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Actress-producer Cate Blanchett and director Guy Maddin shared about their paths into the film industry as well as their experiences of “flow” in making art, while at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). They took the stage in front of more than 800 guests at the Oude Luxor Theater, shortly after a festival screening of their film Rumours.

“I never, ever thought I could work in the film industry,” said Blanchett. “I was resigned happily to having a career in the theater. I didn’t think that I was that girl, and at the time, there was certainly a sense that women had a certain shelf life in the film industry, and a certain type of woman got to parade on screen. But I loved watching films, and I had such an eclectic taste. I think it’s the benefit of growing up with four Australian terrestrial channels.”

The two-time Oscar-winner...

A directing duo is somewhat of a rare thing in Hollywood. Apart from The Wachowskis and a handful of brothers, its not a particularly common thing. Having a directing trio? Well, thats even rarer, though Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson have certainly seemed to figure out how to make it work, collaborating on 2017s The Green Fog and, most recently, Rumours.

This review was originally published during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Canadian directing trio Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson first partnered together with their 2017 experimental film, The Green Fog. Reuniting to present their latest film at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, the directors put together a star-studded cast for a ridiculous, surreal comedy about world leaders encountering a global crisis while getting lost in the woods. As absurd as it sounds, Rumours begins as a hilarious commentary about power on a global scale. However, as the film progresses, it loses its steam thanks to vague storytelling and less successful humor by the end.

Rumours

Director Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson, Guy MaddinRelease Date October 18, 2024Studio(s) Maze Pictures, Buffalo Gal Pictures, Square PegDistributor(s) Plaion Pictures, Elevation PicturesWriters Guy MaddinCast Tomi Kosynus, Ralph Berkin, Alexa Kennedy, Rolando Ravello, Roy Dupuis, Alicia Vikander, Cate Blanchett, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Takehiro Hira, Zlatko Buric,...

Rumours.Rumours (2024), codirected by Guy Maddin and brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, follows the world leaders at a G7 summit as they draft a provisional statement concerning an unspecified global crisis. The film finds Maddin operating in a different vein of artifice than the chaotic pastiches of early filmic techniques that characterize much of his previous work. In Rumours, high-key lighting blasts an antiseptic aura, and the babbly performances are urbane to the point of uncanniness (Charles Dance plays the US president with an unexplained British accent). However, the heads of state soon wander into more familiar Maddin territory. Stumbling through the woods, they encounter surreal and fleshy aberrations: self-pleasuring bog mummies, a gargantuan brain, et cetera. In a classic The Exterminating Angel (1962) conundrum, the figureheads drift through an inescapable liminal space, forced to abandon their mannered etiquettes and self-interrogate. Picture Raúl Ruiz’s The Territory (1981), if transposed into the sphere of international politics.

Rumours follows the leaders of the world's wealthiest democracies as they gather for the annual G7 summit to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. While attempting to draft a global crisis statement, they become lost in the woods and struggle to find their way out.

Filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson have worked together on several films, including The Green Fog and The Forbidden Room. All three have a unique style that, when blended together, create great genre films. The movie features an ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett, Rolado Ravello, Game of Thrones star Charles Dance, and more. Rumours comes to theaters on October 18.

Related Rumours Trailer: Cate Blanchett Horror-Comedy With 80% Rt Score Gets Unsettling First Look

A teaser trailer for Rumours reveals an unsettling first look at Cate Blanchett's upcoming horror-comedy with an 80% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Screen Rant interviewed Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson about Rumours.

Rumours follows the leaders of the world's wealthiest democracies as they gather for the annual G7 summit to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. They realize they are suddenly alone as an apocalypse strikes, causing them to become flustered as they continue to nail down a provisional statement. A combination of several genres, Rumours has something for everyone.

The film stars Cate Blanchett as the leader of the host country, Germany. She has had an extensive acting career and is best known for her roles as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings and, more recently, Lydia Tar in Tar. Denis Mnochete also stars, and is well known for his roles in such films as Inglorious Basterds and Beau Is Afraid. Rumours comes to theaters in the United States on October 18.

Related Rumours Trailer: Cate Blanchett Horror-Comedy With 80% Rt Score Gets Unsettling First Look

A teaser trailer for...

Given the current political state of the world, a movie about the G7 probably doesn't sound like your next must-see addition to the ever-growing watchlist. But how about a G7 movie that sees the likes of Cate Blanchett, Charles Dance, Alicia Vikander, and Roy Dupuis — all adopting bizarre accents — playing inept world leaders whose cosy little Summit gets upended by the discovery of a mummified corpse, some funny business with a giant brain, and more ill-advised, high-powered rumpy-pumpy than you can shake an episode of early season Game Of Thrones at? Because that's exactly what it looks like we're in for with Rumours, a genre-hopping new satire from The Green Fog filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, and producer Ari Aster. Check out the bonkers new trailer below:

Where do you even begin to break down that trailer? It looks like a Wes Anderson joint, has the tone...

Netflix’ Paris Theater, NYC’s longest-running arthouse and Manhattan’s sole single-screen cinema, is marking one year since reopening with the return of screening series Big & Loud.

Special presentations include a new 70mm print of Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo screening for the first time in New York, new 70mm prints of North By Northwest and The Searchers, as well as 70mm screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Boogie Nights, Hamlet (1996), Inception, Lawrence of Arabia, Malcolm X, Nope, Phantom Thread, Spartacus and The Untouchables.

Netflix reopened the historic theater last year following upgrades to present 70mm projection and make it the largest Atmos cinema in Manhattan. It called Big & Loud “a screening series of eye-popping 70mm prints, thunderous Dolby Atmos and cinema worth celebrating.”

Highlights include Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Days of Heaven, Dazed And Confused, East of Eden (in Atmos), Gravity (in Atmos), The Green Fog (double bill with Vertigo), Koyaanisqatsi,...

Following last year’s very successful “Big & Loud! 70mm, Atmos, and Audio-Obsessive Cinema” screening series, Netflix is launching its latest edition of what is becoming a signature late summer and early fall event at its Paris Theater in New York City. This year’s series will again boast, per the streamer, “eye-popping 70mm prints, thunderous Dolby Atmos, and cinema worth celebrating.”

The series kicks off on Friday, August 23 and will run through Thursday, October 31. Special presentations will include a new 70mm print of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (screening for the first time in New York), plus new 70mm prints of “North by Northwest” and “The Searchers,” as well as 70mm screenings of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Boogie Nights,” “Hamlet” (1996), “The Hateful Eight,” “Inception,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Malcolm X,” “Nope,” “Phantom Thread,” “Spartacus,” and “The Untouchables.”

Other highlights (and there are many) include “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Days of Heaven,...

When we say a filmmaker is in another league, we typically mean it in a good way––they’re a cut above the rest. But when we say it about Guy Maddin, it doesn’t imply quality one way or the other. There is simply no one doing what Guy Maddin is doing, whether you love it, hate it, or don’t care about it at all. Maddin’s work is so pioneer, so beguiling, so unrecognizable, so un-distributable that if you’re not doing your own film-history research you likely haven’t come across it. Look up a single image from any of his films and you’ll understand. Maddin films make Eraserhead look like Forrest Gump.

That said: he wants for nothing in reputation, an absolute legend in the avant-garde, experimental, and adjacent cinema scenes. Maddin is the Spielberg of pure art film, the wizard of 19th-century techniques...

Cate Blanchett’s new film “Rumours” took its name from the iconic Fleetwood Mac album, it was revealed on Sunday at a Cannes Film Festival press conference.

The dark comedy, directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, follows a group of world leaders who meet at the G7 — a political and economic meeting of the minds between Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — but get lost in the woods while trying to compose a joint statement. Debauchery ensues, and there are romantic connections between a few of the politicians.

“I did confirm something with Galen last night, and it’s weird that it never came up in rehearsal, which is: ‘Why the hell is this movie called Rumours?'” Blanchett said at the presser. “And my husband had said, ‘Is that after the Fleetwood Mac album?’ And you said, ‘Yes it was.

Cate Blanchett blew kisses to the Cannes Film Festival audience as her new film, “Rumours,” earned a four-minute standing ovation at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night.

The crowd welcomed the film’s dark humor, laughing throughout the entirety of the late-night screening. While some of the auditorium emptied out while the credits rolled, the majority of filmgoers waited patiently to pay their respects to the film’s stars. Blanchett’s “Rumours” co-star Alicia Vikander was notably not in attendance.

The film’s trio of directors — Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson — seemed surprised by Cannes’ relatively new tradition of handing the filmmaker(s) a microphone for post-screening remarks. They made a speech together after the applause wrapped, thanking the audience and quoting their own film by saying “it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

The dark comedy follows a group of world leaders who meet...

The Cannes Film Festival launches auteur filmmakers, and the best among them have known scenes of triumph at the iconic French seaside festival.

But not Guy Maddin, who for all his accolades as an original and idiosyncratic auteur prized for titles like The Forbidden Room and The Saddest Music in the World, has never — until now, that is — brought a film to the Croisette.

It took Maddin and co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson casting Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander and getting the backing of executive producer Ari Aster to get their absurdist political satire Rumours to the Cannes red carpet.

“Once we got some legitimate Oscar-winning movie stars, and other movie stars that are amazing, all of a sudden Cannes cleaned its glasses off for a closer look,” Maddin tells The Hollywood Reporter of the stars aligning ahead of a May 19 world premiere at the Lumière theater. Rumours...

Exclusive: Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster, an exec producer on upcoming Cannes ensemble comedy Rumours, has called the film “stoopid and hilarious and wonderful” as the production reveals an official first look.

Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander star with Roy Dupuis, Charles Dance, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira and Zlatko Burić star in the movie that follows seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies at the annual G7 summit after they become lost in the woods and face increasing peril while attempting to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis.

Some sites have been reporting the provisional statement is about the climate crisis, which we hear is inaccurate.

The intriguing official first image (above) shows Roy Dupuis as the Prime Minister of Canada and Alicia Vikander as the President of the European Commission. The other roles are being kept under wraps.

Bleecker Street has landed U.S. rights to Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s ensemble comedy Rumours starring Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander.

Maddin wrote and directed the feature with longtime collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, with the project recently having wrapped filming in Hungary. Bleecker Street is eyeing a theatrical release later this year for the indie project that co-stars Roy Dupuis, Charles Dance, Denis Ménochet, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Rolando Ravello, Takehiro Hira and Zlatko Burić.

Rumours centers on the leaders of the seven nations comprising G7, who meet for their annual summit but get lost in the woods and must still draft a statement addressing a worldwide crisis.

Serving as producers are Liz Jarvis for Buffalo Gal Pictures, Philipp Kreuzer for Maze Pictures and Lars Knudsen for Square Peg. Kent Sanderson and Avy Eschenasy negotiated the deal for Bleecker Street, while CAA Media Finance represented the filmmakers.

Rumours marks...

Exclusive: Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) has been set to star opposite Cate Blanchett in Rumours, a comedy from writer-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson (The Green Fog), which Bleecker Street has snapped up for release in U.S. theaters this year.

The film follows the seven leaders of the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies at the annual G7 summit after they become lost in the woods and face increasing peril while attempting to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis.

Also featuring in a top role in the pic, which recently wrapped production in Hungary, is Genie Award winner Roy Dupuis (Shake Hands with the Devil). Additional cast includes Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Denis Ménochet (Inglourious Basterds), Nikki Amuka-Bird (Knock at the Cabin), Rolando Ravello (Perfect Strangers), Takehiro Hira (Gran Turismo), and Zlatko Burić (Triangle of Sadness).

Hailing from Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg,...

Cate Blanchett has boarded arthouse favorite Guy Maddin’s latest movie, Rumours, which is set to start shooting on Oct. 9, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The indie has been written and will be directed by Maddin with longtime collaborators Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson. Their last joint film was The Green Fog, an experimental feature that combed through San Francisco-produced films and TV shows as it followed the structure of Vertigo.

Blanchett played a composer-conductor whose reputation is suddenly shattered by revelations of her personal life in Tár. Her other film credits include The Aviator and Blue Jasmine, for which she won Oscars, as well as Elizabeth, Notes on a Scandal, I’m Not There and Carol.

Her star turn in Rumours is seen as the latest A-lister and auteur collaboration as Canadian indie film looks to break out into the global market with distribution and critical acclaim. Maddin’s latest...

The film world is remembering Noah Cowan, the beloved former TIFF leader, festival programmer, visual arts consultant, and Sffilm executive director, who died on January 25 at age 55.

Those filmmakers whose careers he touched and helped shape as former artistic director of TIFF Bell Lightbox, among many other posts, include Guy Maddin. The “My Winnipeg” director has shared words with IndieWire about his fellow Canadian film advocate, who in recent years consulted for organizations like IFC, the Telluride Film Festival, and the Centre for the Moving Image in Edinburgh.

Cowan regularly championed and screened Maddin’s influential avant-garde features in Toronto and San Francisco, throughout which the two maintained a friendship and admiration for one another. Below is Guy Maddin’s message, shared with IndieWire:

“Noah Cowan was one of the great ambushing charmers of the film business. He was a festival director who walked among us at sidewalk level, all...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

17 Films by Anand Patwardhan

One of the greatest chroniclers of Indian history over the past half-century, Anand Patwardhan has caused controversy in his native country for his searing, in-depth political documentaries . Now, his complete filmography is available to view, from his first film Waves of Revolution made in 1974 through his most recent film Reason completed in 2018.

Where to Stream: Ovid.tv

Ammonite (Francis Lee)

Calling a Kate Winslet performance career-best is no easy statement, but her turn as 19th-century English paleontologist Mary Anning in Ammonite is certainly in consideration. Few writer-directors trust their actors to do so much with so little dialogue as Francis Lee. Like Josh O’Connor’s Johnny in Lee’s debut,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe Cannes Film Festival in 2019, by Jean-Paul PelissierThe Cannes Film Festival has officially announced its indefinite postponement, with one potential option being to hold the festival during the end of June through the beginning of July. In an interview with Variety, Spike Lee says, "This is no joke. It’s not some movie. People are dying.”Recommended Viewinga breathtaking trailer for Mondo Macabro's Blu-ray debut of Shinya Tsukamoto's Gemini (1999), a haunting, timely horror film about a Meiji-era doctor who treats plague victims who encounters a mysterious doppelgänger. Recommended Reading A Horse is Not a Hammer by Barbara Hammer (2008)"Barbara Hammer’s cinema is a talking cinema in its most disarming sense: talking about cinema, talking with cinema, learning how to talk." An obituary for the late Barbara Hammer by Gabriella Beckhurst of Another Gaze.

Inclusion was the big winner at the L.A. Film Critics Association Awards, which was held Saturday night at the InterContinental in Century City.

“This year’s winners are the most diverse in Lafca’s 43-year history,” announced its president, Claudia Puig, adding that 14 out of their 18 awards were won by women and people of color. Ironically, however, the organization itself is comprised of “mostly old white men,” one member admitted to Variety. But Lafca is doing its part to change that for the future of film criticism: The first honoree of the night was a formerly homeless student from Los Angeles City College — and a current Wme intern — who called out the obvious “gender disparity” in the industry.

Unlike, say, at the Golden Globes where no female directors were even nominated, Lafca gave best director honors to self-described “social-realist filmmaker” Debra Granik, who helmed the independent movie “Leave No Trace.

A limited-perspective snapshot of a perpetually moving target, and insistent on adhering to 2018 theatrical premieres — thus haunted both by the past and the specter of already-seen “2019” cinema that deserves notice as much as anything herein. Or: it is what it is.

Honorable Mentions

Mandy, A Star Is Born, Cold War, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, The Wandering Soap Opera

10. 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)

A push-pull experience par excellence: plainly beautiful for its still and natural landscapes, roughshod with the superimposition of effects; statically framed but open to variables, experimentation, “accidents” that are perhaps part of a larger plan, depending on what production story you buy; and thrilling for the breadth of its imagination while also a bit boring in the follow-through. More and more it seems our minds need opportunities to sit, wander, think for themselves amidst stimuli rendering the likes of 24 Frames all the more far-flung. Woe betide the audience saddled with...

For 11 years running, our end-of-the-year tradition on the Notebook has been to poll our roster of contributors to create fantasy double features of new and old films. But what about the curators behind Mubi itself? This year we begin what we hope to be a new tradition: publishing the favorite films of the year as chosen by our programming team: Daniel Kasman in the U.S., Anaïs Lebrun and Chiara Marañón in the U.K. We each have two lists: our top new films that premiered in 2018, and then a selection of revivals screened in cinemas.PREMIERESDaniel Kasman1. Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)2. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland)3. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, USA)4. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, USA)5. The Waldheim Waltz (Ruth Beckermann, Austria)6. Unsane (Steven Soderbergh, USA)7. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, USA)8. The Red Shadow [director's cut]9. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?...

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their annual awards Sunday morning with Roma taking home honors for Best Picture and Debra Granik winning Best Director for Leave No Trace.

Ethan Hawke continues to impress critics with his role in First Reformed as he was named Best Actor while the brilliant Olivia Colman took the trophy for Best Actress for her role in The Favourite. Regina King was crowned queen once again winning Best Supporting Role for her breathtaking performance in If Beale Street Could Talk and Steven Yeun won for Best Supporting Actor for his dramatic turn in the quietly intense drama Burning.

The group will honor its winners January 12 at a gala dinner at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, where Japanese director and animator Hayao Miyazaki will receive the Career Achievement award.

Last year, Sony Pictures Classics’ Call Me By You Name was voted the Lafca’s Best Picture,...

Debra Granik named best director for Leave No Trace.

Another good day in awards season for Alfonso Cuaron saw the Mexican auteur’s Roma named best picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (Lafca) on Sunday (9), while the man himself claimed the cinematography prize, and came runner-up in the director and editor categories.

Debra Granik won best director for Leave No Trace whose star Ben Foster was runner-up in the lead actor contest, won by Ethan Hawke for First Reformed. Olivia Colman was named best lead actress for The Favourite, while Regina King won best supporting actress for If Beale Street Could Talk.

Members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. met today to vote on the year’s best cinema accomplishments. Recent winners of the group’s top prize include “Call Me by Your Name,” “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” “Boyhood,” “Her”/”Gravity” and “Amour.”

List of winners below.

Best Film: “Roma” (Runner-up: “Burning”)

Best Director: Debra Granik, “Leave No Trace”(Runner-up: Alfonso Cuaron, “Roma”)

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, “First Reformed”

Best Actress: Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”

Best Supporting Actor: Steven Yeun, “Burning”

Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk”

Best Screenplay: Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Best Animated Film: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (Runner-up: “Incredibles 2”)

Best Foreign Language Film: “Burning” and “Shoplifters” (Tie)

Best Documentary: “Shirkers” (Runner-up: “Minding the Gap”)

Best Cinematography: Alfonso Cuarón,”Roma”

Best Editing: Joshua Altman and Bing Liu, “Minding the Gap”

Best Music/Score: Nicholas Britell,”If Beale Street Could Talk”

Best Production Design: Hannah Beachler,...

Following the Golden Globe nominations last week, the 2018-19 awards season continues today in a big way with the announcement of the 2018 Los Angeles Film Critics Association winners. Lafca, as the group is known, is set to honor the year in film by awarding prizes to the best performances and features of 2018.

Lafca’s east coast counterpart, the New York Film Critics Circle (Nyfcc), announced its winners on November 29, with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” winning three prizes: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. The drama is expected to have another strong showing with Lafca, although the group is known to make surprising choices every now and then.

Recent Lafca winners for Best Film include “Call Me By Your Name,” “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” “Boyhood,” and “Her.” All of these films went on to earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture, with “Moonlight” and “Spotlight” winning the top honor. Last year’s Lafca...

"It's the best movie of the year. You'll hate it." Nothing like defending your pick for the best film of the year by saying "you'll hate it", but that's why we always have to feature this Top 10 every year. One of our favorite lists that kicks off this time of the year is from filmmaker John Waters - his Top 10 favorite films from this year. For 2018, Waters has chosen yet another (expected) eclectic mix of films, lead by Bruno Dumont's historical musical Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc. I haven't heard a single person say they've seen this film much less mentioning it at all, but it's his #1. He also picks a few other underrated films from this year: Carlos López Estrada's Blindspotting, Guy Maddin's cinema mash-up The Green Fog, and yet another French film - Xavier Legrand's Custody, which first premiered last year but...

The onslaught of best-of-the-year lists from guilds and critics groups have only just begun, but one of the few of genuine interest each year comes from a single person: the wonderfully eccentric director John Waters, whose eclectic tastes always includes a mix of the unexpected and underseen.

Topping his list this year is Bruno Dumont’s singular metal take on an iconic figure with Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc. Also on his list are the Sundance stand-outs Blindspotting and American Animals, as well as Xavier Legrand’s intense Venice winner Custody and Guy Maddin’s formally inventive The Green Fog. There’s also room for a Nicolas Cage flick, but perhaps not the one you might expect.

Check out the list below courtesy of Art Forum, who also share Waters’ comments on each pick at their site.

1. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont)

2. American Animals (Bart Layton)

3. Nico,...

John Waters has once again shared his 10 favorite movies of the year with Artforum, and his list is unsurprisingly eclectic. After praising the likes of “Baby Driver” and “Wonderstruck” last year, the filmmaker has singled out Bruno Dumont’s “Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc” as his #1 of 2018 while also giving love to “American Animals” and “Blindspotting.” Here’s his full list:

10) “Permanent Green Light” (Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley)

9) “Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992” (John Ridley)

8) “Sollers Point” (Matthew Porterfield)

7) “Custody” (Xavier Legrand)

6) “The Green Fog”

5) “Blindspotting” (Carlos López Estrada)

4) “Mom and Dad” (Brian Taylor)

3) “Nico, 1988” (Susanna Nicchiarelli)

2) “American Animals” (Bart Layton)

1) “Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc” (Bruno Dumont)

As ever, the filmmaker’s blurbs enliven the piece greatly. Waters calls Dumont’s film “an insanely radical heavy-metal grade-school religious pageant that is sung in French from beginning to end” whose actors “seem like they might burst out laughing,...

Iconoclastic filmmaker Guy Maddin, known for his inspired weirdness in films like The Forbidden Room and The Saddest Music in the World, insists his Berlin Forum entry The Green Fog is perhaps his most commercial movie to date.

It’s a bold statement considering the film’s backstory: Maddin and co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson set themselves the challenge of using Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to create a montage-like tribute to the iconic city where the auteur’s masterpiece takes place, after being commissioned by Stanford Live and the San Francisco International Film Festival.

There was just one catch: “We weren’t allowed to...

“The Green Fog” may be described as little more than a clip show homage to both Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and the cinematic history of San Francisco, but its charming, playful attitude and occasional dips into pathos provide an unexpected buoyancy. Originally commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society, which simply wanted a celebratory collage highlighting San Francisco on the screen throughout the years, the film took a different shape under the guidance of Guy Maddin and his collaborators, Evan and Galen Johnson.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGWe found Kiyoshi Kurosawa's semi-serious, semi-tongue-in-cheek sci-fi film Before We Vanish one of the best premieres of last year. The trailer for the American release plays it straight, but captures the wry verve of the film. Highly recommended.We adore the output of Poverty Row studio Republic (Driftwood, The Inside Story, I've Always Loved You), but rarely have had the chance to see the movies on celluloid and looking good. So we'll be front row, center for the Museum of Modern Art's "Republic Rediscovered" series, curated by Martin Scorsese. But just as good as any of those 1940s classics is the trailer for the retrospective, cut by filmmaker Gina Telaroli.The first look at Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, Gus Van Sant's new film, set to premiere at Sundance.

There's a new genre in town. The first example of it I can name is Bill Morrison's Spark of Being (2010), which retells the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein using aged found footage. In this version, as Morrison puts it, the movie itself is the monster, assembled from pieces of the dead.I may be missing earlier and later examples of this form, but so far as I know Guy Maddin and colleagues Evan and Galen Johnson are the first to respond to that celluloid gauntlet, with The Green Fog, a remake of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) using footage culled from ninety-eight feature films and three TV series shot or set in the San Francisco area. I guess the movie is also in the genre of city symphonies, and has a nodding acquaintance with Thom Andersen's pirate-video documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003).The Madden/Johnsons have several advantages over Hitchcock:...

“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God.”

― Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Jack Palance recites the previous quote in Sudden Fear and it’s the manifesto for Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson’s new project, The Green Fog. The quote is one of a few lines of dialogue to appear in the film. It’s mostly ‘narrated’ with gestures, the breath between words and a score composed by Jacob Garchik and performed by Kronos Quartet. You hear nods to Bernard Hermann’s score of Hitchcock’s Vertigo throughout.

Commissioned by Noah Cowan for the...

Canadian visionary Guy Maddin has typically married his own artistic ideas to inspirations so old and/or obscure that viewers might well assume them (sometimes correctly) to be fictional. In The Green Fog, though, the key reference points are au courant. The hourlong experiment entertainingly answers a question nobody thought to ask: What if Guy Maddin made a Christian Marclay-style assemblage evoking the ghosts of pre-tech San Francisco and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo?

Guy Maddin and co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson didn't set out with Hitchcock in mind. Commissioned by Stanford and San Francisco's Sffilm, their project began as a montage-based look at the long history of movies produced in the area. According to...

The San Francisco International Film Festival had a pretty ambitious idea for its 60th anniversary: commission filmmaker Guy Maddin to construct a new cinematic love letter to San Francisco using movies and television shows set around the city. To hear Maddin tell it though, that idea quickly evolved into something more focused on a single film, Alfred Hitchock‘s seminal classic “Vertigo.” The resulting feature is titled “The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia” and it closed the San Francisco Film Festival with live musical accompaniment from the Kronos Quartet.

Continue reading Guy Maddin Made A Cinematic Love Letter To San Francisco And Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ at The Playlist.

It’s usually unwise to remake a masterpiece, but Guy Maddin has something different planned for “The Green Fog,” a meditation on Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” Unlike Gus Van Sant’s much-maligned 1998 shot-for-shot remake of “Psycho,” the Canadian director has revisited the 1958 thriller as an assemblage of old footage from San Francisco, the city where “Vertigo” takes place.

However, the project was never intended to have anything to do with “Vertigo.”

In “The Green Fog — A San Francisco Fantasia,” commissioned by San Francisco Film Society and set to close the San Francisco International Film Festival’s 60th edition on April 16, Maddin and co-directors Evan and Galen Johnson explore what Maddin has called “a rhapsody” on the Hitchcock movie. Set to an original score by composer Jacob Garchik that will be performed live by the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet, the 63-minute “The Green Fog” reimagines the movie through an assemblage of...