Not sure why there's such antipathy to June Allyson, whose career I haven't followed extensively but who is movingly steadfast and stoic in The Glenn Miller Story, questing and passionate and vulnerable in Interlude.

8/3/01: The Cat's Meow Peter Bogdanovich's underappreciated gem w/excellent Kirsten Dunst, Edward Herrmann, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Tilly A great double feature w/Kane! More: @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab... @jenniekermode.bsky.social: www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-c...

Terrific to find Christopher Münch's The Hours and Times, his nuclear theory of Beatlemania as filmed within the reactor, on the @criterionchannl.bsky.social : www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

The Front Row: “The Hours and Times”

In this 1991 film, the director, Christopher Munch, constructs a cinematic petri dish to consider the worldwide cultural phenomenon sparked by the Beatles.

newyorker.com

If the Nicholas Ray series at the Roxy must end, apt that it's ending with the spectacular, garish burnout of Party Girl, at 5:30pm in 35mm.: www.newyorker.com/goings-on-ab...

Party Girl

newyorker.com

Noting that Charlie Chaplin's 1942 sound version of The Gold Rush screens tonight at 6 @anthologyfilm.bsky.social in 35mm., remembered that I wrote a little something about it a while back—it's very different and very good, reflective of new ambitions and new times: www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Rush in History

newyorker.com

Magnificent musical discovery tonight at @lincolncenter.bsky.social Summer for the City orchestral concert, conducted by Jonathon Heyward: the U.S. première of Jessie Montgomery's cello concerto These Righteous Paths, played—and sung!—by the cellist Abel Selaocoe, a mere twenty-ish minutes

8/1/73: George Lucas' American Graffiti - The last time he tried FF Coppola made it possible More: @alissawilkinson.bsky.social: www.vox.com/culture/2017... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-... FFC on Lucas: "We should’ve had more": www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

How ‘American Graffiti’ Triumphed Over Studio Rejection

Universal's American Graffiti may now be breaking house records in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, but getting it to the screen was no snap. Co-producer Gary Kurtz, who joined the project fro...

hollywoodreporter.com

The remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (midnight @tcmtv.bsky.social ) was my latter-day gateway into Hitchcock, whom I'd previously admired for his outliers (e.g., The Wrong Man); along with its specific inventiveness, it also stretches time in a way akin to many films of the mid-to-late fifties...

The Green Room, one of Truffaut's best and least-seen films, its dearh-haunted sombreness a step short of comedy (and with a Godard-centered twist, at @metrographnyc.bsky.social 7:10pm in 35mm.: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Thereafter

newyorker.com

Dazzling imagination, keen insight, tenderness, humor: Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a major entry in the crucial and personal subgenre of movies about filmmaking: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

In “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Desire and Terror Meet

Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film, which follows a celebrated young filmmaker tapped to reboot an old horror franchise, is a cinematic manifesto that examines how art can inspire both love and fear.

newyorker.com

In college, I programmed and projected a screening of Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life; afterward, a varsity football player told me it was the scariest film he'd ever seen. Only years later did I read between the framelines, so to speak.... It's screening today at 5 at the Roxy, in 35mm.

BOTD Peter Bogdanovich!! MCCT5: 5)Paper Moon 4)Targets 3)St Jack 2)Cats Meow 1)Picture Show More: PB talking Hitch w/ @realgdt.bsky.social: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... @glennkenny.bsky.social: decider.com/2022/01/06/p... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/post...

How Peter Bogdanovich Shaped the Backstory of Modern Cinema

One of the most original directors of New Hollywood, Bogdanovich was also a critic who expanded our cinephilic heritage.

newyorker.com

Chronicle of a Summer, by Jean Rouch and the late Edgar Morin (who died in May at age 104), a vastly original documentary that's underappreciated in proportion to its historic place in the art, screens at Low Cinema at 6; word on it and on some crucial outtakes: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

The Extraordinary “Chronicle of a Summer”

newyorker.com

The political cinema; giddily, earnestly ingenious.

MidCenturyCinema@midcenturycinema.bsky.social · last wk.

7/29/94: Whit Stillman's Barcelona w/Taylor Nichols, Chris Eigeman + "They're against OTAN?" More @noelmu.bsky.social: www.avclub.com/barcelona-dv... @whitstillman.bsky.social w/ @tanjilrashid.bsky.social: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w... @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Silent Movie Week begins at @moma.bsky.social at 7 with D. W. Griffith's Way Down East, featuring a live performance of a reconstruction of the original orchestral score; the movie reaches an extreme of the romantic naturalism that runs through his work: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Because Jean Renoir came up in the other place: I find it important to write about classic movies as extensively and critically as about new releases and have loved doing so with Renoir's films; short thread—first, on The Rules of the Game (don't lose its greatness in overfamiliarity)...

The Enduring Power of “The Rules of the Game”

Jean Renoir’s tragic farce, from 1939, scathingly denounced French society’s frivolity amid threats of war and fascism.

newyorker.com

Since Harry Langdon came up in the other place, worth mentioning: he rightly parted ways with Frank Capra and directed himself in two features, among the greatest of silent comedies; his third, hardly released, is lost: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

HBD Mick Jagger!! Key films Performance/Our take: midcenturycinema.org/node/200 Man From Elysian Fields/ @szacharek.bsky.social: www.salon.com/2002/10/08/e... Also Charlie is my Darling/ @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/culture/rich... Thrilling w/Marchese: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/m...

Mick Jagger Knows He May Have Played His Last Rolling Stones Show

The legendary rock star, now 82, on how fame, touring and aging have changed him.

nytimes.com

Charlie Chaplin's indignation at the arrogance of privilege and power, which got him exiled during the HUAC/McCarthy era, is the basis and the engine of his art, even in his quasi-sentimental first feature, The Kid, on @tcmtv.bsky.social at 8: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

What to Stream: The Radical Insolence of Charlie Chaplin

Even in seemingly apolitical movies, the great comedian takes aim at the law’s cruel prejudice against the poor.

newyorker.com

Discourse on The Odyssey is so heated because something bigger than Bronze Age accuracy is at stake. The problem of adaptation is at the basis of modern cinema itself: it's the subject of the New Wave's critical detonator, Truffaut's essay A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema.

Great that Robert Bresson's last film, L'Argent, from 1983, is at @metrographnyc.bsky.social at 12:45pm, in a tribute to the sound recordist Jean-Louis Ughetto, because the soundtrack plays a dominant role in expression and substance (I was struck by it when I saw it in first run in Paris):

L’Argent (Money)

newyorker.com

Embarrassing (or should be) to the critical and editorial community that there are so few reviews of Lost Chapters.

Dommage qu'on ait sorti en France le Gavagai d'Ulrich Köhler, un film de pures intentions qui signifie sans être, plutôt que le Gavagai de Rob Tregenza, un film (de 2016) aussi vivant que virtuose.

A mention in the other place of opera as literary adaptation reminded me of Monteverdi's 1639-40 adaptation of the Odyssey as Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. Full of gods.

Penny Lane's new documentary Wild Inside is wonderful and took me by surprise; its form (largely crowdsourced) is as unusual as its subject (Flaco the Owl); it opens next Friday; word in Goings On: link.newyorker.com/view/5bea068...

Lost Chapters, Lorena Alvarado's first feature (opening Friday at @ifccenter.bsky.social), is a graceful family drama of literary inspiration and substance—and a lesson in cinematic style and form: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Lost Chapters” Weaves Literary Mysteries Into Family Bonds

The Venezuelan director Lorena Alvarado’s first feature film, “ Lost Chapters,” starring her own relatives, connects a young woman’s homecoming and her artistic ambitions.

newyorker.com

Nolan still has to make films that make money—albeit also with respectability; a few directors whose names are synonymous with an aesthetic, a worldview, the art of cinema itself, don't; that's a greater power.

Vulture@vulture.com · 2w ago

Who are the 100 most powerful directors in Hollywood right now? Vulture’s Nate Jones spent months talking to agents, executives, producers, publicists, and journalists to answer that question.

HBD Paul Schrader!!! Living embodiment of the New Hollywood Great PS essay: paulschrader.org/articles/pdf... Must-read w/ @tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-... More @stephenrodrick.bsky.social: variety.com/2024/film/ne... @bilgeebiri.bsky.social: www.vulture.com/article/paul...

Paul Schrader Thought He Was Dying. So He Made a Movie About It.

“I actually thought when I was making it, Okay, this is the last one. It’s a good last one.”

vulture.com

Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, his bitter and faux-romantic vision of a petty man with delusions of greatness who justifies his self-serving killing spree as an upholder of culture and values—and of the world that takes him at face value—6:45pm at @paristheaternyc.bsky.social in 35mm.:

DVD of the Week: “Monsieur Verdoux”

Richard Brody on Charlie Chaplin's "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947).

newyorker.com

Distractedly neglected to put up word about A Woman Under the Influence, playing now on @tcmtv.bsky.social, and some kind of ultimate vision of what people do to each other in the name of love, what kind of torment is unleashed in the tangles of family bonds: www.newyorker.com/culture/rich...

Seeing John Cassavetes

Richard Brody on John Cassavetes's "A Woman Under the Influence" (1974).

newyorker.com