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The Criterion Channel has unveiled its streaming lineup for August 2024, which features an eclectic mix of independent films showcasing the work of auteurs from around the world.

The boutique service will become the exclusive streaming home of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 comedy “Licorice Pizza,” and will celebrate the occasion by adding four more of his films to the channel: “The Master,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” and “Magnolia.” Anderson’s frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman will additionally be celebrated on the streaming service as part of a larger retrospective. Many of the late actor’s most iconic roles, including “Capote” and “Synecdoche, New York,” will be included, along with his sole directorial outing “Jack Goes Boating.”

The channel will also highlight several other prominent filmmakers including Preston Sturges, who helped pioneer the modern rom-com through films like “The Lady Eve” and “The Palm Beach Story,” and prolific Egyptian auteur Youssef Chahine.

The National have returned with Laugh Track, a surprise new album that serves as “the second half of a double album” which began this past April with the band’s previous release, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. The new record is out now, and features appearances by Phoebe Bridgers, Rosanne Cash, and Bon Iver. Stream it below.

The band announced the album onstage this past weekend at their own Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio. Last month, they shared the singles “Space Invader” and “Alphabet City,” which both appear on the new album, along with “Weird Goodbyes,” the single with Bon Iver that the band shared in August 2022. Earlier this year, the band hinted that “Weird Goodbyes” wouldn’t appear on Frankenstein, alluding to a “future home” for it. Now, we know what that “future home” is.

According to the press release, the songs on Laugh Track were written alongside those on Frankenstein,...

The National announced the impending release of a new album titled Laugh Track during the band’s opening night set at their Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati.

Arriving just five months after the band’s 2023 LP First Two Pages of Frankenstein, Laugh Track will be released digitally on Sunday, singer Matt Berninger told the crowd, with a vinyl release to follow in November.

“We have a new record coming out, it comes out Sunday night at midnight,” Berninger said. “The new record is called Laugh Track, and we have some pre-pressed...

The National have announced a surprise new album called Laugh Track. As revealed during the band’s at their own Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio on Friday, the album will arrive on Monday, September 18th at Midnight Et (via Uproxx).

Laugh Track arrives just five months after the release of the The National’s previous LP, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Last month, the band premiered two new singles called “Space Invader” and “Alphabet City.”

Elsewhere during their Homecoming Festival set, The National performed their 2010 album High Violet in full and brought out Patti Smith to duet on “I Need My Girl.” The band returns to the stage for a second set on Saturday, during which they’ll perform Trouble Will Find Me in its entirety.

The National announce a new album out on Sunday night called Laugh Track (!!!!) pic.twitter.com/OROAZqS44t

— Philip Cosores (@Philip_Cosores) September 16, 2023

pic.

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week, Quavo honors the late Takeoff with a posthumous feature, Usher ups the jealousy ante in new song, and Reneé Rapp captures the plight of queer girls with pop perfection. Plus, new tracks from Anitta, Maluma, Addison Rae and Charli Xcx.

Quavo feat. Takeoff, “Patty Cake” (YouTube)

Usher, “Boyfriend” (YouTube)

Reneé Rapp, “Pretty Girls” (YouTube)

Anitta, “Casi, Casi” (YouTube)

Maluma and Carin Leon, “Según Quién” (YouTube)

Addison Rae feat.

It’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday — especially when it’s New Music Friday! We’re breaking down this week’s best new tracks to keep on your radar.

New Music Friday – August 18th, 2023

Hozier – “De Selby (Part 2)”, plus Unreal Unearth (album)

Reneé Rapp – “Pretty Girls”, plus Snow Angel (album)

Dolly Parton – “Let It Be” (featuring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr)

Victoria Monét – “On My Mama”

Addison Rae – “2 die 4” featuring Charli Xcx, plus Ar (EP)

Grace Potter – “Truck Stop Angels”, plus Mother Road (album)

Madison Beer – “Spinnin”

Jon Batiste – “Uneasy” (featuring Lil Wayne), plus World Beat Radio (album)

Idina Menzel – “Paradise” (featuring Nile Rodgers), plus Drama Queen (album)

Icona Pop – “Fall in Love”

Sufjan Stevens – “So You Are Tired”

Thirty Seconds to Mars – “Seasons”

The National – “Space Invader”, plus Alphabet City (album)

Taela – “beetlejuice (dead to me”)

Lonesome Ace Stringband – “Praying for Rain”

Other noteworthy releases...

Just a few months after they dropped their most recent album First Two Pages of Frankenstein, The National are back with two new singles called “Space Invader” and “Alphabet City.”

It’s unclear whether or not these tracks are Frankenstein outtakes, but their atmospheric production and melodramatic instrumentation feel right in line with the album’s ethos. “Space Invader” clocks in at just under seven minutes, giving Matt Berninger plenty of time to pore over endless “what if”s: “What if we’d never met?/ What if I’d only just done what you told me?” he wonders over thunderous drums, before the song swells into a rollicking coda.

Meanwhile, “Alphabet City” is a mellower, piano-driven breakup track where Berninger’s narrator gets nostalgic about a lost love and wandering the titular Manhattan neighborhood: “I’m not over it, don’t know what it is/ I can’t get there...

The National have released two new songs, “Alphabet City” and “Space Invader.” The latter arrived with a moody visualizer directed by Noah Sacré and Pauline de Lassus, with animation and drawings by de Lassus.

The melancholy, seven-minute track sees frontman Matt Berninger imagining alternate scenarios. “What if I stayed on the/ C train until Lafayette?” he croons. “What if we never met?/ What if I only had done what you/ Told me and never looked back?/ What if I’d only ducked away down/ The hallway and faded to black?...

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

Anthology Film Archives

Robert Downey Sr’s best-known films—some of the funniest ever made—are showcased in a 35mm series, while Mekas and Méliès screen in Essential Cinema.

Museum of the Moving Image

Five films by Chantal Akerman play in the series “Your Loving Mother.”

Metrograph

“Metrograph Selects” offers Cassavetes and Rivette; while The Man in the Moon screens on Sunday. A new restoration of The Wobblies is also playing.

IFC Center

A Gaspar Noé retrospective is underway; the new restorations of Inland Empire and Mississippi Masala continue; Eraserhead, The Crow, and Re-Animator have late-night showings.

Roxy Cinema

Friday brings prints of Alphabet City and Wild Style, while In the Mood for Love and Love is Colder Than Death screen on 35mm this Saturday.

Film Forum

As the new Nights of Cabiria restoration continues, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva plays on 35mm.

Illustration by Jeff CashvanMovie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a title that we think embodies NYC movie going, and present the venue at which it premiered…In November of 2013, we screened Amos Poe’s 1985 neon-blinding neo-noir Alphabet City, with Mr. Poe in attendance. Now, in honor of the recent Blu-ray re-release, distributed by Fun City Editions, we present a new conversation with the No Wave maverick about his early years living and working in New York City. And… Fun City Editions invites Amos back to Nitehawk on November 3 to project Alphabet City on 35mm, with a Q&a following the film guest moderated by The Deuce’s Joe Berger.

Amos Poe had already directed one homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (his 1976 debut feature Unmade Beds) when he began production on the 1984 thriller Alphabet City, but the latter film is the one that really earns the comparisons it invites to Godard and the French New Wave as a whole. A member of the East Village “No Wave” movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s that also included Abel Ferrara, Bette Gordon, Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver, Poe began his career with the seminal punk rock documentary The Blank Generation, and Alphabet City is a singular mash-up of […]

The post Alphabet City, I Start Counting! and Captain Newman, M.D.: Jim Hemphill's Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Amos Poe had already directed one homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (his 1976 debut feature Unmade Beds) when he began production on the 1984 thriller Alphabet City, but the latter film is the one that really earns the comparisons it invites to Godard and the French New Wave as a whole. A member of the East Village “No Wave” movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s that also included Abel Ferrara, Bette Gordon, Jim Jarmusch and Sara Driver, Poe began his career with the seminal punk rock documentary The Blank Generation, and Alphabet City is a singular mash-up of […]

The post Alphabet City, I Start Counting! and Captain Newman, M.D.: Jim Hemphill's Home Video Recommendations first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The appealingly atmospheric crime thriller Alphabet City (1984) debuts on Blu-ray this fall courtesy of Fun City Editions. Directed by Amos Poe, with a script by Poe, Gregory K. Heller (additional dialogue is credited to Robert Seidman), Alphabet City belongs in the company of After Hours and Into The Night (both 1985) as one of the ultimate ’80s nightmare nocturnes, and it is downright, well, criminal that Alphabet City is not better remembered today. Hopefully this Blu-ray will work towards amending that.

Alphabet City

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1984 / Color / 1.85:1 widescreen / 85 min. / Street Date September 29, 2020 / available through Vinegar Syndrome / 24.99

Starring: Vincent Spano, Michael Winslow, Kate Vernon, Jami Gertz, Zohra Lampert, Raymond Serra.

Cinematography: Oliver Wood

Film Editor: Grahame Weinbren

Composer: Nile Rodgers

Written by Amos Poe, Gregory K. Heller, Robert Siedman (additional dialogue).

Produced by Andrew Braunsberg

Directed by Amos Poe

As things kick off, our temperamental hero Johnny, a street hustler for the mob,...

When he was a teenager seeing Rent on Broadway for the first time, Jason Sherwood had no idea he’d one day create his very own version of the musical’s Alphabet City set. But right from when those jangly guitar notes kicked off Act I, he did know he was witnessing something special.

“It felt like the audience was there,” Sherwood (pictured at right) says in an interview the week before Fox’s live broadcast of the show. “It felt like I came to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror [Picture Show]. They were participating. They followed along. They knew when to shut up.

Ruby Modine may have a famous father, but don't let that small factor fool you -- she's worked just as hard as her peers to get to where she is today.

During a break from filming, the 27-year-old actress, best known for playing Sierra on Shameless, called Et on the phone, where she explained her journey from childhood to Hollywood.

Many of Ruby's fans know her father, Matthew Modine, who's starred in films and TV shows like Full Metal Jacket, Birdy, The Dark Knight Rises and Stranger Things. But many aren't as familiar with her Puerto Rican mother, Caridad Rivera, a makeup and wardrobe stylist.

Watch: Emmy Rossum Resolves Equal Pay Dispute, Signs on for Season 8 of 'Shameless'

"I am very proud [of my descent]," she said. "Many people don't believe that I am of black, Puerto Rican and Caucasian descent. That is why you cannot assume that you know what people are about based on what they look...

on this day in history as it relates to showbiz

30 BC Cleopatra commits suicide, allegedly by purposeful snake bite. I don't remember that scene in Liz Taylor's Cleopatra but it might have been at the four hour mark and t'was possibly asleep

How to honor this day: play with someone's snake. In the absence of a suitable one, wink at someone as saucily as Liz

← 1915 "Of Human Bondage" by W Somerset Maugham published. 19 years later it becomes a movie and marks Bette Davis's ascent to superstar actress

How to honor this day: Let it all out like Bette in that performance that's pure...

2017-05-13T05:26:57-07:00Fox Announces Its Next Live Musical Project

Fox has found its follow-up to Grease Live.

Following prolonged negotiations, Jonathan Larson's Tony-winning HIV/AIDS-themed musical Rent is set as the network's next live musical, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Larson's estate is on board to exec produce alongside Marc Platt (La La Land, Wicked). Rent marks Platt's latest live project for following NBC's Jesus Christ Superstar and Fox's newly announced A Christmas Story and last year's Grease. Additional auspices, as well as a premiere date and casting, will be announced later.

The rock musical — loosely based on La Boheme — tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in New York's East Village in the days of the Bohemian Alphabet City and under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

Read the rest of this article at The Hollywood Reporter.

Double Take (“2T”) has announced that it will simultaneously release four new series this mid-December. These stories will star new characters as well as familiar faces from 2T’s first ten series set in a creative universe established in the cult classic Night of the Living Dead.

While 2T’s first ten series took place in a 24-hour period in April 1966, readers this time can expect a modern update to the same universe: the new series all take place in present day. But the storytelling is still just as diverse as the first ten series, which started out seemingly as zombie stories, then transformed into other genres: comedy, sci-fi, superheroes.

New series 51, Z-Mart, and Alphabet City will continue the stories of unique characters introduced last year in Remote, Dedication, and Home respectively. And 2T will also give readers a bold, new super-powered tale in Behold.

“Primarily we want to make great content.

Double Take (“2T”) has announced that it will simultaneously release four new series in mid-December. These stories will star new characters as well as familiar faces from 2T’s first ten series set in a creative universe established in the cult… Continue Reading →

The post Double Take Announces Four New Comic Series: Behold, 51, Z-Mart, and Alphabet City appeared first on Dread Central.

Over the past year, the world of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead universe has been expanded and explored through Double Take's first ten comic book series, and if you couldn't get enough of the unique cast of characters (including little Lisa Foster and her epic insults), then you're in luck, because Double Take has announced that they will debut four new comic book series this December, featuring faces both new and familiar from the Night of the Living Dead: Revival stories.

Press Release: October 26, 2016 – New York, NY –Double Take (“2T”) has announced that it will simultaneously release four new series this mid-December. These stories will star new characters as well as familiar faces from 2T’s first ten series set in a creative universe established in the cult classic Night of the Living Dead.

While 2T’s first ten series took place in a 24-hour period...

“NY84” will have a gala opening and theatrical release this October 14 at the Arena Theater in Hollywood.

A unique venue for a unique film written and directed by Cyril Morin and starring Sam Quartin, Chris Schellenger and Davy J. Marr, “NY84” follows the adventures of three young artists in the downtown New York art scene in the early 1980s. Young and carefree, Kate, Anton, and Keith party, photograph, paint, sing, and play their way through the clubs and lofts of Alphabet City.

The party ends in 1984 when Anton and Keith contract a mysterious illness known as the “gay cancer.” We gain an intimate glimpse into their creative and emotional lives as the three lose their youth and innocence.

Cyril Morin

This is a lyrical poetic paen to those times some of us were lucky enough to have lived through. The sexual revolution and its sexual freedom in effect then for the newly liberated homosexual community, also opened the way for Kate to express herself. And it opened a door for transexuals, women and the whole diversity of humanity to assert itself today.

Today in 1996, Rent opened at the Nederlander Theatre, where it ran for 5123 performances. Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La boheme. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of Hivaids.On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical among other awards. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008 after a 12-year run.

Today in 1996, Rent opened at the Nederlander Theatre, where it ran for 5123 performances. Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La boheme. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of Hivaids.On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical among other awards. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008 after a 12-year run.

The immortal Henry sees things repeating themselves over time, much as they do in this show...

This review contains spoilers.

1.5 The Pugilist Break

The fast pace, quick wit and nuanced comedy of the Chris Fedak-written previous story dissipated rather too rapidly with The Pugilist Break. This was a by-the-numbers detective yarn that seemed borrowed from a dozen other New York crime stories, where the property developer is the nemesis, and people are forced to make poor choices in their circumstances.

But its biggest sin was the lack of any significant character development given the amount of screen time that both Henry and Jo were given here. We already know that Henry is a sucker for anyone being oppressed or downtrodden, and we also know that Detective Martinez is a rule-breaker, so playing those cards again seemed pointless.

Only right at the end of the story, when Henry convinces her...

In the 1990s, a New York model turned his back on the high life – and threw his lot in with homeless people living in tunnels. He eventually turned their lives into an extraordinary film. Marc Singer tells Sukhdev Sandhu how he did it

'I was a handsome young man at the age of 20," says Marc Singer with a grin. Today, still far from unhandsome, he's sitting in a SoHo bar recalling the early 1990s, when he was living the high life, working as a model in New York. Raised in London, he'd left school without finishing his GCSEs and moved to Miami. A girlfriend suggested he try modelling and, before long, he found himself in New York. "I was a kid in the big city partying my ass off. I loved everything that went with that. I loved all the bright lights and making loads of money."

The only snag was the modelling.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the burgeoning relationship of Walt and Bennet on The Carrie Diaries. The show wasn’t on last week, and the guys weren’t on the previous episode. And truth be told, I almost skipped this week’s post since they only have a few short scenes together. But Walt was so frickin’ adorable, I had to give him his due.

Bennet has moved into Alphabet City (which apparently is a real place and not just the title of an ABC album), and Walt is scared to death to visit him. He manages to find the courage, though, and … well, let’s just say it’s a good thing he wasn’t wielding a handgun.

There is one important moment … they both say “I Love You,” for I think the first time.

Here’s a pictorial look at Walt in all his frickin’ adorable glory.

Today in 1996, Rent opened at the Nederlander Theatre, where it ran for 5123 performances. Rent is a rock musical with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La boheme. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of Hivaids.On Broadway, Rent gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical among other awards. The Broadway production closed on September 7, 2008 after a 12-year run.

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 21, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $34.95

Studio: Kino Lorber

The colorful "No Wave" cinema movement is explored in Blank City.

The 2010 documentary Blank City chronicles the “No Wave” and “Cinema of Transgression” film movements that emerged in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time of cheap rent, excessive drug use and unbridled ambition.

In the movie, first-time director Celine Danhier examines the rise of the D.I.Y. independent filmmaking trend and its roots in the punk music, avant-garde art and cult cinema of the era.

In addition to a slew of archival footage, the film features new and vintage interviews with such filmmakers as Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise), Nick Zedd (Geek Maggot Bingo), Lizzie Borden (Born in Flames), Amos Poe (Alphabet City) and John Waters (Desperate Living), performance artists Ann Magnusum and Lydia Lunch, actor Steve Buscemi (TV’s Boardwalk Empire...

By David Savage

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The generation of subversive filmmakers who emerged out of the rubble of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970s, who wrote, cast, produced and directed their own punk riffs on narrative feature films long before the digital revolution made it easy, has long gone without a proper documentary that chronicles their fascinating emergence during this era. Well, no more. Blank City, directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, was one of the most talked about docs at festivals worldwide in 2010, and recently started its theatrical engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan and across the USA at major indie-cinema venues.

Packed with film clips, period footage and insightful interviews with key players from the scene, such as Debbie Harry, John Waters, Ann Magnuson, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor and Jim Jarmusch, Blank City is a fascinating and inspiring documentary...