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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSOver the weekend we lost two greats: Filmmaker George A. Romero, best known for inventing the modern version of all things zombie, and actor Martin Landau. Patton Oswalt has pointed out that a 19-year-old Romero worked as a pageboy on North by Northwest, Landau's second movie.The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has again added more names to its membership, and this latest batch includes even more unexpected additions from the world of international art cinema, including directors Pedro Costa, Lav Diaz, Ann Hui, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kira Muratova, Johnnie To and Athina Rachel Tsangari.Did you see that the lineup of the Locarno Film Festival has been announced? With a huge retrospective devoted to Cat People director Jacques Tourneur and a competition including new films by Wang Bing, F.J. Ossang, Ben Russell,...

American Anarchist centres on the life and work of William Powell, the notorious creator of The Anarchist Cookbook.

The compendium came out in 1971 and offered a DIY guide to bomb-making that went on to sell more than two million copies. Since then, Powell has struggled with guilt over his creation.

Gravitas Ventures will release the film in the first quarter of 2017.

Charlie Siskel's documentary American Anarchist has landed at Gravitas Ventures. The company secured worldwide rights to the Venice International Film Festival entry about The Anarchist Cookbook creator William Powell. The doc hits theaters and on demand the first quarter of 2017. "We are thrilled to collaborate with Charlie and his team on this excellent film," said Dan Fisher, Sr. Director of Acquisitions for Gravitas Ventures. "Equal parts global thriller and…...

Charlie Siskel tracks down the author of The Anarchist Cookbook, who after decades of denial tacitly accepts the damage caused by his epoch-defining text

Charlie Siskel, along with John Maloof, is responsible for Finding Vivian Maier, the documentary about the Chicago street photographer whose genius was only appreciated with the posthumous discovery of her archive. Now he has turned to another intriguing figure – the once marginal yet centrally important William Powell, author of the notorious, radical underground text The Anarchist Cookbook (1971). This was a book that combined standard-issue revolutionary rhetoric with deadly serious and very practical advice about how to make bombs. It has become a standard text, a locus classicus: but not with the revolutionary left, exactly. The book has been linked with almost every killing spree and mass shooting in the Us.

Related: After Kent State: 1970s anti-war student art – in pictures

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Exclusive: American Anarchist is a documentary about William Powell who, at age 19, wrote one of the most infamous books ever published: The Anarchist Cookbook. From Oscar nominated filmmaker Charlie Siskel (Finding Vivan Maier, Tosh.0), the doc will world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival which launches on August 31. Check out the trailer above in which Powell says he “grossly underestimated” the controversy his writing would provoke. The film has…...

I have no clue why Sean (Ty Hickson) messes with the titular book in Joel Potrykus‘ The Alchemist Cookbook. He doesn’t seem to care about money while living as a hermit inside a hidden trailer deep within the woods—bill collectors “no longer owning him”—so gold is out of the question. It might be for an elixir of immortality, his ritualistic incantations recalling satanic verse in search of dealing with a demonic presence that only pentagrams and dead animals hope to conjure. Why Sean plays with forces that push him beyond the boundaries of chemistry is ultimately beside the point. What his journey reveals is the slippery slope of sanity caused by isolation from humanity. Paranoia, anger, and fear arrive quickly; the only transmutation occurring is his.

The film’s title card mimics the cover of William Powell’s The Anarchist Cookbook, a publication brought to fruition as...

A Priest, A Rabbi and Your Mom Walk Into a Movie Theatre…

You might think that your Mom disapproves of all horror films on principle. At least that’s the stereotype: the wagging finger; the warning that horror films cause nightmares. But the truth is that this is merely a bit of parental judo, reverse psychology designed to push us to watching horror films, because nothing warns us and upholds the moral order like a horror film.

What are the elements of a horror film after all? There is a monster; there is a sense of danger (as critic Joe Bob Briggs puts it “Anyone can die at any time”); the deaths are usually gruesome; and there is usually a moral. If you think about it, fairy tales and horror films are not that far apart – they are even closer to one another in the fairy tales original Grimm-er forms,...

In an exclusive interview in this week's Newsweek, Powell talks to Tony Dokoupil about the origins of the Cookbook, his reinvention as a teacher of diplomats' children, and how he processes the unseemly acts tied to his name.

It's the original guide to "everything illegal," from pot loaf and hash cookies to tear gas, dynamite, and TNT. There are frank tips on demolition, surveillance, sabotage, and the gorier parts of hand-to-hand combat, including how to behead a man with piano wire and make a knife "slip off the rib cage and penetrate the heart." In the introduction, the then-teenage author makes clear his wish that the book be of more than just theoretical use. "I hold a sincere hope that it may stir some stagnant brain cells into action," he wrote.

Related story on The Daily Beast: Al Qaeda's Deadly New Nest

William Powell, author of The Anarchist Cookbook, succeeded all too well.

Everything you probably think about M.I.A. is wrong, in Bigger Than the Sound.

By James Montgomery

M.I.A.

Photo: Chris Weeks/ WireImage

"Hi, I'm Maya."

That's how M.I.A. — scourge of The New York Times, the U.S. Department of Immigration and oppressors the world over — introduces herself, and to be honest, it sort of catches me off guard. After all, she does not appear to be clutching a copy of "The Anarchist Cookbook," or covered in blood and gunpowder, or espousing the virtues of violent secessionism. She does not scan the skyline for black helicopters, or check the planters on the New York City rooftop where we've met for listening devices, or even mention the C.I.A., not even in passing. She does not strike me as particularly dangerous, paranoid, or ill-informed. Basically, she is just very tiny, with dainty fingers and windswept black hair and the kind of eyes you could drown in.

By Matt Singer

"He's Just Not That Into You" is a great title. Born from a "Sex in the City" episode, it's adorned a bestseller (by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo) and as a phrase has quickly wormed its way into the lexicon. Now it's got its own movie, too, opening this Friday and starring a slew of stars including Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson and Justin Long. What it does not have, at least in book form, is a story. "Hjntiy" is a dating advice book, a guide for women who can't get it through their heads that the dude they're interested in isn't reciprocating. It's long on helpful tips and sarcastic quips, but not necessarily on plot or character developments. That's an extra-heavy burden for the film's screenwriters, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, who must fashion an entire story that can...

Sophie Monk is aiming to break some hearts.

The Sex and Death 101 actress has signed on to star in the indie comedy Hardbreakers, which revolves around two hot single girls who navigate the Los Angeles dating scene.

Monk will play Lindsay Greene, an outgoing, fun and crazy 25-year-old who has been with a lot of guys.

Newcomer Leah Sturgis wrote the screenplay and will direct.

Robert Latham (The Anarchist Cookbook) is producing with Rock Galotti, whose spent the past 20 years as a weapons coordinator on such big ticket action films as Transformers and Mission: Impossible II.

Monk (Date Movie) is repped by APA and Ziffren Brittenham.