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NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Bam

My ten-film Manoel de Oliveira retrospective Mirror of Life begins, with numerous restorations making their North American premiere.

Japan Society

One of Ozu’s greatest films, Early Spring, plays on 35mm this Friday.

Roxy Cinema

Eraserhead and An American Tail screen, the latter for free.

Anthology Film Archives

The Rules of the Game and The Flowers of St. Francis play on 35mm in Essential Cinema.

Film Forum

A René Clair retrospective continues, as does Luis Buñuel’s Él and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman; Betty Boop and Friends screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop plays in a new restoration; Stop Making Sense, Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, Sorcerer, and Funny Games (the good one) show late.

Nitehawk Cinema

Hanna and a print of Westward the Women screen early on Saturday and Sunday.

Metrograph

Donnie...

The Killing star Sofie Gråbøl is leading the Canneseries jury.

Gråbøl will be joined by Olivier Abbou, Amine Bouhafa, Alice Braga, Macarena García and Alix Poisson in the six-strong jury judging a strong competition lineup that includes the likes of Denmark’s Dark Horse, Euro co-pro This is Not Sweden and Beta Film’s Operation Sabre.

Multi-award-winner Gråbøl is best known as the star of Scandi noir smash The Killing, in which she played the role of police inspector Sarah Lund, which brought her international fame. Past credits include breakout Early Spring, Taxa and Nikolaj og Julie.

She is joined by Abbou, the director and producer of a number of series and movies including Madame Hollywood, Territories and Get In, along with Braga, the Brazilian actress who has starred in internationally-acclaimed City of God and Hollywood movies such as The Suicide Squad.

García, meanwhile, made her film debut with Pablo Berger...

Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute.

But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career.

Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/Nfaj Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29.

Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku,...

Click here to read the full article.

Two of the most anticipated Japanese films showing at the Venice Film Festival this year — Kei Ishikawa’s mystery drama A Man (2022) and a digitally remastered version of Yasujirō Ozu’s timeless classic A Hen in the Wind (1948) — share a uniquely curious distinction. The two Japanese films, separated by 74 years, were both written in the exact same room.

Ozu, one of the great masters of cinema history, famously spent long stretches of the 1940s and 1950s — his most productive period — residing and working at Chigasaki-kan, a small ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn, located on a quiet stretch of coast to the southwest of Tokyo. Ozu’s hideaway within the inn was its “niban no oheya,” or “room 2.” A modest space befitting an Ozu drama, the room was designed in Japan’s traditional washitsu style: tatami mats, a simple floor-level table and sliding shoji...

Season 2 of the Emmy-winning comedy “Hacks,” the debut of Colin Firth’s true-crime drama “The Staircase” and the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” all await HBO Max subscribers in May. If you’re looking for something new to watch or wondering what’s on HBO Max this month, not to worry, we’ve got the full rundown.

There are several must-watch new TV shows on both HBO and HBO Max this month, new and returning. Acclaimed Jean Smart comedy “Hacks” returns for Season 2 on May 12. As for the new debuts, May sees the premieres for HBO Max’s “The Staircase” on May 5, starring Colin Firth as Michael Peterson in the true-crime limited series, as well as the HBO premiere of Steven Moffat’s (”Doctor Who”) series adaptation of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” on May 15.

New films this month include the streaming return of “The Matrix: Resurrections” and streaming premieres...

Even though Friends ended seventeen years ago, the show remains one of the most popular pieces of sitcom programming ever created. So much so that HBO wanted to kickstart their new HBO Max streaming service with a Friends special reunion episode. The special was scrapped in view of the global health emergency last year. In a recent interview, Lisa Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay on the show, confirmed that they still plan to shoot the special in "the early spring".

"There's different facets to it; some already-shot [video] packages of things. I don't know, fully. I really don't, but I pre-shot something for it already, so we're definitely doing it, because I already shot a little something."

After Friends ended, the main cast of actors went on to varying success in film and television. Over the years, while the six leads always expressed affection for each other and their time spent together on the show,...

For those accustomed to the bittersweet greatest hits of Japanese auteur Yasujirô Ozu’s later period familial dramas, the lesser known 1952 social satire The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice reminds one of a wider range than some of his revered titles would indicate. Seeing as this more obscured title arrived just a year prior to 1953’s ineffably devastating Tokyo Story (review), with its poignant intergenerational rifts, makes the latter title all the more unprecedented. Likewise, the coterie of titles marked by seasonal or time-oriented motifs which would follow in quick succession (Early Spring; Tokyo Twilight; Equinox Flower; Good Morning; Late Autumn; The End of Summer; An Autumn Afternoon) speaks to Ozu’s own dislike for the themes and motifs used here.…...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this first episode of a three-part series, David and Trevor are joined by Matthew Gasteier to discuss two films (Early Spring and Tokyo Twilight) from Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu.

About the films:

Master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu directed fifty-three feature films over the course of his long career. Yet it was in the final decade of his life, his “old master” phase, that he entered his artistic prime. Centered more than ever on the modern sensibilities of the younger generation, these delicate family dramas are marked by an exquisite formal elegance and emotional sensitivity about birth and death, love and marriage, and all the accompanying joys and loneliness. Along with such better-known films as Floating Weeds and An Autumn Afternoon,...

Can our children pick and choose the personality traits they inherit, or are they doomed to obtain our lesser qualities? These are the hard questions being meditated on in After the Storm, a sobering, transcendent tale of a divorced man’s efforts to nudge back into his son’s life. Beautifully shot by regular cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki, it marks a welcome and quite brilliant return to serious fare for writer-editor-director Hirokazu Kore-eda following last year’s Our Little Sister, widely regarded as one of the slightest works of his career thus far.

Recent Kore-eda regular Abe Hiroshi plays Ryota, a prize-winning author struggling to live up to the success of his first novel. He’s a father of one, a gambling addict, and probably a bit of an asshole. We learn the man’s been researching for his follow-up book by moonlighting as a private eye. The job adds an...

Groundhog Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow this morning, predicting that we will have an early spring in 2016. Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Predicts Early Spring The groundhog, a native of Pennsylvania, was gathered from his habitat in Gobbler’s Knob this morning by the top hat-wearing Inner Circle. At sunrise (7:30 a.m.) Tuesday, it was determined […]

The post Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney Phil Sees His Shadow, Predicts Early Spring appeared first on uInterview.

The 16th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival announced its line-up in a press conference today.

Here is the complete list of films which will be screened at the festival:-

International Competition

Difret

Dir.: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari (Ethiopia / 2014 / Col / 99)

History of Fear (Historia del miedo)

Dir.: Benjamin Naishtat (Argentina-France-Germany-Qatar-Uruguay / 2014 / Col / 79)

With Others (Ba Digaran)

Dir.: Nasser Zamiri (Iran / 2014 / Col / 85)

The Tree (Drevo)

Dir.: Sonja Prosenc (Slovenia / 2014 / Col / 90)

Next to Her (At li layla)

Dir.: Asaf Korman (Israel / 2014 / Col / 90)

Schimbare

Dir.: Alex Sampayo (Spain / 2014 / Col / 87)

Fever

Dir.: Raphaël Neal (France / 2014 / Col / 81)

Court

Dir.: Chaitanya Tamhane (India (Marathi-Gujarati-English-Hindi) / 2014 / Col / 116)

Macondo

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai (Austria / 2014 / Col / 98)

India Gold Competition 2014

The Fort (Killa)

Dir.: Avinash Arun (India (Marathi) / 2014 / Col / 107)

Unto the Dusk

Dir.: Sajin Baabu (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 118)

Names Unknown (Perariyathavar)

Dir.: Dr. Biju (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 110)

Buddha In a Traffic Jam

Dir.

Penny Dreadful continues to impress with more nightmarish intrigue in its second episode. Here's Becky's review...

Review

This review contains spoilers.

1.2 Seance

The second episode of Penny Dreadful begins with another horrific murder on a foggy London street and whilst not mentioned again for the rest of the narrative, it re-affirms that the city at night is a dangerous place. The focus then shifts to the characters we were introduced to last week, but with some new faces in amongst the familiar. Chandler (Josh Hartnett) is still coming to terms with the events he has just witnessed and finds himself drawn to Brona Croft (Billie Piper). Meanwhile, Murray (Timothy Dalton) continues to work with Vanessa (Eva Green) to search for his daughter whilst Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) introduces his new creature, Proteus (Alex Price) to the world for the first time.

If the first episode was merely a taster of the...

While it may seem arbitrary to some, the thought process behind setting a date for a film.s release is a complex web of variables and hypotheses. Oscar worthy? Early winter release. Genre garbage? Early spring release. It.s something of a science. But when a film with an established release date shifts the date months later, it usually means one of two things: the film won.t be ready, or it has some strong box office competition. With this new batch of release date changes, courtesy of Box Office Mojo, let.s find out which is which. Ken Scott.s comedy Delivery Man, formerly known as Starbuck, stars Vince Vaughn as an ordinary guy who finds out his sperm bank donations have led to him being the biological father of over 500 children. The film was originally going to be released on October 4th, but has changed to November 22nd.

Thank to our friends at the BFI, we have kindly been given Three DVD copies of the fantastic The Ozu Collection: Three Melodramas, which includes Early Spring (1956), Tokyo Twilight (1957) and the rare silent Woman of Tokyo (1933), to give away to our world cinema-loving readers. This is an exclusive competition for our Facebook and Twitter fans, so if you haven't already, 'Like' us at facebook.com/CineVueUK or follow us @CineVue before answering the question below.

Read more »...

Chikage Awashima and Kazuo Hasegawa in Zangiku Monogatari (1956)

"Chikage Awashima, an actress known internationally for her work with Yasujiro Ozu and other greats of Japanese cinema's 1950s golden age, died of pancreatic cancer on Thursday in Tokyo," reports Mark Schilling for Variety. She was 87. In 1950, Awashima left the Takarazaka Revue Company for the Shochiku studio, where she'd appear in "a wide range of roles, though in the West she is best remembered as the vivacious, teasing friend of lead Setsuko Hara in such films as Early Summer (1951) and Early Spring (1956) or Michiko Kogure in The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952), all by Ozu. She later transferred to the Toho studio, where she starred as the level-headed geisha wife of a merchant prince's dilatory son in Shiro Toyoda's Meioto Zenzai (1955); she reprised the role in the 1963 follow-up…. Her last film role was in Masahiro Kobayashi's 2010 drama Haru's Journey."

Awashima's...

What an embarrassing way to start a review, but Naoki Kato's Abraxas harkens back to the profoundly moving and multi- layered, yet minimalist character studies of the great Yasujiro Ozu. It's easy for film critics to casually toss around comparisons to Ozu when reviewing or summarizing contemporary Japanese dramas. If a Japanese film isn't about samurais, ninjas, Kaiju monsters, or little girl ghosts with long hair, it's almost an obligatory given that the film will be likened to the work of the master responsible for Tokyo Story, Late Autumn, and Early Spring. It's a cliché. It's lazy writing, but it is also understandable, within the pantheon of Japanese cinema, Ozu is really the only widely recognized point of reference for non-genre related/focused Japanese films...

Another week has gone by and as usual, Criterion has put up some choice content on their page on Hulu Plus. Using the service more than ever to stream films that I’ve seen before and don’t own or have never even heard of until Criterion put them up, I’ve valued Hulu Plus more than ever. I also want to thank all those who have used our referral link to sign up. It pays for this article to keep going so please, sign up here to keep it going with no hiccups whatsoever. But you want to know what new and amazing films are streaming. So without further adieu…

It’s Alain Resnais’ birthday so you should be streaming his film Night And Fog (1955), a very harsh and intense depiction of the Holocaust, one of the first truthful accounts around.

Also you can stream the film we’re covering this week,...

Updated through 5/5.

A new 35mm print of Kon Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters opens today at New York's Film Forum, playing through May 12. Nick Pinkerton in the Voice: "The setting is the wartime precipice of 1938; the synthesizer score is distinctly 1983. When he finally succeeded in filming Junichiro Tanizaki's novel, Kon Ichikawa was 68 years old — a living link to Japan's cinematic Golden Age, taking on a self-consciously throwback prestige production. The Makioka Sisters details the interlocked emotional lives of four Osakan siblings, orphaned young and left as caretakers of the once-prestigious Makioka name. Observing each woman meeting this duty, The Makioka Sisters is a Whartonian work of compassionate nostalgia tinctured with irony."

"Make no mistake," adds David Fear in Time Out New York, "The Makioka Sisters is a melodrama, complete with public scandals, petulant ingenues, interclan power struggles, unrequited love and consummated love affairs. But Ichikawa plays everything cool without seeming cold,...

"Actor Ryo Ikebe died of sepsis at a Tokyo hospital on October 8," reports Tokyograph News. "He was 92."

For Variety, Mark Schilling notes that Ikebe originally intended to become a director for the Toho studio. "His soft-featured, city-bred good looks drew the attention of Toho helmer Yasujiro Shimazu, who cast Ikebe in the 1941 pic Fighting Fish (Togyo)." Following World War II, "Ikebe moved from young leading man roles to a wider range of parts, such as the elite bureaucrat who falls into self-destructive dissipation in Minoru Shibuya's Modern Man (Gendaijin, 1952) and the cheating businessman in a troubled marriage in Yasujiro Ozu's Early Spring (Soshun, 1956)." He then rode the Japanese New Wave, "starring as an ex-con who takes up with a fast-living younger women in Masahiro Shinoda's seminal gangster pic Pale Flower (Kawaita Hana, 1964)," which, of course, has just screened in the Shinoda Masterworks series at this year's New York Film Festival.

Though I won’t assume anyone took special notice of the fact, I took last Monday off from writing a new installment in this weekly column of Eclipse film reviews. Reason being that I took my family on a ten-day vacation to California, specifically San Francisco and the north coast of that state up toward Mendocino. So since I’m just back from a nice long stretch of traveling, it seems like a road movie is in order, and I found just the right offering, Mr. Thank You, from Eclipse Series 15: Travels With Hiroshi Shimizu. Through no fault of his own, this set of Depression-era films from the little-known director Shimizu is probably one of the most obscure sets featured so far in the entire run of Eclipse boxes, but he’s a perfect example for what makes this line of DVDs so engaging and essential (hey, he even directed a film titled Eclipse,...

I’ll live to see what becomes of a prostitute. I’ll see it for myself.

After a pair of columns over the past two weeks dedicated to the early and later films of Yasujiro Ozu, and an earlier review of Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear, it seems only fitting that my attention should turn toward the last of classic Japanese cinema’s “Big Three” directors. As was the case last Monday with Early Spring, today’s selection happens to fit right into my on-going project of reviewing Criterion films in chronological order. It’s Street of Shame, from Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women, which also turns out to be the last film that Mizoguchi ever made (and the only film I’ve watched so far from this set, which I recently purchased during Barnes & Noble’s 50% off sale)

This set is somewhat unique in...

Over the next three years, BFI is set to release one of the most extensive collection of films from one filmmaker this world has known.

According to DVD Outsider, the company will be releasing all 32 films from the legendary Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu, with at least seven of them being available on DVD/Blu-ray for the very first time in their history. These will only be available as Region 2 locked discs, so you’ll need a Region-free Blu-ray player to take advantage of these titles.

Many of these films are obviously available through the Criterion Collection and its sister collection, the Eclipse Series, but it looks like after the massively successful retrospective run of Ozu’s films, that BFI has taken the reigns and will be giving any fan of the legendary filmmaker a reason to start saving those pennies, or selling those kidneys.

First up is Tokyo Story, Early...

The world today isn’t very interesting.

Everyone’s dissatisfied.

You ought to try and have a good time.

You’re right. That’s the only way.

I guess that’s about it.

After a weekend packed with tweets, blogs and breaking news about hotly anticipated fantasy/action/adventure/sci-fi movies from the San Diego Comic-Con, I’m sure that some of us are ready to spend a few minutes thinking about poignant, calm, reality-based films for grown-ups as a refreshing change of pace. At least I hope so, since that’s where I’m trying to draw your attention. For this week’s column, I’ve chosen Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Spring, from Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu. It’s Ozu’s follow-up to Tokyo Story, one of those perennial candidates for “greatest film of all time,” at least within some subsets of the art house crowd. I’ve...

If only I lived in San Francisco.

According to ActiveAnime, Viz Cinema and New People are set to continue their run of promoting and honoring legendary Japanese filmmakers, with a brand new series of screenings dedicated to the legendary auteur and personal favorite of mine, Yasujiro Ozu.

The series will include Tokyo Story, Early Spring, The Only Son (just announced for a Criterion release this Summer), and Record Of A Tenement Gentlemen. While I haven’t seen the latter, I can tell you that if you have not seen Story or Spring, this is a must see event. Hell, if you have, see them again. These are some of cinema’s most brilliant pieces of work, particularly Story, which I think may be one of the all time greatest films ever made.

The series is set to run from June 12th to the 17th, and will be followed by a...

Of the films made during Japan's cinematic golden age, those of Yasujiro Ozu are seen as most typically Japanese. But as studies in character and domestic life, they are universal, argues Ian Buruma, and they reveal beauty where we don't usually look for it

Akira Kurosawa made great samurai films. Kenji Mizoguchi filmed the lives of courtesans and geishas with the feel of classical Japanese painting. Yasujiro Ozu made films about middle-class families in Tokyo. Of these three masters of Japan's cinematic golden age, which lasted from the 1930s till the 1960s, Ozu is considered to be the most typically Japanese. So much so that Japanese producers refused at first to release his films abroad. Foreigners wouldn't understand. They might laugh at Japanese in business suits sipping green tea on tatami mat floors. They wouldn't get the subtlety of Japanese family relations. Ozu's style would surely strike action-loving westerners as boring and slow.