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Dustin Pittman with Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman holding up New York After Dark

In the first instalment of our conversation with photographer extraordinaire, Dustin Pittman, and music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, we start out with Gloria Swanson at her apartment (star of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard opposite William Holden), the early days with Danny Fields, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Mick Jagger (at Madison Square Garden), Patricia Field, Sex And The City, Susan Seidelman, Halston and the Halstonettes, Diana Vreeland, Liza Minnelli and US First Lady Betty Ford at Studio 54, the Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren connection to Mariann Marlowe and Frankie Savage’s Ian’s, staying with The Pretenders in London, Lucy Sante and her books, the shop 99, Max’s Kansas City, Ungaro’s, Régine’s, The Odeon, Lutèce or La Grenouille, and Dustin Pittman: New York...

Susan Seidelman on the Sex And The City pilot she directed: “The opening line of the script is “Once upon a time …” The opening starts off as a happy fairy tale and then it gets dark.”

In the first instalment with Susan Seidelman on her memoir, Desperately Seeking Something (St. Martin’s Press), we were joined by music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, who over 40 years ago worked with Susan during the late stages of the editing process for her début feature film Smithereens (which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982), starring Susan Berman opposite Richard Hell and Brad Rijn.

In the second instalment Susan Seidelman discusses Dianne Wiest, Emily Lloyd, and Brenda Vaccaro in Cookie, her Sex And The City pilot, friendship and fashion, fairy tales and their dark side, Lina Wertmüller, the passing of Mark Blum, and the lack of female role models in.

Our latest review of new and recent books about (or connected to) cinema includes an extraordinary look at transness in film; memoirs from Griffin Dunne, Jon Chu, and Susan Seidelman; and several new books on music, highlighted by the latest from the great Steven Hyden. Plus, we run down some noteworthy novels worth checking out before the summer’s end. Let’s hold on to the season a bit longer, shall we?

Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema by Willow Maclay and Caden Gardner (Repeater)

The world of cinema has been in dire need of a book like Corpses, Fools, and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema. It is no exaggeration to say that this study of transness in film––from the silent era to more recent works like Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca and Jane Schoenbrum’s We’re All...

Im Rahmen des Förderprogramms Filmerbe hat die Ffa aktuell rund 2,1 Mio. Euro. für die Restaurierung und Digitalisierung von Filmen aus zehn Jahrzehnten bewilligt. Der Schwerpunkt liegt diesmal auf dem Experimentalfilm. Unter den geförderten Filmen ist auch ein Oscar-nominierter Kurzfilm aus der „Erotic Tales“-Reihe.

Die Digitalisierung des Oscar-nominierten Kurzfilms „Der flämische Meister“ aus der „Erotic Tales“-Reihe wird aktuell von der Ffa gefördert (Credit: Ziegler Film)

Für die Restaurierung und Digitalisierung von mehr als 70 Filmen aus zehn Jahrzehnten hat die Ffa im Rahmen ihres Förderprogramms „Filmerbe“ aktuell Mittel in einer Gesamthöhe von rund 2,1 Mio. Euro bewilligt.

Der Schwerpunkt der aktuellen Förderrunde liegt nach Angaben der Ffa mit 25 Filmen im Bereich Experimentalfilm. Mehrfach auf der Förderliste stehen Filmemacher wie Ottomar Domnick, Werner Nekes, Michael Brynntrup, Claudia von Alemann, Aysun Bademsoy und Klaus Lemke. Digitalisiert werden u.a. auch zehn Filme der von Ziegler Film produzierten Reihe „Erotic Tales“ aus den Jahren...

While some of us often dream of labyrinthine houses and ’80s horror icons who invite you to skateboard with them down at the local park (me), Rosanna Arquette is having night fantasies about starring in a sequel to Susan Seidelman’s 1985 comedic drama Desperately Seeking Susan. Arquette played Roberta Glass in the film alongside Madonna as Susan, with Aidan Quinn playing Dez. The cult classic focuses on a bored New Jersey suburban homemaker whose fascination with a free-spirited woman she has read about in the personal columns leads to her getting mistaken for the woman herself. While discussing the film on Anna Smith’s Girls On Film Podcast, Arquette said she often thinks about what happened to the film’s lookalike duo.

“I always had a fantasy about what happened to them?” Arquette said about the character she plays in the movie alongside Madonna, who made her acting debut in the film.

Susan Seidelman’s enduring breakout hit Desperately Seeking Susan turns 40 next year, and Rosanna Arquette, one of the film’s stars, has said she still has hypothetical dreams of revisiting the pic in a sequel.

Speaking on film critic and journalist Anna Smith’s popular Girls On Film Podcast, Arquette said the thought of returning to the feature popped into her mind because sequels are now frequently being produced.

“I always had a fantasy about what happened to them?” she said of the character she plays in the pic alongside Madonna, who made her acting debut in the film. “Who are they now? It would be so great to make that movie. And see where everybody ends up. Do Dez [Aidan Quinn’s character] and her stay together? What happens to them?”

Directed by Seidelman from a screenplay by Leora Barish, Desperately Seeking Susan tells the story of Roberta (Arquette...

Susan Seidelman with Anne-Katrin Titze and music producer/99 Records founder Ed Bahlman: “Music has always been important in my movies.”

In the first instalment with Susan Seidelman on her memoir, Desperately Seeking Something (St. Martin’s Press), and her career as a filmmaker, we start out discussing the jacket choices for Susan Berman, Madonna, Ann Magnuson (Frankie in Making Mr. Right with John Malkovich), and Emily Lloyd.

Susan Berman as Wren in Smithereens and Madonna as Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan

We move on to the influence of Jacques Rivette’s Celine And Julie Go Boating, her love of Billy Wilder films, being named after...

It’s New York City, 1989. Susan Seidelman is in the delivery room, in labor with her son. “Siskel and Ebert” plays on the TV, and in between contractions, the two critics are tearing apart her new movie “She-Devil.” “Watching them review my film literally with the doctor’s hand inside of me telling me to push was very strange,” Seidelman recalls.

That surreal scene is just one of the memorable moments the trailblazing director recounts in “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls.” By turns reflective and celebratory, the book covers the surprises and setbacks of a career carved out at a time when women filmmakers were a rarity.

When Seidelman first realized she could aspire to become a movie director, she could barely find a role model. Outside of Elaine May, there was only a small handful of women directing. But Seidelman kept at it,...

When Susan Seidelman first decided she wanted to become a filmmaker, she didn’t have any guidebooks to help the Philadelphia native on her chosen journey. With her new autobiography, “Desperately Seeking Something,” she hopes to change that.

“When I would read books about what it was like directing, it was John Ford or John Houston or Alfred Hitchcock, these guys writing from a very male perspective,” she told IndieWire during a recent interview. “I had to kind of figure stuff out for myself, so I thought it might be nice to write a memoir about what my experience was like, but also with advice for the next generation, the next few generations, hopefully.”

Seidelman’s book, out this week, charts her wild — and incredibly varied — ride through indie filmmaking (like taking her debut film “Smithereens” all the way to Cannes), keen casting (she gave Madonna her first big role...

With prominent supporting roles in classics like “A League of Their Own” and “Dick Tracy,” as well as the lead in the screen adaptation of the musical “Evita,” Madonna’s film career is well-established, but might never have happened without her star turn in the 1985 cult comedy “Desperately Seeking Susan.” A modern farce set in the scuzzy beauty of ‘80s New York City, the film follows a straight-laced housewife and a bohemian drifter who become intertwined in a criminal plot involving a pair of stolen earrings. While the film is led by actress Roseanna Arquette, it quickly became known as the “Madonna movie,” with her character’s fashion sense — which mirrored Madonna’s own — and her free-spirit energy coming to define the popular culture of the era.

“Everyone’s concern was to find the right actor for the role of Susan,” wrote the film’s director, Susan Seidelman, in her memoir,...

Susan Seidelman's 1985 comedy "Desperately Seeking Susan" is about an unhappy housewife named Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) who notices that two people appear to be communicating through mutually placed personal ads in her local newspaper. The correspondents are "Jim" and "Susan," and Roberta becomes involved in their progressing print-only drama. Audiences also see that Susan (Madonna) is an itinerant drifter who is having an affair with a mobster. She is involved in a crime drama of her own. All the same, Roberta manages to see a meeting between Susan and Jim from afar and then buys some of Susan's clothes after Susan sells them to a thrift store.

Naturally, through some exciting contrivances, Roberta is not only mistaken for Susan, but she hits her head and contracts amnesia, soon believing that she, too, is Susan. It's an exciting, high-concept comedy that introduced Madonna to the world and was inspired by Jacque...

Throughout the early 2000s, the rock ‘n’ roll film festival “Don’t Knock the Rock” was one of the highlights of any L.A.-based cinephile’s year, an impeccably assembled program of movies, live performances, and panels celebrating the intersection between rock ‘n’ roll and cinema. Created by writer-director Allison Anders and music supervisor Tiffany Anders, “Don’t Knock the Rock” was beloved for its determination to showcase difficult-to-see music documentaries and for the breadth and depth of its programming.

The festival last graced L.A. screens in 2016, but now it’s returning to Hollywood via the American Cinematheque with a line-up that’s one of the best ever. From May 23-27, “Don’t Knock the Rock” will screen an eclectic mix of documentaries, music-themed narrative films, and essential retrospective programs at the Cinematheque’s Los Feliz venue, with an added virtual component that will stream from May 23-July 31. Among the...

In 2004, Rolling Stone launched its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. Tabulated from a massive vote that had artists, industry figures, and critics weighing in, the list has been a source of conversation, inspiration, and controversy for two decades. It’s one of the most popular, influential — and argued-over — features the magazine has ever done.

So we set out to make it even bigger, better, and fresher. In 2021, we completely overhauled our 500 Songs list, with a whole new batch of voters from all over the music map. Our new podcast,...

Ron Nyswaner will soon be traveling to New York to reunite with his Writers Guild of America East fellows for a grand occasion. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter, producer and showrunner has been selected to receive the Walter Bernstein Award at the 76th Writers Guild Awards at New York’s Edison Ballroom on April 14.

The honor — named after the late screenwriter who was blacklisted for his political views only to persevere and get his career back on track with such credits as Fail-Safe, Semi-Tough and Yanks — is presented to writers “who have demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery a willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity,” per the organization.

Nyswaner has been doing that for pretty much his entire career. A prime example is Jonathan Demme’s 1993 film Philadelphia. Penned by Nyswaner, the Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington-starrer was the first major Hollywood film to dramatize the real-world...

Patrick Swayze in 1989's Road House (United Artists) and Jake Gyllenhaal in 2024's Road House (Amazon MGM Studios)Image: The A.V. Club

Got Road House? This month Amazon’s Prime Video has two versions of the action movie: the 1989 original starring Patrick Swayze at peak Swayze-ness and the 2024 Doug Liman...

Images of the 2023 National Film Registry selections

Home Alone, Love & Basketball, Apollo 13, 12 Years a Slave, and The Nightmare Before Christmas are among the 25 films chosen to be preserved by the Library of Congress National Film Registry. 2023’s selection also includes Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Lady and the Tramp, Desperately Seeking Susan, and Fame.

“Films are an integral piece of America’s cultural heritage, reflecting stories of our nation for more than 125 years. We are proud to add 25 diverse films to the National Film Registry as we preserve our history through film,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “We’re grateful to the film community for collaborating with the Library of Congress in our goal to preserve the heritage of cinema for generations to come.”

The new additions date back to 1921 and bring the total number of films included in the registry to 875. According to the Library of Congress,...

The Library of Congress announced the 25 features joining the National Film Registry for 2023, with titles including “12 Years a Slave,” “Home Alone,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Selected films must be more than 10 years old and are selected each year for their cultural, historic or aesthetic significance to preserve the film heritage of the U.S.

The Library of Congress is not responsible for the physical preservation of the titles selected — many have already been preserved by copyright holders, filmmakers or other archives. For those that haven’t yet been preserved, the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center works to make sure it will be — through ventures with other archives or studios or through its own preservation program.

The selected films encompass more than 100 years of history, including the earliest title of this year’s additions — the 1921 educational film “A Movie Trip Through Filmland.”

Hollywood studio...

Just in time for the holidays, Chris Columbus’ Home Alone and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas have been unwrapped with 23 other cinematic sparklers for entry into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, it was announced Wednesday.

Among those also voted in: Dinner at Eight (1933), the seventh film from director George Cukor to be selected for preservation; Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985); John Sayles’ Matewan (1987); James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991); Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993); Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995); Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball (2000) and Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000).

Then, there are the films with music central to their core: Lady and the Tramp (1955), Cruisin’ J-Town (1975), Passing Through (1977), Fame (1980) and the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet From Stardom (2013).

This year’s picks span the years 1921 (the Kodak educational film A Movie Trip Through Filmland) to 2013 (20 Feet From Stardom and the lone Oscar...

We ranked the 100 best movies of the ‘80s, and listed our favorite performances, scores, and anime of the decade. We interviewed Charles Burnett about his compromised masterpiece “My Brother’s Wedding,” Susan Seidelman about bringing a new kind of woman to the big screen, “Buddies” actor David Schachter about the first movie to tackle AIDS head-on, and went deep with Hal Hartley on the making of “The Unbelievable Truth.” Michael Giacchino waxing poetic on “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Griffin Dunne reflecting on “After Hours?” The story of the Sundance Institute from the people who brought it to life? A true Day One exclusive.

We ran essays about the synth invasion of Hollywood scores, the uncomfortably comedic role that consent played in ’80s comedies, the birth of the steadicam, the ending of “Fatal Attraction,” and — of course — why “Streets of Fire” should’ve been the biggest rock musical of our lifetimes.

“I wanted to tell stories about people who I wanted to watch on screen,” says Susan Seidelman, the director behind a number of landmark ‘80s films that range from the fearless punk drama “Smithereens” to the Madonna-led classic “Desperately Seeking Susan.” It was never much of a mystery as to who those people were: Over the course of a career that would continue to shape American culture for the rest of the 20th century and beyond (later credits include the pilot for “Sex and the City”), Seidelman has consistently focused her sharp lens on the changing place of women in American society, and the work she made in the 1980s helped fundamentally reshape our national self-image in ways that are still being felt today.

Seidelman came to the cinema after studying fashion at Drexel University, where a film appreciation class had reawakened the fierce love for genre films that...

The Writers Lab, supported by Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, has revealed its ninth annual batch of participants.

With a devotion to developing scripted content written by women over the age of 40, the Lab, produced with New York Women in Film & Television, is known for its commitment to elevating the work of women screenwriters through mentorship, advocacy and exposure.

The participants of The Writers Lab 2023 are Louisa Kendrick Burton (“The Charge”), Shari Lynette Carpenter (“Translate”), Helena Cho (“The Last Buddha”), Marya Cohn (“Hurricane Season”), Lesley Fera (“Inconceivable”), Brooke Hemphill (“Apotcalypse”), Justina Ireland (“Bleeding Kansas”), Tricia Lee (“Good Chance”), Betsy Nagler (“Priceless”), Lisa Ramirez and Michele Noble (“Fifty”), Sarah Sinclair (“The Stratford Wife”) and Jill Twiss (“Bee”).

“Women over 40 make up 25% of the world population, and women over 50 control $19 billion, yet this demographic remains ignored by Hollywood and streamers. AI won’t change that — only women will,” said co-founder Elizabeth Kaiden.

It was more than a little heartening to see Roger Corman paid tribute by Quentin Tarantino at Cannes’ closing night. By now the director-producer-mogul’s imprint on cinema is understood to eclipse, rough estimate, 99.5% of anybody who’s touched the medium, but on a night for celebrating what’s new, trend-following, and manicured it could’ve hardly been more necessary. Thus I’m further heartened seeing the Criterion Channel will host a retrospective of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations running eight films and aptly titled “Grindhouse Gothic,” though I might save the selections for October.

Centerpiece, though, is a hip hop series including Bill Duke’s superb Deep Cover, Ghost Dog, and numerous documentaries––among them Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, making Michael Rapaport a Criterion-approved auteur. Ten films starring Kay Francis and 21 Eurothrillers round out series; streaming premieres include the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita,...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Basket Case"

Where You Can Stream It: The Criterion Channel, Tubi, Kanopy, Screambox, Arrow

The Pitch: Backed by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a group of scattered New York artists gathered in a room sometime in 1974 to talk. Their goal was to assemble a loosely organized art collective that would remain in artistic control of its own exhibitions and its own cable TV station. The resulting collective was called Collaborative Projects, or Colab for short. Colab proceeded to put on public variety performances with names like "Income and Wealth Show," "The Batman Show," and "Just Another A**hole Show." The Colab also sponsored a series of feature films that came to be known as the No Wave movement.

British author Fay Weldon, best known for “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” and “The Cloning of Joanna May,” has died. She was 91.

Weldon’s agent tweeted a family statement on Wednesday. “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023.” A cause of death was not revealed.

Fay Weldon – Family Announcement.

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (Cbe), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023. pic.twitter.com/1nsp4qHlHv

— Georgina Capel Assoc (@GeorginaCapel) January 4, 2023

Weldon’s works were adapted numerous times for the screen. “The Life and Loves of a She-Devil” (1983), where a woman who loses her husband to a romance novelist goes to extreme lengths to make their lives a misery, was adapted both as a multiple BAFTA-winning BBC...

William Lustig's 1980 film "Maniac" is one of the sweatiest, most brutal, most unpleasant grindhouse horror films of its decade on either side. Co-screenwriter Joe Spinell plays Frank Zito, a serial killer with a peculiar M.O. When he encounters his victims, mostly young women, he declares them to be too beautiful, with beauty being punishable by death. He then strangles his victims, strips them, scalps them (!), and carries his "souvenirs" back to his cramped New York apartment where he dresses mannequins in the clothes and "wigs." The film's gore effects were provided by horror movie maestro Tom Savini, who had previously worked on notable horror classics like "Friday the 13th," and with George Romero on "Dawn of the Dead" and "Martin." Savini would also go on to direct the 1990 remake of "Night of the Living Dead." 

"Maniac" is bleak and unpleasant, but may also serve as the Platonic ideal of an exploitation movie.

At the start of the shoot, she was a no one. By the end, she was a superstar. As the 80s cult classic starring Madonna as a gorgeous grifter returns, director Susan Seidelman recalls capturing the zeitgeist on a shoestring budget

Given that it launched the film careers of the then little known Rosanna Arquette, the entirely unknown Aidan Quinn and some singer called Madonna, 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan still stakes a good claim to be one of the canniest casting jobs of all time. And that’s before you get to the then even less known supporting actors: Laurie Metcalf as Arquette’s tacky sister-in-law! John Turturro as the cheesy club Mc! John Lurie barely visible as a saxophone-playing neighbour! Giancarlo Esposito in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role as a street salesman!

It’s an astonishing roll call of future talent from when they were still young and hungry in Manhattan.

Madonna memorably made her film debut in the 1985 comedy “Desperately Seeking Susan”, and a new interview with the movie’s director suggests that she has the son of the head of the movie’s studio to thank for it.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter‘s “It Happened in Hollywood” podcast, “Desperately Seeking Susan” director Susan Seidelman reveals the convoluted circumstances that led to Madonna’s casting in the film, in which she starred alongside Rosanna Arquette.

According to Seidelman, execs at Orion Pictures, which produced the film, was looking to give the role of hip NYC club kid Susan to a relatively unknown actor on the rise, with the likes of Kim Cattrall and Melanie Griffith considered. However, Seidelman kept hearing buzz about Madonna, who was then on the cusp of topping the pop charts with such hits as “Into the Groove” and “Like a Virgin” and...

Click here to read the full article.

It was Madonna’s first starring role in a movie. And many say it is still her best.

The film was 1985’s Desperately Seeking Susan, a hip comedy of errors set in the downtown New York club scene.

Madonna plays Susan, a scenester trailed by the mob after stealing a pair of valuable Egyptian earrings. Rosanna Arquette plays Roberta, a bored New Jersey housewife looking for a thrill who follows Susan after spotting her name in a personal ad.

According to the film’s director, Susan Seidelman, the studio, Orion, was eager to give a rising star the role of Susan, with everyone from Kim Cattrall to Melanie Griffith considered.

Seidelman, however, kept hearing about a charismatic singer named Madonna through downtown New York circles and was eager to give her a shot.

“I wasn’t that afraid to work with a musician,...

Despite the accolades, sometimes a film that we are big on and seemingly has a very bright future ahead will, for a variety of reasons, fail to connect with U.S distributor gatekeepers. A play of words on the 1985 Susan Seidelman film, our Desperately Seeking Studio feature is our way of putting the spotlight on one unique gem that is so deserving of connecting with audiences. It’s our way of saying, “Hey, it’s not too late, what about this?!” This month we put the focus back on: Agustina San Martín‘s To Kill the Beast.…...

Not long after attending my first Cannes Film Festival almost 35 years ago, I was still green and naïve enough to ask long-time Cannes attendees why the famed French fest held such a powerful place in the pecking order of international film gatherings. The late Richard Corliss, Time magazine’s peerless and beloved film critic, answered warmly and succinctly, with his own more worldly query: “Would you rather be in Germany in the winter or the South of France in the spring?”

Corliss had a point, but in the decades since I’ve tucked my own couple of dozen Cannes fests under my belt, I’ve compiled my own list of reasons why Cannes remains the one film festival that people who’ve never been to a film festival have heard about and wish they could go to, and know that if a film has scored there, it must be worth their time.

America has officially celebrated Women’s History month since the 1980s when a feminist surge for equal job opportunities and education blossomed out of local celebrations and the International Women’s Day holiday, as well as Women’s History Week. And for the entire month of March, the streaming service HBO Max is celebrating Women’s History Month with programming devoted entirely to stories about women.

HBO Max is stacked with movies and shows that show complex female leads, and along with their spotlight page offerings, HBO is offering a first ever in-app trivia experience to celebrate the event. The HBO Max Women’s History Month Trivia tray allows fans to discover entertainment milestones that all involve women. To reveal the answer, viewers can simply click or tap the tile.

HBO Max has curated a list of films, TV shows and documentaries that reflect empowering and challenging female characters, overlooked and underrated performances,...

Sally Kellerman, who was Oscar nominated for her supporting role as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s “Mash” feature film, died Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 84.

Her publicist Alan Eichler confirmed her death, and her daughter Claire added that she had been suffering from dementia for the past five years.

Among her other roles were a cameo in Altman’s “The Player,” a professor in Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School” and a Starfleet officer in the “Star Trek” episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The willowy blonde actress with the characteristically throaty voice appeared in two Altman films in 1970; the other was the more experimental “Brewster McCloud,” in which she starred with Bud Cort and Michael Murphy. In this film, which did not have a conventional narrative, Kellerman played Louise, the mother of Cort’s bewinged character, Brewster.

She next starred opposite Alan Arkin...

Welcome to this week’s “Just for Variety.”

Kate Beckinsale is “highly” doubtful that another “Underworld” will be made, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t up for playing Selene in a sixth movie. “I really wanted them to do an ‘Underworld’-‘Blade’ mashup. What a duo that would be,” she told me at the premiere of her action thriller “Jolt” at the San Vicente Bungalows. “I would definitely do that, but I think they just wanted to reboot ‘Blade’ as ‘Blade’ so they didn’t go for it.” Beckinsale also revealed that it wouldn’t be hard for her to slip into Selene’s signature black leather pants because she still has a pair. “I know exactly where they are,” she said. “You never know who you want to impress.”

…

Cynthia Erivo has not only never played the Hollywood Bowl — she’s never even been to the...

The founder and program director of the Etheria Film Festival, Heidi Honeycutt, discusses her favorite films from women filmmakers with Josh and Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Destroyer (1988)

Army of the Dead (2021)

The Howling (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine recommendation

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Wonder Woman (2017)

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – Ed Neumeier’s trailer commentary

The Wild Bunch (1969) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Joe Dante’s review

The Women (1939) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

The Opposite Sex (1956) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Women (2008)

Halloween (1978) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary, Alex Kirschenbaum’s series and timeline power rankings, Randy Fuller’s wine recommendation

Valley Girl (1983) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Valley Girl (2020)

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man (2006)

Mandy (2018)

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) – Karyn Kusama’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Clueless (1995)

Legally Blonde (2001)

The Craft (1996)

Runaway...

Maya Singer and Rebecca Hall in Morgan Spector and Maya Singer’s Mother!!, a Tribeca Film Festival highlight

Three highlights of the 20th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival With/In program of shorts (with music by Mark Adler) are Jonathan Cake’s life-affirming Touching, starring Julianne Nicholson, Iggy Cake, Phoebe Cake, and Jonathan; Bart Freundlich’s Intersection, starring Julianne Moore, Talia Balsam, and Don Cheadle, and Morgan Spector and Maya Singer’s Mother!!, starring Rebecca Hall, Maya Singer, and Morgan Spector.

During my conversation with Maya Singer, who is also the screenwriter of Mother!!, we spoke about how Bong Joon-ho’s Mother and Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! inspired the title Mother!!, formative fantasies, such as Madonna in Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan and Anne of Green Gables, consulting cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, and the work of Batsheva Hay.

Anne-Katrin Titze with Maya Singer on the title: “I was like,...

For a certain generation of women, director Susan Seidelman’s second feature, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” is a formative text, an indelible record of New York in the ‘80s, from Madonna’s iconic hair bow to Rosanna Arquette’s spirited performance as the lead. With its cast of New York underground habitués, and fizzy pace set to the tune of Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” “Desperately Seeking Susan” was a fashion-forward change of pace from the teen comedies and slick action fare of the time.

Seidelman’s first feature, the scrappy microbudget “Smithereens,” shocked everyone when it was selected as one of the first American independent films to be accepted into official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. With a cast that included proto-punk rocker Richard Hell, the 1982 “Smithereens” captured the East Village in all its grungy, pre-gentrification glory, and has become a cult classic.

A die-hard New Yorker, Seidelman never felt comfortable in Hollywood.

Film transformations aren’t all about eyebrow-plucking and wearing a nice dress – they’re also about flying and prosthetics

Out with the old, in with the new: suburban housewife puts on groovy jacket and learns that life isn’t all picket fences and ironing. In Susan Seidelman’s 1985 comedy, bored Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) lives vicariously through enigmatic drifter Susan (Madonna), whose messages she reads in the personal ads. Her obsession leads to an appropriation of Susan’s lacy, trashy aesthetic – and liberation.

Amazon Prime Video (£)...

Actor known for his film roles in Desperately Seeking Susan and Crocodile Dundee

The actor Mark Blum, who has died aged 69 from complications of the coronavirus, gave a memorable performance in the screwball comedy Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) as a harried, unfaithful hot-tub salesman plunged into New York’s grungy bohemian underbelly when his wife goes missing. Searching for her, he teams up with the devil-may-care Susan, played by Madonna in her first major film role, and is exposed to her wayward, outrageous lifestyle.

Blum’s screen test with the singer followed a similar pattern. After first mistaking her for a bike messenger in the waiting room, he was invited by the director Susan Seidelman to rehearse a scene in which their characters are dancing and talking in a nightclub.

Mark Blum with Madonna in Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan

Mark Blum died yesterday in New York at the age of 69 from coronavirus complications. He starred opposite Rosanna Arquette, Aidan Quinn, and Madonna in Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan and had a recurring role as the character Union Bob in the series Mozart In The Jungle, created by Roman Coppola, Alex Timbers, Paul Weitz, and Jason Schwartzman. His film work includes Peter Faiman’s Crocodile Dundee and he was a constant presence on the Off Broadway stage, in plays such as Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery.

Blum was the Director of the Uta Hagen Institute’s Hagen Core Training at Hb Studio. On Tuesday the theatre community lost four-time Tony Award winning playwright Terrence McNally to Covid-19.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio just announced at his press conference that there are now 21,873 coronavirus positives and 365 deaths reported in the city.

CNN premiered the first episode in Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s six-part summer series “The Movies” Sunday night, 84 minutes devoted to the 1980s. Subsequent installments cover the 90s and post-2000 and then turn back to the 70s, 60s, and the bulk of core film history — 1930-1950 — crammed into the finale. Silent film, it seems, was not worth a mention.

First of all, this series is not targeted at erudite cinephiles who know their film history. Any self-respecting TCM watcher is too sophisticated for this breezy look at “The Movies.” Clearly the producers are trying to draw younger audiences who might be vaguely familiar with some of the movies here, from Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” to Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.” (Both directors are on hand to comment.) Snobby old Hollywood lovers sometimes forget that for today’s 18-year-old film fan devouring classic films made before they were born,...

Celine Danhier with Joel Coen and Ethan Coen at the table behind us at The Odeon on the evolution of Blank City: "James Nares said 'Let me call Jim Jarmusch.' It was really like that. And then at the same time I had the music scenes and I interviewed Pat Place." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Celine Danhier's all-hands-on-deck Blank City, edited to perfection by Vanessa Roworth, enters the world of the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression. We see and hear about the work of Bette Gordon, Casandra Stark Mele, Charlie Ahearn, Michael Oblowitz, Nick Zedd, Sara Driver, Susan Seidelman, Maripol, Patti Astor, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Vivienne Dick, Vincent Gallo, John Lurie, Steve Buscemi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lizzie Borden, Amos Poe, John Waters, James Nares, Jim Jarmusch, Anders Grafstrom, Richard Kern, Ann Magnuson, James Chance, Lydia Lunch, Pat Place, Becky Johnston, Adele Bertei, Scott B, Tommy Turner, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Kemra Pfahler,...

In just two weeks, a cinematic haven will launch. After the demise of FilmStruck left cinephiles in a dark depression, The Criterion Channel has stepped up to the plate to launch their own separate service coming to the U.S. and Canada on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, iOS, and Android and Android TV devices. Now, after giving us a taste of what is to come with their Movies of the Week, they’ve unveiled the staggeringly great lineup for their first month.

Along with the Criterion Collection and Janus Films’ library of 1,000 feature films, 350 shorts, and 3,500 supplementary features–including trailers, introductions, behind-the-scenes documentaries, interviews, video essays, commentary tracks, and rare archival footage–the service will also house films from Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate, IFC Films, Kino Lorber, Cohen Media, Milestone Film and Video, Oscilloscope, Cinema Guild, Strand Releasing, Shout Factory, Film Movement,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGFinally, it’s here: Netflix’s trailer for their restoration and reconstruction of Orson Welles' final and previously unfinished The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich.A dreamy, sun-bathed trailer for Carlos Reygadas's Our Time, about a Mexican family that raises fighting bulls, and a young horse trainer who enters and disrupts their lives. The Venice-bound film is Reygadas's first since his 2012 Post Tenebras Lux. Behold, the official trailer for Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, cut with an erratic rhythm that blurs the line between violent bodily contortions and interpretive dance. The film has been acquired by Mubi to show in UK cinemas on November 16.The trailer for Rialto Pictures's new 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville's little-seen When You Read This Letter (1953). The film, which...

Everyone remembers the best among the scrappy 1980s films that started American “indie film” in earnest — particularly those over-stylized, wink-wink comedies by Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman, Alexandre Rockwell, and so on that were among the movement’s most influential early successes. Similarly, few could forget how much fun “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” were, revitalizing the crime-caper genre with wit and outsized directorial personality.

What we’d prefer to forget is just how many labored comedy quirkfests and effortfully wiseass capers the above films “inspired” for years afterward — wannabe movies straining for the same qualities without any original inspiration, failing to find their own voice while deliberately or unconsciously mimicking somebody else’s. The majority of these pale imitations wound up a blip on the Sundance Festival radar — if they were lucky — then were forgotten ever after.

Unfortunately, those happily buried cinematic memories come rolling back with the arrival of “Blue Iguana,...

Gr8ter Days Terence Stamp makes rare Us appearance to talk about this career and push his new memoir. The great actor is about to turn 80...

Tfe ...so he's still too young for this 100 Oldest Living Oscar Nominees list.

THR Movie attendance has been steadily rising in Russia but the UK and France remain the top European movie markets

/Film Hmmm, The upcoming Disney spectacle Nutcracker and the Four Realms will now have two directors credited after reshoots. Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger) will be credited after the original director Lasse Hallström

Vulture Director Susan Seidelman on her 80s NYC classics Smithereens and Desperately Seeking Susan 

Mnpp Luca Guadagnino has shown Suspiria to Quentin Tarantino who loved it

Moviemaker Paul Schrader on our selfish legacy and environmental disaster (Do Not Read If You Haven't Yet Seen First Reformed)

Playbill if you're in NYC in the second half of...

New York is the city that never sleeps, and with so many events and activities each week across all five boroughs, it can be hard to know what’s actually worthwhile. Here are the events New York City actors should have on their radars this week. “Movies With a View” returns with a female gaze.Movies With a View, the annual outdoor screening series, returns to Brooklyn Bridge Park beginning July 12, with a decidedly 2018 point of view. More specifically, every film selected for the series will be directed by a woman, beginning with the Susan Seidelman-helmed “Desperately Seeking Susan.” Ongoing through Aug. 30 every Thursday evening, other flicks include “Paris Is Burning,” “Bend it Like Beckham,” and “Wonder Woman.” (Free) Spend Thursday in the park with Broadway.There is but one time of year during which Broadway and the outdoors come together and it’s back beginning July 12. Broadway in Bryant Park,...

Darya Zhuk talks about her film ’Crystal Swan’ which opens the East of the West competition on Saturday (June 30).

Director Darya Zhuk reveals why she wanted to return to the hopeful, optimistic time of 1990s Belarus for her debut film Crystal Swan which opens Karlovy Vary’s East of the West competition on Saturday (June 30).

Crystal Swan is about a young woman growing up in post-Soviet Belarus in the 1990s. Alina Nasibullina plays a wannabe DJ who dreams of moving to the Us but makes a tiny error on her visa application throwing her plans into disarray. It is the...

It’s the 20th anniversary of “Sex and the City,” which debuted June 6, 1998, under lots of pressure. Pay cabler HBO needed a tentpole hit to replace its popular “The Larry Sanders Show,” which was ending after six seasons. Some pundits were skeptical about the new series, but in an April 27, 1998, interview with Variety, HBO exec Chris Albrecht predicted success: “It has a great female point of view and that’s something we don’t have a lot of.”

The series, created by Darren Star based on Candace Bushnell’s newspaper columns, centered on four women in their mid-30s and older, as they dealt with work, romance, sex, health, fashion and life. But the core of the show always remained the friendship among the quartet. It became a huge hit, and when “The Sopranos” debuted six months later, HBO got an unprecedented one-two punch, with comedy and drama series that...

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.

#16 — Mary Fisher, a frivolous romance novelist who steals the husband of a dowdy housewife.

John: For such a tepid and unruly film, She-Devil enjoys quite an outsized reputation. Considered by many to be the nadir of Streep’s early career and one of her worst performances, She-Devil is also a Streep turn that is often reblogged context-free online, which makes sense when one considers its outre, Gif-ready moments of ironic femininity and gaudy Real Housewives of Long Island aesthetic that some might consider ahead of its time. Having seen these images of Streep’s Mary Fisher before watching the film, I had anticipated fun kitsch or perhaps even smart camp. Roseanne’s film debut! Susan Seidelman with a budget! Meryl’s comedy vehicle to silence the critics! But these are promises that She-Devil most certainly does not keep.