The Roundup is a regular column which collates (and curates) news, feature articles, podcast episodes and other online curios associated with film.
News
- SBS have announced that they will be putting 400 new films onto their OnDemand service on October 1, which will stay online for 12 months, a huge expansion on their Festival of 100 Clicks campaign in March. Some of the films being added include Oldboy, Bicycle Thieves, Black Dynamite, Fish Tank and American Splendor.
- Also on streaming, the Financial Review has reported this week that Australian television organisations have been frantically buying up content with the express aim of blocking out Netflix from the market. In an interesting article on the subject, Dan Barrett over at Televised Revolution asserts that this move shows that companies don’t understand how Netflix operates and also, in a closer link to the latest SBS announcement, notes that:
One of the biggest sources of competition to Netflix is actually SBS. It is the niche types of content that SBS have leveraged off to build their compelling SBS2 that actually echoes the sorts of series that does well on Netflix.
- The Dissolve write that the motorcycle from Easy Rider will be auctioned off. Whilst the headline is funny, it’s no match for the URL.
- The Art Gallery of NSW have unveiled their latest film program in conjunction with the Japanese Film Festival – “Great Japanese directors and actresses of the 20th century” – which will see films including Woman in the Dunes, Floating Clouds and Ten Black Women screen in 35mm during October.
- Some light controversy erupted this week when Josh Lawson, writer/director of The Little Death, said some things that could be perceived as disparaging to modern Australian film, alleging that an overrepresentation of bogans and crime has led to Australian audiences disengaging from local features. Dave Crewe writes in FilmInk about these comments and whether disparaging Australian cinema is the best way to attract viewers.
Features
- Reverse Shot have a great piece by Azadeh Jafari and Vahid Mortazavi on the evolution of Iranian cinema as part of their ‘Escape From New York’ essay series, which aims to focus on mostly international cinema.
- Gone Girl premieres at NYFF soon and opens here in Australia in early October, which means we’re getting a torrent of interviews with David Fincher and, luckily, he’s a pretty great interviewee. Two of the best we’ve read so far are with Playboy and Little White Lies.
- Andrea Picard, the inimitable programmer of TIFF’s Wavelengths section, wrote an excellent tribute to the late, great Harun Farocki over at Cinema Scope. Watch out for our upcoming edition of our regular You Have to See… column on Farocki’s How to Live in the German Federal Republic.
- Darren Hughes and Michael Leary have started a fascinating four-part discussion on the films of Claire Denis over at To Be Cont’d. Part one focuses on “Ways of Looking” and part two looks at “Materiality and Abstraction.”
- Adeola Enigbokan writes in The New Inquiry about Spike Lee’s School Daze and finding parallels between the act of creating that film and Soviet-era art:
In School Daze, the plot is not the thing, just as in jazz, the melody is never the thing. Instead, it is the cascade of ghosts of black lives we have lived and witnessed, which first thrills us in the theater and then leads us to the subway in silent mourning.
Podcasts
- Over at The Talkhouse director Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick) speaks to Terry Gilliam about The Zero Theorem and filmmaking more broadly in a two-part podcast.
- NYFF director Kent Jones talked with Filmwax Radio to talk about its latest instalment, his admiration of Jean-Luc Godard and other interesting tidbits. Their back catalogue is also definitely worth your attention – with an impressive list of past interviewees including Claire Denis, Wong Kar-Wai and Bernando Bertolucci, to name just a few.
Other
- Cinephilia and Beyond gifts us this rare television spot for Kubrick’s The Shining
- Photographer Stefanie Zoche travelled around the south of India to look at the architecture of cinemas in whats she dubs “hybrid modernism”. It’s a beautiful collection of images and, purely from the point of cinematic spaces, raises the notion of physical engagement with the screen and with fellow audience-members.
- Oldie but a goodie – the cast of Spongebob Squarepants dub scenes from classic films including Casablanca and Singin’ in the Rain.
- Steven Soderbergh has released another of his ‘film classes by way of edited existing films’ (previously: Heaven’s Gate, Psycho) with a black-and-white version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the score replaced by that of The Social Network, all to train the viewer to “think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. ” We’ve previously looked at Soderbergh’s practice for watching films in black-and-white here.
Tweet of the Week
I’ve been defending THE GAME’s perfect ending all these years and now Fincher says “we didn’t figure out the third act.” #TheGameGate
— Vern (@outlawvern) September 16, 2014