale (the single...

For the tenth edition of Film Art: An Introduction, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson are partnering with Criterion to present Connect Film, an hour-long set of twenty videos on various aspects of filmmaking addressed in the now-classic textbook. Above: "Elliptical Editing in Vagabond (1985)." Kristin Thompson: "Most of the other Connect examples illustrate the chapters on the four types of film technique: mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. There's also a short documentary about digital animation."

More books. You may remember that Dave Kehr is quite an admirer of the writing of Arlene Croce, a dance critic for the New Yorker from 1973 to 1998. She's also the author of The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book and, in the new issue of the New York Review of Books, she reviews Todd Decker's Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz and Kathleen Riley's The Astaires: Fred and Adele. As the Boston Globe's Mark Feeney writes,...

DVD Playhouse—March 2012

By Allen Gardner

J. Edgar (Warner Bros.) Director Clint Eastwood provides a rock-solid, albeit rather flat portrait of polarizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, covering his life from late teens to his death. Leonardo DiCaprio does an impressive turn as Hoover, never crossing the line into caricature, and creating a Hoover that is all too human, making for an all the more unsettling look at absolute power run amuck. Where the film stumbles is the love story at its core: Hoover’s relationship with longtime aide Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). In the hands of an openly-gay director like Gus Van Sant, this could have been a heartbreaking, tender story of forbidden (unrequited?) love, but Eastwood seems to tiptoe around their romance, with far too much delicacy and deference. The film works well when recreating the famous crimes and investigations which Hoover made his name on (the Lindbergh kidnapping,...