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Bob Dylan has revealed that his next release will be a book of drawings titled Point Blank (Quick Studies), out November 18th on Simon & Schuster. Pre-orders are ongoing.

The collection will contain about 100 black-and-white drawings created by Dylan between 2021 and 2022. It will feature both landscapes and portraits, including images of a Parisian canal, roller skaters, a roll of Scotch tape, and a karaoke singer.

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Many of the book’s drawings are currently on display at Halcyon Gallery in London, now through July 6th. Point Blank (Quick Studies) also contains vignettes written by Jackie Hamilton, Lucy Sante, and Eddie Gorodetsky. Gorodetsky previously worked with Dylan on his 2022 book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, as well as his radio show.

According to publishing executive Sean Manning, “This book showcases Bob Dylan’s mastery of telling stories, creating moods and provoking feelings. The images are deeply evocative,...

Bob Dylan’s next release won’t be new music — it’ll be a book of drawings. On Tuesday, Simon & Schuster announced that it will publish Dylan’s book Point Blank (Quick Studies), a collection of black-and-white artwork made by the musician between 2021 and 2022, on Nov. 18.

The collection, comprising approximately 100 drawings by the musician, features portraits and landscapes, including images of roller skaters, a suspension bridge, a karaoke singer, a Parisian canal, a man with a crooked smile, and a roll of Scotch tape.

“This book showcases Bob Dylan’s mastery of telling stories,...

A new documentary is set to dig into one of the wildest life’s in punk rock history, that of Cro-Mags bassist and vocalist, Harley Flanagan. A new trailer for the upcoming film, Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos, is out now with the film slated to arrive in theaters June 20.

The new trailer opens with a clip of Flanagan playing his bass while going for a run in the woods, saying, “I feel like I’ve been angry for almost 50 years. I’m only starting to now realize that this...

Harley Flanagan at age 11 on drums in The Stimulators with Anne Gustavsson, Patrick Mack and Denise Mercedes

Rex Miller’s unrelenting Harley Flanagan: Wired For Chaos (a highlight of the 15th edition of Doc NYC) on The Stimulators drummer and Cro-Mags founder, features revealing on-camera interviews with his wife Laura Lee Flanagan, Denise Mercedes (his aunt and founder of The Stimulators), Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Ian Mackaye (Minor Threat; Fugazi; founder of Dischord Records), Lucy Sante, Darryl Jenifer (Bad Brains), Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Keith Morris (Black Flag; Circle Jerks; Off), Glenn Danzig (The Misfits; Danzig), Michael Imperioli, Brooke Smith (Jonathan Demme’s The Silence Of The Lambs; Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street; Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns), Anthony Bourdain, Sacha Jenkins, Marcia Resnick, Scott Ian (Anthrax), Kate Schellenbach (Beastie Boys; Luscious Jackson), and Ray Cappo (Youth of Today).

Rex Miller with Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze...

Cinematographer Michael Crommett (a Doc NYC 40 Under 40 honoree) with music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze on photographer Dan Winters: “Dan was a central part of this Nat Geo [Photographer] series that I shot.”

2024 Doc NYC early highlights include the Opening Night World Premiere of Sinead O’Shea’s impassioned Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story, plus world premieres of Dorenna Newton’s insightful Watching Frank (with Gay Talese on Frank Sinatra); Reiner Holzemer’s spellbinding Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams; Rex Miller’s unrelenting Harley Flanagan: Wired For Chaos, and the New York première of Dori Berinstein’s socially relevant A Man With Sole: The Impact Of Kenneth Cole.

Gay Talese (at home with Anne-Katrin Titze) on Frank Sinatra in Dorenna Newton’s Watching Frank: "Even if I had reservations, as I did about Sinatra, I certainly had great respect for Sinatra.

Dustin Pittman with Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman holding up New York After Dark

In the first instalment of our conversation with photographer extraordinaire, Dustin Pittman, and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with Gloria Swanson at her apartment (star of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard opposite William Holden), the early days with Danny Fields, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Mick Jagger (at Madison Square Garden), Patricia Field, Sex And The City, Susan Seidelman, Halston and the Halstonettes, Diana Vreeland, Liza Minnelli and US First Lady Betty Ford at Studio 54, the Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren connection to Mariann Marlowe and Frankie Savage’s Ian’s, staying with The Pretenders in London, Lucy Sante and her books, the shop 99, Max’s Kansas City, Ungaro’s, Régine’s, The Odeon, Lutèce or La Grenouille, and Dustin Pittman: New York...

In an era where print magazines continue to shutter (most recently Cinema Scope and Total Film), it’s always a breath of fresh air for the industry of film journalism when a new one enters the game. Metrograph has now unveiled The Metrograph, a new biannual print publication designed by Matt Willey at Pentagram.

Featuring exclusive cover artwork by the renowned cinematographer Ed Lachman, Issue 1 boasts contributions from a remarkable lineup. A sneak peek: novelist Yiyun Li, cartoonist Daniel Clowes, filmmakers Ari Aster, Amalia Ulman, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, critics Hunter Harris and Thora Siemsen, writer Lucy Sante, cult writer/actor Cookie Mueller, actors Steve Martin and Simon Rex, and many more. Readers can also look forward to The Metrograph Interview #1, where Nick Pinkerton engages the 94-year-old pop culture icon Clint Eastwood in a rare, career-spanning conversation.

Metrograph notes, “Led by the editorial team of Senior Editor Annabel Brady-Brown (co-founder Fireflies...

The Metrograph empire is expanding from screen to page.

Metrograph announced a new biannual print publication, titled “The Metrograph,” which will cater to cinephiles and cultural connoisseurs alike. Since its founding in 2016, Metrograph has opened beloved theater Metrograph NYC, which also houses a bookstore and The Commissary restaurant, as well as launched distribution company Metrograph Pictures. Metrograph Pictures is led by former Oscilloscope and A24 executive David Laub, who previously announced that Metrograph should target 10 film releases per year with features like “Good One,” “The Black Sea,” “Santosh,” “The Kingdom,” “Gazer,” “April,” and “Miroirs No. 3” among the upcoming slate. Metrograph additionally has an At Home streaming platform and online Journal.

Now, Metrograph is expanding into print with a star-studded creative team launching “The Metrograph.”

“The Sweet East” screenwriter and former Village Voice writer Nick Pinkerton is the Editor-At-Large, whose interview with “Juror #2” director Clint Eastwood will be the tentpole of the first issue.

This October, Spirit Entertainment, in collaboration with The Criterion Collection, is set to delight horror fans with the release of two seminal films, Night of the Living Dead and a double feature of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. These releases promise to offer a fresh perspective on classic horror with pristine 4K restorations and an array of special features that delve into the making and legacy of these groundbreaking films.

Night of the Living Dead: A Landmark in Independent Cinema

Directed by the legendary George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead will be available in a new 4K Uhd restoration on 7th October. Shot on a modest budget just outside Pittsburgh, this 1968 masterpiece became a midnight hit and a box-office sensation, fundamentally altering the horror genre. The film’s simple yet gripping plot follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they fend...

A pair of moody horror milestones from producer Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim are being paired up for a new release from The Criterion Collection.

The double feature is getting a 4K Uhd + Blu-ray combo edition as well as a Blu-ray edition and a DVD edition, with the release date for all three versions set for October 8, 2024.

Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of Rko’s B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease.

Suffused with ritual, mysticism,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.FESTIVALSMay Days.As many as 200 French film festival workers plan to stage labor actions during Cannes, citing insufficient pay and the exclusion of many festival staff from unemployment benefits when they are not under contract. The movement is being organized under the banner of Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma.A new report outlines the institutional dysfunction at the Toronto International Film Festival, which recently lost the support of the telecommunications company Bell as its major sponsor. Citing a desire for “greater accessibility,” Slamdance Film Festival will relocate from Park City, Ut, to Los Angeles in 2025.NEWSHarlan County, U.S.A..Now that all thirteen IATSE locals have reached tentative agreements with the AMPTP,...

I Heard Her Call My Name upcoming event: Lucy Sante with Griffin Hansbury at Rizzoli in New York on February 12.

In the first instalment with author, critic, and artist Lucy Sante, music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman joined us. In this second instalment we discuss Lucy coming from Belgium as a young boy to New Jersey; fighting to survive school in Manhattan, dandyism, and the unattractive prospect of masculinity; her book Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation And The Promise Of Water for New York City (published by Experiment in 2022), and touch upon Nancy Buirski’s documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy and Jon Voight’s boyishness as Joe Buck in John Schlesinger’s film.

Lucy Sante with Anne-Katrin Titze on going to an all-boys Jesuit high school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan: “I really did not fit in.”

Lucy Sante is...

Jean-Michel Basquiat in Sara Driver’s Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat

In the first instalment with author, critic and artist Lucy Sante we touch on transitioning and two of the documentaries she has been interviewed for - Andrew Rossi’s The Andy Warhol Diaries and Sara Driver’s Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat. William Burroughs and crime novels, Whit Stillman and Steiff animals, writing lyrics for The Del-Byzanteens led us to music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman.

Lucy Sante with Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman: “99 Records was the most perfect single-model representation of the zeitgeist in my youth.”

From there we go back in time to Ed producing and mastering Bush Tetras’ iconic Two Many Creeps (99-02), Lucy’s memories of 99 and her friendships with Pat Place and Cynthia Sley (Bush Tetras), Richard McGuire, and the late inventive photographer...

Footage of late Sixties New York City seamlessly sways into Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy stealing a handful of plum tomatoes and a coconut from a fruit stand with help from his new sidekick Joe Buck (Jon Voight). “These Eyes” sing Guess Who, and Lucy Sante comments that the film “could be an advertisement for anti-glamour and yet by doing this it manages to express the zeitgeist.”

Nancy Buirski’s masterful Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited with Anthony Ripoli is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s multiple Oscar-winning film. Based on James Leo Herlihy’s novel, adapted by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, with costumes by Ann Roth, Midnight Cowboy features an impressive supporting cast, including Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and...

Desperate Souls, Dark City and The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy director Nancy Buirski on Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo: “They become appealing because of these wonderful performances by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman.”

Nancy Buirski’s masterpiece is much more than a documentary on John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, screenplay by Waldo Salt, shot by Adam Holender, costumes by Ann Roth, and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman with Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt, and Bob Balaban. Desperate Souls, Dark City And The Legend Of Midnight Cowboy, edited by Anthony Ripoli, features on-camera interviews shot by Rex Miller with Lucy Sante, Brian De Palma, Edmund White, Michael Childers, Charles Kaiser, Jim Hoberman, Ian Buruma, Voight, Vaccaro, Balaban, Holender, and Jennifer Salt.

Brenda Vaccaro with John Schlesinger: “Ann Roth saved my life,” says Vaccaro, “by putting me in that fur coat.”

The evocative, wide-ranging, and evermore timely documentary drops us...

Exclusive: Mvd Entertainment Group has claimed North American rights to the darkly comedic thriller Wrong Reasons, marking the feature debut of writer-director Josh Roush. The film, executive produced by and featuring Kevin Smith, is slated for release on digital, VOD, Blu-ray and DVD on August 15.

Hailing from AntiCurrent Productions, Wrong Reasons watches as an ambiguously intentioned masked man (James Parks) kidnaps a drug addicted punk rock singer (Liv Roush) and triggers a police investigation headed by Detective Charles Dobson (Ralph Garman) as well as a media circus. The film also starring Teresa Ruiz, David Koechner, Daniel Roebuck, Smith and Keith Coogan boasts a punk rock soundtrack with music by Tim Armstrong, L7, Black Flag, The Wipers, Channel 3, William Elliott Whitmore, The Unseen, Bi-Product and more.

After world premiering at Smith’s first annual Smodcastle Film Festival in the fall of 2022, the Liv Roush-produced film...

Exclusive: Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist Films have picked up North American rights to Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy — a new documentary on the making of the iconic John Schlesinger film, from acclaimed documentarian Nancy Buirski (The Loving Story).

Related Story 1091 Pictures Acquires Domestic Distribution Rights To Romantic Drama ‘Under My Skin’ Related Story Locarno Film Festival War Drama 'Tommy Guns' Gets North American Deal Related Story Ralph Fiennes' 'Four Quartets' Gets North American Distribution Deal Ahead Of Stateside Bow At Santa Barbara

Zeitgeist will open the film in North American theaters beginning at New York’s Film Forum in late June and take it nationwide from there, with a digital, educational and home video release on all major platforms via Kino Lorber to follow.

Inspired by Glen Frankel’s 2021 book Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic, Desperate...

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.

Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy)

Everything you need to know about Alice’s (Anna Kendrick) state of mind concerning the abuse inflicted by her boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick) are the words “it’s not like he hurts me.” We feel Sophie’s (Wunmi Mosaku) wince in our bones—”hurt” doesn’t only become noteworthy when wrought by a physical altercation. Alice is glued to her phone to ensure she doesn’t miss a call or text. She wakes up super early to apply make-up and style her hair to Simon’s preference. Parrots all the soundbites he uses to police her eating habits about the toxicity of sugar. And literally pulls her hair out of her head whenever she has a spare second...

Jean-Michel Basquiat in Gray with Michael Holman and Shannon Dawson (Konk), seen in Sara Driver’s Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat Photo: Nick Taylor (Gray), courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Anthony McCarten’s The Collaboration (currently on Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club) with Jeremy Pope as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah takes liberties with time while Sara Driver’s inspiring Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2018) captures the artist and the scene around him through on-camera interviews with Jim Jarmusch, Carlo McCormick, Fred Brathwaite (aka Fab 5 Freddy), Sur Rodney (Sur), Glenn O’Brien, Kenny Scharf, Lee Quiñones, Patricia Field, Jamie Nares, Lucy Sante, Al Diaz, Michael Holman, Jennifer Jazz, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Mary-Ann Monforton, Bud Kliment, Felice Rosser, and Alexis Adler, who says “If we don't tell the history, then others will, who weren't there and don't know the truth.

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber releases the film in select theaters on Friday, June 23.

Perhaps the most explicit and emotionally intense film of the New Hollywood era — and yet in its “Odd Couple” theme and wistful sensibility a profoundly Old Hollywood film, too — “Midnight Cowboy” remains littered with contradictions. Gay and tender, its representation of sex is vile. It’s nostalgic and hopeless; a celebration of the counter-culture and, seemingly, an indictment of its decadence. All that makes Nancy Buirski’s new documentary about its production and legacy more interesting.

Not that “Midnight Cowboy” isn’t already fruitful subject matter. James Leo Herlihy’s radical 1965 novel was picked up by British kitchen sink filmmaker John Schlesinger, who related to its themes of repressed homosexuality, loneliness, victimhood and how our identities are, in truth, whatever we want them to be.

Five Inspirations is a series in which we ask directors to share five things that shaped and informed their film. Stephen Karam's The Humans is exclusively showing on Mubi in many countries starting August 12, 2022, in the series Debuts.Inspiration #1Brigitte Mira in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) by Rainer Werner FassbinderThis very interior film (in a pre-war space) and the soulful performance by Brigitte Mira always had me thinking about how to shoot Jayne Houdyshell.Inspiration #2Nyc Chinatown tenements skyshapesI took these shots of my building’s air shafts on Eldridge Street a year before we started filming—and versions of the shots made it into the film and formed the entire opening.Inspiration #3Photographs of empty spaces by Todd HidoAnd Lucy Sante’s Paris Review essay, “The Empty Room”:The more empty the photograph, the more it implies horror. The void that dominates an empty photograph is the site of past human activity.

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.

The French Dispatch isn’t even half the full title of the movie. On screen, it’s The French Dispatch of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun. Wes Anderson’s latest film is a collection of short stories, serving as examples of the stories published in the Dispatch.

In the film, the magazine ceases publication upon the death of the editor, Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray). As the staff prepares his obituary, some highlights of the stories he published come to life on screen.

Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) visits the underbelly of Ennui-sur Blasé on bicycle. J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) writes about prisoner and artist Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), whose muse is his guard, Simone (Léa Seydoux). College students Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet...

Above: Manny Farber and Patricia Patterson in their Hudson Street apartment, New York City, 1967.“Manny Farber writes a visual, sensory account of his thoughts, not necessarily the polished and fully articulated ones, but those which cumulatively add up to the rich life of the mind.”—Josephine Halvorson“The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.”—Patrick Star“You start anywhere and end up anywhere.”—Luc Sante2019 has turned out to be quite the year for film’s conquering hero, the writer and painter Manny Farber (1917–2008). The January-February 2019 issue of Film Comment featured a transcription of a never-published lecture delivered by Farber at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979. Helen Molesworth put on an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles called “One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art,” in which his celebrated love of go-for-broke termiting-tapeworming-fungusing served as a “starting point for assembling...

“Deadpan Alley”

By Raymond Benson

The maverick independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch burst into art-house public consciousness in 1984 with his strikingly original slice-of-life comedy, Stranger Than Paradise, and we hadn’t really seen anything like it before. I remember going to see it at the little cinema across from Lincoln Center in New York City. As the guy interviewed in front of the theater in the supplemental documentary on this Criterion Collection doozy says, the queue of people to get inside was indeed full of “hipsters.” It was the picture to see if you were in tune to the downtown arts scene, avant-garde theatre/music/film/literature, and far-from-Hollywood-mainstream moviemaking.

For me, it was my favorite film of the year. Audience members who dug it found subtle humor in the three main characters’ seemingly aimless existences and motivations to live their lives in a spontaneous, who cares? fashion. Those viewers who...

One of the best things about Beastie Boys Book, the massive memoir being released this week, is how wildly overstuffed it is with jokes, insights and unexpected voices. It’s mostly made up of incredible first-person memories from Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond, but there are also interjections from friends like Wes Anderson, Luc Sante and Amy Poehler; a recipe section from chef Roy Choi; a photo scrapbook from Spike Jonze; a short graphic-novel chapter; and lots more. “We wanted to have it be different, with little chapters about different things,...

Michael Diamond was driving in California the other day, just a nudge past the legal speed limit, when he got pulled over. “So the officer goes, ‘My son is eight years old. He was just listening to “Brass Monkey” and “Intergalactic” this morning!'” He pauses for the punchline. “Still gave me the ticket, though.”

Adam Horovitz, sitting next to him, smirks. “Yeah, he listened to it and he hated it!”

The two old friends – known to three generations of fans as Mike D and Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys...

Beastie Boys‘ Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz will embark on a six-date book tour in support of their upcoming tome on the legendary hip-hop trio, Beastie Boys Book.

Beastie Boys Book: Live & Direct with Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond will feature a special guest moderator at each stop along with feature readings, a Q&A and a live score provided by the group’s longtime DJ Mixmaster Mike.

The U.S. leg begins October 29th at New York’s Town Hall and concludes November 5th at San Francisco’s Nourse Theater,...

In the three decades since he died, at 27, of a heroin overdose, Jean-Michel Basquiat has come to be thought of in timeless terms. With every passing year, his paintings only rise in acclaim, in price, in the essential perception of where he stands in the pantheon of 20th century art. But it wasn’t always that way. In his time, Basquiat was a celebrated but intensely controversial figure. There are still those who look at Basquiat’s art and don’t see the totemic poetry of it; they see words and blotches and scrawls. Yet if you’re a Basquiat believer, as I am, what’s extraordinary about his work is that it is composed of words and blotches and scrawls — but when you look at the paintings, they’re alive. They pulsate.

There are other painters whose work has this dimension (Jackson Pollock springs to mind), but in Basquiat...

It was the worst of times, it was the most underwhelming of times, etc. I, too, have noticed some startling quantity of voices decrying 2017 as a subpar year in cinema, and the standard instinct is to put oneself into that classic defensive posture: look harder, look deeper, treasures appear. And sure. Still: the millstone of fatigue nearly any right-thinking person’s wearing nowadays starts seeping into this most reflective of mediums. The going got tough, escapes got deferred.

I won’t use headline-making events to bind 2017’s cinematic and real-world paths because 1) cast a pebble across your Twitter feed and voila; 2) we have different eyes, so who could think we ever saw the same thing? Only with my particular year (long story; who doesn’t have one nowadays) in sharper focus do I now understand that almost everything contained herein was a conduit for further consideration, the individual and collective...

Trouble No More is a goldmine for Bob Dylan fans. The new documentary from Jennifer Lebeau, which played at Rome Film Fest after its world premiere at New York Film Festival, brings to light lost footage from Dylan’s gospel years, during which he released a trilogy of Christian albums.

Among those hardcore fans is Michael Shannon, who was recruited to perform a series of sermons, written by Luc Sante, that are intercut with the concert footage in the film.

Speaking to press in Rome, Shannon said he has always been a huge fan of the singer, and his very first...

Abramorama and Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings will premiere Jennifer Lebeau’s Bob Dylan concert documentary Trouble No More with Landmark Theatres, screening the film for one night only on Thursday, November 2. Trouble No More, which intersperses concert footage from Dylan’s 1980-ear Gospel period with sermons written by Luc Sante and delivered by Michael Shannon, made its bow at this year’s New York Film Festival. Executive produced by White Horse Pictures, the doc…...

“We wanted turbulence,” remembers critic Luc Sante in Sara Driver’s vivid and beautifully meditative memory piece on the downtown New York art and music scene of the late 1970s and early ‘80s, “Boom for Real.” As the ever-growing sub-genre of movies and books about that astoundingly fertile period have shown, turbulence they got.

Driver’s movie is a worthy, if sometimes familiar, addition to that canon.

Continue reading ‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom For Real’ Explores The Beautiful Chaos Of New York’s Last Great Art Scene [Nyff Review] at The Playlist.

Magnolia Pictures announced today that they have acquired North American rights to Boom For Real The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-michel Basquiat, director Sara Driver’s (When Pigs Fly, Sleepwalk) love letter to New York City’s past through the eyes of people who knew the renowned artist.

The film, which world-premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival to critical acclaim, will next screen at the 55Th New York Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Magnolia plans a 2018 theatrical release.

Boom For Real The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-michel Basquiat follows Basquiat’s life pre-fame and how New York City, the times, the people and the movements surrounding him formed the artist he became. Using never before seen works, writings and photographs, Driver worked closely and collaboratively with her friends and other artists who emerged from that scene: Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, James Nares,...

Exclusive: Sara Driver’s documentary Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, offers insight into the artist and New York native’s formative years. The docu is having its world premiere today at the Toronto Film Festival. Driver, a close friend to Basquiat and part of art scene of the 1970s and ’80s, worked with other artists who emerged from that scene like Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, James Nares, Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quinones, and Luc Sante. She…...

This year’s New York Film Festival has just unveiled a slew of Special Events to round out its already full-to-bursting lineup, and it includes some late-breaking entries to previously announced sections and a selection of brand new events that are very special indeed. Highlights include a trio of documentary premieres, including Susan Lacy’s “Spielberg” (focused on the eponymous director, with both Lacy and her subject set to appear at the festival), along with Jennifer Lebeau’s Bob Dylan concert film “Trouble No More,” and Susan Froemke’s “The Opera House,” a history of the Metropolitan Opera and a love letter to the art form that will (appropriately enough) screen at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center.

Other standouts include four brand-new films from Claude Lanzmann, a sparkling new restoration of G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box.” Elsewhere, Kate Winslet will be on hand for a career-spanning chat...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1932) is playing July 5 - August 4, 2017 on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Cocteau's Poets.“…images born of cinema with the cosmogony of a poet.”—Henri Langlois on The Blood of a PoetThe films of Jean Cocteau have distinguished themselves among early twentieth-century cinema at large. This is due, arguably, to Cocteau’s works existing best as experiences rather than as proper films, and to their openness to interpretation. This is especially true of Cocteau’s The Blood of a Poet, made in 1930 but not shown publicly until 1932, and one which has inspired as many critical interpretations since the filmmaker’s death in 1963 as Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or Bergman’s Persona. Like those works, The Blood of a Poet...

A Jim Jarmusch movie is unmistakable. He’s a storyteller who favors richness of detail over plot, whether it’s reunited vampires (“Only Lovers Left Alive”), escaped prisoners (“Down By Law”), or a cousin visiting from Budapest (“Stranger Than Paradise”). Small in scale, generous in production value, and tempered with idiosyncratic rhythms and dry humor, his films represent one the most original and uncompromised bodies of work in American cinema.

However, while Jarmusch might seem to be an auteur-theory poster child, the filmmaker told IndieWire’s David Ehrlich in 2014 (then writing for The Guardian) that he doesn’t believe, for him, the concept of director-as-author applies:

“I put ‘A film by’ as a protection of my rights, but I don’t really believe it. It’s important for me to have a final cut, and I do for every film. So I’m in the editing room every day, I...

The Jingoist and Blind screenwriter John Buffalo Mailer Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Cremaster and Drawing Restraint 9 (with Björk) mastermind, Matthew Barney, adapted Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings to create River Of Fundament. Cornelia Parker staged The Maybe with Tilda Swinton at MoMA and now her Alfred Hitchcock Psycho inspired Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) is on The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Roof Garden - the perfect setting for a John Buffalo Mailer on Norman Bates, Houdini, Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes on Gay Talese's The Voyeur's Motel, Michael Mailer, Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore and Dylan McDermott conversation.

Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Giamatti, James Toback, Elaine Stritch, Debbie Harry, James Lee Byars, Lawrence Weiner, Salman Rushdie, Luc Sante, Cinqué Lee, Jonas Mekas, Fran Lebowitz, Dick Cavett, Jeffrey Eugenides, Aimee Mullins and Sam Nivola are among the River Of Fundament dwellers. Buffalo Mailer, Milford Graves and Lakota Chief Dave Beautiful Bald Eagle reincarnate as Norman I, Norman II...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSDr No. Production design by Ken Adam.Our beloved production designer Ken Adam, the man behind Stanley Kubrick's War Room and the glacial period interiors of Barry Lyndon, as well as defining the look of the most gloriously grandiose era of James Bond films, has passed away.Austin's cultural mega-event South by Southwest has just announced the winners of its film festival competition, with Adam Pinney's The Arbalest taking home the Grand Jury prize for Narrative Feature and Keith Maitland's Tower the Documentary Feature Grand Jury prize. We were at the festival but, alas, didn't catch either of those films. Our favorite coverage of SXSW has been David Hudson's writing on Richard Linklater's new feature, Everybody Wants Some!! at Keyframe.The brilliant new film magazine Fireflies,...

Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There's more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you'll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette's world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of 1958. It's just as revolutionary as an early Godard or Truffaut, but in a style all Rivette's own. Paris Belongs to Us Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 802 1961 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Paris nous appartient / Street Date March 8, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Marie Robain, Jean Martin. Cinematography Charles L. Bitsch Film Editor Denise de Casablanca Original Music Philippe Arthuys Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Grualt Produced by Claude Chabrol, Roland Nonin Directed by Jacques Rivette

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The French New...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

All The President’s Men will opens the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival. See more films here.

Watch Yorgos Lanthimos and Ariane Labed discuss the making of The Lobster:

Little White Lies‘ Katherine McLaughlin on how Anomalisa echoes the existential blues of Chantal Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle:

What is it be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?” asks customer service expert Michael Stone in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa. These are the same questions that the late Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman posed over 30 years ago in her black-and-white debut feature Je, Tu, Il, Elle.

Watch a...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSVoyage of TimeWell, the Academy Awards, of course! Here's the list of winners. Who made us smile most for his win of the golden statue? Ennio Morricone and his gracious speech for his ace score to The Hateful Eight. Biggest gaff beyond the central controversy? Setsuko Hara, Manoel de Oliveira, and Jacques Rivette not included in the "In Memoriam."And yet another filmmaker has left us this year. The New York Times reports that Syrian director Nabil Maleh has died at the age of 79.With Terrence Malick's dividing film Knight of Cups about to be released in cinemas in the Us this week, images have come in (including one above) of the filmmaker's mysterious documentary we keep hearing about, Voyage of Time.In New York, the big news this...

Looking for a worthy project to complete for his thesis film at Nyu back in 1978, with his genuine sense of interest and weasily persuasive personality, Howard Brookner somehow convinced the then world famous writer William Burroughs to let himself become the subject of the warm cinematic portrait that would become Burroughs: The Movie. Brookner gathered his fellow film students Jim Jarmusch and Tom Dicillo to serve as sound recordist and cinematographer, respectively, and they set about filming on and off for five years, observing Burroughs in all aspects of his life, both public and private. After the film premiered in New York City in 1983 and followed with a brief world tour, the film sat in storage and was nearly forgotten about after Brookner succumbed to AIDS in 1989.

Thankfully, Howard’s nephew Aaron Brookner grew up with a taste for cinema, had visited his uncle’s sets, worked as a production...

Being known for being unknown is a bit of a booby prize, but over the course of 35 years, the British multi-genre-punk band the Mekons has managed to make underachieving a heroic ideal. After recording more than 20 albums, what began as a bit of an art-school lark evolved into something stirring, earning the band a star turn in Joe Angio’s documentary, Revenge of the Mekons, which is screening at Film Forum for two more days.A few of the esteemed devotees they’ve picked up over the years gathered last Thursday night in a Columbia University auditorium for an Ivy League symposium: Novelist Jonathan Franzen, critic Greil Marcus, American Psycho director Mary Harron, nonfiction writer Luc Sante, and artist and architect Vito Acconci gave readings on the band after a screening of excerpts of the film, while band guitarist and singer Jon Langford sat among them, offering a song about...

Chicago – What is amazing about the texture of this 1992 film version of the 1848 Henri Murger novel, “La Vie de Bohéme,” is that it looks like it could have been filmed during the French New Wave period of the late 1950s/early ‘60s. The Criterion Collection offers a stunning new Blu-ray transfer of a now classic adaptation.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er...

As an entry into Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki’s filmography, his 1992 film La Vie De Boheme, which is loosely based on Henri Murger’s Scenes De La Vie De Boheme, (the basis for the famed opera La Boheme), is an excellent starting point. His first French feature, Kaurismaki’s absurdist, deadpan tone is in high gear with this lively look at a trio of disheveled outcasts eking it out as artists on society’s fray.

Three struggling creative types (composer/writer/painter) live together for support and necessity as they try to peddle their own original output. Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms) is an aspiring playwright and magazine editor, and has had considerable difficulty getting someone to publish his latest work, “The Avenger: A Play in 21 Acts.” Rodolfo (Matti Pellonpaa) is an Albanian painter illegally living in Paris, though lucky enough to have found at least one patron to purchase his works.

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Blue Jasmine"

What's It About? Cate Blanchett stars as Jasmine, a fancy New Yorker whose late husband was one of those finance scumbags who swindled people. Left high and dry, she heads to Sf to impose upon her sweet sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), who's got her own problems to deal with.

Why We're In: This Woody Allen flick is getting rave reviews, nominations, and awards out the wazoo, so if you haven't seen it yet, get cracking.

Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (Criterion)

What's It About? Comedy bigwigs like Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, and Jonathan Winters star in this slapstick-y flick about buried treasure.

Why We're In: Because it's winter and you need a laugh, and because this Criterion edition is restored, extended, and spiffed up in all the right ways.

Museums are odd places. People gawk, taking in the history and culture on offer, ruminating in silence. People talk, or, more often than not, they are talked at by guides or recorded audio stand-ins who give background to the pieces on display. Young people dragged along unwilling automatically become bored, unappreciative of the opportunity they’ve been afforded, while others soak in the space like a sponge, experiencing the catharsis of cultural and emotional profundity that can be provoked by a truly great work of art. Within Museum Hours, writer and director Jem Cohen manages to perfectly encapsulate both the marvels and oddities inherent in the museum going experience by framing a loose narrative of life and loss around the reminiscence of an aging gallery guard in and around the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna and the visitations of a middle aged woman from Montreal whose Austrian émigré cousin has sadly fallen into a coma.

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Jan. 21, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95

Studio: Criterion

A group of impoverished, outcast artists living the bohemian life in Paris in La vie de bohème.

The 1992 film La vie de bohème by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, Leningrad Cowboys Go America) is a deadpan tragic-comedy about a group of impoverished, outcast artists living the bohemian life in Paris.

Based on stories from Henri Murger’s influential mid nineteenth-century book Scènes de la vie de bohème (the basis for the opera La bohème), the film features a marvelous trio of Kaurismäki regulars, André Wilms, Matti Pellonpää, and Karl Väänänen, as a poet, painter, and composer who scrape by together, sharing in life’s daily absurdities.

Gorgeously shot in black and white, La vie de bohème is a vibrantly scrappy rendition of a beloved tale and one of Kaurismäki’s most beguiling works.

Presented in French with English subtitles,...

When it comes to my personal tastes it would seem I should never have watched a Jim Jarmusch film until after seeing his early work. I believe the first film of his I saw was 2003's Coffee and Cigarettes, followed by Broken Flowers and then Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. After these three films, to say I was unmoved and didn't "get it" would be an understatement. I was at a loss. 2009's The Limits of Control seemed to be the tipping point. I was having such a hard time finding anything interesting in these movies. They had their moments, but overall I was left cold and bewildered. After four films, however, I didn't give up. In 2010, Criterion released Jarmusch's 1989 feature Mystery Train, which I watched and loved. It was at that point I realized I had only begun watching the films from the Jim Jarmusch everyone seemed to praise.