In the second of our three weekly dispatches, Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer, managing editor Maxwell Paparella, and contributors K.F. Watanabe write to each other about their New York Film Festival experiences.
In the first of our three weekly dispatches, Screen Slate editor Jon Dieringer, managing editor Maxwell Paparella, and contributors Jeva Lange, Chloe Lizotte, and K.F. Watanabe write to each other about their festival experiences.
A column by Cristina Cacioppo for Screen Slate
From a 2018 Twitter thread: twitter.com/ScreenSlate/status/1057704806972866562
1-32 are from the original thread, but I'll update with some more that currently…
"Despite focusing on a self-absorbed jerk contemplating murder most of the runtime, A New Leaf is a genuinely sweet film. Maybe that’s due to the studio interference—May’s cut included an excised subplot casting marriage as a life sentence—but the film’s ending and Henry’s slow growth remained unchanged from May’s vision. At one point after getting soaked to the bone, Henry asks Henrietta 'Still cold?' Henrietta says, 'I feel a little warmer,' a perfect summation of A New Leaf’s effect." Featured by Danielle Burgos
Screen Slate's friends at Le Cinema Club recently invited us to pick a film for their weekly streaming selection.
"Amid the proliferation of stereos and VCRs in the 1980s, Sweden’s youth culture was taken with The Karate Kid, horror movies, and hip-hop, ushering a new wave of counter-culture and youth rebellion. This also led to moral panic over videovåld (“video violence”), Sweden’s own version of the UK “Video Nasties,” which elevated movies by homegrown exploitation filmmakers like Mats Helge Olsson…
"With a fresh restoration, the film’s previous murkiness is removed to restore its intended high-style chiaroscuro, revealing a noir/sci-fi crossover with a banger soundtrack to a wider audience." Featured by Danielle Burgos
Featured by Dana Reinoos (aka dana danger)
"The Devil’s Rain is the exemplar of a certain kind of 1970s American horror movie: slow, weird, 'plotless,' and depressing. It’s the kind of movie that made Roger Ebert say, “The problem is that the material's stretched too thin… No doubt that's why we get so many barren landscapes filled with lonely music and ennui.” But what could more accurately depict the hollowed-out core of the post-Nixon American soul than nothingness, ennui, and a deal with the devil?"
"While watching, it’s difficult as a queer person, namely a lesbian, to not note how these women inadvertently fulfill lesbian fantasies of domesticity and a household that does not rely on a stark male presence or intrusion. Both young and in their 20s, they explain how their children were the result of relationships with men that didn't work out, and rather than struggle independently, they’ve found each other."
"Peerless in its vision and esoteric in its details, Om Dar-B-Dar is a movie that can hold true to the moniker of being 'unlike anything you’ve ever seen.'"
"Part of 'Liberating History: Arab Feminisms and Mediated Pasts,' a streaming series presented by the Block Museum and programmed by Simran Bhalla and Malia Haines-Stewart, Fatma 75, the first non-fiction film by a Tunisian woman, is a formally nimble explication of the parallel struggles for Tunisian independence in the 1950s and women’s rights. Fatma is scheduled to deliver a talk on the subject to her class. Using this narrative device — a sort of unrestricted cinematic…
"In 1972, BBC Two presented a feature-length teleplay as part of its annual “A Ghost Story for Christmas” series of the ‘70s: The Stone Tape, directed by Peter Sasdy and written by Nigel Kneale. Kneale was already well-established as a television writer, having, amongst others, created science hunk Bernard Quatermass, who first made his appearance in British TV serials but was also the protagonist of several Hammer films, including The Quatermass Xperiment and, my personal favorite,…
