Editorial - Mike Williams
Mike describes the work that goes into the publicity of a film in awards season. Sometimes they are "live performances playing out across the internet". Mike describes Timothée Chalamet's stunts for Marty Supreme. (I'm giving it a deliberate miss, but that might be my age). He goes on to describe the different campaigns for the leading film, from the restrained 'One Battle After Another' to the excess visibility for Wicked, For Good and everything in between. "Authenticity remains the prize everyone is chasing".
Opening Scenes
The Hungarian director Bella Tarr (no, I had never heard of him) died in January.
Editor's Choice
One of the six items is a piece about a book called Don't Look Now and Then by John Doherty. Four hundred and twenty-four pages of interviews, recollections, pictures, words from the director and stars. Sounds great. The foreword is by none other than Reece Shearsmith.
In Production
These films include Mikey Madison's new picture, a remake of Masque of the Red Death. (I remember well the Vincent Price film of 1964). Mikey plays twin sisters, and the film also stars Lea Seydoux. Also, the prolific playwright Alice Birch is to direct her first film, Sweetsick, starring Cate Blanchett.
In Conversation
Nothing of interest.
Festival
The UK's largest LGBTQ+ film festival is Flare at 40.
Reader's Letters
No.
The Long Take
I now realise that Pamela Hutchinson's regular column is always about something old and something new. So this month it's about Wuthering Heights. First of all about the 1938 Hollywood film directed by William Wyler, where producer Sam Goldwyn replaced him for the ending. Laurence Olivier played Heathcliff. He may have been miscast, but they wanted a well-known Brit. Pamela likes this film but much prefers Andrea Arnold's 2011 version, where Heathcliff is not white. She's not sure about Emeral Fennell's new film but is going to give it a go.
Flick Lit
Nicole Flattery starts with a piece about Flesh, which won David Szalay the Booker Prize in 2025. (Not on my to-read list). The hero is, apparently, irresistible to women. That is a precursor to a similar person in Timothée Chalamet's Marty Supreme (again purposely avoided), which she says is "irreverent, comic and high energy". It takes her on to Philip Roth and about him being Jewish, which mirrors that of Marty. Nicole thinks that Uncut Gems is the least tasteful of films, "more substantial and cohesive" than Marty.
TV Eye
Andrew Male is watching The Lowdown (on Disney+), set in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's created by writer/director Sterlin Harjo, a Native American investigating "the classic narrative beat of Chandlerian crime fiction". It shows how land "ownership was established through murder, deception and the passing of corrupt laws". But in this film, land ownership is not a right but a curse.
An Audience with the Master
James Bell interviews Paul Thomas Anderson following his Oscar nomination for One Battle After Another. There are eleven pages that start with his early films. From the short film The Dirk Diggler Story he made at eighteen through to movies such as Magnolia, Boogie Nights, The Master, Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood and my favourite, Liquorice Pizza. The interview is very revealing. Anderson insists on making his movies on film. They discuss other films such as Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty (1988) and Dr Strangelove (1964). Then about his career and his first film, Hard Eight. All about his influences and then on to his big movies with lots of photos.
Hell and High Water
Mary Hartrod talks to actor and director Kristen Stewart about her first film behind the camera, called The Chronology of Water. She has also adapted the book by Lidia Yuknavitch. A harrowing story that spoke to Stewart: "even my producer tried to dissuade me." I was surprised I had seen so many films in which she appeared: Panic Room (at twelve years old), Personal Shopper, Love Lies Bleeding, Spencer, Cafe Society and Crimes of the Future. There is also a page about her formative cinema influences, including Lynne Ramsay's Morven Callar.
From Brazil with Love
Isabel Stevens talks to director Kleber Mendonca about this film, The Secret Agent. It's set in Rio in 1977 when the country was under a dictatorship. Included in this interview is an upsetting scene in the early part of the film, so I'm not sure I want to see that.
Sonic Boom
Guy Lodge talks to director Oliver Laxe's new film, Sirat. A road movie like no other. A father and son join five ravers on a journey through the deserts of Morocco. It's described as "unconventional". The pounding score might not be for me.
Shaking it up
Director Mona Fastvold talks to David Thomson about her new film, The Testament of Ann Lee. Apparently it is partly a musical? It is set in late 18th-century upstate New York and the Shaker community there. It's founder was Ann Lee (played by Amanda Seyfried), who died at the age of forty-eight in 1784. It's described as "part speculative biopic, part unabashed musical". Hmm.
The Hustler
Thomas Flew talks to the director of "Marty Supreme", Josh Safdie. We are in 1950's New York with Timothée Chalamet as a table tennis hustler, of which there seem to be too many scenes for my liking. There are some nice stills from the film, including one set piece in a large bar with something in the middle. Guess what!
Way Down in the Hole
Katie McCabe reviews the new film from Mary Bronstein, her first feature in seventeen years! Oscar-nominated Rose Byrne plays a mother with a poorly child and a collapsing home. Don't you just hate it when a reviewer starts with their own personal history to compare with the movie? Reading about the director, these are films I purposely avoid: "Bronstein had the film's unusual title in mind for twenty years."
REVIEWS
Sound of Falling
Catherine Wheatley calls this German film by Mascha Shilinski "furious and fragmented" ... "a film about the silencing of women", and "it is a difficult watch".
The Testament of Ann Lee
See previous article. Katie McCabe tells us it was shot at the real Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts.
The Secret Agent
Giovanni Marchini Camia is the reviewer. He says the director Kleber Mendonca Filho has "such a confident skill, combined with a richness of the narrative, etc. ... riveting for all of the 160 minutes."
Marty Supreme
I read all of Nicolas Rapolo's full-page review just to see if there was anything to which I could relate. There was not. "Marty's life feels like an all-or-nothing gambit for vindicating success or abject humiliation." I think I'm too old.
A Private Life
Philip Voncannon reviews this small film starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil. A mainly two-hander that might be OK to watch at home.
Sirat
See the article headed 'Sonic Boom'. Not for me.
Hamlet
A modern version reviewed by Kate Stables that she calls a "lean contemporary psychological thriller". A British Asian family business is at war. It stars Riz Ahmed who is "exciting to watch and completely in control of his material". Must look for the trailer.
If I had legs, I'd kick you.
See the previous article. Nicolas Ropolo again with a long review. See above.
28 Years Later, The Bone Temple
Reviewed by Henry K. Miller. He tells us that star Ralph Fiennes "is a delight". It was shot back-to-back with the previous instalment. See my reviews. Miller invokes Muriel Spark at the end of his review and her book Memento Mori (again, see my review).
DVD and BLU-RAY
The only thing of interest in these six pages is a recent restoration (with added extras) of I Know Where I'm Going (1945). See my post of 17th December 2024.
Books
David Lynch's American Dreamscape: Music, Literature, Cinema.
From the Archive: I'm Not Afraid of Anything
From Sight and Sound Magazine's June 2008 edition comes an interview with Andrzej Wajda, all because there is a BFI retrospective marking ten years from his death.
This Month in ..... 1989
It's the three film reviews that caught my eye. Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar) and Paris by Night (David Hare), which stars Charlotte Rampling.
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