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Today's Comics Corner begins in the demimonde with the return of Penny Dreadful! Also: Dark Nights: Metal #3, Wolfenstein #2, Adam Green's Hatchet #1, Back to the Future #23, Hellboy and the Bprd 1955 Occult Intelligence #2, Betty and Veronica Halloween Annual Digest #257, Neil Gaiman's American Gods: Shadows #8, Sacred Creatures #4, and Harrow County #26.

Penny Dreadful: The Awaking #2.6: "Continues the story directly after the shocking events of Penny Dreadful’s season three TV finale!"

On Sale: 11 Oct 2017

Writer: Chris King

Artist: Jesus Hervas

Type: Comic

Series: Penny Dreadful

Genres: Fantasy, Horror

Age: 17+."

The Penny Dreadful comic sequel is back from a mini break with issue #6. To learn more, visit:

https://titan-comics.com/c/1089-penny-dreadful/

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Dark Nights: Metal #3: "Superman is pulled into the mystery of the Dark Multiverse while the Justice League follows the trail to a weapon that could keep the forces of the Dark Multiverse at bay!"

Artist: Jonathan Glapion,...

Today's Comics Corner begins with a look at the 153rd issue of Venom from Marvel Comics! Also: Back to the Future #22, Clue #3, Hellboy and the Bprd 1955 Secret Nature One-Shot, Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth #4, Rose #5, and Sacred Creatures #2.

Venom #153: "The Land Before Crime Concludes! Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote are having a tough time sticking together, biologically speaking. Fortunately, the fine folks at Alchemax are working on a cure! Eddie just has to find and stop Stegron the Dinosaur Man from turning New York into a raging army of dinosaurs for them! Luckily, Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur are around to help! I wonder if they realize Stegron can control dinosaurs in addition to turning people into them.

Published: August 09, 2017

Rating: Rated T+

Penciler: Gerardo Sandoval

Cover Artist: Francisco Herrera."

For more information, visit:

http://marvel.com/comics/issue/64156/venom_2016_153

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Back to the Future #22: "“Time Served,...

Zenescope Entertainment's "Robyn Hood: Tarot" #1, available June 26, 2017, is written by Joe Brusha and illustrated by Renato Rei, Sergio Arino, Daniel Maine and Riveiro, with covers by Sean Chen, Jose Luis, Richard Ortiz, Manuel Preitano and Meguro:

"....The Order of Tarot. has long existed in the shadows but now it has emerged to take its place as the ruler of Earth and the surrounding realms of power.

"But there are still a couple of people who stand in the way of the Order's reign, as 'Robyn' and 'Mystere' are about to be pulled into a deadly game of survival by a mysterious gypsy that seeks to destroy them both..."

Click the images to enlarge....

Zenescope Entertainment's "Grimm Fairy Tales: Robyn Hood: I Love NY" #10, is written by Lou Iovino and illustrated by David Lorenzo Riveiro, Sergio Arino, with covers by Allan Otero, David Lorenzo Riveiro, Jose Luis and Renato Rei:

"...New York City needs a guardian angel and 'Robyn' has unselfishly answered the call, time and time again.

"But she's starting to wonder if that's what she really wants. Luckily, big questions are sometimes answered in small ways, even in the 'Big Apple'..."

Click the images to enlarge...

Every December it bears repeating: Anyone who thinks this was a bad year for movies simply hasn’t seen enough. In an age of binge-viewing, a preponderance of must-see premium cable shows and, hell, even smartphone apps that command far more attention most feature-length achievements, the true range of quality cinema is often obscured by the noise of an ever-cluttered media landscape. To really assess the state of modern movies, one look beyond the obvious. Sure, it was a weak year for movies that stand out mainly due to star power and sizable marketing budgets, but those options represent only a small fraction of the marketplace.

The film festival circuit provides an ideal alternative to conventional channels for discovering movies worth talking about all year long — and, if they’re lucky enough to land distribution, they quality for year-end celebration on lists like this one. This year, every single finalist...

We here at The CriterionCast wear our admiration for The Criterion Collection squarely on our sleeves. Not only is it in the very title of this website and the podcast from which it spawned, but it is in the very DNA of what we strive to do through both ventures. At their very best, The Criterion Collection doesn’t so much bring to light gloriously dense home video releases of beloved, crystal clear classics from the history of film, but instead highlights lesser known masterpieces from throughout the world and spanning the entirety of film’s history as an artform. Be it esoteric experimental works like that of director Jean Painleve to baroque world cinema classics like La Cienaga, Criterion’s greatest achievement is giving the world a new glimpse at world history through the lens of those directors commenting on it through their films.

And few films quite hit...

One of the most interesting collisions of the public perception of Iran’s Islamic state and its reality is how, out of an apparently repressive state hostile to the creative arts, Abbas Kiarostami became the essential free filmmaker. “Freedom” is always a relative term when it comes to cinema, which, like politics, unfortunately runs on money. But it’s easy to spot the genuinely free filmmakers when they come along. Despite their varying struggles to get their movies made, the work that results is directly personal and unbound by prevailing cultural trends and diktats. They range from Jean Vigo to Kidlat Tahimik, Pedro Costa to Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage to Jose Luis Guerin. Kiarostami was the free filmmaker par excellence, since he managed to find his ever-developing acute approach to modernism through whatever system in which he might find himself working.

Read More: Abbas Kiarostami, Palme d’Or-Winning Director Of...

Grasshopper Film continues to win brownie points among cinephiles with the upcoming release of “The Academy of Muses,” a festival-circuit favorite that might otherwise have slipped through the theatrical cracks. The trailer for the latest film by José Luis Guerín, who won praise for “In the City of Sylvia,” is now available.

Read More: Locarno Review: Romantic Comedy or Philosophical Debate? Jose Luis Guerin’s ‘The Academy of Muses’ is Both

It begins with a woman recounting a myth about Cupid shooting his arrow, first at Apollo and then at Daphne, each with a different effect: Apollo is fated to fall in love with the first creature he sees, Daphne to run away from the first man she sees. The rest of the conversation-heavy trailer is complemented by a string section and pull quotes from cinephilic outlets like Fandor’s Keyframe and Mubi’s Notebook singing the film’s praises.

Read More: Exclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene’s Sundance Winner ‘Kate Plays Christine’

Like fellow Grasshopper selection “Kaili Blues,”Guerín’s film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last summer. Grasshopper is set to release “The Academy of Muses” on September 2 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

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Related storiesThe Business of Too Much TV & Six Other Top Longreads of the WeekExclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene's Sundance Winner 'Kate Plays Christine'Hong Sangsoo Plays With Time in Backwards 'Right Now, Wrong Then' Trailer...

I saw The Academy of Muses a month ago and have considered it almost every day since then, turning over in my mind the clearly defined ideas, only-half-understood narrative directions, and documentary-narrative distinctions that mark José Luis Guerín‘s first fiction feature since 2007’s In the City of Sylvia. Those who go into it blind won’t initially find much distinction, though: there might instead be the belief they’ve entered an At Berkeley-esque documentary about European academia — until the movie slowly becomes something much more complicated, and then blossoms into full-on drama.

Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.

See it below:

Synopsis:

A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.

The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.

Mainstream Spanish films are thriving as TV broadcasters fill the gap in public funding. But at what cost to auteur film-making? Could a new Pedro Almodovar emerge now?Spain territory focusSpain focus: new talent, the magnificent sevenSpain focus: hot projects, big name draws

The Spanish film industry has started 2016 on an optimistic note. Emilio Martinez-Lazaro’s broad comedy Spanish Affair 2 (Ocho Apellidos Catalanes), the sequel to the all-time local hit Spanish Affair, was the top grossing film of 2015, taking $34.7m (€32m), and Fernando Gonzalez Molina’s romantic period drama Palm Trees In The Snow, released on December 25, out-performed Star Wars: The Force Awakens on its second weekend on release and has garnered more than $17m to date.

The label ‘made in Spain’ on a commercial, locally produced film is now a positive note for local audiences. “As in France, we’re learning to make films that work for a big audience,” says [link=nm...

Other winners include Venice title Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me and documentary Rabin In His Own Words.

Elad Keidan’s debut feature Afterthought (Hayored Lemaala) was crowned Best Israeli Film at this year’s Haifa Film Festival (Sept 26-Oct 5).

London-based Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf presided over the jury that included Karlovy Vary artistic director Karel Och, MoMA’s former cinema curator Laurence Kardish, Israeli cinematographer-director-actress Yvonne Miklosh and director Julie Schlez.

Screened earlier this year in Cannes’ Special Screenings section, the film is a metaphor of Israel today, focusing on two characters, one going up and the other down the staircases crisscrossing Haifa’s Mount Carmel and was entirely shot on location in the city.

Back from Venice’s Horizons section, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me (Lama Azavtani), a gloomy portrait of a city slum and of a teenager living on the fringes of society who desperately tries to find his own identity, gained director...

Any roundup of the day's news has to begin with Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. Following yesterday's release of the poster, France's Premiere broke the news that the tale set in the summer of 1965 and featuring Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Jason Schwartzman would open this year's Cannes Film Festival on May 16. The Festival's quickly followed up with its official announcement. Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux: "Wes Anderson is one of the rising powers of American cinema, to which he brings a highly personal touch, particularly in Moonrise Kingdom, which once again is a testimony to the creative freedom in which he continues to evolve. Sensitive and independent, this admirer of Fellini and Renoir is also in his own right a brilliant and inventive filmmaker."

A couple of related items: At Open Culture, Colin Marshall argues that, with his two ads for the Hyundai Azera (which,...

Madrid -- If Daniel Monzon's "Cell 211" took home the top prize at Sunday night's Goya awards ceremony in Madrid, Academy president Alex de la Iglesia's political savvy has been the talk of the town ever since.

De la Iglesia wooed Spain's prodigal son, Pedro Almodovar, for nearly a year in an effort to repair a schism that left Spain's most international director in self-exile, frustrated with what he deemed the academy's cold shoulder.

"I'm here because you have a very persistent president, who insisted until satisfied," Almodovar told the audience as they settled back into their seats after the standing ovation that welcomed him back into the fold.

The effort paid off with Almodovar's surprise entrance at center stage to an unsuspecting audience that included Spain's Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, Almodovar muse Penelope Cruz and the entire Spanish film industry.

The move highlights the finesse De la Iglesia...