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The mood got decidedly funnier and edgier in this year’s Emmy race for Original Music and Lyrics. It was a badly needed tonic for the country. Most notably, Tina Fey joined the musical fray for the first time, looking for her 10th Emmy with the hilarious “Hell No,” a tribute to Beyonce’s “Lemonade” (featuring an enraged Tituss Burgess) from “Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt.”

But, given the current zeitgeist, it’s not surprising that Chance the Rapper was nominated for his Run-d.M.C.–inspired rap tribute to Obama, “Last Christmas,” from “Saturday Night Live,” or that Rachel Bloom was back again with the raunchy “We Tapped That Ass” from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” There was even room for the excruciatingly uncomfortable “The Ballad of Claus Jorstad (Devil Stool)” from “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” and and the animated burlesque of “Jing-a-Ling-a-Ling” from “Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Christmas Special.”

Apart from comedy, there’s...

Iconic actress Jeanne Moreau’s death this week at 89 received muted American coverage, with remembrances that hardly captured Moreau’s essential presence and influence in world cinema. Overshadowed by the passing of Sam Shepard the day before (more contemporary, American, prominent in multiple fields, and younger), she received back-page obituaries in major papers. Her lack of any Oscar nominations, or a deserved honorary award, didn’t help the cause.

Even more unfortunate is the treatment of her death reflects American audiences’ ever-increasing disinterest in French-language film. Jeanne Moreau is significant for her transcendent artistry and the directors with whom she worked, but she also represented the iconic qualities of her country’s cinema.

Though the boom in “art houses” (a term popularized in the late 1940s) came more from Italian films (“Rome, Open City,” “Shoe Shine,” and particularly “Bicycle Thief”), French film became a steady part of the subtitled market by the mid-1950s.

When Netflix announced March 14 it would be financing and distributing a finished cut of Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind,” the company opened a new chapter in one of the wildest, most frustrating sagas of film lore.

The legendary director shot his final film between 1970 and 1976, but a series of financial setbacks kept him from realizing his vision before his death in 1985. In the 32 years since, surviving members of the production had attempted to complete the project, but for legal reasons were unable to procure the more than 1,000 reels of negatives from a vault in Paris until the streaming giant stepped in this week.

The negatives are now safely in Los Angeles, in the hands of the team that will edit the film, according to a March 14 note from producer Filip Jan Rymsza. A short video released the next day on Yahoo details the process of shipping the reels.

‘The Salesman’ (Courtesy: Habib Majidi)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we’re well on our way to seeing how the best foreign language film race will shape up at the Oscars in 2017. Leading the pack of the shortlist is The Salesman from Iran, which could land filmmaker Asghar Farhadi a rare second win in the category. How often do we see someone with more than one win in this worldwide competition?

The shortlist of nine films — more about those here — will, on January 24, be trimmed down to the official five nominees that will eventually face off at the Oscars on February 26. This site’s namesake, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, lists the current frontrunners as: Germany’s Toni Erdmann (written and directed by Maren Ade), Denmark’s Land of Mine (written and directed by Martin Zandvliet), Sweden’s A...

Films set to show at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), updated as announcements are made in the run up to the event.

Tiff will open on September 10 with Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts.

Tiff 40

Key: Wp = world premiere; Nap = North American premiere; IP = international premiere; Cp = Canadian premiere.

GALASBeeba Boys (Canada), Deepa Mehta, WPDemolition, Jean-Marc Vallée WPDisorder (Maryland) (France-Belgium), Alice Winocour NAPThe Dressmaker (Aus), Jocelyn Moorhouse, WPEye In The Sky (UK), Gavin Hood WPForsaken (Canada), Jon Cassar, WPFreeheld (Us), Peter Sollett, WPHyena Road (Canada), Paul Gross, WPLolo (France), Julie Delpy, NAPLegend (UK), Brian Helgeland, IPMan Down (Us), Dito Montiel NAPThe Man Who Knew Infinity (UK), Matt Brown, WPThe Martian (Us), Ridley Scott, WPMiss You Already (UK), Catherine Hardwicke WPMississippi Grind (Us), Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden CPMr. Right (Us), Paco Cabezas WPThe Program (UK), Stephen Frears, WPRemember (Canada), Atom Egoyan, NAPSeptembers Of Shiraz (Us), Wayne Blair, WPStonewall ([link...

Films set to show at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), updated as announcements are made in the run up to the event.

Tiff will open on September 10 with Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts.

Tiff 40

Key: Wp = world premiere; Nap = North American premiere; IP = international premiere; Cp = Canadian premiere.

GALASBeeba Boys (Canada), Deepa Mehta, WPDemolition, Jean-Marc Vallée WPThe Dressmaker (Aus), Jocelyn Moorhouse, WPEye In The Sky (UK), Gavin Hood WPForsaken (Canada), Jon Cassar, WPFreeheld (Us), Peter Sollett, WPHyena Road (Canada), Paul Gross, WPLolo (France), Julie Delpy, NAPLegend (UK), Brian Helgeland, IPThe Man Who Knew Infinity (UK), Matt Brown, WPThe Martian (Us), Ridley Scott, WPThe Program (UK), Stephen Frears, WPRemember (Canada), Atom Egoyan, NAPSeptembers Of Shiraz (Us), Wayne Blair, WPStonewall (Us), Roland Emmerich, Wpspecial PRESENTATIONSAnomalisa (Us), Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson, CPBeasts of No Nation (Ghana), Cary Fukunaga, CPBlack Mass (Us), Scott Cooper, CPBorn To Be Blue (Canada-uk), Robert Budreau WPBrooklyn (UK-Ireland-Canada), John...

Above: Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa.

Cinephilia & Revolution

A familiar practice in Persian film literature is that of the “cinematic memoir”—personal reminiscences of the film culture of pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Bolstered by a nostalgic tone, these autobiographical texts deal with the themes of childhood, adolescence and encounters with cinema in a Westernized Iran. The authors of such memoirs frequently depict Iran as a haven for cinephiles. Considering the number of films that were shown in pre-Revolutionary Iran and the diversity of their origins, this may be taken as an accurate characterization.

Such melancholic documentations of the past echo the feelings of a generation lost, misplaced and confused after the Revolution; people who are utterly unable tore-situate themselves in the new post-Revolutionary nation and after the trauma of an eight year war. However, this longing for a paradise lost can function as a kind of subjective history of film culture in Iran; while by...