News

This one goes out to all those who were children in the early aughts convinced that Spy Kids was the pinnacle of cinema. Your loyalty has been rewarded! Robert Rodriguez's beloved action comedy has been added to the National Film Registry. On Monday, the Library of Congress announced the...

We are just past the 40th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It's been now 42 years since the film came out and captivated audiences everywhere. It brought back an iconic Star Trek villain in Khan Noonien Singh and showcased one of the most impressive hero/villain dynamics in franchise history with Khan and James T. Kirk.

The performances of Ricardo Montalban and William Shatner captivated a generation and so much of the modern Star Trek trend follows the model that Wrath of Khan created. Even after 42 years the fans still flock to the film. In many ways, it's the touchtone of Star Trek's creativity.

This is why it was picked, alongside 24 other films, to be added to the National Film Registry for Preservation. The selections for the class of 2024 range from 1895's "Annabelle Serpentine Dance all the way to 2010's The Social Network. And no, the '1895' wasn't a typo.

As it does every year, the Nfr is adding 25 culturally relevant films to its library.

The Library of Congress’s National Film Registry has 25 new entrants. Each year, the registry announces a list of new films it has deemed culturally significant enough to archive for posterity. Movies must be at least 10 years old to qualify and be deemed worthy of preservation by the Nfr.

Black and Hispanic filmmakers and stars are heavily represented in this year’s enshrined movies, each of which were selected to promote the wide range of content found in American film.

“Films reflect our nation’s history and culture and must be preserved in our national library for generations to come,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a statement. “This is a collective effort in the film community to preserve our cinematic heritage.”

Check out the list of 25 movies added to the National Film Registry below,...

As the year comes to a close, The National Film Preservation Board has announced which 25 films will be entering The Library of Congress this year. Since Congress passed the National Film Preservation Act in 1988, which established the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, 25 films from a wide range of times and genres are carefully considered each year for entry into the Library of Congress. These films are deemed culturally or historically significant and will be conserved by the Library, which will make them more available to the American public.

This year, the Board has chosen, as they often set out to do, a wide range of films to join the 900 other preserved films of history, from the genre-breaking 1974 horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to David Fincher’s modern masterpiece The Social Network. While additions like the 1953 sci-fi classic Invaders from Mars and the Cohen brothers'...

25 films join the National Film Registry in 2024 (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

The 25 new additions to the Library of Congress National Film Registry include Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original), Dirty Dancing, Beverly Hills Cop, The Social Network, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The 2024 honorees represent nearly every genre and were selected for their “cultural, historic, or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.”

“Films reflect our nation’s history and culture and must be preserved in our national library for generations to come. We’re honored by the responsibility to add 25 diverse new films to the National Film Registry each year as we work to preserve our cultural heritage,” stated Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “This is a collective effort in the film community to preserve our cinematic heritage, and we are grateful to our partners, including the National Film Preservation Board.”

The 2024 selection...

The Library of Congress is back to share one of the most-anticipated lists of the year: its selection of movies that will be placed in the National Film Registry for preservation.

This year’s collection of movies that the United States National Film Preservation Board has deemed as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” span from 1895 to 2010, with the public nominating more than 6,700 titles for consideration. Among the highlights are Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Dirty Dancing (1987), Spy Kids (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007), and the newest film added to the registry, David Fincher’s social media drama The Social Network (2010).

“Films reflect our nation’s history and culture and must be preserved in our national library for generations to come. We’re honored by the responsibility to add 25 diverse new films to the National Film Registry each year as we work to preserve our cultural heritage,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement.

The Library of Congress has added another selection of 25 movies to The National Film Registry. This year’s lineup includes gangster classics, horror essentials, landmark documentaries, and even Spy Kids.

Check out the full list of this year’s inductees into the National Film Registry:

Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)

KoKo’s Earth Control (1928)

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Pride of the Yankees (1942)

Invaders from Mars (1953)

The Miracle Worker (1962)

The Chelsea Girls (1966)

Ganja and Hess (1973)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Uptown Saturday Night (1974)

Zora Lathan Student Films (1975-76)

Up in Smoke (1978)

Will (1981)

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (1982)

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)

Powwow Highway (1989)

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

American Me (1992)

Mi Familia (1995)

Compensation (1999)

Spy Kids (2001)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

The Social Network (2010)

Notably, Wrath of Khan is the first Star Trek movie to be added, while The Social Network ranks as one of the most recent entries on the National Film Registry.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner, but the National Film Registry did just put “Dirty Dancing” on its 2024 list. The 1987 Patrick Swayze/Jennifer Grey classic was among the 25 films Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced this morning as being added to the Registry, which honors classic films worthy of preservation.

Trekkies’ hearts are rejoicing this morning, as well, because “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is a new add to the list — making it the first “Trek” movie ever to join the Registry. And the theme of ’80s blockbusters continued with “Beverly Hills Cop” also making the cut. In a bit of shock that it wasn’t already on there before, Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” one of the most acclaimed horror movies of all time, finally received recognition also.

Before this morning and its 25 additions, there were 900 films on the National Film Registry, which was...

David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” sci-fi classic “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” groundbreaking horror film “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and Eddie Murphy’s “Beverly Hills Cop” are among the 25 films selected by the Library of Congress National Film Registry for 2024. These films will be added due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, and range from silent films to family features.

“The National Film Registry now includes 900 titles, and what’s remarkable to me is that every year when the board talks about films and their significance, we find new titles to consider,” TCM host and film historian Jacqueline Stewart said in a statement. “The wealth of American film history is sometimes rather overwhelming, and people often wonder: how do you recommend this film or that film? It’s through a lot of research, conversation and discussion, and it...

A new batch of classic films have made their way into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry this week, including Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess!

The National Film Registry recognizes films that are of “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance which preserves the nation’s film heritage.”

Deadline reports that the new selections bring the number of feature titles in the registry to 900. The public submitted nominations of more than 6,700 titles for consideration this year for context.

The National Film Registry says of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, “Graphic, lurid and completely unapologetic in its brutality, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ has since its debut in drive-ins and grindhouse theaters, become a cultural, generational and filmmaking touchstone. Filmed for a pittance and supposedly as difficult of a production as a film can be (beset with record heat and filthy locations), ‘Texas...

Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2013, they’ve now reached 900 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2024 list, which includes David Fincher’s The Social Network, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Coens’ No Country For Old Men, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, and more.

“The National Film Registry is an essential American enterprise that officially recognizes the rich depth and variety, the eloquence and the real greatness of American cinema and the filmmakers who have created it, film by film,” said Scorsese.

Check out the list of this year’s additions below,...

David Fincher’s 2010 Facebook drama “The Social Network,” 1974’s indie horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey’s Catskills-set love affair “Dirty Dancing” have been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.

The Librarian of Congress annually recognizes 25 motion pictures that are at least 10 years old and register as “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant. This year, more than 6,700 titles were submitted by the public for consideration.

Other titles added to the National Film Registry in 2024 include 1982’s sci-fi sequel “Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan,” Gus Van Sant’s 1991 drama “My Own Private Idaho” with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, 2001’s family adventure “Spy Kids” and the Coen brothers’ 2007 Western “No Country for Old Men,” as well as Eddie Murphy’s first feature film on the registry, 1984 action comedy “Beverly Hills Cop.”

This year’s selection brings the number of films in the registry...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.News Office Space.Some Hollywood insiders are blaming post-pandemic work-from-home policies—rather than rampant financialization and an overinvestment in stale intellectual-property tentpoles—for the industry’s recent decline.A coalition of human-rights groups have penned an open letter to Netflix demanding the renewal of its “Palestinian Stories” collection, which expired earlier this month after three years on the platform.Workers in RadicalMedia’s nonfiction division have launched a union drive, having collected an “overwhelming majority” of signature cards from the 65-person bargaining group. They plan to join the Writers Guild of America East.China will not have an Oscar entry this year, after the Academy deemed the documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (2023) ineligible for the Best Foreign Picture award,...

Paul Morrissey, the avant-garde filmmaker who worked on Andy Warhol movies including Chelsea Girls, Flesh, Trash and others who also managed The Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s, died Monday. He was 86.

His archivist Michael Chaiken told The New York Times that Morrissey died of pneumonia in a Manhattan hospital.

Morrissey collaborated with Warhol on several ultralow-budget features focused on the NYC subculture, starting with 1965’s My Hustler through 1974’s Blood for Dracula aka Andy Warhol’s Dracula. Their experimental movies — on which Morrissey often served in roles also including cinematographer and editor — often featured non-pro actors including Joe Dallesandro and Candy Darling and generally were ad-libbed rather than scripted.

Their biggest commercial success — a relative term — was with Trash, the 1970 pic starring Dallesandro as and junkie gigolo and Holly Woodlawn as his wife. Other Morrissey-Warhol films include 1968’s Lonesome Cowboys and 1972’s Heat and Women in Revolt. The duo...

Having already proven their bona fides with both 1986’s Evol and 1987’s Sister, Sonic Youth delivered their most cohesive, accessible album to date with their 1988 opus Daydream Nation. Originally inspired by the ferocity of hardcore punk, the cerebral art rock of acts like the Velvet Underground and Public Image Ltd., and the avant-garde compositions of Glenn Branca, the album saw the four New York bohos sweeten their no-wave edge with anthemic songwriting.

Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s detuned guitars strum plaintively and hypnotically as Daydream Nation slowly shakes itself awake on “Teen Age Riot.” Bassist-singer Kim Gordon channels the Stooges’s eerie chants on 1969’s “We Will Fall” and even cribs from its lyrics: “Spirit, desire/We will fall,” she mumbles before the song’s dual-guitar riff tears the track apart.

“Teen Age Riot” is an articulation of the alternative nation—which saw Dinosaur Jr.’s lead noisemaker, J Mascis,...

Describing the visual language of Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground for Apple TV+, Haynes’ longtime cinematographer Edward Lachman contends that the director “found the visual metaphor for the art, the counterculture” of the New York underground during the ’60s.

This feature-length look at the influential band is a collage of archival material, including Andy Warhol’s silent video shorts known as Screen Tests of such band members as Lou Reed and John Cale. The historical content is presented in the split-screen style of his 1966 film Chelsea Girls, and is deftly combined with new interviews — including with band members Cale ...

Describing the visual language of Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground for Apple TV+, Haynes’ longtime cinematographer Edward Lachman contends that the director “found the visual metaphor for the art, the counterculture” of the New York underground during the ’60s.

This feature-length look at the influential band is a collage of archival material, including Andy Warhol’s silent video shorts known as Screen Tests of such band members as Lou Reed and John Cale. The historical content is presented in the split-screen style of his 1966 film Chelsea Girls, and is deftly combined with new interviews — including with band members Cale ...

A brain hemorrhage claimed German musician Christa “Nico” Päffgen 30 years ago this Wednesday, but American cinema-goers can celebrate her legacy later this summer. Magnolia Pictures has released the first trailer for “Nico, 1988,” the third narrative film from Italian writer-director (and occasional documentarian) Susanna Nicchiarelli. “Nico, 1988” tracks the singer’s final year, during which she attempts to reconnect with her estranged son while distancing herself from past collaborations with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.

Denmark-born Trine Dyrholm, the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear–winning actress from 2016 (“The Commune”), stars as the nicotine-fueled songstress. For Päffgen, life was difficult from the beginning: her family fled her hometown when she was a toddler to escape World War II bombings (and her enlisted father never recovered from his injuries). In the trailer, she totes a recorder across Europe, attempting to recapture the sound of the explosions.

The 93-minute biopic visits Nico’s earlier decades,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Bam

Films by Elaine May, Yvonne Rainer, and Shirley Clarke play under “A Different Picture: Women Filmmakers in the New Hollywood Era, 1967—1980.”

Metrograph

As an Emile de Antonio retro ends, four of Paul Schrader’s best films screen.

Quad Cinema

The long-longed-for Alan Rudolph retrospective continues and mustn’t be missed.

Museum of Modern Art...

by Jason Adams

Although I might have been hallucinating by the time, given the sheer length and purposeful boredom of the experience, I'm pretty sure there's a portion of Andy Warhol's four-hour double-projector experimental film Chelsea Girls where the Velvet Underground singer Nico just sits and cuts her bangs for twenty straight minutes on camera. It felt like twenty straight minutes, anyway. And that was my introduction to her. Catherine Deneuve heroin chic - too cool for anybody, herself included.

That's the baggage one drags into a bio-pic about the singer, and that's what Susanna Nicchiarelli's film called Nico, 1988 insists on clipping away like those bangs. It's right there in the title - this is 1988, twenty-two years after Underground, after Andy, and this is a fully fifty-year-old woman with dark brown hair and a debilitating drug habit who does not give a shit...

What It Is: As someone who works in beauty, new products are constantly hitting my desk, which means my routine doesn’t ever stay the same for too long. But in an effort to live like Kim Kardashian, I swapped out everything — and I mean everything — in my regimen so I could mimic the Kkw Beauty mogul’s routine for a few weeks.

Who Tried It: Kaitlyn Frey, Style & Beauty Assistant and Kardashian superfan

Why We Tried It: I love the Kardashians, and I’m willing to try anything that makes me feel like like the 6th member of the KarJenner sister squad.

Andy Warhol by Marie Menken. Competed 1965.

Marie Menken made several films inspired by and starring artists she knew, such as Visual Variations on Noguchi (1945) and Arabesque for Kenneth Anger (1961). According to Warhol’s memoir Popism: The Warhol Sixties (written with Pat Hackett), in 1963 Warhol was brought by his friend Charles Henri Ford to a party hosted by Menken and her husband Willard Maas at the couple’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Warhol and Menken hit it off immediately and he would go on to cast her as an actress in his films, such as Chelsea Girls and The Life of Juanita Castro.

Close to the same time, Warhol was also introduced to Gerard Malanga, who would become Warhol’s main art assistant throughout the ’60s and who is featured prominently in this short film. In Popism, Warhol describes Menken and Maas as “sort of godparents” to Malanga.

Andy Warhol presents...

Ring Twice for Miranda

Stage II at New York City Center Through April 16, 2017

During Ring Twice for Miranda, while witnessing the frequent long and drawn-out arguments scenes that pepper this play’s landscape, I was reminded of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls. What kept your attention during that film’s interminable arguments among Warhol’s characters was hope of some kind of satisfying resolution. Playwright Alan Hruska is by trade a litigation lawyer, so he knows how to argue. Unfortunately his characters do not share his real life expertise. I kept saying to myself “come on, get on with it!” My impatience had me physically squirming much as I did when, eons ago, I first viewed Chelsea Girls! In addition, specters of the post-apocalyptic Spike Milligan/Richard Lester film collaboration The Bed Sitting Room floated about me. Absent from Miranda’s world was the clear social satire and whimsy which sustained Mr.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Anthology Film Archives

Andy Warhol‘s rarely screened Chelsea Girls will have a 50th-anniversary screening introduced by Jonas Mekas.

Multiple shorts programs also screen this weekend.

Metrograph

A Park Chan-wook retrospective brings Oldboy and Joint Security Area on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, while a documentary about the making of Oldboy, Old Days, screens on the latter day.

This was a busy year at Tiff, where I was a juror for Fipresci, helping to award a prize for best premiere in the Discovery section. Not only did this mean that some other films had to take a back burner—sadly, I did not see Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge—but my writing time was a bit compromised as well. Better late than never? That is for you, Gentle Reader, to decide.Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany)So basic in the telling—a record of several days’ worth of visitors mostly to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienberg, Germany—Austerlitz is a film that in many ways exemplifies the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. What is the net effect for humanity when, faced with the drive to remember the unfathomable, we employ the grossly inadequate tools at our disposal?Austerlitz takes its name from W. G. Sebald’s final novel.

For those who still view Lou Reed primarily as Rock's Transgressor-in-Chief, it would be easy to pooh-pooh the idea of a Reed tribute at Lincoln Center, that bastion of New York City high-culture propriety. But the setting for "The Bells: A Daylong Celebration of Lou Reed," which took place Saturday, couldn't have been more fitting. As a stalwart New York arts lover, Reed frequented the place, and it hosted a remarkable public memorial for him after his passing in 2013. Reed shared a stage there with Ornette Coleman, one of his great musical heroes,...

Let’s start with this obvious point: few cities need another repertory outlet less than New York City, which provides enough decent-to-outstanding options every week (or day) to fully occupy any caring customer. And so when a new theater, Metrograph, was announced this past August, the largely enthusiastic response — people taking note of a good location, a dedication to celluloid presentations and new independent releases, its strong selection of programmers, and other services (e.g. a restaurant and “cinema-dedicated bookshop”) — went hand-in-hand with some people’s skepticism, or at least a certain raising of the eyebrows. The question of necessity was premature, but such is the influx of available material that it should inevitably come up.

It’s safe to say their first selections silenced those skeptics. Metrograph’s slate is strong in a way that’s uncommon; one could say it’s exactly the sort that a cinephile with...

Each weekend we highlight the best repertory programming that New York City has to offer, and it’s about to get even better. Opening on February 19th at 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is Metrograph, the city’s newest indie movie theater. Sporting two screens, they’ve announced their first slate, which includes retrospectives for Fassbinder, Wiseman, Eustache, and more, special programs such as an ode to the moviegoing experience, and new independent features that we’ve admired on the festival circuit (including Afternoon, Office 3D, and Measure of a Man).

Artistic and Programming Director Jacob Perlin says in a press release, “Jean Eustache in a Rocky t-shirt. This is the image we had in mind while making this first calendar. Great cinema is there, wherever you can find it. The dismissed film now recognized as a classic, the forgotten box-office hit newly resurrected, the high and the low,...

This interview was originally published online by Sight & Sound. It is being re-published on the Notebook in conjunction with Albert Serra's Story of My Death playing on Mubi in most countries in the world through December 14, 2015.If new movie masterpieces are proclaimed at each and every major film festival each and every year, the notable absence of adventurous, exciting and otherwise transgressive cinema amongst those lauded should inspire us to question not only the terms we use to describe films but also the standards to which we hold them.Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra, a transcendental minimalist who wields his camera like only a handful of fellow feature-film digital adventurers – among them Pedro Costa, David Lynch and Michael Mann – is one of the few who produces work that truly creates a new encounter with the audience. His radically stripped-down, voluptuously shaggy adaptations of canonical writing – Cervantes in Honour of the Knights...

From the very opening of the Yves Saint Laurent biopic Saint Laurent, director Bertrand Bonello lays out his major thematic conflicts. In the first shot, we look down on an intricately designed floor of a hotel lobby, into which one inconsequential black-clad figure strays. In the second, we see a black-clad figure from behind, sitting on a bed, staring out a window at a foggy Parisian scene. The camera tracks in slowly on him, but does not cut to his face. Already we know that our subject is mysterious and that the movie will play with the notion of revealing his identity to us, but that we will never be able to understand him, possibly because this man moves through a material world of beautifully crafted physical artifice that has, thankfully, supplanted the unnecessary interior world of the artist. As Yves Saint Laurent himself says later in the film, he’s interested in the soul,...

This story first appeared in the Oct. 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Andy Warhol'S Chelsea Girls On Oct. 25, downtown L.A.'s Redcat arts center will host a special screening of Andy Warhol's and Paul Morrissey's Chelsea Girls, presented in its original dual-projector, split-screen setup. Filmed at Manhattan's famed Hotel Chelsea and Warhol's legendary Factory studio, this fascinating and invigorating audiovisual experiment is at once a primer on Warhol's troupe of talents (Nico, Brigid Berlin) and transgressives (Mario Montez, Eric Emerson) and a moving study of still lives. 631 W. 2nd St. See more 35

read more...

Jamaica Inn: BBC One, 9pm

First of a three-part adaptation by Emma Frost of Daphne du Maurier's bleak romance. In 1821, Mary Yellan, a headstrong heroine, is forced to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn in Cornwall following her mother's death. Danger and disaster await her on Bodmin Moor.

Her bullying uncle Joss is revealed to be a notorious smuggler, whose gang has control across the entire Cornish coastline. Life at the inn soon changes Mary as she begins to wonder whether she will change herself, surrounded by such immoral criminals. Even so, she cannot resist the charm of her uncle's enigmatic younger brother Jem.

Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This: ITV, 9pm

Feature-length drama exploring the life of much-treasured comedian Tommy Cooper, written by Simon Nye and starring David Threlfall (Frank Gallagher from Shameless). There is attention given to Cooper's practised incompetence with magic tricks,...

When Andy Warhol made the switch from painting to filmmaking, he took popular culture by surprise. Warhol was hardly the first artist of his era to traverse media, but he was one of the most prominent and famed, a decidedly off-kilter celebrity who created a personality not fit for prime-time yet nonetheless held a continued presence in prime-time. But the most shocking thing about Warhol’s films was the ways in which they presented the exact opposite of his notorious artwork. Where Warhol’s paintings and prints explored the ubiquitous presence of major movie stars, his own films cast a troupe of eccentric outsiders deemed the alternate universe superstars of his own downtown “factory.” Where Warhol’s paintings created “original” works of glossy, mass-produced products familiar to everyone in a society inundated by advertising (e.g., the infamous Campbell’s soup can), his films were raw, deliberately unpolished, often unedited events that challenged the inherently manufactured nature...

Warhol's most famous movies – including Sleep, a five-hour film of his lover dozing – perfectly capture the avant garde New York of the Velvet Underground and the Chelsea hotel

This weekend the Ica will be showing new prints of some of Andy Warhol's most famous films – Sleep, Vinyl and Chelsea Girls. These consciously crude and raw films of the 1960s New York avant garde have been restored by MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art and the only surprise is that they're getting such a short outing at a single London cinema. A national release of some kind is called for, surely?

I say that, but I have never actually seen Chelsea Girls. And yet I feel as if I have watched it many times. I got to know and love it indirectly when I was 15, through a vinyl album by Nico that I bought at a record shop in Wrexham.

Ashley Benson looked so cool and glam at the ‘Spring Breakers’ premiere at the 2013 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas on March 10. Her makeup artist spills how to get Ashley’s exact look below!

Ashley Benson, 23, switched up the traditional black smokey eye for a cool blue look at the Spring Breakers premiere at the South By Southwest festival on March 10! Makeup artist Nico Guilis created Ashley’s premiere look and breaks it down for HollywoodLifers below!

Check out the exact products used to get Ashley’s premiere look below:

“With Ashley’s sexy cool new brown hair, I thought the makeup should really bring out those blue eyes and focus on her beautiful Jane Birkin-esque classic features. She is so naturally beautiful and with this hair I wanted to try something different,” Nico says.

Ashley Benson’s ‘Spring Breakers’ Premiere Makeup — Get The Look

“I used Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua...

Review by Sam Moffitt

I love anything about Andy Warhol! I must say that right out of the gate, I love Andy Warhol! I have followed Warhol since the Sixties. Growing up near St. Louis, Missouri in the Sixties my family had a subscription to Life Magazine and they seemed to always be running articles about Op Art, Pop Art, the emerging youth and drug cultures and underground films made by people like the Kuchar Brothers, Jonas Mekas, Taylor Mead and Andy Warhol. It seemed like Warhol was in the news constantly, especially the question of whether his stuff was really art or even had any real value.

I read avidly about his ‘Factory’. in New York and his crew of strange underground people who helped him turn out art works, like….well like a factory!

I have three documentaries about Warhol himself, and have read every book by and about him I could find.

As I mentioned in the preface to the first part of my Wavelengths preview (the one focusing on the short films), there are significant changes afoot in 2012. Until last year, the festival had a section known as Visions, which was the primary home for formally challenging cinema that nevertheless conformed to the basic tenets of arthouse and/or “festival” cinema (actors, scripting, 70+minute running time, and, once upon a time, 35mm presentation). This year, Wavelengths is both its former self, and it also contains the sort of work that Visions most likely would have housed. While in some respects this can seem to result in a kind of split personality for the section, it also means that Wavelengths, which has often been described as a sort of “festival within the festival,” has moved front and center. Films that would’ve occupied single slots in the older avant-Wavelengths model, like the...

After much media hoopla about "Vertigo" toppling "Citizen Kane" in its poll, Sight and Sound magazine have now released the full version of its once a decade 'Top 250 greatest films of all time' poll results via its website. The site also includes full on links showcasing Top Tens of the hundreds of film industry professionals who participated in the project.

For those who don't want to bother with the individual lists and to save you a bunch of clicking, below is a copy of the full 250 films that made the lists and how many votes they got to be considered for their positions:

1 - Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) [191 votes]

2 - Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) [157 votes]

3 - Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) [107 votes]

4 - La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939) [100 votes]

5 - Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927) [93 votes]

6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) [90 votes]

7 - The Searchers (Ford, 1956) [78 votes]

8 - Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) [68 votes]

9 - The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer,...

Forget everything you think you know about Andy Warhol.

With the brilliant new book The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol, author J. J. Murphy obviously focuses in on the artist’s filmmaking career. However, Murphy may just be the first writer to integrate movies such as Couch, Eat, Empire, Lonesome Cowboys and The Chelsea Girls into the totality of Warhol’s artistic pursuits, i.e. silk screening, painting, filmmaking, videomaking, tape recording and photography.

This is, unbelievably, the first time in cinema scholarship such an endeavor has ever been undertaken. That may seem like a shame, particularly given Warhol’s enormous filmic output and his stature as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Yet, it’s clear it’s been worth the wait for such an astute writer and Warhol film fan like Murphy to finally tackle the topic.

Previously, one...

Sotheby's to auction off trove of art treasures and memorabilia owned by the renowned playboy. Mark Brown, meets his son Rolf

Picture the scene. A ruggedly handsome, impeccably dressed man is enjoying a snack with his superstar wife, Brigitte Bardot, in St Tropez's Gorilla bar in the late spring of 1967. A pale, odd-looking white-haired man with a large entourage notices him and marches straight over, complaining that the Cannes film festival, of all places, has refused to screen his film because of its nudity. The man agrees to see the film, Chelsea Girls, and everyone bundles into speedboats and heads for the Carlton Hotel on La Croisette.

That chance meeting between the millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and artist Andy Warhol had a profound effect on both men. For Sachs, a serious collector, it led to a sea change in his art buying; for Warhol it marked a vital first foothold in Europe.

Andy Warhol, the insanely influential and iconic multimedia pop artist, was born on Aug. 6, 1928. He would have been 83 today. He passed away on Feb. 22, 1987 following complications due to gall bladder surgery, which really sucks because one gets the feeling that Andy would have totally loved and embraced the Internet and incorporated it into his work.

Warhol made the bulk of his films between 1963 and 1968 when he became notorious for shooting extremely long movies of monotonous tasks. Many of these movies were named after the task performed on camera, including Sleep, Eat, Kiss and Haircut.

But the most notorious of his static films is 1964′s Empire, a non-moving cinematic portrait of the spire of NYC’s Empire State Building that, when screened, runs for 8 hours. Empire was photographed by Jonas Mekas and the filming of which was named Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film’s sixth most outrageous moment in underground film history.

Senses of Cinema editor Rolando Caputo introduces the new issue: "For some time now, Senses has wanted to publish an English language translation of Jean-Baptiste Thoret's seminal article, 'The Seventies Reloaded: (What does the cinema think about when it dreams of Baudrillard?),' first published in French in 2005. So, it has been some wait, but finally we've got our wish thanks to a translation by Daniel Fairfax that does full justice to the original. Thoret is both one of the most esteemed scholars on Baudrillard's writings (a long-term Editor-in-Chief of Panic, a French journal closely associated with Baudrillardian thought), and a specialist of the American cinema of the post-classical Hollywood period (author of Le Cinéma américain des années 70, 2006). Both strands come together in sticking fashion in 'The Seventies Reloaded.'"

Among the other highlights of Issue 59: Jiwei Xiao on Jia Zhangke, Peter Tonguette on King Vidor, Graham Daseler on...

‘The haves vs. the chavs’: Made In Chelsea’s Caggie Dunlop’s response to criticism from The Only Way Is Essex’s Amy Childs

That was the headline Wednesday on the Daily Mail Online website. The article went to detail the Twitter war of words between Made in Chelsea’s Caggie Dunlop and Amy Childs, Lydia Bright and Harry Derbidge from the Only Way Is Essex. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that ‘Caggie’ was having a go at Amy for her comments saying that the Chelsea show was a pile of rubbish. Caggie’s response to the suggestion that the Chelsea girls would be better off with a fake tan and a vajazzle on Twitter was ‘Just seen @MissAmyChilds comments on us. She says we need a vajazzle. Darling, at least my vajazzle will have real diamonds!!’ To which Amy replied: ‘Haha, people are getting jel!’ This...

Are you wondering what that mishmash of colors above means? I present to you Movie Barcode. This tumblr takes every frame of a film, stretches it out and presents a single image. I stumbled upon the site today, but the after a quick search realized /Film picked it up a month ago. I still want to share it with Tfs readers, as I think there a few gems here. Above, in one of the most colorful pieces, is The Lion King. Below you can check out The Matrix and then a list with links of all of them. Head over to the site to also buy prints.

Æon Flux (2005)

127 Hours (2010)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

A Single Man (2009)

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Amélie / Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)

American Beauty (1999)

Antichrist (2009)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Astro Boy (2009)

Babel (2006)

Bambi (1942)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Batman Begins (2005)

Black Swan (2010)

Brazil (1985)

Breathless / À bout de souffle...

The Kills. Photograph by Edouard Plongeon.When Alison Mosshart and Jack White formed The Dead Weather in 2009, a nation of Chelsea Girls and Modern Gainsbourgs trembled at the prospect of no more Kills records. Co-founder and guitarist Jamie Hince’s relationship with Kate Moss (they’re now engaged) helped keep the group in our thoughts, but it was no substitute for a proper dose of creepy-chic retro cool. Four years since Midnight Boom, the duo has finally reunited for Blood Pressures, out April 5 on Domino. Here, Alison Mosshart talks about Hince, White, and why you will never see her looking mousy.

The series producer responsible for ITV2 hit The Only Way Is Essex will head the team behind new E4 show Chelsea Girls. Broadcast reports that the reality series will follow socialites and wealthy playboys who "mingle" with royals and enjoy their parents' wealth. Sarah Dillistone has been hired by Monkey Kingdom to executive produce the programme after her success with the ITV2 show which cataputed stars including Mark Wright and Amy Child to fame. Dillistone commented: "Joining Monkey offers me the chance to take all the experience I’ve gained in this genre and help create programmes I love. The huge appetite for shows like The Only Way Is Essex and The Hills (more)...

In an effort to mix things up a bit, I’ve tried to do some searching to find random oldies, but goodies. I’ll try to keep doing this in the future so these weekly link roundups don’t start to get stale.

First, I dug up an interesting, older article by longtime underground film writer Fred Camper about the problems naming the avant-garde, experimental, underground, etc. He also comes up with a six-part “test” to determine if a film is underground or not. And, yes, there’s lots of hostility to the term “underground,” but, obviously, it’s what I personally go with. On the other hand, there’s this cute attempt at underground film history. Back in 2002, Gary Morris wrote an interesting appraisal of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls for Bright Lights Film Journal. The Los Angeles Times reports that Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer Bobby Beausoleil,...

<p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wDOXQ-jM468lEYPw9-fpK8Jka74/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wDOXQ-jM468lEYPw9-fpK8Jka74/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wDOXQ-jM468lEYPw9-fpK8Jka74/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/wDOXQ-jM468lEYPw9-fpK8Jka74/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"><img alt="RaroVideo.jpg" src="http://twitchfilm.com/news/RaroVideo.jpg" class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt;" width="190" height="158" /></span> <div>Exciting news for fans of international cult film with word that Italy's RaroVideo - one of the finest boutique video labels in the world - is coming to the Us. I have a handful of Raro titles in my collection at the moment and their reputation for delivering the highest quality product, both in terms of transfers and extras, is very well deserved in my opinion. Here's the official announcement:<br /><br /><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote><i>Hailed by cinephiles for expertly restoring rare films by influential filmmakers and publishing them with compelling extras, Italian DVD label RaroVideo announces the company will begin distributing its acclaimed DVDs in the U.S. for the first time ever in February 2011 through E One Entertainment.</i><br /><br /><i>To launch RaroVideo in the U.S., the company will spotlight two powerhouse directors of Italian cinema with Federico Fellini's hard-to-find The Clowns (1970) and The Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection, a four-disc set that...

Flaming Creatures midnight screening

Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal: The Rise Of The New American Cinema 1959-1971 is essential reading for anybody interested in underground film. The book contains excerpts from the “Movie Journal” column Mekas wrote for the Village Voice alternative weekly newspaper for a dozen years. Also included in the book are a couple of movie posters and newspaper ads from that era, which I’ve scanned and uploaded to a photo gallery. If you click on each image in this post, it will take you to an embiggened version of it so you can look at them in better detail.

It’s tough for me to pick an absolute favorite poster out of the bunch, but I inserted the most striking above. It’s for a special midnight screening of Jack Smith’s classic Flaming Creatures. I’m guessing from the date on the poster and the year the film was completed,...

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed

England's northernmost town exploits its tourist-friendly heritage for this imaginative festival, with a trail of film-based artworks commissioned for local landmarks as well as regular cinema screenings. The theme is Stagings, which means all manner of film-related art based around ideas of performance. So you'll find dance in the 14th-century Coxon's Tower and animation in the town hall prison cells, while film artist Guy Sherwin presents his ingenious projected pieces in the Holy Trinity Church. The screenings are also performance-themed, ranging from The Keystone Cut Ups, a live event colliding music, silent comedy and early avant garde cinema, to Malaysian drama Karaoke (you can guess what it's about), a Finnish rugby mockumentary and the Marx brothers' A Night At The Opera.

Various venues, Wed to 19 Sep, berwickfilm-artsfest.com

The Scoop Film Season, London

The holidays are over, the kids are back to school...