Review: "The Fabelmans" is a 'love letter to cinema' done right

by Cláudio Alves

Around the holiday season of 1952, a Jewish couple takes their son to the movies in New Jersey. It's his first time watching a picture on the big screen, and the experience will change him forever. As Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth unravels at 24 frames per second, the kid's eyes watch everything in starry awe, growing fearful as a massive train crash marks the narrative's climactic set piece. In the coming days, he'll ask for a trainset as his Hanukah present, growing obsessed with restaging the calamity he saw projected big on that magical place, the movie screen. So he doesn't ruin the expensive toy with multiple crashes, his mom suggests the boy films the crash with the dad's 8mm camera. And thus begins a love story bigger than life itself.

In reality, the boy's name was Steven Spielberg. In this latest memory play turned film fantasy, or private secret elevated to public spectacle, he's Sammy Fabelman…

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Yes No Maybe So: "The Fabelmans" and "Glass Onion"

by Nathaniel R

It's hard to keep up in September with festival premieres, Oscar news, and fresh trailers arriving daily. The strangest thing about September though is how future-oriented everything is. It's not about what people have access to now (theaters start crawling out of their current wasteland Friday) but what they might be talking about in December and January. Which makes September feel like foreplay without pleasure. But October is just around the corner and things get significantly more in-the-moment the further into the last quarter we get. Still trailers have their own kind of anticipatory pleasure. So today let's talk The Fabelmans which is getting raves from the first responders at TIFF...

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Links: JAffleck, The Buccaneers, and Bloodless Horror

• IndieWire on Ms Marvel's exploration of family trauma and India's Partition
• Broadway World The Wicked movie behind shooting this November...
• ...TFE as you may have heard it will be a (sigh) two-parter which is about as big of a red flag as you can get for this project
• AV Club Steven Spielberg has directed his first music video
• Cartoon Brew Reviews are in for Paws of Fury and they're... not good

More after the jump including Juno, Barbie, The Gray Man, Lady Gaga's "Chromatica Ball", and the Hunger Games prequel...

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Oscar Volley: Can anyone beat Jane Campion? Or, rather, who is in second place?

Team Experience is discussing the various Oscar categories. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff and Timothy Lyons to discuss Best Director

MARK BRINKERHOFF: There's only a few days left of Oscar voting. So, in the spirit of balloting, let’s settle something when in comes to one of this year’s presumably more predictable categories: Best Director. And the 2021 nominees are...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: WEST SIDE STORY (2021)

by Cláudio Alves

A beautiful shot, full of carnality and color!

Re-watching Spielberg's interpretation of the classic musical made me realize that, beyond the mournful tonalities of Rita Moreno's Valentina, the new West Side Story works mainly as a tragedy of two gang leaders, what they symbolize, and the clashing communities they represent. So, logically, my best shot would have to feature Riff and Bernardo while also showcasing the best aspects of the picture's photographic strategy. Hopefully, it'd also hide some of my personal misgivings with it, too – namely, the overabundance of glaring lens flares...

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