NYFF Reveals 2021's Main Slate

by Jason Adams

Like a kid high on candy canes staring at the boxes under the tree on Christmas morning, wondering what wonders await, so go I, wild-eyed and very very awake now, ogling the just-announced roster of the New York Film Festival's "Main Slate" for 2021 (which runs from September 24 – October 10). Like three bears or bowls of porridge we'd already sized up the spectacular threesome that is Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth opening the fest, Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog closing it, with Pedro Almodovar's milky-eyed Parallel Mothers sandwiched in the Centerpiece between, but now... now! Now comes all the meat and fixins and I, for one, am full to burst. Droolin' over here, everybody!

NYFF is often framed as an also-ran when it comes to the full Festival Season since it doesn't get a ton of World Premieres -- most of these movies will have played at Toronto or Venice or heck even back to Sundance (I see you, Passing -- no really I already saw you and reviewed you right here) -- but as my much-loved hometown fest I don't care what's first, I care what's best, and the curation these folks do remains to my eye top-notch...

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I'll Link You Last

• AV Club Sue Mengers superagent biopic in the works with Jennifer Lawrence to star and Paolo Sorrentino behind the camera. You may recall that Sue Mengers got this treatment on Broadway already with the play "I'll Eat You Last" starring Bette Midler
• Collider in unexpected casting news Luiz Guzmán is the new Gomez Addams in a future live-action Netflix series spun off from The Addams Family
• MNPP the first poster for Parallel Mothers is never going to make it to the US
• Celebitchy Looks like Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander had a baby during those couple of years when neither of them were in the press or on the screen 

Gemma Chan, Beanie Feldstein, West Side Story's non-reopening on Broadway, South Park forever more, Clue memories, Zola tweets and more after the jump...

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Esther Williams @ 100: Neptune's Daughter

by Camila Henriques

As we continue with our celebration of Esther Williams's centennial, we're thrown into the story of "a girl, a guy and a swimsuit". All in all, that's an accurate summary of Neptune's Daughter, the 1949 film directed by Edward Buzell that paired the star with one of her frequent onscreen partners Ricardo Montalbán. Like other Williams efforts, the picture relies on her screen charisma to succeed, and, when it does it's pure magic.

It's a funny coincidence that her centennial comes as we're invaded by the Olympic spirit. Williams herself was never able to compete in the games. Her big shot came the year they were cancelled due to World War II, in 1940...

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A Room with a View Pt 1: A Florentine Summer

Occasionally we'll take a movie and baton pass it around the team and really dive in. If you missed past installments we've gone long and deep on Rebecca (1940), West Side Story (1961),  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Cabaret (1972), Silence of the Lambs (1991), Thelma & Louise (1991), Aladdin (1992) and A League of Their Own (1992).  

 

A ROOM WITH A VIEW
(a three part retrospective)
part 1 by Cláudio Alves

Ismael Merchant and James Ivory's breakthrough hit, A Room with a View, based on the 1908 novel by E.M. Forster marked the beginning of a new era of British costume pictures. It opened in both the UK and the US in the spring of 1986 (the year we're celebrating this month at The Film Experience) on its way to becoming a beloved modern classic.

The movie won the BAFTA for Best Film and was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Since it's currently streaming on both HBOMax and the Criterion Channel, it's a perfect time to revisit. Let's dive in...

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Locarno Diary #3: Phil Tippett, the "Mad God" of special effects

by Elisa Giudici

Being a prestigious European movie festival but not one of the crowded and powerful ones, Locarno is the perfect size to showcase the work of  artisans. Every year there are one or two guests who are legends in peculiar, unseen, less discussed niches of the movie industry. I am confident that meeting Phil Tippett, a legendary special effects creator, animator and supervisor, will be one of the most vivid memories of this edition of the festival.

Before Locarno and the opportunity to meet Tippett, I knew close to nothing about his career other than that he was a collaborator and close friend of Paul Verhoeven's. So much so, he said, that on the set of RoboCop they asked each other, with dry humour, who they were forced to be nice to...

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