Doc Corner: 'In My Blood It Runs'

By Glenn Dunks

It can be so good to see a filmmaker take a significant leap in their talents. Such a thrilling moment to realize that a director isn’t just capable of making good films, but great ones. I must say, I didn’t expect a film like In My Blood It Runs from Maya Newell. The Japanese-Australian filmmaker had previously made the cutely affecting Gayby Baby about the children of same-sex parents (Newell herself is a ‘gayby baby’), but nothing there would suggest a film of such cultural specificity as this.

It’s the sort of film that makes me so glad I watch Australian cinema more regularly than most (including my fellow nationals). I feel like I can easily say it’s one of the best documentaries this country has produced in recent years. A work of emphatic poignancy that speaks so much to this country’s institutionalized racism and its assimilationist ideals to the societal and cultural issues facing Australia’s indigenous populations.

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NYFF Opening Night: Lovers Rock

by Jason Adams

Black joy is revolutionary. Even as a white dude -- even then! -- that's not hard for me to get. People of color have been saddled with being the standard bearers for suffering for so long -- look no further than the Slavery horror film Antebellum out in cinemas this weekend; or hey how about the news every single day and night? -- that joy becomes its own act of defiance: just song, dance, and smiles. A shuffling off of the strangleholds, the exemplary expectations, the time to scream proud and wild and free, not a thought or burden in the world. Liberation exists in the very molecules of that space...

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Smackdown '38: You can't take the great waltz with you, Jezebel!

In the Supporting Actress Smackdown series we take a particular Oscar vintage and explore it with a panel of artists and journalists. This episode goes way back to 1938. 

THE ACTRESSES & CHARACTERS
In 1938 the Academy was still evolving and the "Best Supporting Actress" category was just three years old. Still, their all time favourite type (the long-suffering wife/mom) was already showing its strength (Beulah Bondi in Of Human Hearts, noticeably that film's only nomination). Other then-popular character types like 'the vamp' (Milja Korjus in The Great Waltz) and ditzy/funny moms (Billie Burke in Merrily We Live! and Spring Byington in You Can't Take It With You) didn't stay in vogue with the Academy for as long. In 1938 we also got an historic first: Fay Bainter was the first actor to be double-nominated, competing in both Lead (White Banners) and Supporting (Jezebel) categories simultaneously, winning the latter. Will our panel agree? 

THE PANELISTS
Here to talk about these performances and movies are the actors Steven Weber and Britney Young, Joanna Robinson from Vanity Fair, and TFE's busiest duo, Cláudio Alves and your host Nathaniel R. Let's begin.

1938
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST  
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...

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Yes No Maybe So: No Time to Die

by Deborah Lipp

The twenty-fifth official James Bond movie, No Time to Die, was originally scheduled for release in April, and was the first major movie to suffer delay due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is now scheduled for release on November 21st and a new trailer recently dropped.

How badly do we want to see it? Let’s break it down…

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The Furniture: Framing Perpetual Childhood in The Truth

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Towards the end of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, legendary actress Fabienne Dangeville (Catherine Deneuve) admits something quite harsh. “I prefer to have been a bad mother, a bad friend and a good actress,” she announces at dinner. Her talent and her single-mindedness have given her a lengthy career, multiple Césars, and the freedom to take liberties with her own story. Her soon-to-be-published memoir is the occasion for which her daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche), has come for a visit, bringing her American husband (Ethan Hawke) and their daughter, Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier). And this short trip quickly becomes a long one, once Lumir agrees to step in as her mother’s assistant on the set of a science-fiction film.

Lumir’s presence becomes an opportunity to relive and relitigate family history. It’s not just that Fabienne’s memoir strays from the truth, but that their entire relationship is based on contested memories. Kore-eda suggests that it might be Fabienne’s work that has so deeply wounded her personal relationships. Has the vocation of make-believe crept into the rest of her life, encouraging her to freely reshape her own memories and ignore the truths of those closest to her? Has acting made Fabienne a forever-child?

And how on earth do you express that with production design?

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