Resources for September 11, 2017

20th Century Women (USA: Mike Mills, 2016) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Bronstein, Ronald, et al. "Good Time." Film Comment Podcast (July 27, 2017) ["As Eric Hynes wrote in the cover story of our July/August issue, “At their best, the Safdies’ films don’t just mooch off the city’s story surplus—they also feed into it, contributing truly odd, activated extensions of urban life.” Their latest, Good Time, is no exception. In conversation with their lead actor Robert Pattinson, co-writer Ronald Bronstein, and Film Comment editor Nicolas Rapold at a special sneak preview, the filmmakers delineate and riff on the alchemic creation of a criminal anti-hero. Actively engaged in their native New York’s alternate (and everyday) realities, the Safdie Brothers trace the six-year long journey from the conception of to the making of Good Time—from a first encounter with Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song and binge-watched episodes of Cops to news of Richard Matt and David Sweat’s prison-break and the initial hard-core-addict look of Pattinson’s character."]

The Century of the Self (BBC Documentary: Adam Curtis, 2002)  ["To many in both business and government, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power is truly moved into the hands of the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How is the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interest?"]

Chan, Andrew, et al. "Musicals! The Podcast." Film Comment Podcast (May 16, 2017) ["There’s one alliterative movie musical that’s dominated the recent conversational limelight, but less frequently discussed is how it operates within the genre. In this spirit, Michael Koresky, Director of Editorial and Creative Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, uses La La Land as a starting point to delve into the form of the movie musical in his May/June Film Comment feature “Working It” As a second act, this week’s episode of the FC podcast expands the sample set of movie musicals—each panelist brings in a favorite classic musical, as well as a newer musical that pushes the form forward—to look at a wider variety of global cinemas, performance techniques, and ways of deploying music in the narrative."]

Deighan, Samm, et al. "The Ninth Configuration (1980)." The Projection Booth #323 (May 16, 2017) ["Written and directed by William Peter Blatty, The Ninth Configuration (1980) ... and was based on his novel Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane. The film stars Stacy Keach as Col. Hudson Kane, a new psychiatrist at an unusual retreat for men who have cracked up during the Vietnam War. Also at this fog shrouded castle is Captain Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), an astronaut who freaked out before his mission to the moon. The two men are at odds about the world, especially around the question of faith."]

Flores, Steven. "The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai." Cinema Axis (January 5, 2014)

Hancock, James and Steven Saunders. "The Cinema of Alexander Mackendrick." Wrong Reel #314 (September 2017)

Sorkin, Amy Davidson. "Another 9/11 Anniversary at Guantanamo, Amid Hurricane Irma." The New Yorker (September 1, 2017)

West, Steven. "The Ethics of Ambiguity." Philosophize This! (July 29, 2017) ["... Simone De Beauvoir and her book The Ethics of Ambiguity. There are some thinkers who are, from the very beginning, unambiguously identified as philosophers (e.g., Plato). There are others whose philosophical place is forever contested (e.g., Nietzsche); and there are those who have gradually won the right to be admitted into the philosophical fold. Simone de Beauvoir is one of these belatedly acknowledged philosophers. Identifying herself as an author rather than as a philosopher and calling herself the midwife of Sartre’s existential ethics rather than a thinker in her own right, Beauvoir’s place in philosophy had to be won against her word. That place is now uncontested. The international conference celebrating the centennial of Beauvoir’s birth organized by Julia Kristeva is one of the more visible signs of Beauvoir’s growing influence and status. Her enduring contributions to the fields of ethics, politics, existentialism, phenomenology and feminist theory and her significance as an activist and public intellectual is now a matter of record. Unlike her status as a philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir’s position as a feminist theorist has never been in question. Controversial from the beginning, The Second Sex’s critique of patriarchy continues to challenge social, political and religious categories used to justify women’s inferior status."]

Zirin, Dave. "Stand with NFL Star Michael Bennett, Who Refused to Be Silent About Racial Profiling." Democracy Now (September 8, 2017) ["As the National Football League begins its new season, one of its most outspoken players has revealed he was recently detained and assaulted by police in Las Vegas. Seattle Seahawks star Michael Bennett issued a statement on Twitter Wednesday, writing that an officer threatened to "blow my f****** head off" and that "Las Vegas police officers singled me out and pointed their guns at me for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time." The incident took place outside a boxing match last month in Las Vegas while police were responding to reported gunshots."]