Link Round-Up: The End is Nigh

Besides some writing on Letterboxd and maybe a blog post, expect this to be the last work you'll see from me until late December—my thesis is due December 12th, and my PhD applications before that, so I'll be working on those day and night until then. You'll still get podcasts (I think), or at least they are in the pipeline, but for now...

Three more episodes of The Cinephiliacs went up in October: you had the final NYFF report with Tony Dayoub talking about big hitters like 12 Years a Slave, Blue is the Warmest Color, Her, The Immigrant, and more. Then there's an episode with Craig Simpson from the Indiana University archives talking about Welles, Pauline Kael, and Paris, Texas. Finally, there's a roundtable episode of the show on the occasion of what would have been Andrew Sarris's 85th Birthday. The roundtable includes past guests like Dan Sallitt, David Schwartz, and Godfrey Cheshire. So head on over and take a listen.

In terms of written work, I took another dive at Blue is the Warmest Color and reviewed it for In Review Online, and then my contribution to scary movies was a piece for The Film Stage on the release of two new Criterions: Lewis Allen's The Uninvited and Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte (the worst horror is marriage). 

On Letterboxd, my piece on The Counselor got some buzz, so much that Critcwire guru Sam Adams chose it along with a piece by Keith Uhlich on 12 Years a Slave to highlight. Thanks Sam! Otherwise: I also wrote about...A Girl In Every Port, The Big Sleep, Pulse, Club Sandwich, I No Longer Hear the Guitar, HaHaHa, The Chase, I Used to Be Darker, All is Lost, and La Chembre. 

Link Round-Up: Pies and Cries (And Whispers)

Mr. Keaton always preferred the chase to the pie.

Over at To Be Cont'd, I continue our month long conversation on the summer blockbuster by examining the relationship to the Cinema of Attractions and Donald Crafton's idea of the "pie and the chase," and how we're moving toward a pie-centric blockbuster. I also expand on the ideological elements of blockbuster cinema, and explain how a great metaphor like Jaws works while Star Trek Into Darkness makes me want to destroy the very idea of a political cinema. Read that here.

The Strange Little Cat played at the Toronto Film Festival, and it's an absolute delight as I argue here.

It's Bergman Vs. Bergman over at The Film Stage, where I review Criterion's recent Blu-Ray update of Autumn Sonata, directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Ingrid Bergman. I also review the new late-term abortion documentary, After Tiller.

On Letterboxd, those who've seen Blue is the Warmest Color, the Palm D'Or winner from Abdellatif Kechiche, can read my spoiler-filled take on the very good, often misconstrued film.

I also have shorter pieces on Fritz Lang's M, Howard Hawks's Fig Leaves, Renoir's The River, Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day, Don Siegel's Coogan's Bluff. I also went kind of long and super ambivalent on Hour of the Furnaces, if you're curious about that one.

Finally, Jordan Cronk came on The Cinephiliacs, where we reviewed Repo Man.