Noticias

by Cláudio Alves

We live in a time when what was once conjecture is becoming a perilous reality, dreams of advanced tech crashing into the nightmare of actual artificial intelligence. Facing these newborn terrors of our digital age, the Criterion Channel looks back. Spanning fifty years of film history, a collection of 17 titles investigates how cineastes have approached the topic of AI, from decades when it was just narrative device or metaphor, to our present state of sci-fi as a direct response to concrete real-world anxieties.

This cinematic tasting menu of techno-cinema offers many gustative possibilities, though none more surprising than Lynn Hershman-Leeson's Teknolust. Criminally underseen upon its 2002/2003 release, the unorthodox comedy posits a scenario where Tilda Swinton plays four roles, mad scientist Rosetta Stone and her three cybernetic creations cum clones – Ruby, Marinne, and Olive…...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

One of last year’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we talk about one of the best actresses working today: Tilda Swinton!

Our guest is the great Dan Walber, public historian and recovering (!) film critic. Walber is also part of the @closefriendscollective, which you can find on Instagram.

Our B-Sides today are: Edward II, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Possible Worlds, The Deep End, and Teknolust.

Walber speaks to her immediate exceptionalism in Derek Jarman’s ‘80s films, we marvel at her endless range (from Constantine to Snowpiercer and so on and so forth), and I gush about the work of Francis Bacon and the depths of his controversial career after falling in love with Love is the Devil. We...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month and amongst the highlights are a Ricky D’Ambrose double bill, including his new film The Cathedral, as well as a trio of films by Maurice Pialat, Gaspar Noé’s Vortex, David Osit’s Mayor, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, an expansion of their Tilda Swinton series, and more.

Also including films by Tsai Ming-liang, Sky Hopinka, Nacho Vigalondo, Anton Corbijn, and more check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

September 1 – Classical Period, directed by Ted Fendt | Ted Fendt Focus

September 2 – 2 Days in New York, directed by Julie Delpy

September 3 – Timecrimes, directed by Nacho Vigalondo

September 4 – Małni – Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore, directed by Sky Hopinka

September 6 – Mayor, directed by David Osit

September 7 – Friendship’s Death, directed by Peter Wollen | The One and Only: Tilda Swinton

September 8 – Hideous, directed by Yann Gonzalez | Brief Encounters

September 9 – The Cathedral,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Forman, Spielberg, Hitchcock, and more play as part of “Universal in the ’70s.”

Ronin screens on Friday; King Kong shows this Saturday.

Museum of the Moving Image

Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and New York, New York will screen as part of the ongoing Scorsese retrospective.

The Tilda Swinton-led Teknolust screens this Sunday.

IFC...

Short-listed projects included On Screen Off Screen and How To Kill Uffie.

Interactive documentary The Flickering Flame, exploring Ken Loach’s 50-year career, has won the Arte International Prize at the Pixel Market.

The website, app and film is being overseen by Ken Loach’s long-time producer Rebecca O’Brien at Sixteen Films in collaboration with Paris-based digital production house Upian.

As previously reported by ScreenDaily, the production will explore Loach’s career through the battles he and his team faced to make his films.

The filmmaker’s son Jim Loach, whose own credits include Oranges and Sunshine and episodes of TV series such as Shameless and Dci Banks, is directing the central, interview-led documentary.

The Flickering Flame was among eight projects in the running for the Arte prize, all of which were pitched at the Pixel Market Finance Forum on Wednesday (Oct 8) and then discussed in one-to-one meetings in the Pixel Market the following day.[p...

Today's Must Read

The Hairpin's "Being Maleficent", on play-acting, female aggression, and iconic villainy

'Me, please,' they said. 'I want to be Aurora.'

I chewed my fingernails and felt my glasses slip down my nose. I wanted to be Aurora too. I wanted to be the center of the play. I wanted the woodland creatures to dance around me and the whole room to talk about my beauty, even if it was just pretend. But at seven, I was already hyper-aware of my skinned knees, my knobby elbows and my boy haircut. I stood up. 'I’ll be Maleficent.'...

More Recommended Links

de film Krant loved this impassioned vote for Brian de Palma as a sensibility shaper and the problems with "greatest of all time" lists

Grand Old Movies looks back at a Norma Shearer movie I hadn't heard of - Let Us Be Gay (1930). With deglamming!

Who can forget Carrie Fisher’s gold, swirly, shamelessly skimpy bikini as a slave girl held captive by Jabba the Hutt in 1983’s Return of the Jedi? Cue sex icon posters of Fisher taped to salivating fanboys’ walls. Fast forward almost 30 years later, with both fanboys and fangirls, er fanmen and fanwomen at this point, awaiting an upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII by 2015, following Tuesday’s huge announcement about Disney acquiring Lucasfilm.

It’s a new world for women in sci-fi fantasy since the metal bikini days, or even since George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, released in 1999, 2002 and 2005, which starred...

Female filmmakers in the sci-fi and fantasy genre will be celebrated with the first ever Etheria Film Festival, to be held in September 2012.

Etheria is the brainchild of film journalist Heidi Honeycutt and the Viscera Organisation, a not-for-profit group dedicated to increasing the visibility of female genre filmmakers.

Last month, the Viscera Film Festival Carpet Ceremony put the spotlight on up-and-coming women directors in the horror genre with a programme of new short films and a celebrity judging panel of industry veterans.

A Viscera spokeswoman said: "The Viscera Film Festival has been showcasing the best in emerging female horror film talent since 2007.

"But why stop with horror? There are talented women filmmakers across every genre. The Etheria Film Festival is the only film festival in the world that screens, exclusively, the best new short science fiction and fantasy films directed by women from around the globe."

Etheria is co-presented by...

DVD Release Date: March 20, 2012

Price: DVD $29.99

Studio: Zeitgeist

The ladies talk it over in !Women Art Revolution.

The 2010 documentary film !Women Art Revolution illuminates the under-explored feminist art movement through conversations, observations, archival footage and works of visionary artists, historians, curators and critics.

Starting from its roots in 1960s antiwar and civil rights protests, !Women Art Revolution details developments in women’s art through the 1970s and explores how the determination of the the pioneering artists of the time resulted in what is now widely regarded as one of the more significant art movements of the late 20th century.

The film was directed by artist/filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson (Teknolust), who tapped her archive of some 40-plus years of interviews she conducted with her contemporaries and molded then into a feature-length portrait.

Popping up in the movie are such female artists as Miranda July (The Future), The Guerilla Girls, Yvonne Rainer,...

Janine Antoni is among the artists featured in “!Women Art Revolution”

Lynn Hershman Leeson is the quintessential Renaissance woman. Her artwork is held in numerous collections at galleries across the globe. Her work in new media earned her the Digital Art Museum in Berlin’s 2010 d.velop digital art award, the most distinguished honor for lifetime achievement in the field of new media. Leeson’s films have screened at many of the world’s most renowned film festivals, and she has been a Sundance Screenwriter Lab Fellow and recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for writing and directing the 2002 film “Teknolust.” Her latest effort, “!Women Art Revolution,” premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and is screening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It is a collection of 40 years’ worth of interviews with those who pioneered the feminist art movement. Here, she writes for Moving Pictures about how she came to make the film.

Janine Antoni is among the artists featured in “!Women Art Revolution”

Lynn Hershman Leeson is the quintessential Renaissance woman. Her artwork is held in numerous collections at galleries across the globe. Her work in new media earned her the Digital Art Museum in Berlin’s 2010 d.velop digital art award, the most distinguished honor for lifetime achievement in the field of new media. Leeson’s films have screened at many of the world’s most renowned film festivals, and she has been a Sundance Screenwriter Lab Fellow and recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for writing and directing the 2002 film “Teknolust.” Her latest effort, “!Women Art Revolution,” premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and is screening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It is a collection of 40 years’ worth of interviews with those who pioneered the feminist art movement. Here, she writes for Moving Pictures about how she came to make the film.

.When the definitive book on media arts is written, San Francisco artist Lynn Hershman Leeson deserves a long chapter... San Francisco Chronicle

Lynn Hershman Leeson.s new film !Women Art Revolution will screen at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. In addition to the screening Sundance will feature an installation titled Rawwar. Rawwar is a live participatory environment that allows users to .bring light. to lost or invisible histories of women in art with virtual flashlight controllers accessing an interactive community-curated archive.

!Women Art Revolution was recently acquired by Zeitgeist Films for North American distribution after premiering at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim. Zeitgeist Co-President Nancy Gerstman notes, .There is so much about the history of the Feminist Art Movement that has been unacknowledged up to now and Lynn Hershman Leeson has done a great service in enriching our understanding of the pioneering heroines from the `70s until today.

DVD Playhouse September 2010

By

Allen Gardner

The Girl Who Played With Fire (Music Box Films) Follow up to the hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finds Lisabeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) and Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) joining forces once again as Blomkvist is about to break a story on Sweden’s sex trade, which leads unexpectedly to a dark secret from Elizabeth’s past. Starts off well, then quickly nose-dives into sensationalism and downright silliness, with a pair of villains who are straight out of a Roger Moore-era James Bond film. A real letdown for those of us who felt Dragon Tattoo had finally breathed life into the cinema’s long-stagnant genre of the thriller. Bonuses: English language track; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.

The Killer Inside Me (IFC Films) Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s classic, and notorious, novel about the psychotic mind of a small town sheriff (Casey Affleck,...

Art house patrons first saw Tilda Swinton in a series of controversial works from gay British auteur Derek Jarman's in the late 80s and early 90s (he died in 1994). A much larger international audience followed with Orlando (1993). In the past decade, key roles in mainstream Hollywood efforts won the great Swinton plentiful new devotees.

Do you remember the first time you saw her onscreen? My first time was Edward II in 1992 and though I was impressed, I had no idea what marvels awaited in Orlando the next year...

Tilda Swinton in Posters...

Caravaggio (86, debut) | The Last of England (88) | Edward II (91)

Orlando (92) | Female Perversions (96) | Conceiving Ada (97)

The Beach (00)| The Deep End (01) | Teknolust (02)

Young Adam (03) | The Chronicles of Narnia (05) | Stephanie Daley (06)

Michael Clayton (07) | Julia (08) | I Am Love (10)

That's not the complete filmography but the lead roles and a few key / essential supporting gigs. There are many more smaller roles. She's not...

Which stars have been out and about this past week? Whole galaxies of them. I've collected a few randomly for this edition of the red carpet lineup. It's but a tiny fraction of the luminaries since we're now in the thick of festival season. Telluride is behind us, Venice wraps today, and Toronto just kicked off. And that's just the big ones.

Nicholas Hoult and Julianne Moore hit Venice for the premiere of A Single Man (see previous post). An Education's Carey Mulligan, quickly emerging as the one to beat for Best Actress, is going to be fought over fiercely when it comes to dressing for the Oscars, just watch. She wore this Prada 09 Fall/Winter collection piece for her film's Toronto premiere. Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly and her perpetually Oscar snubbed husband Paul Bettany were also in Toronto promoting the Charles Darwin biography / marital drama Creation.

Finally, Venice...