CriterionCast

Ryan’s Criterion News Collection For October 10th 2012

I keep telling myself that I don’t need to include so many links in these posts each day, but I keep coming across new and exciting ones that I just have to share. Also, you might notice that each night these go up later and later, and I’ll be that continues to the point where they won’t be up until after midnight. So let’s get started!

Cigarettes And Red Vines (an excellent PT Anderson fan site) is celebrating the 15 Year Anniversary of Boogie Nights.

PBS’ POV Blog has another post in their series from a visit to Kartemquin

In another corner of the Kartemquin house was a behemoth lurking under a tarp. All I could see was a 1960s sea foam green base, so of course I was curious as to what, exactly, it was. It turns out the behemoth was a Steenbeck flatbed editing suite. Now, we can edit video using nonlinear editing software on a laptop computer, but linear editing was much more hands-on and required different kinds of tools.

The Playlist has a piece on a recent conversation between Brian De Palma and Noah Baumbach at the New York Film Festival

De Palma acknowledged that they are diametrically opposed in their directorial approaches but that their differences are actually helpful in giving each other feedback. ‘I think why we get along so much is because we approach things so differently,’ De Palma said. ‘Noah builds these character pieces. I’m fascinated by movies that are built on characters because this is something that I approach the completely opposite direction. I’m looking for plot, visual structure and I’ve got to plug the characters in…I’m fascinated by directors like Noah who generate whole stories starting with the characters.’

From IndieWire: Bernardo Bertolucci will be the Guest Artistic Director at AFI Fest

As Guest Artistic Director, Bertolucci has selected four feature films for his special sidebar program at the festival: “42nd Street” (by Lloyd Bacon), “La Regle du Jeu” (by Jean Renoir), “Surnrise” (by F.W. Murnau) and “Vivre Ca Vie” (by Jean-Luc Godard).   In addition, the festival will present “Electric Chair,” a behind-the-scenes film about the making of Bertolucci’s new movie, “Me and You.”

Uma Thurman has joined Lars Von Trier’s The Nymphomaniac

The film, which von Trier is producing as two feature length dramas, is currently shooting in and around Cologne, Germany. It is unclear what role Thurman will play in the film. This will be Thurman’s first role in a Von Trier film.

Apparently eating Jiro’s sushi is expensive, but “totally worth it”:

Adam Goldberg of A Life Worth Eating ate at Sukiyabashi Jiro yesterday. The meal was 21 courses, about US$380 per person (according the web site, excluding drinks), and lasted only 19 minutes. That’s more than a course a minute and, Goldberg estimates, around $20 per person per minute. And apparently totally worth it.

Prometheus is about you:

Peel away at its corners and it reveals itself to be an inversion of the traditional fan/movie relationship: Prometheus is all about its answer-expecting audience and what it wants and expects from them.

Criterion posted their 3 Reasons video for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Netflix isn’t doing so well these days:

Netflix set a lofty goal at the beginning of this year, hoping to grow its subscriber numbers by seven million people. In response to the last quarter’s numbers though, they’re looking at significantly less. At this point, the company is hoping for a growth of around 5.5 million users. It’s still a growth, but it’s 1.5 million less than planned.

Over on Mubi, Daniel Kasman has an interview with Abbas Kiarostami:

KASMAN: What is it like interacting with the actors when you are constructing characters who are so opaque? We are constantly having to guess who these people are, what they’re thinking, what they’re doing. I would think it would be difficult to evoke this from actors, that they might share a vagueness, confusion, a guessing that the audience also feels.

KIAROSTAMI: Well, you know, regardless of how the characters are, I never give any instruction, I never give them the whole script, because I know otherwise the actors will begin to anticipate, to give clues on what is coming next. So I only give them the pages they’re going to act the next day. I never give them any explanations, it doesn’t matters what their specificities are, they are not given any clue in general. I think there is nothing more harmful than an actor than extra information, unnecessary information.

The Playlist also scored an interview with Kiarostami, and asked the question I’ve wanted answered:

The elder actor, Tadashi Okuno, is fantastic but seems to have very little credits to his name. Where did you find him?

To start with, when he came he told me that he earned a living in films for 50 years by being an extra. He had never uttered a line in his whole career and had always been in the background. Although I had already cast him, if I told him he would be my main character he’d be too intimidated so I told him that I had a very small role in the film. He wasn’t given a script, I would just give him the lines that we were shooting at the time and he had no general view of the film.

Apparently Amazon paid a premium to get those Epix titles recently:

Now, a Reuters report ‘“ citing analysts and executives familiar with the negotiation ‘“ says Amazon did so and more. And in the process it potentially raised the bar for future subscription video-on-demand content license deals by agreeing to pay Epix additional monies should its subscriber base increase above certain benchmarks.

David Fincher will produce a Halo trailer:

An important cog in the game’s launch will debut Oct. 18 on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, when the David Fincher-produced Halo 4 launch trailer, titled ‘Scanned,’ makes its worldwide debut. The trailer will debut on Halo Waypoint and the Xbox YouTube channel immediately following the broadcast debut.

Dennis Lim has a great piece on Holy Motors over on the New York Times:

‘Holy Motors’ plays at times like a love letter (or an elegy) to the cinema, with nods to Georges Franju and King Vidor and echoes of Mr. Carax’s earlier work. But for Mr. Carax spotting references is beside the point. ‘The film speaks the language of cinema, but it’s not a film about cinema,’ he said. ‘I created a world ‘” not our world exactly but not that far, either ‘” and I tried to show the experience of being alive in this world.’

There’s a new Django Unchained trailer.

Ryan Gallagher

Ryan is the Editor-In-Chief / Founder of CriterionCast.com, and the host / co-founder / producer of the various podcasts here on the site. You can find his website at RyanGallagher.org, follow him on Twitter (@RyanGallagher), or send him an email: [email protected].