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Wilhelm Sasnal on food in Robert Walser’s 1908 novel: “ I was actually struck by the first scene with the food when I was reading this.”

In the second installment with Wilhelm Sasnal, co-director with Anka Sasnal of The Assistant (Czlowiek Do Wszystkiego), a highlight of the 54th edition of Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films, we discuss how Robert Walser’s novel employs food as security and weapon, costume design and nail polish inspired by cars, and the meaning behind the kids on their bikes dragging cans. A special Polish comic book, his exhibition Painting as Prop at the Stedelijk Museum and what he painted for the film, Hitchcock’s use of artworks, Thomas Bernhard’s Frost and Francis Bacon also came up, as well as his love for the work of Bruno Dumont.

Wilhelm Sasnal with Anne-Katrin Titze on the...

Note: This interview was originally published as part of our 2024 festival coverage. Afternoons of Solitude opens in theaters on June 27.

With Afternoons of Solitude, Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra returns to Spain for his first documentary: a bloodsoaked portrait of celebrity bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey and the procession of bulls he slays. Captured in tight framing, Serra’s camera conjures never-before-seen proximity to a frontier of bloodsport. Outside the bullring, Roca Rey floats through limousines and empty hotel rooms: a startlingly somber, almost gentle presence. Without a glimmer of exposition or polemical critique, Afternoons of Solitude builds from an innate curiosity about violence and the seemingly irrational conquests of its practitioners who launch headfirst into the brink of death, risking all for nothing. Though Serra refutes it as a “masculine” performance, bullfighting––with its traditional costuming and theatricality––reveals itself as a strange anachronism: a specter of old values and cultures haunting modern Spain.

For years, Awesome Art has been about two things only – awesome art and the artists that create it. With that in mind, we thought why not take the first week of the month to showcase these awesome artists even more? Welcome to “Awesome Artist We’ve Found Around The Net.” In this column, we are focusing on one artist and the awesome art that they create, whether they be amateur, up and coming, or well established. The goal is to uncover these artists so even more people become familiar with them. We ask these artists a few questions to see their origins, influences, and more. If you are an awesome artist or know someone that should be featured, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.This month we are very pleased to bring you the awesome art of…

Dave Dick

Dave Dick is a Philadelphia-based...

Like any other story, music has always played an integral role in many great superhero movies over the years, whether it was Danny Elfman’s output on Batman or John Williams’ work on Superman. Given the impact of Elfman’s work on the Caped Crusader, Christopher Nolan’s reinterpretation of the character had some big boots to fill, and fortunately, he didn’t disappoint.

The Dark Knight | Credit: Warner Bros.

Not only did both Hans Zimmer and James Newton absolutely nail the score for Batman Begins, but the former further elevated his game in the sequel, especially with one particular theme. As for the process behind it, Zimmer confessed to making Nolan listen to almost 10,000 bars of music during the latter’s flight from Hong Kong to London.

Hans Zimmer recounts Christopher Nolan’s response to an anarchy-filled flight The Dark Knight | Credit: Warner Bros.

After working closely on Batman Begins,...

Following Nitram and The Order, Justin Kurzel goes from strength to strength with his riveting first detour into episodic television, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. While a current of unflinching violence runs through the director’s work, seldom if ever has the blunt shock of bloodletting played in such haunting counterpart to the pathos of brutalized humanity as it does in this adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel. There’s a lingering soulfulness here that feels new to Kurzel’s work, distilled in an intensely moving lead performance from Jacob Elordi.

Big, bold and strikingly cinematic, the limited series’ first two of five 45-minute episodes were presented as a special gala at the Berlin Film Festival ahead of its Australian premiere on Prime Video in April. Most other major markets will follow, though Sony has not yet closed a deal for U.S. rights. With Elordi’s star on the rise,...

Paris-based Pulsar Content has boarded “The Velazquez Mystery,” narrated by Cannes and Venice best actor winner Vincent Lindon, which also marks the directorial debut of renowned French producer Stéphane Sorlat.

The third part of a doc feature trilogy — following José Luis López Linares’ “Bosch: The Garden of Dreams” and his “Goya, Carriere and the Ghost of Buñuel” — “The Velazquez Mystery” explores multiple questions raised by the painter.

One is how Velázquez could be so admired by great painters — “the only great painter in history,” said Salvador Dalí — but remain so often on the margins of collective memory.

Quoting Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and Dalí, “The Velazquez Mystery” plumbs his genius. “Velázquez was a double genius, from a technical point of view, but also how he changed the rules, putting himself inside the paintings and creating labyrinths of meaning,” Sorlat told Variety.

“Guided by the symbolic thread of water, a metaphor for movement and reflection,...

Wildly unpredictable, visually gorgeous, and occasionally gruesome, the German animated feature Felidae is a surreal amalgam of gothic horror and noir-tinged mystery that’s definitely not for the kiddies. The film is rife with delirious dream imagery and unrestrained depictions of sadistic medical experiments, murder, and mutilation. Not to mention that, per its feline-centric title, all the central characters are cats. Felidae is the result of what might happen if a giallo director like Dario Argento took a whack at directing The Secret of Nimh.

No sooner has the urbane Francis (Ulrich Tukur), accompanied by his feckless human “can opener,” a romance writer named Gustav Löbel (Manfred Steffen), moved into new digs in a new part of town, than he meets the grizzled Bluebeard (Mario Adorf), who supplies the profanely wise-cracking buddy component for the twisty mystery that follows. Bluebeard’s idea of a housewarming present turns out to be...

David Lynch, a filmmaker who changed the actual landscape of cinema and left a legacy of masterpieces, has passed away at the age of 78. The news comes just days after the co-creator of Twin Peaks and all-around genius was evacuated from his home during the apocalyptic wildfires of Los Angeles. Born on January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Mt, the famed auteur began smoking at the eight of eight and did so for nearly 70 years. He developed serious emphysema in 2020, telling Eileen Finan of People in 2024, “In the back of every smoker’s mind is the fact that it’s unhealthy, so you’re literally playing with fire."

Related: David Lynch Gets Evacuated from His Home During LA Fires

“It can bite you. I took a chance, and I got bit,” Lynch said in that interview with People. The terrible air quality from the fires likely led to the visionary filmmaker's death. His...

Luca Guadagnino's beautifully surreal Queer has been garnering praise since it hit theaters in late November, with awards attention for Daniel Craig's performance. However, the British actor played a role much earlier in his career that shares a surprising connection with Queer. In 1998, director John Maybury (who also made The Jacket) directed the biopic Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, about the painter Francis Bacon and his decade-long relationship with George Dyer. Derek Jacobi plays Bacon across from Craig in his breakthrough performance as Dyer. Guadagnino's adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel and the life of Francis Bacon have a surprising connection, and watching Love is the Devil can deepen our understanding of Queer in a fascinating way.

“I’m finding out we’re the same person — long-lost cousins,” Drew Starkey says to Harris Dickinson. Though the two have just met, at 31 and 28, they are indeed in the same unusual position: Both play the love interests of far more seasoned movie stars. Starkey was best known for Netflix’s teen drama “Outer Banks” before stepping into Luca Guadagnino’s surreal love story “Queer” as a quiet veteran who’s passionately pursued by a tenderhearted heroin addict (Daniel Craig) in 1950s Mexico City. And, directed by Halina Reijn, “Babygirl” imagines Dickinson as the intern of a prominent CEO played by Nicole Kidman. In both films, questions arise about which lover really holds the power. In real life, Starkey and Dickinson are finding their power, still reflecting on their school-play roots and learning to deal with the anxiety that comes with each new script.

Harris Dickinson: I’m a bit full up.

Daniel Craig celebrated his third Golden Globes nomination last night by going to work, taking the stage at London’s Southbank for an extended Q&a with critic Mark Kermode. The occasion was to publicize the release of Luca Guadagnino’s extraordinary film Queer, an adaptation of Beat writer William S. Burroughs’ early memoir set in the gay subculture of 1950s Mexico City. Craig plays William Lee, a pseudonym Burroughs used to protect his parents from the then-scandalous aspects of his writing (homosexuality and hard drugs), but Guadagnino’s adaptation infuses the writer’s lean, skeletal prose with a romantic yearning that always existed in Burroughs’ heart if not on his pages.

“The original story is not told with that much lyricism,” said Craig. “That’s down to Luca. We decided very early on to get under this character’s skin and find out what he was about — the yearning,...

“Burn anything you’re afraid of. Burn anything you can’t control.”

When we think of patriarchal systems of oppression, it’s usually men we find at the helm. The patriarchy itself is a model of societal control based on the heteronormative nuclear family. Its survival is dependent on men in positions of leadership bolstered by subservient women convinced to work against their own best interests. But the “fairer sex” is just as capable of orchestrating our own destruction. In fact, many women feed the patriarchy with a patented blend of religious fervor and fear-mongering wrapped in delicate grace and perpetual victimhood. Co-host Rocco Thompson may describe Christophe Gans’ Silent Hill as “Francis Bacon and Hieronymus Bosch having a fuckfest in Chernobyl,” but this slyly progressive film also reveals the dangers of blind allegiance to a matriarchy just as toxic as anything men could create.

Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) may seem...

Steve Martin is a legend in the world of comedy, film, and music, known for his sharp wit, unique performances, and versatility across many creative outlets. At 78, the star of “Only Murders in the Building” continues to entertain audiences with his effortless charm and unparalleled talent. Despite being in the spotlight for decades, there are still many aspects of his life and career that remain lesser-known or surprising. Here are seven fascinating facts about Steve Martin that offer a deeper look into his remarkable journey.

1) He started his career at Disneyland Steve Martin. | Image via Instagram

Long before he became a household name, Steve Martin honed his craft at Disneyland. From ages 10 to 18, he worked various odd jobs in the theme park, including selling guidebooks and performing at Merlin’s Magic Shop in Fantasyland. It was here that Martin learned the art of performing magic tricks and developed his comedic timing,...

Even in his portrayal of the Joker, Christopher Nolan found the influence of time and distortions of matter playing a huge part. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger created history with his Oscar-winning portrayal of the Batman villain. But for Nolan, the movie was the culmination of a nightmare that chased him for decades since he was a teenager.

Heath Ledger in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight [Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures]

In many ways, Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is rightfully considered the best Batman adaptation to exist on screen. But it doesn’t merely constitute a comic book story brought to life. Nolan’s films take inspiration from the triptychs of Francis Bacon, the 20th-century painter who used his canvas to bring raw and unsettling images to life.

The Dark Knight movies mirrored those triptychs. The 3-part story that delved into the rise of a hero, the fight between good and evil,...

Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burrough’s second novel, Queer, begins, shall we say, peculiarly. Sinéad O’Connor’s haunting cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” scores overhead shots of what we soon realize is Burroughs’s own writing space, every object alluding with cringey literalness to the Beat Generation author’s thorny mythos.

“Everyone is gay,” per “All Apologies,” and it quickly becomes clear that Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes are content to stay on the surface of that knotty lyric and plenty more besides. They would seem to think that plumbing depths is for snootily cultured queens. Queer prefers to oafishly stick, and not always unentertainingly so, to mincing façades, beginning with Daniel Craig’s performance as Burroughs avatar William Lee.

His bruiser face tarted up with dorky specs and his growly voice tending ever so slightly toward a lisp, Craig sashays his way around a fever-dream...

Afternoons of Solitude.Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (1932), his book of reportage on bullfighting, was received skeptically by some critics upon its publication. When reviewing it in The New York Times, R. L. Duffs contended that the work’s long-winded spiritualism was at odds with the writer’s habitually lapidary prose. Catalan director Albert Serra is also a self-described admirer of the sport; it repels some even while it mesmerizes others with its peculiar mixture of artful pageantry and shocking gore. His new nonfiction film Afternoons of Solitude (2024) eschews the Hemingway-esque temptation to dress up in philosophical garb a spectacle that, at its core, stems as much from crude, irrational impulses as it does from the desire to touch the sublime through a proximity to violence. In Afternoons, whose title professes its affinity for Hemingway’s rendering of tauromaquia, Serra follows the Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, observing...

Luca Guadagnino wanted an "iconic" actor in the lead role for 'Queer'.The 53-year-old filmmaker has helmed the historical romantic drama and revealed how he and his agent Bryan Lourd came up with the idea of Daniel Craig starring in the adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novel.Luca told Variety at the Venice Film Festival: "We were chatting about who could be the incarnation (of Burroughs) and I said, 'I don't know. I think it should be someone iconic.' And he said, 'What about Daniel Craig?'"I said, 'Well, I thought about him, but I don't know. I would never dare to ask. He goes like, 'Why? He would love that.'"He gave the script to Daniel, and Daniel and I were on the phone a week later. Then, a week passed, and he was in the movie."The former James Bond star has been tipped for...

Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novella “Queer,” which premieres Tuesday in competition at the Venice Film Festival, is his most personal film yet — and one that he’s been dreaming of making for many years.

The stars aligned when producer Lorenzo Mieli and Fremantle’s head of literary acquisitions Raffaella de Angelis were able to get the book rights and Guadagnino rapidly paired up again with “Challengers” writer Justin Kuritzkes. Then, CAA chief exec Bryan Lourd brought Daniel Craig on board to play the renowned counterculture author’s alter ego, Lee, an outcast American expat who lives in Mexico, and “Outer Banks” star Drew Starkey was cast as a younger man with whom he becomes madly infatuated.

From the director of “Call Me by Your Name,” the film features intimate love scenes between the two men that will certainly make it one of the buzziest indie movies of the year.

“O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space.”

Hamlet – Act II, scene ii

Like the best cinema––or, at least, the kind I respond to most passionately––the films of Ben Rivers immerse us in stories that aren’t as interested in solving enigmas as letting us luxuriate in them. To say that very little happens in Bogancloch––a follow-up to the director’s 2011 feature debut, Two Years at Sea––is both technically correct and frustratingly reductive. For a little less than 90 minutes, Rivers’s latest tracks an old man as he go about a life of self-subsistence in the middle of the woods––all we do is watch him bathe, cook, hike, hunt, and sleep.

His name is Jake Williams, a Scottish musician who’s lived in this remote corner of Aberdeenshire for decades, and whom Rivers had already...

Through four seasons on Netflix, the big draw of “The Umbrella Academy” was getting to watch its uniquely crafted characters interact with one another in increasingly bizarre, mindbending scenarios.

As sibling superheroes with varying powers, the core cast proudly displayed their complicated interpersonal dynamics regardless of whatever world-ending drama was going on in the background. However, with so many actors on the call sheet, it was unfeasible for every single possible pairing to get their moment in the spotlight.

In honor of the final season’s release, stars Elliot Page, David Castañeda, Justin H. Min, Aidan Gallagher, Ritu Arya, Tom Hopper and Robert Sheehan handpicked which of their fellow cast members they wished they got to interact with more onscreen.

“We never got to do s–t together, I’ve got to say. Not even a second, David and I,” Page said. “For me, it’s Viktor and Diego, at...

Humble Beginnings: Art School and Short Films For David Lynch, it began with painting. While some artists know from the very beginning that their path is filmmaking, Lynch was simply enthralled with artistic pursuits in general. Born in Montana and then raised in various different states and cities across the Midwest, Lynch is unsurprisingly no stranger to the ‘All-American’ mundanity that permeates the gleaming surface of many of his films. Over the course of many years and after a string of other artistic academic endeavors, Lynch would finally settle in his enrollment at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Here, the artist would finally turn into a director, creating numerous short films such as ‘The Alphabet’, ‘The Grandmother’, and ‘The Amputee’. All of these were wrought with the eerie, evocative imagery that would soon pervade his feature-length films. Oft-inspired by the surreal and/or macabre works of prominent painters like René Magritte or Francis Bacon,...

In the history of cinema, there have been actors who have taken extreme measures to completely immerse themselves in their roles. As evidenced by Christian Bale’s 62-pound weight loss to play an emaciated insomniac in The Machinist and Shia Labeouf extracting his own tooth for Fury. However, Jeremy Strong may have elevated his method of acting to a whole new level.

Jeremy Strong in Succession (2018) || HBO

Strong portrays the role of Kendall Roy in Succession, a well-acclaimed comedy-drama series. Although the actor’s performance on the show has received positive reviews, Bowen Yang on the other hand believes that Strong may have taken his method acting a bit too seriously.

Jeremy Strong takes method acting to an absurd degree

The tale of Jeremy Strong‘s extreme commitment to his roles is known to many. Given that during the filming of a protest scene in The Trial of the Chicago 7,...

New photos from the upcoming horror film The Possession of Gladstone Manor, directed by Asher Levin, offer fans a glimpse into its intense, Lovecraftian nightmare.

Per Dread Central, new images were unveiled today that showcase the eerie scary atmosphere inherent in the upcoming haunted house horror. The photos also provide a close-up look at horror movie legend Lin Shaye, who also appears in the film. Shaye is most known for playing the memorable character of Elise Rainier in the hugely popular Insidious horror film franchise. This includes the original Insidious from 2010, and the most recent installment, Insidious: The Red Door, which is a direct sequel to Insidious: Chapter 2.

Related New Insidious Movie Confirmed, Gets Release Date

The popular horror franchise Insidious has just set a release date for its sixth installment.

The other photos also showcase a look at the frightening exterior and interior of the haunted Gladstone Manor home itself from the film.

FX/Hulu’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans depicts the infamous rift between writer Truman Capote and his “swans” — a handpicked collection of Manhattan socialites who ice out Capote from New York society after he publishes a short story loosely based on Babe Paley and her husband’s various infidelities. In this scene from the pilot, written by Jon Robin Baitz, the audience is treated to a meet-cute of sorts between Truman (Tom Hollander) and Babe (Naomi Watts) years before their clash that offers an idea of the deep connection between the two players.

Truman Capote is an American pop culture icon, recognizable to literary fans even today. Getting his voice and mannerisms on the page was important — and Baitz says that Hollander stuck to the script, avoiding any ad-libbing in character as Truman. “His respect for the word is based on his love of playwrights, of trying to figure...

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Mary & George finale. Proceed at your own risk!

Mary & George‘s quest to rule the Court of England came to a bloody end in the finale of the Starz limited series.

More from TVLine<em>Mary & George’</em>s Nicholas Galitzine, Tony Curran Talk Scheming, Seduction and Sex in Starz Series — Watch VideoNicholas Galitzine Talks <em>Red, White & Royal Blue</em> Sequel Odds, Imagines How His <em>Mary & George</em> Lothario Would Seduce Prince Henry — Watch VideoUnplanned CSI: Vegas Series Finale Leaves Fans With Some Cliffhangers - Though a Killer Tease Got Edited Out

After George’s plan to...

This post contains spoilers for the latest episodes of "Doctor Who."

It turns out love really is all you need. Well, love and a Time Lord willing to fight off the spirit of music through a delightfully campy song battle that sees literal musical notes fill the air. The showdown between the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), Ruby (Millie Gibson), and the chaotic being known as Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon) in the new season's second episode might be one of the goofiest things that's happened on "Doctor Who" recently -- and it's not even the most over-the-top part of the episode. "The Devil's Chord" takes some deliciously weird risks, the biggest of which is centering its drama on "characters" who aren't exactly historical figures yet: The Beatles.

Of course, the long-running BBC sci-fi series (which recently made the move to Disney+) is known for crafting plotlines that see its central heroes mucking...

Oscar winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice) and Nicholas Galitzine lead the cast of Starz’s new period drama Mary & George. Episode one, “The Second Son,” premieres on April 5, 2024 at 9pm Et/Pt and finds Moore as Mary Villiers plotting how to improve her family’s standing.

The cast also includes Tony Curran (Mayflies) as King James I, Nicola Walker (The Split) as Lady Hatton, Niamh Algar (The Wonder) as Sandie, Trine Dyrholm (The Legacy) as Queen Anne, and Sean Gilder (Slow Horses) as Sir Thomas Compton. Adrian Rawlins (Living) plays Sir Edward Coke, Mark O’Halloran (The Miracle Club) is Sir Francis Bacon, Laurie Davidson (Masters of the Air) is Earl of Somerset, Samuel Blenkin (The Witcher: Blood Origin) is Prince Charles, and Jacob McCarthy (Sas: Rogue Heroes) as Kit Villiers.

“The Second Son” Plot: Mary Villiers develops a cunning plan to transform her family’s fortunes forever, but first,...

Mary & George offers a comical and scandalous look at 17th-century English royalty, with a stellar cast bringing real-life characters to the small screen. The Starz miniseries, led by Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine, delves into the historical love affair between George Villiers and King James VI. With a large ensemble including Tony Curran, the series offers a mix of drama and comedy in British history, akin to popular royal dramas like The Great.

Mary & George takes a comical and scandalous look at 17th-century English royalty, with a dazzling cast portraying various real-life characters. The Starz miniseries, which released its first episode in the United States on April 5, 2024, boasts a large cast to bring the drama of British history to the small screen. Created by D.C. Moore (Not Safe for Work), Mary & George has been hailed a replacement for series like The Tudors, with the sort of comedy...

Prepare for an exhilarating showdown in the grand finale of “Mastermind” Season 21, airing on BBC Two at 6:00 Pm on Monday, April 1st, 2024. In this ultimate test of knowledge and wit, contestants will face off in a battle of intellect as they tackle a diverse range of specialist subjects.

From the Wimbledon singles championships 2000-present to the enigmatic artist Francis Bacon, viewers can expect a thrilling display of expertise and passion as contestants delve deep into their chosen fields. The ancient Greek poet Sappho, the Mercury Prize, the French revolutionary the Marquis de Lafayette, and the composer and pianist Clara Schumann also feature as challenging topics.

As the pressure mounts and the stakes soar, contestants will showcase their mastery of trivia and recall, leaving viewers on the edge of their seats. Who will emerge victorious and claim the coveted title of “Mastermind”? Tune in to BBC Two at 6:00 Pm on Monday,...

Spoilers for "True Detective: Night Country" follow.

The dark, sleepy mining town of Ennis, Alaska, which is where the events of "True Detective: Night Country" are set, conceals many dark secrets beneath the ice. When a group of researchers go missing from their base, Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and the rest of the police force have enough reasons to suspect foul play, but nothing prepares them for what they find. The researchers are found frozen together with no clothes on, their limbs tangled and protruding in various directions, with expressions of pure terror stamped on their icy faces. It is a rather ugly thing to look at, and Danvers immediately describes it as a corpsicle, which is perhaps the most inventive way of referring to this horrifying spectacle.

Writer-director Issa López chooses to linger on these bodies, zooming in on specific body parts that could possibly serve as a clue...

A Poison Tree: Moller Employs Wrathful Mother in Jailhouse Revenge Drama

“A man that studied revenge keeps his own wounds green,” comes to mind in Gustav Möller’s sophomore film Sons, (Vogter) a quote credited to Francis Bacon in his essay “Of Revenge.” Like his celebrated 2018 debut, The Guilty (read review), Möller creates a pressure cooker for a psychologically isolated character, this time a prison guard played by the great Sidse Babett Knudsen who seizes an opportunity to exact vengeance on a prisoner responsible for murdering her son. The plot is effectively simple, swiftly presenting the scenario of a good hearted woman reintroduced to a trauma she clearly still nurses, unbeknownst to those around her.…...

English animator Robert Morgan has deservedly accrued a shelf of awards over the past quarter-century or so for shorts like “The Cat With Hands,” “The Separation” and ickily awesome “Bobby Yeah.” Their macabre, surreal nightmares are at once threatening and oddly winsome, with a sinister aesthetic equally redolent of the Brothers Quay, early David Lynch and the painter Francis Bacon — all of whom count among the director’s admitted influences.

He’s been in no hurry to adopt a longer format, and his first feature underlines the wisdom of that reluctance. Not unprecedented among his work in its mix of animated and live-action elements, “Stopmotion” demonstrates the difficulty in stretching such a singular, fantastical sensibility to suit a full-length project’s storytelling requirements.

This “Repulsion”-like tale of a fragile young woman’s descent into madness, starring “The Nightingale’s” Aisling Franciosi, arrests attention with its vivid, escalating eruptions of grotesque imagination.

When the Art Directors Guild holds its annual awards ceremony on Feb. 10, prizes will go to talented designers who created looks ranging from the nuclear-threatened whimsy of Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” to the apocalyptic wasteland of “The Last of Us,” to the pink-hued fantasy of a doll choosing between plastic eternity and real-world life and death (she picked the latter).

See a common thread here? In addition to the gloom lurking behind these creations, other contenders provided backdrops for the implied genocide of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the grief of a lauded composer stricken by the death of his wife in “Maestro,” the battlefield carnage of “Napoleon” and the development of an ultimate weapon that can extinguish humankind in “Oppenheimer.”

Want more? There’s AI armageddon in “The Creator” and “A Murder at the End of the World,” Frankenstein biology in “Poor Things” and a cool-headed professional assassin in “The Killer.

For years, Awesome Art We’ve Found Around The Net has been about two things only – awesome art and the artists that create it. With that in mind, we thought why not take the first week of the month to showcase these awesome artists even more? Welcome to “Awesome Artist We’ve Found Around The Net.” In this column, we are focusing on one artist and the awesome art that they create, whether they be amateur, up and coming, or well established. The goal is to uncover these artists so even more people become familiar with them. We ask these artists a few questions to see their origins, influences, and more. If you are an awesome artist or know someone that should be featured, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.This month we are very pleased to bring you the awesome art of…

Phil Shelly...

The trailer and premiere date for the salacious new Starz series Mary & George have been revealed!

Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine star as the titular characters in the limited series, which also just got a US premiere date.

If you didn’t know, the series is also premiering on Sky in the UK, Ireland, Germany and Italy.

Learn more and watch the trailer inside…

The upcoming seven-part series is “inspired by the scandalous true story of a treacherous mother and son who schemed, seduced and killed to conquer the Court of England and the bed of King James I.”

Julianne stars as “Mary Villiers, Countess of Buckingham, who in 17th century England molded her beautiful son, George, to seduce King James I and become his all-powerful lover. Through outrageous scheming, the pair rose from humble beginnings to become one of the richest, most titled and influential players the English court had ever seen,...

The official trailer for Starz’s Mary & George shows the scheming mother and son attempting to trap King James I into a sexual relationship as part of their plot to attain power and wealth. The seven-episode period drama will premiere on Friday, April 5, 2024 at midnight on the Starz app. It’ll debut on the Starz network on 9pm Et/Pt in the US and 10pm Et/Pt in Canada.

Oscar winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice) stars as Mary Villiers, Nicholas Galitzine plays George Villiers, and Tony Curran (Mayflies) is King James I. Nicola Walker (The Split) plays Lady Hatton, Niamh Algar (The Wonder) is Sandie, Trine Dyrholm (The Legacy) is Queen Anne, and Sean Gilder (Slow Horses) is Sir Thomas Compton.

The ensemble also includes Adrian Rawlins (Living) as Sir Edward Coke, Mark O’Halloran (The Miracle Club) as Sir Francis Bacon, Laurie Davidson (Masters of the Air) as Earl of Somerset,...

In movie history, there are a rare few directors whose style has coined an adjective: Felliniesque, Hitchcockian, Chaplinesque. The modern filmmaker most likely to join that class is Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek auteur famed for “The Lobster” and “The Favourite,” whose newest, wildest project, “Poor Things,” is his most colorful and phantasmagorical to date.

The look of the film – set in a fairy tale 19th century world unlike any you’ve ever seen – is singular, even if the moniker Lanthimosian doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

“That’s a really hard word to say,” said cinematographer Robbie Ryan with a laugh. The Irish camera maestro earned an Oscar nomination for “The Favourite,” his previous collaboration with Lanthimos.

“Maybe Lanthimosesque is better – or is it even worse? I do totally agree, though: His filmmaking is signature, for sure. It’s inventive in a way that’s undefinable. I can describe...

"This world is full of monsters..." Indeed it (still) is. Starz has unveiled an extra spicy first look teaser for a new British historical drama miniseries called Mary & George, set to arrive sometime in early 2024 (no date yet). Follow the story of the Countess of Buckingham who molded her son to seduce King James I and become his all-powerful lover, through intrigue, becoming richer, more titled and influential than England has ever seen. The story is based on Benjamin Woolley's non-fiction historical book The King's Assassin, about a treacherous mother and son who schemed, seduced and killed to conquer the Court of England and the bed of King James I. "If I looked like you. I'd rule the f&!king planet." Based on a scandalous true story, the 7-part limited series stars Julianne Moore as Mary Villiers, Nicholas Galitzine as George Villiers, with Tony Curran, Laurie Davidson, Nicola Walker,...

This year’s awards-contending films offer a treasure trove of crafts that includes transformations, exquisite sets, lavish costumes, memorable scores and songs and immersive cinematography. The contenders range from newcomers to legends — Variety breaks down the categories below.

Makeup And Hair

Prosthetic makeup designer Kazu Hiro could very well walk away with his third Oscar for his work on Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.” Transforming Cooper into the legendary composer Leonard Bernstein consisted of five different stages to gradually age the actor. And the guild as well as the Academy love a transformation.

Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” could be a contender in this area, following in the footsteps of the first two films that landed guild nominations. The sheer volume of prosthetics and wigs went into building the characters such as the humanimals, the hybrid of humanoid and animal, and the villain, the High Evolutionary, played by Chukwudi Iwuji.

London – A psychedelic eye mosaic commissioned by John Lennon for the swimming pool at his Kenwood home in Surrey in 1965 leads Bonhams’ Rock, Pop & Film sale on Wednesday 29 November at Knightsbridge, London.

Claire Tole-Moir, Bonhams Head of Popular Culture in London, commented: “This monumental mosaic, commissioned by John Lennon is a striking example of the Beatle’s artistic vision and influences. Lennon’s Kenwood home in the English countryside was a place of respite from all the public attention he experienced during the height of The Beatles’ popularity. It’s said Lennon would spend idle hours near the swimming pool and that the mosaic could even be seen from his favoured ‘sunroom’ at the top of the house. With Kenwood still under private ownership, it is very rare to see anything from when John Lennon lived there, making the ‘Psychedelic Eye’ mosaic an incredibly important artefact of Beatles history.”

Consisting of approximately 17,000 tiles,...

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we take a look at two music videos by John Maybury. John Maybury is an actor's director. He might have started out as an avant-garde filmmaker and peer of Derek Jarman, his strongest feat as a director is the performance he gets out of his actors. Take for instance his film, Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, about the painter Francis Bacon. It's a film that is full of painterly mise and scene, off kilter camera angles and strong editing choices, but the core is a harrowing performance of Daniel Craig in a star making turn, and a never-better Derek...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Nominations voting is from January 11–16, 2024, with official Oscar nominations announced on January 23, 2024. Final voting is February 22–27, 2024. And finally, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10, and air live on ABC at 8 p.m. Et/ 5 p.m. Pt. We update predictions throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.

The State of the Race

“Maestro” (Netflix) is the one to beat at this point for the remarkable transformation of Bradley Cooper as legendary conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, but also in the running are “Barbie” (Warner Bros.), “Priscilla” (A24), “Poor Things” (Searchlight), and “Oppenheimer” (Universal).

Other Oscar hopefuls include “The Color Purple” (Warner Bros.), “The Exorcist: Believer” (Universal), “Napoleon” (Apple TV+/Sony Pictures), “The Little Mermaid” (Disney), “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (Marvel/Disney), “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Apple TV+/Paramount), “Wonka” (Warner Bros.), and “Saltburn” (Amazon/MGM).

Oscar-winning prosthetic makeup guru Kazu Hiro...

Doja Cat and the German metallic hardcore band Chaver likely have a lot in common (a total rejection of normal society, for instance), but today, the gossamer thread connecting the two artists is the image of a pink spider with a gem-like drop of pink blood in its chelicerae. Slight variations of the arachnid, designed by artist Dusty Ray, appear on the covers of each artist’s new album.

Doja Cat debuted her artwork, which features the spider and no type-treatment (other than the obligatory “Parental Advisory”), on Instagram on Tuesday,...

From the Nc-17 ménage à trois of Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” to James Spader having intercourse with Rosanna Arquette’s leg wound in David Cronenberg’s “Crash,” producer Jeremy Thomas loves a controversy onscreen.

Cinema raconteur Mark Cousins pays homage to the Oscar-winning producer in his 2021 Cannes Classics selection, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.” The film follows Cousins on Thomas’ annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival — literally, the producer drove for decades from England to the fest — and a five-day road movie through France. Together, they remember Thomas’ most acclaimed and provocative films as a producer, from his Oscar-winning “The Last Emperor” to “Crash” and its scandalous opening at the festival in 1996, Nicolas Roeg’s “Bad Timing,” Jerzy Skolimowski’s “Eo,” plus Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch,” Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast,” and Terry Gilliam’s reviled child abuse fairy tale, “Tideland.”

The film includes Thomas’ stories of movie stars like Marlon Brando,...

Structure is a seminal aspect of the storytelling process. Of course, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, with most feature-length films following a strict, three-act structure. But even if the narrative of a given screenplay is of the non-linear variety, a blueprint for the steps its characters take will define its quality in the end.

Some creatives methodically plan out each scene in their script according to the scriptures of screenwriting, like Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder or Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field. Other writers operate on a whim, letting their creative juices flow without skipping a beat in their heads. But no matter the process, a certain structure is adhered to.

Movie triptychs involve exactly three interconnected storylines — anything more or less would be classified as something different. Each story within a triptych follows the three-act structure of every feature film,...

The man is not in black. He is in nothing at all. Wearing his nakedness calmly, like a fact so obvious it requires no explanation, an 86-year-old Chinese male stands up slowly in the otherwise empty gallery of Paris’ famous Bouffes du Nord theatre. The artfully peeling, faded-grandeur interior, dim but for gathered pools of warm light, booms with the sound of his wooden seat swinging back into place, then with the creaks of the floorboards under his bare feet. This is the arresting opening to Chinese documentarian Wang Bing’s other Cannes 2023 film, “Man in Black,” a project so diametrically different from his Competition entry “Youth: Spring” that it feels hard to credit them both to the same person. Perhaps we shouldn’t. This brief but profoundly moving film represents such a consummate collaboration between director, cinematographer, editor and subject that its authorship could be recorded as a four-way tie.

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today we talk about one of the best actresses working today: Tilda Swinton!

Our guest is the great Dan Walber, public historian and recovering (!) film critic. Walber is also part of the @closefriendscollective, which you can find on Instagram.

Our B-Sides today are: Edward II, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, Possible Worlds, The Deep End, and Teknolust.

Walber speaks to her immediate exceptionalism in Derek Jarman’s ‘80s films, we marvel at her endless range (from Constantine to Snowpiercer and so on and so forth), and I gush about the work of Francis Bacon and the depths of his controversial career after falling in love with Love is the Devil. We...

It’s raining the Bard.

In the wake of “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight and “Happy Valley” star Sarah Lancashire’s recently announced series on William Shakespeare, another production with the Bard as topic has revealed some of its cast.

Conspiracy drama series “The Rosy Cross: The Rebels who wrote Shakespeare,” being brought to the screen by Lasse Hallberg, executive producer of Netflix series “Lilyhammer,” explores the controversial Shakespeare authorship debate. The cast includes Stephen Campbell Moore, Romario Simpson (“Granite Harbour”), Samuel Barnett (“The History Boys”), co-producer Ed Hughes and Jonny Weldon (“House of the Dragon”).

The series is based on research claiming to identify the real and diverse underground writing group of men and women who secretly crafted the plays under the pseudonym of William Shakespeare, led by the great English philosopher Francis Bacon. The show follows a shadowy order of diverse freedom fighters from all walks of life...

Luca Guadagnino will next direct the William S. Burroughs adaptation “Queer” with Daniel Craig playing the renowned counterculture author’s alter ego, an outcast American expat who lives in Mexico, and “Outer Banks” star Drew Starkey starring as a younger man with whom he becomes madly infatuated.

“Queer” will also topline Lesley Manville (“The Crown”), frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Jason Schwartzman; and Henry Zaga (“The New Mutants”), according to inside sources.

The boldly ambitious indie film is set to start shooting this month at Rome’s refurbished Cinecittà Studios where the Mexico City-set movie will be filmed in its entirety.

Lorenzo Mieli’s Fremantle-owned Italian company The Apartment – the internationally expanding shingle behind Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” and Sofia Coppola’s upcoming “Priscilla” – is lead producing “Queer” in tandem with Guadagnino’s own Frenesy Film. Fremantle North America is also on board.

American playwright Justin Kuritzkes, who penned...

When Oscar-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs (“Sleepy Hollow”) was first tasked with designing the titular structure for Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” he treated it like a literal onion, taking the model apart and cutting into it to study the layers. “There was something so cool and architectural about it, that it became part of the design,” he told IndieWire. “You really see the layers of depth in the dome. The metaphor of the Glass Onion works so well and I tried not to invent stuff that wasn’t there.”

For Johnson — whose latest whodunit takes inspiration from such iconic films as “Sleuth,” “The Last of Sheila,” and “Evil Under the Sun” — the metaphor of The Glass Onion was wrapped around the narcissistic, bad-boy mind of tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Bron hosts a murder mystery weekend getaway on his private Greek island with his...