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Fans of manga and anime can certainly enjoy a good story without knowing the background of how the series was made or the creative methods of the author. Still, for the most devoted fans, it is always worth knowing more about the people who crafted a particular story, which can add some context about how a story is written. Some manga/anime stories may feel deeper and more nuanced if a fan knows more about the author behind it all.

Fans love knowing the finer details of famed manga/anime creators like Akira Toriyama, Masashi Kishimoto, and Rumiko Takahashi, while plenty of other authors like Takehiko Inoue are worth learning about, too. Even if Takehiko Inoue isn't "big three" material and didn't redefine manga, he is still a highly skilled and passionate author who put a lot of thought and effort into his works. Anyone who loves his most famed...

Joanna Bruzdowicz, the Polish-French composer whose wide-reaching work included several collaborations with Agnès Varda, has died at the age of 78.

Her family confirmed to Deadline that Bruzdowicz had passed away peacefully at her music studio in the French Pyrenees.

“The shock of her departure is so great and so sudden, it seems impossible to process our loss as a family,” her son Jörg Tittel commented. “We can take some comfort in knowing that she will continue talking to us through her music. I hope that her untimely departure will lead to more people discovering her seminal work.”

Born in Warsaw, Bruzdowicz was a child prodigy and wrote her first concerto at age 6. She studied at the Warsaw Music High School, at the State Higher School of Music, and earned her M.A. in 1966.

Receiving a scholarship from the French government, she continued her studies in Paris and became a student of Nadia Boulanger,...

When Agnès Varda died in March at the age of 90, Jean-Luc Godard sent a sympathy gift to her daughter. That small gesture should resonate for anyone who saw “Faces/Places,” Varda’s Oscar-nominated penultimate feature, which culminated at Godard’s doorstep. Varda’s good-natured attempt to introduce the fellow French New Wave filmmaker to her new friend and co-director Jr is a bittersweet moment, because the reclusive Godard stands them up. Godard was a close acquaintance of Varda before he receded to the shadows, but his absence in “Faces/Places” didn’t tell the whole story.

“He sent me a kind of photo collage of Agnés,” said Rosalie Varda, who produced “Faces/Places.” “It was something special. It’s a secret. But he sent me something nice. I think he cared for Agnès a lot. He saw all her films.”

It’s only fitting that a plot point from Varda...

The Crucible director Hwang Dong-hyuk is making a Korean drama for Netflix. The Svod service has commissioned mystery drama Round Six.

The series, which is the company’s latest Asian original, is a story of people who fail at life for various reasons, but suddenly receive a mysterious invitation to participate in a survival game to win ten million U.S. dollars. The game takes place at an unknown location, and the participants are locked up until there is a final winner. The story will incorporate popular children’s games from the 1970s and 1980s of Korea, such as squid game, literal translation of its Korean name, which is a type of tag where offense and defense use a squid-shaped board drawn in the dirt.

Director Dong-hyuk recently directed The Fortress, for which he won awards including best screenplay at Blue Dragon Film Awards. He is also behind Miss Granny,...

If you’re looking to meet a shock-of-the-new, beyond-punk vanguard girl who’s so out there and alienated, and maybe liberated, that you’ve never quite seen the likes of her, you could do worse than spend 102 minutes in the company of Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo), the title viper of Pablo Larraín’s new film. Ema, with her stick earrings and nose ring, her slicked-back platinum mane and big-eyed insatiable blank stare that takes in everything and gives back nothing, is a dancer who lives in the Chilean port city of Valparaíso. When she’s doing her Reggaeton dance moves, punching the air as if she owned it, she’s like Lady Gaga in the great video for “Telephone.” But this is a Gaga who’s gangsta. After hours, she takes out a flamethrower and sets fire to cars, swing sets, traffic lights. She’s the mother of an adopted son,...

Labor Day is around the corner and following the start of the new month, Netflix will unveil a fresh slate of titles to binge. Revisit the terror in Ryan Murphy’s “American Horror Story: Apocalypse” or keep up with the adventures of Princess Bean in “Disenchantment Part Two.” Additionally, “Good Boys” fans can re-watch “Superbad,” which hits the streaming service Sept. 1.

Netflix seems to be preparing for Halloween early with a solid list of horror and thriller titles joining the service next month. Along with “American Psycho,” “The Last Exorcism” and Season 3 of MTV’s “Scream” starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kiana Ledé will be available in September as well as new series “Serial Killer With Piers Morgan.”

Scroll through the list below:

Sept. 1

300

68 Kill

American Psycho

Dante’s Peak

Elena

For the Birds

Igor

Loo Loo Kids: Johny & Friends Musical Adventures: Season 1

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.

Most of us know Betty Grable from the famous pin-up copied by the cover artwork for this release; by 1944 Ms. Grable was Fox’s biggest earner, and the Armed Force’s most popular daydream babe both back home and at the front. This movie pulled in the multitudes, even though Betty doesn’t even play a model suitable for pin-up duty! But just imagine: in almost any town during wartime with a war industry somewhere nearby, movie theaters played around the clock, with sold-out audiences, to accommodate swing shift defense workers.

Pin Up Girl

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1944 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 84 min. / Street Date June 18, 2019 / Available from Twilight Time Movies / 29.95

Starring: Betty Grable, John Harvey, Martha Raye, Joe E. Brown, Eugene Pallette, Dorothea Kent, Dave Willock.

Cinematography: Ernest Palmer

Choreography: Hermes Pan

Original Music: Song Score Ð James V. Monaco (Music)/Mack Gordon (Lyrics); Charles Henderson, Emil Newman (Musical Directors)

Written by Robert Ellis,...

Life can seldom offer us neat endings. Cinema sometimes can, and there is something nicely fitting to the notion that Agnès Varda, the seventh art’s great celebrator of all things gleaned, would leave audiences–newcomers and devotees alike–with so much to take from her final film, as Varda par Agnès has ultimately proved to be. It is a swan song but not a melancholy tune, more a joyous celebratory coda to the director’s life and work, a film that feels purpose-built to dispel any notions of solemnity around her passing.

A time-hopping stroll through the past, in pure nuts and bolts terms, Varda’s last film is a feature-length collage of her work that takes a series of masterclasses she gave in and around 2018 as its backdrop. It’s autobiographical to the point of career-selfie, a style Varda was no stranger to, having often looked back in...

New titles include political drama Chief Of Staff and Designated Survivor: 60 Days, adapted from the Us TV series.

Netflix is launching five new Korean-language original series and one movie as it ramps up production in one of the region’s hottest TV drama markets.

New productions include Chief Of Staff, about the world of political aides, and Designated Survivor: 60 Days, an adaptation of the popular Us TV series.

Starring Lee Jung-jae and Shin Min-ah, Chief Of Staff is directed by Kwak Jung-hwan (Ms Hammurabi) and written by Lee Dae-il (Life On Mars). It begins a global rollout on June 14.

Set...

New titles include political drama Chief Of Staff and Designated Survivor: 60 Days, adapted from the Us TV series.

Netflix is launching six new Korean-language original series as it ramps up production in one of the region’s hottest TV drama markets.

New productions include Chief Of Staff, about the world of political aides, and Designated Survivor: 60 Days, an adaptation of the popular Us TV series.

Starring Lee Jung-jae and Shin Min-ah, Chief Of Staff is directed by Kwak Jung-hwan (Ms Hammurabi) and written by Lee Dae-il (Life On Mars). It begins a global rollout on June 14.

Set to launch on...

Chicago – If the French New Wave cinema movement (1958 to late 1960s) had a mother, it was undoubtably Agnés Varda. The versatile filmmaker began her film journey shortly before the movement began, and her influence resonated throughout that era and within her career. Varda died at the age of 90 on March 29th, 2019.

French Filmmaker Agnés Varda in Chicago, October of 2015

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

Arlette “Agnés” Varda was born in Brussels, Belgium, and through her French mother applied to the Sorbonne (University of Paris) shortly after World War II, gaining a degree in literature and psychology. Continuing her education in art history, she turned to photography before becoming a voice in Left Bank Cinema and the French New Wave. Her debut film was 1954’s “La Pointe Courte,” which she built from still images of her photographs.

Her career built from there, as her follow feature...

My trip into Tamil Nadu and Bala’ cinema continues, after “Vagabond” with “I Am God”, one of his previous films and a much more raw and disturbing effort. The script is based on the Tamil novel Yezhaam Ulagam by Jeyamohan, who also penned the dialogues for the film.

Rudran’s father made a terrible mistake 14 years ago, when, after listening to an astrologer saying his son was born under an evil star and would bring disaster to his family, abandoned him in Kashi (Varanashi). Now, the father has returned to the city with deep regret in order to find his son and bring him back to Tamil Nadu, as per his wife’s wishes. However, he discovers that his son has become an Aghori: an ascetic who spends his life close to death, praying to Shiva and considering himself to be a God. Eventually, Rudran decides to follow his father,...

The Cannes Film Festival is saluting director Agnès Varda with its official poster, which depicts the filmmaker, then in her mid-20s, shooting her first feature, 1955’s “La Pointe Courte.”

The announcement reflects the enormous respect the director-cum-visual-artist had earned from Cannes and the film community worldwide as a pioneering director — the woman whose independent debut paved the way for the French New Wave. Later, Varda went on to make “Cléo from 5 to 7,” which premiered in competition at Cannes in 1962 and featured a cameo from “Breathless” director Jean-Luc Godard, whose own film career was catalyzed in part by her example. Varda died at 90 last month.

Varda was a regular at Cannes, whether or not she had a film to screen there — and she presented many, including “Jacquot de Nantes,” “The Gleaners and I,” and, most recently, “Faces Places” — and served on the jury in 2005, the year Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne...

The Beaches of Agnès (2008), the first feature I saw by Agnès Varda, is arguably both the best and worst place to begin watching her body of work. To put it another way, it’s a great farewell, but also a perfect primer for this titan of world cinema who died on March 29th at the age of 90. Varda directed the movie many consider to be the first French New Wave film, La pointe courte (1955), which also began a six-decade-plus career for her in filmmaking. She made documentaries, scripted fiction, gallery installations, and numerous experiments somewhere in between the two. She was married to another major French New Wave director, Jacques Demy. Her family was a key component of her cinema, giving roles to her children Mathieu and Rosalie, as well as collaborating with Demy on Jacquot de Nantes (1991) as he was dying of AIDS. To return to The Beaches of Agnès,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAgnès Varda, 1921—2019.Agnès Varda, vital initiator of the French New Wave, prolific auteur, nimble innovator, and constant inspiration as an artist and a person, has left us at the age of 90. "'In all women there is something in revolt which is not expressed,' Varda once said of her protagonist in Vagabond. Her films express exactly that sense of revolt, in both form and content." That's Christina Newland writing on Varda's cinema and its expression of the female experience for the New Statesman.Though it was first premiered at Venice in 2014, Abel Ferrara's Pasolini will finally have its North American release on May 10. The premiere coincides with “Abel Ferrara Unrated,” an upcoming retrospective of Ferrara's works at the Museum of Modern Art. Following a recent screening of High Life, Claire Denis stated that...

Agnes Varda is deservedly eulogized in newspapers and on social media all over America today, but critics, programmers and audiences in the U.S. took time in recognizing her accomplishments. It took several decades for her work gain appreciation in the U.S., and during that time, I witnessed Varda’s ability to continue evolving as an artist every step of the way.

While Varda’s debut feature, “La Pointe Courte” (1955) has yet to have a theatrical release in America, her early short, “L’Opera Mouffe” (1958), was distributed by Cinema 16, an important film club run by Amos and Marcia Vogel in the 50’s and early 60’s dedicated to the showing and release of experimental and avant-garde cinema. The film won some notoriety because of its casual nudity — then still rare on American screens — and it was booked in film societies around the country seeding the bed for later Varda appreciation.

Agnès Varda at her 2017 Blum & Poe exhibition in New York Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

When I arrived at the Washington Square Hotel on Waverly Place in the Village for my conversation with Michal Aviad, the director of Working Woman, it was the day after the passing of Agnès Varda on Friday, March 29. I had contacted Agnès for a tribute honouring Michel Legrand, who died just two months earlier, and she immediately responded with her memories of him with Jacques Demy and sent personal photos from the set of Demoiselles De Rochefort with Catherine Deneuve.

We discussed Faces Places (Visages Villages), Vagabond, Le Lion Volatil, Varda Par Agnès, and why Les Glaneurs Et La Glaneuse (The Gleaners And I) is Michal's favourite.

Michal Aviad on the difference between Agnès Varda and Jean-Luc Godard: "You see what a lively, alive person she is. And what kind of an old grump - sorry to say - he is.

Many filmmakers have taught me how to look at the world, but Agnès Varda is teaching me how to age. She died this week at the age of 90, leaving behind an example we should all strive to meet as we get on in years.

One of the legendary filmmakers who made up the Nouvelle Vague, France’s influential cinematic New Wave of the 1960s, she continually embraced life and a changing world, even after losing her beloved husband and fellow New Wave icon, Jacques Demy, in 1990. In the years when one might have expected her to grow more home-bound, perhaps venturing forth to publish a memoir or pick up the occasional award, she instead continued to plunge into the ever-changing technology of cinema.

As a filmmaker, she constantly experimented with digital cameras and editing, never afraid to step into the arena of the young and always open to completely upending...

Until today, if you had asked me to name the greatest living filmmaker, I would have answered Agnès Varda. What a loss that the 90-year-old director — who died Friday, leaving behind such intimate masterpieces as “Cléo from 5 to 7,” “Vagabond,” and “The Gleaners and I” — will create no more.

Her passing is a chance for the world of cinema to come together and recognize the achievements of an outsider artist who lived long enough to appreciate the impact her work has had on both audiences and multiple generations of younger directors. Before the French New Wave took form in the late 1950s, it was Varda who paddled out from shore and shouted, “Hey boys, come on in! The water’s fine!” And in recent years, with a series of increasingly personal documentaries — including two, “The Beaches of Agnès” and “Faces Places,” that the Los Angeles Film Critics awarded along the way...

There have been any number of films about lonely men who fall in love with a prostitute, but Camille Vidal-Naquet’s raw and visceral “Sauvage / Wild” is the rare film about a prostitute who falls in love with another man. But Leo can’t afford to be stingy with his affections; he’s driven by an insatiable and undiscriminating desire for intimacy.

An untethered 22-year-old sex worker who lives on the streets of Strasbourg, and is ferally embodied by Félix Maritaud (who played a supporting role in the bracing “Bpm”), Leo doesn’t care about money or moving up in the world, nor does he resent his clients the way that some of his fellow sex workers do. In fact, he seems to lack any natural ability to separate feeling from fucking, and he needs as much from his johns as his johns need from him. When Leo offers to...

French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda is being remembered by Hollywood as not just a legendary, influential director and pioneering voice for independent cinema, but also as a charming presence to all those she came in contact with.

“For my shooting star, wherever you are,” the French street artist Jr, who collaborated with Varda on 2017’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Faces Places,” wrote on Twitter.

“Work and life were undeniably fused for this legend. She lived Fully for every moment of those 90 damn years,” director Barry Jenkins wrote on Twitter.

Also Read: Ranking Roger Charlery, Singer With The English Beat and General Public, Dies at 56

“I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda ever followed in anyone else’s footsteps, in any corner of her life or her art … which were one in the same. She charted and walked her own path each step of the way, she and her camera,” Martin Scorsese said in a statement to TheWrap.

Update (11:40am Et): Martin Scorsese has issued the following statement on Varda:

“I seriously doubt that Agnès Varda ever followed in anyone else’s footsteps, in any corner of her life or her art…which were one in the same. She charted and walked her own path each step of the way, she and her camera. Every single one of her remarkable handmade pictures, so beautifully balanced between documentary and fiction, is like no one else’s—every image, every cut… What a body of work she left behind: movies big and small, playful and tough, generous and solitary, lyrical and unflinching…and alive. I saw her for the last time a couple of months ago. She knew that she didn’t have much longer, and she made every second count: she didn’t want to miss a thing. I feel so lucky to have known her. And...

Agnès Varda, “the mother of the French New Wave” who spent seven decades as a trailblazing filmmaker and documentarian, has died at the age of 90.

“The director and artist Agnes Varda died at her home on the night of Thursday, March 29, of complications from cancer,” Varda’s family said in a statement to the Afp. “She was surrounded by her family and friends,” the family said in a statement.”

The Cannes Film Festival tweeted Friday, “Immense sadness. For almost 65 years, Agnès Varda’s eyes and voice embodied cinema with endless inventiveness.

Agnès Varda, the French New Wave director and filmmaking icon behind such films as “Cleo From 5 to 7” and “Vagabond,” has died at age 90. Varda passed away from breast cancer at her home in Paris early March 29. The death was confirmed by Varda’s family, who issued a statement saying Varda was “surrounded by her family and friends” at the time of her passing. The family described the filmmaker as a “joyful feminist” and “passionate artist.” Varda’s funeral is expected to take place in Paris on Tuesday.

Varda got her start as a still photographer before making the jump to feature filmmaking with the 1955 drama “La Pointe Courte.” The film, starring Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, is widely considered to be one of the forerunners of the French New Wave.

Varda’s second feature, “Cleo From 5 to 7,” was entered into the Cannes Film Festival and earned her international acclaim.

Agnès Varda, the pioneering French film director who emerged in the New Wave movement of the 1960s and continued to direct influential work including 2017’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Faces Places,” has died. She was 90.

“The director and artist Agnès Varda died at her home overnight on Thursday of complications from cancer,” her family said in a statement to Agence France-Presse. “She was surrounded by her family and friends.”

In 2017, Varda became the first female director to receive an honorary Academy Award — and one year later became the oldest nominee for a competitive Oscar for co-directing the documentary feature “Faces Places” with French street artist Jr.

Also Read: 'Faces Places' Directors Agnès Varda and Jr Look for Fun in a 'Disgusting' World

An acclaimed photographer, screenwriter, actress and visual artist, Varda first rose to attention with her 1962 movie “Cleo from 5 to 7.”

She followed with other films such as 1985’s “Vagabond,...

The legendary, lovely Agnès Varda has passed away at the age of 90. The French New Wave pioneer died from cancer “at her home in the night of March 29, 2019, surrounded by her family and friends,” her family confirmed. She recently premiered her final film Varda by Agnès at Berlinale, on the heels of both an honorary Academy Award and her Oscar-nominated documentary Faces Places.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1928, she began her creative career in 1948 as a photographer before moving into filmmaking in 1954 prior to the beginning of the French New Wave. From her first feature La Pointe Courte all the way through Varda by Agnès, the director has had a uniquely playful eye when it comes to the cinematic form, from her landmark films Cléo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur, and Vagabond to her immensely inventive and heartfelt documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.

This century,...

Agnès Varda, the French director who helmed films including La Pointe Courte and Cleo from 5 to 7 and won an Honorary Oscar and multiple Cannes Film Festival awards, died Thursday evening due to complications from cancer. She was 90.

“She was surrounded by her family and friends,” the family said in a statement.

Despite ill health, she was at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where she presented Varda by Agnès and received an award.

From her first film, La Pointe Courte in 1954, Varda’s style reflected elements of what would become the French New Wave although because she preceded that movement her work is more Left Bank in style. Her next feature, Cleo From 5 to 7, was a documentary style look at a singer awaiting results of a biopsy, which foreshadowed Varda’s fascination with human mortality. Her films also tended to focus on women and her subsequent Vagabond examined the investigation...

Varda passed away following a short battle with cancer.

Agnès Varda, the Belgian-born director whose work played a pivotal part in the French New Wave, has died aged 90.

She died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, according to a statement from her family given to French news agency Afp. It said: ”The director and artist Agnès Varda died at home on Thursday night due to cancer, with her family and loved ones surrounding her.”

Her death comes just weeks after Varda put in a fitting final appearance at the Berlin International Film Festival with the documentary Varda By Agnès.

An extended filmed masterclass of sorts,...

Varda passed away following a short battle with cancer.

Agnes Varda, the Belgian-born director whose work played a pivotal part in the French New Wave, has died aged 90.

According to a statement from her family given to Afp, she passed away following a short battle with cancer. It said: ”The director and artist Agnès Varda died at home on Thursday night due to cancer, with her family and loved ones surrounding her.”

He final film, Varda By Agnès, premiered at the Berlin Film earlier this year, where it was awarded the Berlinale Camera award.

In 2017 she became the first female...

Agnes Varda, a leading light of the French New Wave who directed such films as “Cléo From 5 to 7,” “Vagabond” and “Faces Places,” has died. She was 90.

Varda’s death from breast cancer at her Paris home was confirmed Friday by her family. “The filmmaker and artist Agnes Varda died from a cancer at her home in the night of March 29, 2019, surrounded by her family and friends,” the family’s statement said, describing her as a “joyful feminist” and “passionate artist.”

The funeral is expected to take place in Paris on Tuesday.

Just last month, the diminutive director presented her latest film, “Varda by Agnes,” at the Berlin Film Festival and received the honorary Berlinale Camera award. She had films in competition at the festival four times, winning the Grand Jury Prize in 1965 with “Le Bonheur.” But as ill health overtook her in recent weeks, Varda canceled the masterclass she was...

SauvageNew Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf) returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art for its 48th edition, and once again proves that for New Yorkers it’s the key festival to discover an exciting new crop of young filmmakers, most of them presenting debut or second features. The program includes some movies previously covered on Notebook: Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Ms Slavic 7, Peter Parlow’s The Plagiarists, and Mark Jenkin’s Bait (Berlin Film Festival premieres), Andrea Bussmann’s Fausto (Locarno Festival), Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s Manta Ray (Venice), Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load (Directors' Fortnight), and Eva Torbisch’s All Is Good (Locarno). While diverse, overall, this year’s slate is thoughtful and yet agile, with films that invite both risk and ambiguity.Not since Agnès Varda’s Vagabond (1985) has there been a film in which the main character drifts into willful dissolution with as...

The Berlinale Camera was presented to Agnès Varda on February 13 at the Berlinale Palast. This was followed by the world premiere of Varda’s documentary ‘Varda par Agnès’ (‘Varda by Agnès’), screened out of competition in the section Competition. The laudatory speech was given by Christoph Terhechte, who headed the Berlinale’s Forum section for many years.

After the surprising and wonderful Faces, Places I expect to see Varda in a new incarnation and I was not at all disappointed. This documentary about her and by her is an catalogue raisonné of her work since her first feature La Pointe Courte, in 1954 and 1962’s Cleo from 5 to 7, which I remember so well first seeing it while I was discovering my first foreign films, to her work today which goes beyond cinema’s Faces, Places and ventures into the visual high arts with installations and exhibits as shown in the Museum of Modern Art,...

Apologies if this reads like a eulogy for a living artist, but has anyone ever died more joyfully than Agnès Varda? Famous since the release of her debut feature in 1954, and even more so by 1961 — when her “Cléo from 5 to 7” arrived at the crest of the French New Wave — the Belgian photographer, filmmaker, and installation creator has only gotten more iconic as she’s grown older. That’s especially evident in “Varda by Agnès,” which she has called her final film.

In part, Varda’s growing clout stems from the singular look she’s adopted (a two-tone bob and the wry smile of a good witch in a Miyazaki film). And in part, that’s because Varda has put so much of herself on camera. While her playful curiosity for the world and all its people is evident in her fiction work, it’s perhaps most palpable in her digital age documentaries,...

French filmmaker Agnes Varda has been named the recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s 2019 Jean Renoir Award for International Screenwriting Achievement.

Varda’s films “La Pointe Courte,” “Cleo From 5 to 7,” and “Le Bonheur” helped define France’s New Wave cinema. Varda co-directed the documentary “Faces Places” with artist Jr and earned the pair a 2018 Oscar nomination for documentary feature. The nomination made Varda, at the age of 89, the oldest person ever to be nominated for a competitive Oscar. The film also won France’s Lumiere Award.

Varda will be honored at the Wgaw’s 2019 Writers Guild Awards L.A. show on Feb. 17 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

“The Jean Renoir Award was made for Agnès Varda,” said Wgaw president David A. Goodman. “She is one of our industry’s pioneers, a revolutionary artist who paved the roads of filmmaking. Her films are relentlessly curious, complex and challenging,...

Steve Gunn presents vivid wayfarer characters in his new song “Vagabond.” The song appears on his forthcoming album, The Unseen in Between, which will be released on January 18th via Matador Records. It follows Gunn’s previously released LP singles, “New Moon” and “Stonehurst Cowboy.”

Named after Gunn’s favorite Agnes Varda film, the pensive, twangy “Vagabond” features Gunn’s intricate picking as Gunn describes wandering characters like, “Mona” who’s “camped out in a graveyard/ Took a job and cleaned some tombstones/ Like lovers in a crooked dream” and...

This week has been one for first times, since, after watching my first Mongolian film, “Shift”, I also caught my first Tamil Nadu one, and I have to say I am impressed “Vagabond”, a film that starts as a light-hearted comedy but soon transforms into a shuttering drama. The script is based on “Eriyum Panikadu”, the Tamil translation of English novel “Red Tea” by Paul Harris Daniel and inspired from real life incidents that took place before independence in the 1930s.

“Vagabond” screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam

The story revolves around Rasa, a young man who is considered the village clown by the rest of the residents of a rural village in the Madras Presidency during the early days of the British Raj, who call him bin picker and constantly laugh at him. Rasa is an orphan and is being brought up by his grandmother. Angamma, a local girl falls for him,...

After receiving an honorary Oscar in 2017 and an honorary Palme d’Or in 2015, iconic auteur Agnes Varda received a career tribute at the 17th Marrakech Film Festival during a star-studded ceremony on Sunday.

Varda’s tribute was introduced by Cannes Film Festival’s artistic director Thierry Fremaux and French actress Chiara Mastroianni. Martin Scorsese, who presented the tribute to Robert De Niro the day before, was there as well and came up on stage to pose with Varda, along with her children, the director Mathieu Demy and Rosalie Varda, the artist Jr, who collaborated with Varda on “Faces, Places,” and Melita Toscan du Plantier, director of Marrakech Film Festival.

“Francois Truffaut used to say that in the (French film industry), the boss was Jean Renoir. When it comes to women, the boss is Agnes Varda,” said Fremaux, who started off his speech with a few words on three revered industry figures who have recently died,...

Welcome to Career Watch, a vocational checkup of top actors and directors, and those who hope to get there. In this edition, we take on Keira Knightley, who plays with gender identity in the title role of fall hit “Colette,” which is focused on the early career of the flamboyant French literary star.

Bottom Line: Ever since 2002, when Keira Knightley popped at age 17 in TV’s “Dr. Zhivago” and on-screen in Gurinder Chadha’s girl-power soccer movie “Bend it Like Beckham,” the actress has picked her projects well. Still only 33, the screen beauty has earned an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and is equally capable of carrying bodice-ripping dramas and athletic action roles. Perhaps her most charming performance was in Richard Curtis’ holiday comedy “Love Actually,” juggling expressions of affection from swains Chiwetel Ejiofor and Andrew Lincoln.

Although she grew up in London as the child of two actors,...

Welcome to Career Watch, a vocational checkup of top actors and directors, and those who hope to get there. In this edition, we take on Keira Knightley, who plays with gender identity in the title role of fall hit “Colette,” which is focused on the early career of the flamboyant French literary star.

Bottom Line: Ever since 2002, when Keira Knightley popped at age 17 in TV’s “Dr. Zhivago” and on-screen in Gurinder Chadha’s girl-power soccer movie “Bend it Like Beckham,” the actress has picked her projects well. Still only 33, the screen beauty has earned an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and is equally capable of carrying bodice-ripping dramas and athletic action roles. Perhaps her most charming performance was in Richard Curtis’ holiday comedy “Love Actually,” juggling expressions of affection from swains Chiwetel Ejiofor and Andrew Lincoln.

Although she grew up in London as the child of two actors,...

“The more gratitude you have, the more powerful you will feel because you will eliminate fear,” muses Draco Rosa, born Robert Edward Rosa Suárez. Puerto Rican by way of New York, the 49-year-old musician has, in a way, has gone to hell and back, confessing to darker days in the past: times when he struggled with rejection, drug addiction; and when he battled and beat cancer, twice. Yet today, he’s currently enjoying the blessing of a second chance.

Rosa got his first taste of stardom during the Eighties, as...

Even though the Dora the Explorer movie feels like some kind of straight-to-television production based on the first look we’ve seen, the Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon project has certainly rounded up a decent supporting cast. Isabela Moner is playing the titular character from the educational animated program that played all over Nickelodeon every morning for […]

The post ‘Dora the Explorer’ Movie Picks Up Michael Peña as the Vagabond’s Father appeared first on /Film.

Disney’s ‘Patrick’, Warner’s ‘Tag’, Stx’s ‘Adrift’, Vertigo’s ‘The Bookshop’ among new openers.

With the weather poised to once again be hot and sunny and the football World Cup moving into the knockout stages, UK distributors face a challenge on two fronts this weekend.

New openers are relatively sparse, and Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom could regain its weekend box office crown from Warner Bros’ heist comedy Ocean’s 8. The former dropped 55% last weekend with £3.2m, while the latter opened with a £2.3m Fri-Sun period (boosted by four days of previews to a total of £4.3m...

Strand Releasing has acquired all North American rights to Camille Vidal-Naquet’s feature debut

“Sauvage” which world premiered at Cannes’s Critics Week.

Felix Maritaud, who stars in the film as a 22-year old gay male prostitute in free fall, won the best actor prize at Critics’ Week. Maritaud previously starred in Robin Campillo’s Cannes’s Grand Jury prize-winning “(Bpm) Beats Per Minute).”

Besides exploring the world of male prostitution, “Sauvage” also tells the story of an unrequited love between Maritaud and a fellow hustler.

“We’re thrilled to be working again with Pyramide and to have this amazing discovery by a first time feature filmmaker is a revelation. Both director and actor make this such an stunning film that best reflects the kinds of films that we strive to acquire and bring to American audiences,” said Strand Releasing’s topper Marcus Hu who negotiated the deal along with...

New Wave godmother Agnès Varda has been laden with any number of honors and tributes in recent years, but she hasn’t received a better one, albeit indirectly so, than “Sauvage.” Even the title of Camille Vidal-Naquet’s tough but invigorating debut feature recalls the unmoored, asphalt-pounding energy of Varda’s seminal 1985 character study “Vagabond,” though the feral human subject here is a gay male prostitute, as hardened by the elements and the travails of his profession as he is vulnerable to them. Played with potent, unpredictable abandon by Félix Maritaud, he’s a protagonist you fear and fear for by turns, as he recklessly roams the streets, nightclubs and backwoods of Strasbourg in search of more than just the physical contact he’s freely selling. Though hardly revolutionary in form, the frank, sometimes violent queerness of its perspective makes his Cannes Critics’ Week entry genuinely bracing: Distributors inclined towards...

We caught up with Toothgrinder at the recent Monster Energy Fort Rock Festival which was held at Markham Park in Sunrise, Florida.

We spoke with the band about their favorite moments of “mayhem”, what is in-store for the band for the rest of 2018, as well as, what they enjoy “nerding” out about in their spare time!

Check out the full interview below:

The band has just premiered their new music video for the track “Vagabond” and New Jersey fivesome keep it classy — by dressing in some seriously snazzy suits— as they narrowly evade the long arm of the law in this cinematic clip. It’s pretty epic! You can view the video here!

The band is currently on tour with Bullet for My Valentine and Trivium.

For more information about Toothgrinder, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/toothgrinder.usa/

To watch more bands nerd out, check out our other “Nerding Out” interviews here.

A bevy of international productions are heading to Portugal, lured by its unique light, landscapes and a revamped 25%-30% cash-rebate scheme.

Terry Gilliam’s Cannes-closer “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” benefited from the incentives; upcoming productions include Ira Sachs’ “A Family Vacation,” starring Isabelle Huppert and Marisa Tomei, to shoot in Sintra and produced by Said Ben Said and Luis Urbano.

“The new scheme gives me greater chances to work with directors such as Ira Sachs,” Urbano says. “But for me, it’s important that the projects have an organic link with the locations.”

With its warm climate, beaches and long daylight hours, Portugal is positioning itself as the “California of Europe” — with a booming tourism industry, start-up culture and high-profile events such as the Web Summit.

In 2017, Portugal experimented with a 20%-25% tax rebate scheme, a minimum €1 million ($1.1 million) production spend and supported four projects, including “Don Quixote.

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.

Metrograph

Retrospectives on Akira Kurosawa and Terence Stamp are underway.

Wong and Lynch play in “Visionary Form.”

Quad Cinema

Hoo-ah! “Pacino’s Way” looks at one of our greatest actors in his best and not-best work.

Film Forum

All ::checks runtime:: eight hours of Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day have been restored.

Michaël Dudok de Wit on Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli: "He's very much into symbolism, metaphors and the subtle emotions." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The French Institute Alliance Française in New York in their latest CinéSalon series is honouring actresses who have won the César Award. Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut's 10-César award-winning The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro - introduced by Anne-Katrin Titze on February 13 at 4:00pm); Sandrine Bonnaire in Agnès Varda's Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi), and Isabelle Huppert (Oscar-nominated for her performance) in Paul Verhoeven's Elle are the upcoming Best Actress: A César-Winner Showdown films to be shown.

Michaël Dudok de Wit with Anne-Katrin Titze on Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: "It's basically fairy tales and ghost stories." Photo: Natascha Bodemann

Michaël Dudok de Wit's (César and Oscar-nominated and Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize winner) debut feature The Red Turtle,...

Michaël Dudok de Wit on Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli: "He's very much into symbolism, metaphors and the subtle emotions." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The French Institute Alliance Française in New York in their latest CinéSalon series is honouring actresses who have won the César Award. Catherine Deneuve in François Truffaut's 10-César award-winning The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro - introduced by Anne-Katrin Titze on February 13 at 4:00pm); Sandrine Bonnaire in Agnès Varda's Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi), and Isabelle Huppert (Oscar-nominated for her performance) in Paul Verhoeven's Elle are the upcoming Best Actress: A César-Winner Showdown films to be shown.

Michaël Dudok de Wit with Anne-Katrin Titze on Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: "It's basically fairy tales and ghost stories." Photo: Natascha Bodemann

Michaël Dudok de Wit's (César and Oscar-nominated and Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize winner) debut feature The Red Turtle,...

Black LevelNot too long ago, a colleague chastised me, blind-item style, for writing about a film festival based on the use of screeners instead of going to the festival and attending the event in person. (In current parlance, I was “subtweeted,” although not on Twitter.) The argument was that by conducting my film criticism in “armchair mode,” I was missing out on lively discussion, camaraderie, and a good deal of atmospheric context that makes a festival more than just a collection of individual films. (Whether or not any given film is necessarily improved by having a discussion with its maker, particularly if critics are supposed to remain relatively objective in our evaluations, is an open question.) However, it occurred to me that, before any given film exhibition or festival, the works contained therein exist as precisely that: just a collection of individual films. It’s only through selection and programming...