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The Scarecrow, aka Dr. Jonathan Crane, is my favorite Batman villain. I've always been drawn to his eponymous motif, his horror-twinged stories, and how he contests Batman for the title "The Master of Fear." Hence, though "Batman: The Animated Series" holds a special place in my heart, I've always been disappointed that Scarecrow wasn't an A-list player.

Crane is the antagonist in only three episodes and in each one is mostly an obstacle for Batman to develop against. In his villainous debut, "Nothing to Fear," Batman is dosed with Scarecrow's Fear Toxin and haunted by an apparition of his father, leading to the Dark Knight's most famous line. In "Dreams in Darkness," the Fear Toxin drives Batman temporarily insane and he's locked in Arkham Asylum. He must escape both his physical and mental prison before Scarecrow can poison Gotham City.

"Batman: The Animated Series" has many superlative takes on...

MK2 Films has come on board “Silver Star,” a timely crime drama headlined by “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney and directed by Ruben Amar (“Swim Little Fish Swim”).

MK2 Films has acquired international sales to the indie road movie, and will introduce the project to buyers at the virtual American Film Market this week. Filming is scheduled to begin in early 2021 in the U.S.

“Silver Star” tells the story of a Bonnie-and-Clyde-type couple, Buddy, a 20-year-old Civil War re-enactor who’s fresh out of jail and struggling to root himself in today’s world, and Franny (Sydney Sweeney), an impulsive, pregnant 19-year-old with nothing to lose. Buddy is determined to reconnect with his estranged parents by saving their home from foreclosure, whatever it takes. During a botched bank robbery, Buddy takes Franny as his hostage and together they embark on an unexpected road trip across America.

Sweeney’s credits include “Euphoria,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Newsd.A. Pennebaker, best known for his cinéma vérité-style documentaries (including Don't Look Back and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars) has died at the age of 94. Author Toni Morrison, the first black woman to win the Nobel prize in Literature, has also died, leaving behind a legacy of inimitable influence upon generations of readers. Her career was recently the subject of a documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Recommended VIEWINGThe estate of Charlie Chaplin has made available a treasure trove of rare videos from the archives, which also features home videos like this one, entitled "Charlie Chaplin Swallows Easter Egg." Museum of Modern Art curator Anne Morra discusses Ida Lupino's Never Fear, Lupino's first credited directorial effort, in a new video essay. The official teaser for Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0, the final film...

Well, another year spent in the company of classic cinema curated by the TCM Classic Film Festival has come and gone, leaving me with several great experiences watching favorite films and ones I’d never before seen, some already cherished memories, and the usual weary bag of bones for a body in the aftermath. (I usually come down with something when I decompress post-festival and get back to the working week, and this year has been no exception.) There have now been seven TCMFFs since its inaugural run in 2010. I’ve been lucky enough to attend them all, and this time around I saw more movies than I ever have before—18 features zipping from auditorium to queue and back to auditorium like a gerbil in a tube maze. In order to make sure I got in to see everything I wanted to see, I had to make sure I was...

I live in Los Angeles, and my residency here means that a lot of great film programming-- revival screenings, advance looks at upcoming releases and vital, fascinating glimpses at unheralded, unexpected cinema from around the world—is available to me on a week-by-week basis. But I’ve never been to Cannes. Toronto, Tribeca, New York, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, SXSW, these festivals are all events that I have yet to be lucky enough to attend, and I can reasonably expect that it’s probably going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. I never attended a film festival of any kind until I made my way to the outskirts of the Mojave Desert for the Lone Pine Film Festival in 2006, which was its own kind of grand adventure, even if it wasn’t exactly one for bumping shoulders with critics, stars and fanatics on the French Riviera.

But since 2010 there...

Chis Marker's Chat écoutant la musiqueThere are dog people and there are cat people, this we know, and there are even people who claim to be of both—though latent sympathies remain unspoken, like with a parent and which child is their favorite. With the Vienna Film Festival welcoming me with a tumbling collection of dog and cat short films spanning cinema's history—the Austrian Film Museum, an essential destination each year collaborating with the Viennale, is hosting a “a brief zoology of cinema” throughout the festivities—it is clear that filmmakers, too, have their preference. Silent cinema decidedly prefers the more easily trained and exhibited canine, with 1907’s surreal favorite Les chiens savants as a certain kind of cruel pinnacle. For the cats, Chris Marker, already the presiding figure over so much in 20th century art, I think we can easily claim is the cine-laureate. One need not know...

Sally Forrest, a dancer, actress and protege of Hollywood pioneer Ida Lupino who starred in the 1949 feature dramas Not Wanted and Never Fear, has died. She was 86. Forrest died March 15 at home in Beverly Hills after a long battle with cancer, publicist Judy Goffin announced. Forrest starred as a young unwed mother who puts her baby up for adoption in shame and then wants him back in Not Wanted, then stood out as an up-and-coming dancer who is paralyzed from polio in Never Fear. These performances led Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper to name Forrest the

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