"There is a fantastic thing that Godard used to say: In the old days, they made silent films and you understood everything, without words. You understood more than the story, you understood how people suffer and why." –Pedro Costa, 2023
Haunted by this video. Bittersweet. Because this is the perfect glimpse/art-output of the 1990s. It was cool just to make cool shit. And this little 8mm thing is like 40,000 times cooler than anything now. And somehow had way more deep cultural influence than a million YT views.
Fucking hyperbolic statement, I know, but this two shots made me realize that Pedro Costa is one of best and most important filmmakers of the 21st century.
If you torrent stuff, you’re basically crossing a picket line. If you want to keep doing it, shut the fuck up about it on Twitter. You’re basically saying “fuck you” to my and many’s living. I don’t mind when you need to take screengrabs, but other than that fuck you back.
FUNNY WARS by JLG was apparently completed and runs 20 minutes and will be at Cannes. Aragno and Grivas are working to complete SCÉNARIO according to his prehumous instructions.
This week’s column breaks news about Godard’s final movie going to
#Cannes
and unearths details about The Weeknd’s ambitions as an auteur, including an attempted remake of ICHI THE KILLER with Paul Schrader
It can be revealed —
@FilmsRadiance
will be releasing the new restoration of Jacques Rivette’s epic 4-1/2 hour L’AMOUR FOU on Blu-ray. I put together the booklet.
Coming with extensive new extras including a feature length doc, video essay by
@AdrianMartin25
and
@laughmotel
, interview with Caroline Champetier, extensive booklet by
@evillights
and new artwork. Coming to cinemas soon and on disc
I've translated into English the Cahiers editor-in-chief Marcos Uzal's first impressions of Jean-Luc Godard's TRAILER OF THE FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST "PHONY WARS," from the Cahiers website:
My 2-hour film interview with Pedro Costa from the early 2010s. Someone liked it today and given Pedro's recent interview thought it would be a good time to repost:
Greatest thing on Friday was Drew Barrymore having to acknowledge Errol Flynn stole John Barrymore’s corpse for one last party (cc:
@KarinaLongworth
) and Drew declaring, “Defile my corpse too.” I find this very moving, I love Hollywood unabashedly
"But mainly, [Fabrice Aragno] says, he is helping to establish the Jean-Luc Godard Foundation, renovating an old factory in the director’s home town of Rolle. This will serve as an exhibition space and archive, but principally it will provide a seedbed for young artists."
Today is the world premiere at Cannes of Jean-Luc Godard’s first of two posthumous films — TRAILER OF THE FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST “PHONY WARS.” In time we will see the completed version of his second, SCÉNARIO. It is a solace. Thank you to Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Paul Battaggia,
Just a note that CS published some startling texts in its time. It ran, for example, across two successive issues, B. Kite’s 15,000 word or so consideration on Jacques Rivette, a high point in English-language film writing.
I'm sorry but there is absolutely no racism in John Ford. I have to assert that that's the case. It's like saying there's racism in Faulkner. Ford was among the most progressive directors of the bygone era.
Unless I missed it (very possible) the film isn’t actually named in the piece..? It’s Godard’s GRANDEUR ET DÉCADENCE D’UN PETIT COMMERCE DE CINÉMA from 1986
One of Jean-Luc Godard's rarest masterpieces, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, will have its first screening since 2017 at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research this month.
Details and tickets:
@Nick_Newman
Same here. Every now and then I'll indulge in a regular Coke, and it blows the pants off of Diet Coke. Though I don't mind Coke Zero. Of course, the king is the Mexican Coke.
Thread, with the English-tranlsated gist of Fabrice Aragno's remarks on Godard's DRÔLES DE GUERRES / PHONY WARS. JLG wanted to adapt the film from Charles Plisnier's 1937 novel FAUX PASSEPORTS / FAKE PASSPORTS broken into several sections with a different character in each...
I translated on my blog the preview of Godard's TRAILER FOR THE FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST "PHONY WARS" published in the May issue of Cahiers, with texts by Fabrice Aragno and Nicole Brenez:
Sitting with it overnight, BLACKHAT (Mann cut) is up there among his best films. Totally excellent, something unique from America, something à la NEW ROSE HOTEL.
Aragno: Godard watches French TCM all the time “and films he DESTROYED, just DESTROYED in the Cahiers, now sometimes he says Well that’s not so bad...”
Incredible and essential new interview from Mubi Notebook today by Christopher Small with Pedro Costa. "When I'm out of this hellhole..." [Cannes] — Thanks to
@theMummyMa
for bringing this to my attention.
If you want the primary critical text on Ford, then you read JOHN FORD: THE MAN AND HIS FILMS by Tag Gallagher. People are complex, which the current era has no time for even considering. And again, I will only say: FAULKNER. FAULKNER. FAULKNER.
Who’s a director you can’t stand but you nod at other people’s enthusiasm because good for them and also you don’t want to have any conversation about it. I’ll start it off: Hal Ashby.
Ozu is as great as Shakespeare. Not with the language (Shakespeare remains unparalleled on all Earth for that), but with the wisdom and complexity of human emotions and psychology.
JLG once said in the last ten years or so that he would make films till his dying breath, if it involved pencils and markers and a little camera. I'm incredibly moved by this beautiful 30-second preview.
In time it has taken its rightful place in my Top now-4!!! films ever made, for me. Its next to THE RULES OF THE GAME, OUT 1, and HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA.
via Gabe Klinger via the Cannes site: Cannes Classics will present a screening called "L'ultime film de Jean-Luc Godard". And that will be: his TRUE final-final film, SCÉNARIOS, which is near 19 minutes and filmed/completed the day before he went to die. But then a SECOND film...
Out now on region B — Rivette’s L’AMOUR FOU. Contains fine fine work from
@laughmotel
and
@AdrianMartin25
, and Jessica Felrice, et al. I produced the booklet and wrote this piece, included:
Very proud of this release which was my first co-production with
@TheFilmDesk
for the new restoration on Blu of Alain Resnais's LA GUERRE EST FINIE [THE WAR IS OVER], an undershown crucial piece of the master's cinema. Don't sleep on this!
If you can't read the Spanish on that last RT, it's that Harmony Korine has also made the new film with thermodynamic cameras from NASA, according to his neighbor who also has a part in the film.
Unbelievable new issue of Cahiers du Cinéma. The long interview with Godard is accompanied by recent photos he's taken on his iPhone, and has manipulated. The working title of his next film (with images from the scenario) is SCÉNARIO.
Just watched CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH for I think the 5th time. An angel hurtled through the light, the obscurity. A more perfect unison was there never till the Straubs made this film.
The post-screening of SCÉNARIOS etc saw Aragno and Mitrahani take the stage. No-one cares. The most important film in years, the final gesture of the greatest. Anyway I'm watching it on FB so there's no way to reasonably share, but it might be on YT now. Enjoy the piss movies.
I love the Criterion 24/7 feature on the Channel. It’s basically TCM but better. I’ve been keeping it on in the background. Playing currently: LOST HIGHWAY
I have friends who do it and whose living rooms look like the 29th circle of hell. I don’t care whether it’s an “otherwise unavailable” film or not. Make the money to buy it on disc or canvas to make it come back into a rights-horizon.
An
#NYFF6
Main Slate selection, L’AMOUR FOU is one of the most remarkable of Jacques Rivette’s many explorations of the intersection of life and art.
Rivette’s 1969 classic opens in a new 4K restoration this Friday! 🎟️:
Woke up in a very good mood today, seeing Harmony’s movie has rankled Bilge Ebiri’s middlebrow ass. It can generally be counted on that a “zero” from Ebiri translates to a “10” from me.
In English, Pedro Costa, in talk with
@AntoineThirion2
: “Between HORSE MONEY and this latest film, Vitalina started working at a Zara shop, and there she learned it all. Three months at Zara, I think, is a course in Marxism-Leninism.”
Linklater’s one of the best American filmmakers.
I don’t know why he made this movie. I don’t want another breezy Run-through of the ‘60s and watered down re-representations of the stances at play.
Also, “NOUVELLE VAGUE” is already a title used for one of the greatest films.
Read the excellent profile on
@KarinaLongworth
in the new issue of Rolling Stone. I can't profess to know who the devil this friend is in paragraph 1...:
I’ve never understood the always failed compulsion to make spectacle, or entertainment, out of atrocity. The atom bomb, the Holocaust, are not cruise-rides. If they’re to be addressed, the filmmaker must THINK. Like Lanzmann, Resnais, Kubrick, Godard…
I once told Tag I hadn’t seen WAR AND PEACE yet bc I was waiting to read the Tolstoy and he responded “You should see the Vidor first and wait to read the Tolstoy.”
All I ask of cinema is cinema itself. The premiere clip of Harmony Korine's AGGRO DR1FT has me more excited than anything I've seen in a long while, since Godard and Costa.
If I were to start an email cc list thing where people, everyone and anyone, can sign up, and we discuss a single film till we feel like moving on to the next one — would anyone be interested?
via
@theMummyMa
— Jean-Luc Godard in conversation a few weeks ago in English and French (subtitled) after the lifetime achievement award, for 1 hour 30 minutes!
He made a fifty-page brochure with each page constituting one shot. He told Aragno and Battaggia that this was "his best film." Fin de thread. Fin de cinéma.
Precisely. Nolan is such a ghastly ghoul he thinks the visceral feeling of the atomic bomb will be “a showstopper.” It’s more obscene than the tracking shot in KAPO. Hiroshima, mon ami?
RIP Henri Serre at 92, the magnificent Jim of Truffaut’s JULES ET JIM, and a star of Cavalier’s LE COMBAT DANS L’ÎLE (available via
@FilmsRadiance
). I only just found out he died last Monday.
Actully have no problem w/ the de-aging in THE IRISHMAN. Hollywood always used gimmicky tricks to deal with this though admittedly usually to make a character/actor look old. It looks fake, but the bias is just digital tools. Which everyone from Rivette to Kiarostami to JLG used.
I posted two new translated pieces on Jean-Pierre Gorin from recent issues of Cahiers: one is a short report from Charlotte Garson, the other an interview by Garson with Gorin. Subscribe to Cahiers.
It also should be noted that for all her extreme beauty, Vitti embodied an alienation and fractured psychosis that upended expectations onscreen and within the audiences, who could relate silently.
Super stoked to be involved with the new
@TheFilmDesk
label. Thank you to the master-chief Jake Perlin. We have some AMAZING stuff coming down the road! In the meantime, set your pre-orders for our first release, Claire Denis's monstrous TROUBLE EVERY DAY.
Alain Delon. Love-hate relationship inviting a strange interaction. Was never a major fan and didn’t find him that fascinating, as I do with Robert Ryan or Sterling Hayden. But Delon led some of the best movies ever made: NOUVELLE VAGUE, L’ECLISSE, LE SAMOURAÏ.
Rest In Peace Hermine Karagheuz, who died two days ago, one of the ultimate actress presences of the ‘70s films of Jacques Rivette, including the all-shattering 13-hours-in final shot of OUT 1. RIP Cinema Goddess
I just wonder how many people on here going on about the New Wave this and that have ever seen, let's stick to, Luc Moullet's films, and writings, and books. Srikanth Srinivasan has translated key texts at — but there's only a circle of 10 who ever RTs him
FURIOSA is a landmark in the history of the cinema.
More in a bit. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen in my life. Every single moment is exhilarating.
#MadMax
#Furiosa
Been working piecemeal on these Truffaut translations at my blog from the '23 debut issue of the new Cahiers hors-série (with the obituary Godard wrote for him from the '84 special issue). First in a series:
Latest issue of Cahiers about Hollywood is very good. Say what you will about the revue’s different phases and periods, but no-one puts in the work or has the curiosity of their editorial board in North American titles, where it’s just incessant festival coverage and free trips.
Moullet: "Like a majority of the technical rules in use, this is also a strictly western law. The Japanese constantly break the shot-reverse shot line; for them the problem does not arise. Imagine: had Japan won the war, that would have been the end of 180 degrees!"
*ANNOUNCEMENTS* We are delighted to present our June slate: A yakuza classic, masterpieces from rural Italy, the wild world of Jean-Pierre Mocky and more Dirty Arthouse🧵