November is the month of thankfulness, so why not be thankful for some great independent cinema?
As the end of the year approaches, new films arrive in theaters at a rapid pace with big blockbusters, seasonal holiday films, and major Oscar contenders all vying for those juicy November and December slots. This month alone, some highly anticipated films include “American Fiction,” “Dream Scenario,” “Leave the World Behind,” “May December,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” “Napoleon,” and the Disney Film “Wish.” On streaming, new movies skew towards the seasonal holiday variet with mountains of Christmas rom-coms coming to Netflix for you to enjoy and/or dread. But there’s still plenty of classic films arriving on platforms this November — including great independent movies that have released as recently as 2014 and as far back as 1969.
It’s a particularly great month for the Criterion Channel: the streamer for...
As the end of the year approaches, new films arrive in theaters at a rapid pace with big blockbusters, seasonal holiday films, and major Oscar contenders all vying for those juicy November and December slots. This month alone, some highly anticipated films include “American Fiction,” “Dream Scenario,” “Leave the World Behind,” “May December,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” “Napoleon,” and the Disney Film “Wish.” On streaming, new movies skew towards the seasonal holiday variet with mountains of Christmas rom-coms coming to Netflix for you to enjoy and/or dread. But there’s still plenty of classic films arriving on platforms this November — including great independent movies that have released as recently as 2014 and as far back as 1969.
It’s a particularly great month for the Criterion Channel: the streamer for...
- 11/10/2023
- by Wilson Chapman
- Indiewire
Explore where to stream the best films of 2023.
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.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
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.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
- 11/3/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Among the myriad reasons we could call the Criterion Channel the single greatest streaming service is its leveling of cinematic snobbery. Where a new World Cinema Project restoration plays, so too does Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I think about this looking at November’s lineup and being happiest about two new additions: a nine-film Robert Bresson retro including L’argent and The Devil, Probably; and a one-film Hype Williams retro including Belly and only Belly, but bringing as a bonus the direct-to-video Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club. Until recently such curation seemed impossible.
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
November will also feature a 20-film noir series boasting the obvious and the not. Maybe the single tightest collection is “Women of the West,” with Johnny Guitar and The Beguiled and Rancho Notorious and The Furies only half of it. Lynch/Oz, Irradiated, and My Two Voices make streaming premieres; Drylongso gets a Criterion Edition; and joining...
- 10/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Cauleen Smith’s capricious, slyly resourceful DIY feature debut, Drylongso, follows photography student Pica (Toby Smith) as she struggles to find her artistic voice in a school whose methodology is disconnected from the harsh realities of late-’90s Oakland. Countless Black men in her neighborhood have been victimized by police and gang violence or mercilessly swallowed by the prison industrial complex, and now there’s a serial killer on the loose targeting Black youth. In the film’s first scene, Pica even witnesses another young woman, Tobi (April Barnett), get beaten up in front of her house and abandoned by her boyfriend (Timothy Braggs).
Pica copes with, and confronts, these various forms of violence by taking Polaroid photos of as many Black men as she can, explaining to Tobi, whom she soon befriends, that it’s because they’re becoming an endangered species. A supportive teacher, Mr. Yamada (Salim Akil...
Pica copes with, and confronts, these various forms of violence by taking Polaroid photos of as many Black men as she can, explaining to Tobi, whom she soon befriends, that it’s because they’re becoming an endangered species. A supportive teacher, Mr. Yamada (Salim Akil...
- 8/30/2023
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSStars at Noon.Claire Denis is currently location scouting in Cameroon for her next film, which she completed writing a couple of weeks ago, according to the Guardian.The BlackStar Film Festival, taking place from August 2 through 6 in Philadelphia, has just announced their lineup. The slate includes new films by Ja’Tovia Gary, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Darol Olu Kae.Recommended Viewinga special mini-season of the Mubi Podcast involves conversations with filmmakers at Cannes. The first of these sees host Rico Gagliano talk to legendary director Wim Wenders about one of two films he premiered at the festival: Anselm, a 3D documentary about the work of German fine artist Anselm Kiefer.We’ve partnered with Filmadrid for our annual collaborative series, “The Video Essay.
- 6/14/2023
- MUBI
Surely marking an upgrade from the snapcase Warner Bros. DVD we all watched in your green-gilled days, Criterion will give Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams the 4K treatment this August. It’s the biggest announcement this month, but shouldn’t entirely overshadow the further offerings––among them a four-film set highlighting Swedish director Bo Widerberg, newly restored and boasting an introduction from Ruben Östlund.
Meanwhile, the recently restored, much-acclaimed Drylongso gets Blu-ray treatment––read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here––and Wayne Wang’s little-seen Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart arrives in a new director’s cut.
Find artwork below and more at Criterion.
The post Criterion’s August Lineup Includes 4K Kurosawa, Drylongso & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
Meanwhile, the recently restored, much-acclaimed Drylongso gets Blu-ray treatment––read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here––and Wayne Wang’s little-seen Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart arrives in a new director’s cut.
Find artwork below and more at Criterion.
The post Criterion’s August Lineup Includes 4K Kurosawa, Drylongso & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 5/15/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Roxy Cinema
The Last Temptation of Christ and The Flowers of St. Francis have 35mm showings for Easter Weekend, while Barbarella and The Terminator also screen on film; Ken Jacobs’ Two Wrenching Departures plays on Sunday with Jacobs present.
IFC Center
Gregg Araki presents Something Wild on 35mm this Friday, while his film The Doom Generation opens in a director’s cut; Beau Travail offers a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight screen, while Akira and Barb Wire have late showings, with Wild Things showing on 35mm.
Bam
One of Shôhei Imamura’s last films, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, is screening, while “Queering the Canon” offers films by Lizzie Borden, Funeral Parade of Roses, and more.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Varda,...
Roxy Cinema
The Last Temptation of Christ and The Flowers of St. Francis have 35mm showings for Easter Weekend, while Barbarella and The Terminator also screen on film; Ken Jacobs’ Two Wrenching Departures plays on Sunday with Jacobs present.
IFC Center
Gregg Araki presents Something Wild on 35mm this Friday, while his film The Doom Generation opens in a director’s cut; Beau Travail offers a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight screen, while Akira and Barb Wire have late showings, with Wild Things showing on 35mm.
Bam
One of Shôhei Imamura’s last films, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, is screening, while “Queering the Canon” offers films by Lizzie Borden, Funeral Parade of Roses, and more.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Varda,...
- 4/7/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Snow, Bresson, and Pasolini; somewhat different from Jeanne Dielman, Godzilla vs. Megalon plays Friday and Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
A Joe Dante retrospective begins; films by Luis Buñuel and Chaplin screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
The recently restored Finnish classic Eight Deadly Shots begins its two-part run; Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity and The Conformist continue; two Harold Lloyd movies screen; The Jackie Robinson Story plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
The newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
White Material, Chocolat, and Beau Travail offer a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screen, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings,...
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on Jeanne Dielman‘s influences brings the film itself and work by Snow, Bresson, and Pasolini; somewhat different from Jeanne Dielman, Godzilla vs. Megalon plays Friday and Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
A Joe Dante retrospective begins; films by Luis Buñuel and Chaplin screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
The recently restored Finnish classic Eight Deadly Shots begins its two-part run; Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity and The Conformist continue; two Harold Lloyd movies screen; The Jackie Robinson Story plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Film at Lincoln Center
The newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
White Material, Chocolat, and Beau Travail offer a Claire Denis fix; Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screen, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings,...
- 3/31/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of the Moving Image
Tokyo Story plays on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity plays in a 4K restoration; Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 and The Conformist continue their runs; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts as well as her onscreen work; Panahi’s The White Balloon plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Films by Luis Buñuel screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
Before Sunrise screens, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
Synecdoche, New York and Paul Williams...
Museum of the Moving Image
Tokyo Story plays on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity plays in a 4K restoration; Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 and The Conformist continue their runs; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts as well as her onscreen work; Panahi’s The White Balloon plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Films by Luis Buñuel screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
Before Sunrise screens, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
Synecdoche, New York and Paul Williams...
- 3/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSThe Act of Killing. Though he’s known for nonfiction, Joshua Oppenheimer just began production on a musical about the end of the world, fittingly called The End. Filming now in Dublin, it stars Tilda Swinton and George Mackay, via the production company’s website.After 23 years, A.O. Scott is stepping away from film criticism at the New York Times, transitioning to a new role as a critic at large for the Book Review. He conducts his own exit interview.In comedy news, Safdie muse and Razzie record-breaker Adam Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this week in Washington, D.C.Finally, we’re thinking of the character actor Lance Reddick this week, who died suddenly last Friday at...
- 3/22/2023
- MUBI
Roadside Attraction’s Moving On grossed an estimated $798k at about 800 theaters, about status quo this weekend for a specialty sector that’s better but still looking to break out.
The audience for the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin-toplined comedy was, not surprisingly, 63% female and 82% over 35. Some 64% were 50+. It played best on the coasts. Estimated per theater average for the Paul Weitz film that also features Malcolm McDowell and Richard Roundtree is just over $1k.
Fonda and Tomlin play estranged friends who reunite to seek revenge against the husband of their recently deceased best friend. The film had trailer time before 80 For Brady where the duo played alongside Rita Moreno and Sally Field (and Tom Brady). That wide-release opening Paramount pic, now down to 168 screens in week 7, has grossed $39 million.
Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen called the opening number “positive” with word of mouth good and noted that midweek...
The audience for the Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin-toplined comedy was, not surprisingly, 63% female and 82% over 35. Some 64% were 50+. It played best on the coasts. Estimated per theater average for the Paul Weitz film that also features Malcolm McDowell and Richard Roundtree is just over $1k.
Fonda and Tomlin play estranged friends who reunite to seek revenge against the husband of their recently deceased best friend. The film had trailer time before 80 For Brady where the duo played alongside Rita Moreno and Sally Field (and Tom Brady). That wide-release opening Paramount pic, now down to 168 screens in week 7, has grossed $39 million.
Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen called the opening number “positive” with word of mouth good and noted that midweek...
- 3/19/2023
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso starts screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
The Dardenne brothers are subject of a career-spanning retrospective, with L’Enfant, The Kid with a Bike, and Lorna’s Silence showing on 35mm; Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Times Square, and Poison Ivy have late screenings.
Film Forum
Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 begins a run; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River continues showing in a 4K restoration, while The Conformist returns; Selena plays this Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill, Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, Minnie and Moskowitz, Belly, and Synecdoche, New York have 35mm showings.
Museum of the Moving Image
With First Look underway,...
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso starts screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
The Dardenne brothers are subject of a career-spanning retrospective, with L’Enfant, The Kid with a Bike, and Lorna’s Silence showing on 35mm; Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Times Square, and Poison Ivy have late screenings.
Film Forum
Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 begins a run; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River continues showing in a 4K restoration, while The Conformist returns; Selena plays this Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill, Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, Minnie and Moskowitz, Belly, and Synecdoche, New York have 35mm showings.
Museum of the Moving Image
With First Look underway,...
- 3/17/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
In Drylongso, Pica (Toby Smith) coughs her way through each day. She goes to photography class at the local college, works nights putting up posters for various missing persons and political organizers, and survives in a household with her mother and grandmother, along with an open-door assortment of the former’s friends. Her sickness becomes an afterthought, a part of her character that cannot be fixed, treated, or resolved.
Pica documents the Black men in her neighborhood in Oakland, several of which have gone missing or have been murdered by an anonymous serial killer. She asks them, “Can I take your picture?” pulls out her Polaroid camera, and snaps a shot, keeping them in a rubber-banded stack in her backpack. Her photography, and her extended art, can be seen as a way of documentation, but also as remembrance. Funerals keep happening, but at least these young Black men dying have this “evidence of existence,...
Pica documents the Black men in her neighborhood in Oakland, several of which have gone missing or have been murdered by an anonymous serial killer. She asks them, “Can I take your picture?” pulls out her Polaroid camera, and snaps a shot, keeping them in a rubber-banded stack in her backpack. Her photography, and her extended art, can be seen as a way of documentation, but also as remembrance. Funerals keep happening, but at least these young Black men dying have this “evidence of existence,...
- 3/16/2023
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
For the fifth year, IndieWire is co-hosting the Locarno Critics Academy, giving a group of talented up-and-coming critics a chance to help their role in the current climate for film criticism and journalism at the Locarno International Film Festival. With assistance from Penske Media, the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, participants will engage in a series of activities and then get to work. They will spend the first half of the festival which begins today, in roundtable discussions with working critics and industry figures; beginning next week, they’ll write about films at this year’s festival, as well as topics ranging from television to digital media.
Before then, take a minute to get to know them, and find out what they’re looking forward to checking out. Keep up with their dispatches from this year’s festival here and follow them on Twitter.
Before then, take a minute to get to know them, and find out what they’re looking forward to checking out. Keep up with their dispatches from this year’s festival here and follow them on Twitter.
- 8/3/2016
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
BrandChannel.com is a site that lists all product placement found within #1 studio feature films, going back to 2001.
Something to pay attention to next time you sit down to watch a movie, and to later discuss, when you and your pals go to Starbucks afterward and order cappuccinos, oblivious of the fact that you might be doing so because a character in the movie you just saw was drinking one
For example… Limitless, last week’s number 1 movie, featured brands that include: adidas, Apple, At&T, Bentley, BlackBerry, Bloomberg, Dell, Google, Ibm, Levi’s, Louis Vuitton, Maserati, Mercedes, New York Post, Percocet, Red Bull, Smartwater, St. Regis Hotel, Trump, and Two Men and a Truck.
Several “high end” brands there. I haven’t seen the film however. But since you’re technically supposed to be able to tell who the target audience of the film is, by looking at the brands featured in the film,...
Something to pay attention to next time you sit down to watch a movie, and to later discuss, when you and your pals go to Starbucks afterward and order cappuccinos, oblivious of the fact that you might be doing so because a character in the movie you just saw was drinking one
For example… Limitless, last week’s number 1 movie, featured brands that include: adidas, Apple, At&T, Bentley, BlackBerry, Bloomberg, Dell, Google, Ibm, Levi’s, Louis Vuitton, Maserati, Mercedes, New York Post, Percocet, Red Bull, Smartwater, St. Regis Hotel, Trump, and Two Men and a Truck.
Several “high end” brands there. I haven’t seen the film however. But since you’re technically supposed to be able to tell who the target audience of the film is, by looking at the brands featured in the film,...
- 3/27/2011
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
On this blog, we’ve often wondered about and investigated the current whereabouts of past promising black filmmakers who just seemed to vanish after their auspicious debuts, like, in this case, award-winning writer/director Cauleen Smith, whose 1998 first feature film, Drylongso, co-written by Salim Akil (Girlfriends, The Game, Jumping The Broom) – a coming-of-age drama about a young woman who begins photographing, for preservation purposes, what she deems “America’s most endangered species,” African-American males – premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film itself is very hard to find. It’s not on DVD, as far as I know. You might be able to get a VHS copy on eBay.
After Drylongso, Cauleen tried and tried and tried to get her second feature financed and produced, without success; despite it being selected as a Tribeca All-Access Project, a few years ago. Titled I Am Furious Black, the script’s synopsis read,...
The film itself is very hard to find. It’s not on DVD, as far as I know. You might be able to get a VHS copy on eBay.
After Drylongso, Cauleen tried and tried and tried to get her second feature financed and produced, without success; despite it being selected as a Tribeca All-Access Project, a few years ago. Titled I Am Furious Black, the script’s synopsis read,...
- 1/14/2011
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
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