Links / Cinema
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Mr. Scorsese
№ 118I've been rewatching Scorsese films these past two weeks (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, Casino), so I was excited to learn about the new limited documentary series Rebecca Miller made on the director, called Mr. Scorsese.
I appreciated the documentary, learning more about Scorsese's older, brilliant work, and getting an inside look at films like Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Gangs of New York. The man's a great storyteller, and at five episodes, I think it could've been a little longer still!
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A still from Robert Eggers' Nosferatu (2024). Last week, I watched Robert Eggers' Nosferatu for the first time. I loved his work on The Witch and adored the madness of The Lighthouse, so was keen to see his take on this classic. And, it was breathtaking.
I watched it projected on a wall, sound blasting through a great installation, and the cinematography completely blew me away. The atmosphere they were able to create for this film is nothing short of astonishing. During a few scenes, I noticed I literally sat there with my mouth open. Visuals, audio, acting; everything's spot-on.
A still from Robert Eggers' Nosferatu (2024). CineD had a closer look at how they were able to get it done—especially the practical lighting, when seen onscreen, is magical.
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Richard Brody on the life and work of French filmmaker Agnès Varda. I'm looking forward to reading the upcoming biography, and I've quite a few of her films to catch up on.
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Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul reflects on his latest movie—his first not shot in Thailand— the process of shooting it on film, and the role sound design played in its creation. I absolutely loved watching this in the cinema and highly recommend you do so, if you can.
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Letterboxd reflects on their first decade on the platform by interviewing some early members. Having joined the platform in 2013, it's nice to read how other people have used it and what it's brought them.
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Over on Criterion's Current—a blog that quickly morphed into a full-blown magazine on film—Mike McQuade dives into his design process for the Criterion Collection edition of Citizen Kane. Iconic, yet divisive.
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I've written about it before: the cinematography of The Batman is fantastic. It's a dark, immersive world, portrayed with shots wet with rain and dirty with grime. Patrick Tomasso published a video essay last year that details the work that director Matt Reeves and cinematographer Greig Fraser did to achieve it.
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I recently watched this documentary about Martha Cooper, who photographed much of—if not all of—New York's graffiti in the 1970s and 1980s. The documentary is an inspiring piece of work, and Martha comes across as a delightful individual, with a fantastic legacy of documenting people rising above their environments.
Seek it out, if you can!
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Brought to my attention by Fabian, in response to my essay on the intimacy of experiencing a film in a movie theatre, Soderbergh's address—dating back to 2013—is an impassioned speech, arguing that film culture is "under assault by the studios".
