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Philip J. Fry (Billy West) is the hero of "Futurama," but his robot buddy Bender (John Dimaggio) is the show's star. A crass alcoholic "lovable scamp" (read: sociopath), Bender is to "Futurama" what Homer is on "The Simpsons."

"Futurama" takes place in the 31st century, and this future is filled with plenty more charming robots than only Bender. From acting unit Calculon (Maurice Lamarche) to the Robot Devil, some of the funniest characters in "Futurama" have silicon souls. 

No one can accuse "Futurama" of being written by Isaac Asimov, but many episodes of the show explore Bender's existence as a robot too. In "Fear Of A Bot Planet," the characters visit a planet that is Bender's paradise (a planet of robots who want to kill all humans). "Obsoluely Fabulous" sees Bender befriend several outmoded robots while he himself deals with fears of obsolescence.

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Few animated shows have stood the test of time in the way that "Futurama" has. Not only does the show have another new season currently airing, after first premiering nearly 25 years ago in 1999, but it has been canceled four different times, only to come back to life once again. Like any great show, much of the appreciation stems from the love viewers have for the characters. Bender, in particular, is a fan-favorite. A vulgar, alcoholic, selfish robot with lots of human tendencies, Bender is a brilliant creation. He also nearly looked a whole lot different than he does now.

A new book detailing the history of the show recently hit shelves titled "The Art of Futurama: A Visual History of Matt Groening's Cult Classic Animated Series," which is available now on Amazon. In it, art director Bill Morrison explains...

Matt Groening’s second most beloved animated comedy was nearly a lookalike of the Og — and he had the nerve to call Seth MacFarlane a plagiarist.

Ever since Groening emerged as the greatest animation mogul of his generation, audiences have always been able to tell just by looking at any animated comedy whether or not he was the show’s creator. From The Simpsons to Futurama to Disenchantment, Groening has always had a hard-on for drawing characters with underdeveloped chins, bulging, overlapping eyes and, if they’re a slightly lazy leading man, a perfectly round paunch of a belly. Like most great artists, Groening has a distinct style, but also like other legends, he needs to be very careful that he doesn’t repeat himself, lest some Simpsons fan should suddenly think that one of Homer’s various long-lost relatives is now a 31st century delivery boy while flipping through the channels.

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"Futurama" is filled with loathsome but hilarious characters. Bender the robot (John Dimaggio) wants to kill all humans, but his felonious antics are always a highlight of the show. Professor Farnsworth (Billy West) is a mad scientist who dreams of doomsday devices and atomic monsters, but his mad genius makes him almost as funny as Bender.

Then there's starship captain Zapp Brannigan (also Billy West), a wannabe lech who lacks the charm one needs. He's captain of the Nimbus, a ship in the Doop (Democratic Order of Planets), with beleaguered alien second-in-command Kif Kroker (Maurice Lamarche). Kif is Zapp's Spock, but an abused assistant instead of a trusted advisor.

Zapp, Kif, and their crewmen wear red Doop uniforms, with gold stylings and miniskirts. In "Zapp Gets Canceled," Leela, Fry, and Bender take over the Nimbus and start wearing those same uniforms.

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Even if you didn't know who created "Futurama" or "The Simpsons," you could probably tell from the animation style that there was plenty of creative overlap between them. For whatever reason, Matt Groening's shows love to design their characters with distinct overbites and give the male characters round stomachs. The main difference is that the Simpsons have schoolbus-yellow skin, whereas the human "Futurama" characters are much closer to people's real-life skin tones.

Originally, the "Futurama" cast looked even more like "The Simpsons" -- particularly its main character, Fry. As animation director Rich Moore explained in the new book, "The Art of Futurama," the show "had trouble designing Fry. Matt pointed out the problem was he looks just like Bart with teenage hair. So Matt gave him a second bump on his nose. Now it's original. Now it's Fry! That's the thing about Matt,...

No Other Land, the powerful documentary set in a Palestinian community of the occupied West Bank, may lack U.S. distribution, but it’s got awards momentum behind it.

The film directed by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers earned a place on Doc NYC’s coveted Short List — the festival’s nod to what it considers to be among the year’s best feature documentaries. The list – a harbinger of potential traction with Oscar voters — also gave recognition to Will & Harper, a Netflix film built around a road trip taken by Will Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele after Harper came out as trans.

Both No Other Land and Will & Harper earned nominations for Best Documentary Feature at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards announced earlier this week. Also pulling off the Doc NYC-Critics’ Choice double is Sugarcane, the National Geographic documentary investigating the disappearance of Indigenous children...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Paris Theater

Prints of Salò, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Turin Horse, There Will Be Blood, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Au Hasard Balthazar, and Rome, Open City all screen for “Bleak Week.”

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Minnelli, Bergman, Powell and Pressburger, Lubitsch, and more screen in an Annie Baker-curated series.

Anthology Film Archives

A five-film Aki Kaurismäki retrospective begins, while “Essential Cinema” brings von Stroheim’s Greed on Friday.

Film Forum

Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine begins playing in a new restoration, while films by Jim Jarmusch, George Miller, and more screen in “Out of the 80s“; Stormy Weather shows on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Last of the Mohicans and The Bridges of Madison County play on 35mm as part of “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex”; an Agnieszka Holland retrospective continues...

Futurama, the cult animated comedy series created by Matt Groening, is getting the deluxe art book treatment.

Abrams ComicArts, one of the leaders in the trendy format, will release The Art of Futurama, billed as the first art book to delve into the development and history of the acclaimed sci-fi comedy.

The book will be replete with the cool behind-the-scenes visuals the Art of books are known for and will come with commentary from the Groening, showrunner David X. Cohen and producer Claudia Katz.

It examines the first seven seasons of the series, which first aired on Fox in 1999. Readers will be able dive into the development and visual history of all 150 episodes, including brand–new content, never–before–seen concept art, sketches, developmental work, and a complete episode guide for the Emmy-winning show.

For the uninitiated, Futurama was a social satire that cented on a slacker named Philip J.

The American Cinematheque is kicking off a robust new Los Angeles nonfiction film festival dubbed This Is Not a Fiction, running from April 10-18. The festival opens with docuseries “Thank You, Good Night: The Bon Jovi Story,” with Jon Bon Jovi in-person at the Aero Theatre for the L.A. premiere screening.

The event will include in-person tributes to distinguished documentary filmmakers including Barbara Kopple, Joe Berlinger, Brett Morgen, Bill Morrison, Kirsten Johnson, Terry Zwigoff, Jeff Tremaine and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, as well as a virtual Q&a with Frederick Wiseman.

Other premieres will include “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” “Power,” “Strong Island,” “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg,” a restoration of “Lumumba: Death of a Prophet” and “Incident,” plus special presentations of Morgan Neville’s “Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” and “Girls State.” A celebration of the 15th anniversary of “30 for 30” will feature a panel...

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2023, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

The greatest year in cinema since the monumental offerings of 2007––a transformative year that set the seeds for this very site to come into existence––2023 offered a resounding affirmative that indeed the medium is alive and well: auteurs flexing what they do best, newcomers providing a hopeful voice for the future of filmmaking, along with a plethora of worthwhile offers. Along with my personal favorites when it came to U.S. releases, two films also premiered that would’ve topped this list had they come out in 2023: Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast and Víctor Erice’s still-shockingly-undistributed Close Your Eyes.

While they didn’t make the top 15 cut below, I must make mention for the most essential, one-and-done viewing of the year with De Humani Corporis...

Updated with quotes from winners and IDA’s incoming executive director. Bobi Wine: The People’s President earned the top award at the 39th IDA Documentary Awards, presented in a virtual ceremony tonight.

The film directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp was named Best Feature Documentary, winning over nine other Oscar-contending documentaries, a list that included Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, In the Rearview, The Mother of All Lies, and Apolonia, Apolonia. Scroll for the complete winners list.

Bobi Wine: The People’s President tells the story of the titular Ugandan pop singer-turned politician, who dared to challenge his country’s dictator for leadership of Uganda.

Ugandan opposition politician Bobi Wine.

“The awareness this film has brought to world audiences has arguably kept Bobi Wine alive and out of prison for now,” Bwayo commented in his acceptance speech. “This film is a testament to the courage and determination of Bobi Wine,...

Apolonia, Apolonia leads the 2023 International Documentary Awards nominations with four nods.

Other top nominees include The Mother of All Lies and Milisuthando, which earned three nominations apiece.

All three films are up for the top prize of best feature documentary, along with two-time nominees Against the Tide, ANHELL69, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project and Q.

All of this year’s best director nominees represent films nominated for best feature.

Other two-time nominees, not up for best feature or director, include Anselm (best cinematography and original music score), To Kill a Tiger (best original music score and best writing) and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (best editing and cinematography).

Winners will be announced at the IDA’s virtual awards show, set for Dec. 12, which will take place at 8 p.m. Pt and stream on documentary.org and the IDA’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram channels.

“In the wake of devastating events...

The International Documentary Association has announced nominations in 18 categories for its 39th awards, which will be awarded in a streaming ceremony on Dec. 12.

The nominees for best feature documentary are “Against the Tide,” “ANHELL69,” “Apolonia, Apolonia,” “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” “In the Rearview,” “Milisuthando,” Q,” “The Mother of All Lies” and “While We Watched.”

The awards will unspool at 8 p.m. Pt on documentary.org and on IDA’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram channels.

“In the wake of devastating events unfolding in the world and the grief our staff, board, community, and humanity at large are experiencing, we have decided to forego an in-person party. We know that stories have the power to encourage compassion, understanding, and peace. We are committed to preserving space for stories to be shared. Our wish is to recognize and celebrate the nominees and winners together, as a global documentary community,...

The 2023 IDA Documentary Awards has officially unveiled its list of nominees.

The 39th annual awards ceremony for the International Documentary Association will take place virtually on December 12, streaming on documentary.org, as well as the IDA YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram channels. The awards recognize the top films and projects in the documentary genre.

Nominees include “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” about how a Ugandan pop star disrupted the national political landscape; “Pianoforte,” following the prestigious international piano competition; and HBO documentary “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project.” The shortlist for the nominees was announced earlier this year

The decision to hold the 2023 IDA Documentary Awards virtually was in part due to the current geopolitical landscape, according to IDA Interim Executive Director Ken Ikeda.

“In the wake of devastating events unfolding in the world and the grief our staff, board, community, and humanity at large are experiencing, we have decided to forego an in-person party,...

Lea Glob’s documentary Apolonia, Apolonia earned a leading four nominations today as the IDA Documentary Awards revealed its nominees for the 39th edition of the prestigious event.

Following closely with three nominations apiece were The Mother of All Lies, directed by Asmae El Moudir, and Milisuthando, directed by Milisuthando Bongela.

Apolonia, Apolonia, a personal exploration into the life and work of French artist Apolonia Sokol filmed over the course of 13 years, will compete for Best Documentary Feature, Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Editing. Glob’s film won the top prize at IDFA, where it debuted last November, going on to win awards at Cph:dox in Copenhagen, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and the Sofia International Film Festival, among others. Despite its many laurels, the film has yet to land a U.S. distributor.

‘The Mother of All Lies’

The Mother of All Lies earned nominations as Best Documentary Feature,...

Comic illustrators Glenn Fabry, David Finch, John Romita Jr. and Philip Tan are among the bold-faced guests that will be hosted at 2024 edition of Lake Como Comic Arts Festival, the unique convention that focuses on comic artists.

Artists Bill Sienkiewicz, Jordi Bernet, Frank Cho, Juanjo Guarnido, Tula Lotay, Bill Morrison, David Petersen and Charles Vess, most of whom have previously attended, are also in the lineup for the three-day event that kicks off May 17 with a reception overlooking the lake and gardens of the historic Villa Erba, the festival’s home, in Cernobbio, Italy.

Entering its third year, the event is less a convention than it is a fair with an intimate approach to artist-guest interactions, all in the picturesque setting made famous by Hollywood jet-setters such as George and Amal Clooney and John Legend and Chrissy Teigen. Those who have attended have described it as a con for art collectors.

With the festival kicking off tomorrow, Telluride Film Festival has now unveiled its lineup, featuring new films from Jeff Nichols (the first image from which can be seen above), Emerald Fennell, Annie Baker, Andrew Haigh, Yorgos Lanthimos, Justine Triet, Wim Wenders, Kitty Green, Ethan Hawke, and many more.

“Fifty years is a long time to do anything. And while we might be a little biased, we feel the work that Tff does is pretty important,” comments Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger. “We take the charge of preserving the theatrical experience and promoting film seriously, but with necessary winks here and there. We’re ecstatic to share a program we feel reflects so much of the past fifty years, naturally and organically, films old and new, which stand as a testament to our beloved co-founders Tom Luddy and Bill Pence who are no longer with us.”

• All Of US Strangers...

2023 Festival dedicated to founders Tom Luddy, Bill Pence, Stella Pence, James Card.

Telluride Film Festival has announced its 2023 50th anniversary line-up with Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall, and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City on the roster.

The selection, which will play in the Colorado Rockies locale from August 31 to September 4, includes Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders, Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes sensation The Zone Of Interest, Pablo Larrain’s El Conde, Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel, George C. Wolfe’s Rustin, Nyad from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin,...

There’s a documentary aspect to every film, whether it’s a home movie, a commercial or even the glossiest tentpole: The images and sounds capture transient moments that memorialize people, animals, places. They give permanence to the impermanent. But imagine a world in which those films have disappeared — as an estimated 80 percent of silent films and half of sound films already have. In the robust and incisive Film: The Living Record of Our Memory, Inés Toharia, a documentarian specializing in film preservation, invites us to consider the ways movies have become essential to the human experience.

The director spends quality time with a few well-known filmmakers and many of the “backstage people,” as one interviewee puts it, who devote their energies to safeguarding a vast array of moving images from the ravages of time, neglect and climate, not to mention obsolescence in the wake of ever-evolving formats and technology.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Atom Egoyan Presents

The great Canadian filmmaker has curated a streaming series for Filmatique—”ten films which have left a strong sense visual impression,” including work by Jafar Panahi, Christian Petzold, and Andrea Arnold.

Where to Stream: Filmatique

Drone (Sean Buckelew)

The latest short by LA-based animator and Guggenheim Fellow Sean Buckelew, Drone follows an artificially intelligent Predator drone named Newton who refuses to participate in military-mandated destruction. Instead, he livestreams his ethical musings as he tours the country spreading a message of peace. Drone deftly navigates the moral complexities of remote warfare, highlighting comedy and compassion along the way.

Where to Stream: Le Cinéma Club

The Integrity of Joseph Chambers (Robert Machoian)

If the apocalypse comes, we’re all screwed.

What will be your first movie of 2023? If you’re reading this it’s likely you put some (let’s be honest: too much) thought into what commences the cinematic year. The Criterion Channel’s January lineup will put some good things front and center: they’re launching a 20-film cinema verité series that highlights all major figures of the form; an eight-film Mike Leigh retrospective that focuses on his little-seen, lesser-discussed BBC features produced between 1973 and 1984; a series on Abbas Kiarostami’s studies of childhood; and because you’ve either seen Eo or have it marked to watch, Jerzy Skolimowski’s three most-acclaimed films should be of equal note.

Another 2022 favorite, Il Buco, will have its streaming premiere alongside Kamikaze Hearts, the Depardieu-led Cyrano de Bergerac, and the recent restoration of Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane. The sole Criterion Edition for this month is 3 Women, while some notable recent documentaries—The American Sector,...

Dreams Under Confinement.This year marks the second installment of Prismatic Ground (May 4 – May 8), a new festival focusing on experimental documentary and avant-garde film and video. Last year’s inaugural edition was a completely virtual affair, but this year the festival returns in a hybrid version with in-person screenings and online viewing available for most of the films in its impressive 14 programs. Co-presented by the Maysles Documentary Center and Screen Slate, Prismatic Ground brings festival-goers a wide range of politically engaged, formally challenging new work by up-and-coming artists alongside established ones like Bill Morrison, Jodie Mack, and this year’s Ground Glass Award recipient, Christopher Harris. In the world of experimental film where visibility and opportunities to premiere new work can be hard to come by, the festival is poised to make a significant splash.Founded by Inney Prakash in 2021, last year’s edition consisted of four programs of films,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Titane (2021).Actor Vincent Lindon has been announced as the president of this year's Cannes competition jury, leading a group that includes Rebecca Hall, Deepika Padukone, Jeff Nichols, and Joachim Trier. The festival has also added several pleasant surprises to the lineup: films by Serge Bozon, Albert Serra, Louis Garrel, Patricio Guzmán, and more.Subscribe to our limited-edition, print-only Notebook magazine by April 30 to secure your copy of Issue 1, featuring a conversation between Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Yoshitomo Nara, a carte blanche contribution by Christopher Doyle, and much more.Recommended VIEWINGAbove: I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) .Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation has launched a virtual screening room for restored films, called the Restoration Screening Room. The fun begins with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1945 film I Know Where I'm Going!, which will be available for...

The 2022 Taiwan International Documentary Festival (May 6 -15) devotes two of its iconic sections to filmmaking in pandemic times and to the creative use of archival materials in documentary. “Stranger than Documentary” and “DocuMemory”are long-running Tidf sections that have turned into doc film buffs’ favorites for their explorative and avant-garde spirit and unconventional programming.

13 unique new short films will be screened in “Stranger than Documentary: the Potential Future” to highlight the dramatic impact that the Corona pandemic has had not only on people’s lives around the globe, but also on the themes, forms, scope and production methods of filmmaking.

The selected works reflect a wide tableau of impressions, reflections, and innovative filmmaking techniques during the pandemic era, and span North America, Europe, the Philippines, Japan, China, and also Taiwan. As the pandemic has confined people’s movement, filmmakers began to turn to their private lives and daily routines. A...

Film aged, not just by costume but literally so, the distortion of celluloid made cellural, the camera's capture cancerously concealed. They smile and dance in their costumes, the strings swell beneath them while sepia bleeds deeper into detail like the flicker of vibrato. The cello, fain to provide its depth to aural texture is matched by the flickering of the chaos.

She tries to cross the party as he watches and waits. A masque perhaps, but the revelries are lost in what becomes reverie. The band plays while the images pass, marked with the passage of time. There is a sense of story

Bill Morrison's film is drawn from Pawns Of Passion (1928), rescored by Michael Montes. It is something hypnotic, restored, revelatory. There's a hint of The Masque Of The Read Death, but it's one born of its current context.

"A lot of the time [he's] looking through trash." He talked.

What can we glean from three minutes of film shot in 1938? This is the question driving Three Minutes — A Lengthening, an engaging essay film from director Bianca Stigter. Over a decade ago Glenn Kurtz recovered a 16mm film reel hiding in his parent’s house. It was footage his grandfather David Kurtz shot while on a European vacation in 1938. These three minutes photograph the mostly Jewish town of Nasielsk, Poland. By 1939, the Nazi occupation and their Holocaust would leave less than 100 surviving Jewish townspeople. In these brief, captured moments we see a flurry of faces. Who were these people? What lives did they lead?

Primarily relying on the three minutes of existing footage, Stigter and her collaborators investigate each frame as if it’s a Julio Cortázar short story. From the faces to the street signs to the banners atop the storefronts, everything is dissected. The brief 69-minute runtime moves fast,...

Film, the Living Record of Our Memory director Inés Toharia with Anne-Katrin Titze on Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker: “We were hoping to catch up with them both, because they work together so closely and they are so crucial for Michael Powell’s work.”

Film, The Living Record Of Our Memory (a highlight of the 12th edition of Doc NYC) features insightful commentary from filmmakers Ken Loach, Jonas Mekas (Todd Haynes dedicated The Velvet Underground to Jonas), Kevin Brownlow, Fernando Trueba, Costa-Gavras, Patricio Guzmán, Ahmad Kiarostami (producer for Abbas Kiarostami), Idrissa Ouédraogo, Martin Scorsese, Bill Morrison, Ridley Scott, Nicolas Rey, Wim Wenders (on music rights and restoration), and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Inés Toharia on Martin Scorsese speaking on film preservation at the Cineteca di Bologna: “I think Langlois and him are the two people - they’re very different, but they opened everyone to understand why.”

In the first instalment with Inés Toharia,...

In 2016, filmmaker Bill Morrison received word of a local event from Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson: Off the coast of Iceland, four reels of 35mm film had been pulled up from the bottom of the sea in a lobster trawler’s nets. Archival material has long been the specialty of Morrison, who has put the purpose in “repurposing” through such avant-garde triumphs as Decasia, Spark of Being and Dawson City: Frozen Time, all constructed from old films in various states of decomposition.

The reels of film that had been sitting beneath the Atlantic turned out not to be the remains of a rare, lost film ...

In 2016, filmmaker Bill Morrison received word of a local event from Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson: Off the coast of Iceland, four reels of 35mm film had been pulled up from the bottom of the sea in a lobster trawler’s nets. Archival material has long been the specialty of Morrison, who has put the purpose in “repurposing” through such avant-garde triumphs as Decasia, Spark of Being and Dawson City: Frozen Time, all constructed from old films in various states of decomposition.

The reels of film that had been sitting beneath the Atlantic turned out not to be the remains of a rare, lost film ...

The Museum of Modern Art announced the lineup for the 14th annual edition of The Contenders on Friday. The film series will run from Nov. 4 through Jan. 22, 2022, primarily in person with a select number of virtual screenings.

The Contenders will open with Pablo Larraîn’s “Spencer,” the Princess Diana biopic starring Kristen Stewart. Larraîn and Stewart will appear for a conversation after the screening. The closing night film will be Sebastian Meise’s “Grosse Freiheit” which, translating to “Great Freedom,” is set in postwar Germany and follows the relationship between Hans, a man imprisoned for being homosexual, and his cellmate Viktor, a convicted murderer.

“This year’s Contenders lineup includes highly anticipated genre pics, new works by the most followed auteurs such as Jane Campion (‘The Power of the Dog’) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (‘Memoria’) and independent films that introduce emerging cinematic voices like Amalia Ulman (‘El Planeta’) and Ahmir ‘Questlove...

What classifies as a lost film? On one side, there are silent films that Hollywood studios dumped in the Pacific Ocean once talkies took over. On another, there is Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, which he suppressed for personal moral reasons, and there are also movies like Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, which was caught in legal trouble for years before it was finally edited and debuted in 2018.

Bill Morrison expands on these ideas of lost cinema with The Village Detective: a song cycle, a project about a recovered print of The Village Detective (1969) starring populist Soviet actor Mikhail Žarov—who acted in roles criticizing the bourgeoisie and socialism—and how the film is well known to Russians of a certain age but lost to many in post-Soviet Union Russia. By comparison, it’s like if network television stopped showing It’s A Wonderful Life...

Bill Morrison makes movies out of fragments of other movies, giving new life to ghostly scraps of an earlier time. Whereas most film conservationists aspire to restoring lost and degraded films to their original glory, Morrison sees beauty in the decay — the underlying premise of his mesmerizing avant-garde super-cut “Decasia,” released in 2002, and a key attraction of his latest collage feature, “The Village Detective: A Song Cycle,” which spends long minutes projecting what remains of four reels of celluloid recovered from the Atlantic by an Icelandic fishing trawler.

A decade after “Decasia,” Morrison reached even wider recognition with “Dawson City: Frozen Time,” wherein a stockpile of century-old 35mm prints unearthed in northern Canada — an end-of-the-line Klondike gold rush outpost that had become a de-facto graveyard for traveling films — served as the raw material for a rumination on a lost era, both the fortune-seekers who sought the frontier and the remarkable...

It is hard to overstate how important Bill Morrison’s work is to the language and history of cinema. As much a historian as he is a filmmaker, Morrison seeks out long-lost work and brings them back to life. In often merging these rescued images with beautiful, cerebral music, a new piece of art is built atop the old, offering both a celebration of what’s been found and what is still to come.

Morrison’s new feature The Village Detective: A Song Cycle is a slight departure, though no less effective. This time around the discovered film is one that was never lost. In fact, it’s a movie rather well-known in its native country of Russia. In 2016, the late, great composer Jóhann Jóhannsson reached out to Morrison about some film canisters that a fishing boat had caught in their net off the coast of Iceland. The four reels...

The Toronto Film Festival marked its completion Saturday with an unfortunate milestone: No major acquisitions deals have been announced since the festival kicked off its 10-day run. It was far from a bust: Early awards contenders like Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” picked up steam, and on-the-ground audiences in Canada reveled in the joy of once again gathering to experience big movies like “Dune.” Nor is the overall film market lukewarm: Deals have been ironed out at a steady clip throughout the year.

It raises the question: Why was nobody buying at Toronto?

There’s certainly not one cause, though unsurprisingly Covid is an easy catchall to explain why TIFF was unable to maintain its status as the fall’s most important dealmaking venue this year.

This marked the second year in a row that TIFF was a largely virtual affair, with a lineup just one-third the size of the 300-plus...

This year’s fall festival season features a tapestry of in-person, virtual, and hybrid programming from Telluride, Venice, TIFF, and NYFF. One throughline: many of the most anticipated premieres — from “Dune” to “The Power of the Dog” — are arriving to festivals with distribution in hand.

Though the festivals have pared down the size of their lineups amid the pandemic, there’s still plenty for buyers to choose from, from discovery titles to those with bankable elements. Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn’s “Official Competition” features Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz in a rare appearance on screen together; it still has North American rights available ahead of its Venice premiere. In “Lakewood,” Phillip Noyce directs Naomi Watts as a mother racing to her child during an active-shooter incident, it premieres at TIFF. And “Beba,” a personal documentary from first-time feature director Rebeca Huntt, is catching early buzz as a potential TIFF breakout.

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about filmmakers! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.

Today, Conor and I have a brief, lovely chat with filmmaker Bill Morrison, who blew many cinephiles away with Dawson City: Frozen Time a few years back. We were lucky enough to speak with him then about the film and its inception. This time around, Morrison has a short film called let me come in, which is having its world broadcast premiere as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival on May 7th. 

let me come in re-purposes footage from the lost 1928 silent film Pawns of Passion with the entrancing touch that only Morrison can employ, accompanied by a new song by composer David Lang and performed by soprano Angel Blue. 

We discuss the new film with Morrison,...

Last year, shortly after the pandemic hit the U.S., WarnerMedia’s TCM — with about three weeks notice — shifted its annual in-person TCM Classic Film Festival to a hybrid online/network experience.

When the TCM team determined they were not going to be able to hold the fest in person again in 2021, they made an even bigger pivot to provide two virtual venues for this year’s Classic Film Festival — on both the TV network and with corporate sibling HBO Max.

For the first time ever, the TCM Classic Film Festival will be hosted on both the network’s channel and HBO Max, featuring an extensive festival lineup for fans nationwide on May 6-9, 2021. (HBO Max hadn’t launched before last year’s fest.)

Shifting from in-person to virtual events has been standard operating procedure for festivals over the last year due to Covid-19. But by teaming with HBO Max,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Monte Hellman and his dog Kona. Monte Hellman, cult director of The Shooting (1966), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Road to Nowhere (2010) has died. Hellman spoke with Notebook on several occasions about his films, decrying the committee-designed quality of new films while staying true to his own long-held principles: "I am aware of continually breaking rules." Léos Carax's first English-language film, the musical Annette, will be opening the 74th Cannes Film Festival on July 6th. The film will simultaneously be released in French cinemas. Two other Cannes titles have also been announced, having been selected for last year's postponed edition of the festival: Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch and Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta. Steven Soderbergh is undertaking the overwhelming creative task of staging this year's Oscars ceremony. As Soderbergh says, the project is "the walking...

Classic movie lovers, rejoice! Going virtual once again this year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place from May 6 to 9 and will be extended to HBO Max’s platform as well. The lineup has now been unveiled and there’s no shortage of both canonical classics and gems worth discovering.

Along with much-adored classics from Breathless to North by Northwest to Mean Streets, the lineup also features a Nichols and May documentary, a pair of Chantal Akerman films, Anthony Mann’s T-Men, Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm, Samuel Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A., Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going!, the world premieres of the new restorations of Irving Pichel’s noir gem They Won’t Believe Me, the French drama Princess Tam Tam, the Pre-Code film Her Man, and more.

There’s also a number of special events, including a star-studded Plan 9 From Outer Space table read,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: The Cinerama Dome in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Decurion has announced that it won't be reopening its Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres locations. The theater chain's most famous location is its Hollywood Arclight multiplex on Sunset Boulevard, home to the Cinerama Dome. Arte France Cinéma will be co-producing three new features: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's Les amandiers (starring Louis Garrel), Arnaud Desplechin's Brother and Sister (which stars Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud), and Pietro Marcello's L'envol (the filmmaker's first feature in France). The Workers of the Cinemateca Brasileira have released a manifesto calling attention to the many risks facing the Cinemateca's unattended collection, equipment, and facilities due to its "current state of abandonment" by the Ministry of Tourism. Backed by TCM, documentarian Josh Grossberg and his...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Ak vs Ak (Vikramaditya Motwane)

Over the 21st century, Bollywood cinema has entered into a completely different era of filmmaking and storytelling than was being made in the decades prior. Actors and directors who started their careers in the ‘80s and ‘90s have experienced such a drastic shift from their beginnings to what they are doing now that their older works seem almost archaic and unrecognizable. This has led, expectedly, to many of Bollywood’s artists making self-reflexive work that also reflects on the industry in general––Fan, Sanju, The Dirty Picture, Luck By Chance, and Shamitabh are just a few examples. Vikramaditya Motwane’s Ak vs Ak is...

Closing out a year in which we’ve needed The Criterion Channel more than ever, they’ve now announced their impressive December lineup. Topping the highlights is a trio of Terrence Malick films––Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The New World––along with interviews featuring actors Richard Gere, Sissy Spacek, and Martin Sheen; production designer Jack Fisk; costume designer Jacqueline West; cinematographers Haskell Wexler and John Bailey; and more.

Also in the lineup is an Afrofuturism series, featuring an introduction by programmer Ashley Clark, with work by Lizzie Borden, Shirley Clarke, Souleymane Cissé, John Akomfrah, Terence Nance, and more. There’s also Mariano Llinás’s 14-hour epic La flor, Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time, Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, plus retrospectives dedicated to Mae West, Cary Grant, Barbra Streisand, and more.

Check out the lineup below and return every Friday for our weekly streaming picks.

Always be wary of claims of “first” or “only.” Such is the case with brand-new streaming platform Documentary Plus+, which announced this summer that it would be “the first of its kind to focus exclusively on documentary films.” The venture comes from Xtr, the well-financed Los Angeles-based nonfiction film and television studio that Oscar-nominated documentary short producer Bryn Mooser (“Lifeboat”) launched last year.

Xtr, which took five co-financed films to Sundance 2020 — including well-received docs “Feels Good Man,” “Mucho Mucho Amor,” and “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” — plans to roll out Documentary Plus+ this fall; a representative said they’re hoping for the end of September.

Billed as a “highly curated documentary streaming service,” Documentary Plus+ aims to “provide audiences with the best in documentary film and further serve as a permanent home for the work of nonfiction filmmakers along with added distribution and amplification of their projects across all social channels.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)

Even with its two-hour running time, the experience of watching Spike Jonze’s “live documentary” Beastie Boys Story has the feeling of a breezy, intimate, and perhaps too-short trip through the band’s history. Documenting a live event hosted in Brooklyn by surviving members Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, the collaboration is a performed extension of their memoir, Beastie Boys Book. Reteaming with the group, Jonze directs this minimal two-man stage show about three guys who were lucky enough to cultivate and sustain a relationship as best friends for years. – John F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Apple...

The great Larry Wilmore joins us to share some very personal double features.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

1917 (2019)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Duck Soup (1933)

My Little Chickadee (1940)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

A Hard Day’s Night (1964)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

The Parallax View (1974)

Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Jaws (1975)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

The Party (1968)

The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Richard Pryor: Live In Concert (1979)

Richard Pryor: Live And Smokin’ (1971)

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986)

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Lenny (1974)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

Lolita (1962)

Caligula (1979)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

The Elephant Man (1980)

What Would Jack Do? (2020)

Blue Velvet (1986)

The Apartment (1960)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

Double Indemnity (1944)

The Sting (1973)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid...

Facts are so often stranger than fiction: The truth can be so terrible that we struggle to believe it, or so joyous and full of life that we’re inspired or moved. The past decade has seen a boom in the documentary space as streaming platforms have invested in their production and proliferated their distribution opportunities. So many docs that could have made this list, from those that have inspired public policy changes to others that captured gorgeous slices of life often overlooked, and even a few that pushed the visual boundaries of what’s possible in non-fiction storytelling. Here are just a handful of the best documentaries from the previous decade:

10. “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”

Alison Klayman’s documentary may have been many Americans’ introduction to Ai Weiwei, the outspoken artist (whose work has found a devoted following on social media) and controversial voice that the Chinese government has...

The Eisner Award nominees have been announced! Congratulations to every single person and publisher that received these prestigious nominations!

As per the Sdcc website, “Voting for the awards is held online, and the ballot will be available at www.eisnervote.com. All professionals in the comic book industry are eligible to vote. The deadline for voting is June 14. The results of the voting will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, July 19 at a gala awards ceremony at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel. Jackie Estrada is the Eisner Awards Administrator.”

If you are a comic book industry professional, please make it a point to vote in these awards. Every vote counts! Voting opens on Monday, April 29th.

Here’s the list of every category with their respective nominations below:

Best Short Story “Get Naked in Barcelona,” by Steven T. Seagle and Emei Olivia Burrell,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Bumblebee (Travis Knight)

With Bumblebee, director Travis Knight and writer Christina Hodson weave together two different movies: 1) A sensitive, familiar riff on E.T. about a young girl who, struggling with the recent death of her father, regains her confidence through a clandestine friendship with an alien and 2) A less bombastic version of a Michael Bay-helmed Transformers movie, complete with Autobot vs. Decepticon lore, mechanical fight scenes with grinding metal sounds high in the mix, explosions, etc. To their credit, Knight and Hodson semi-seamlessly combine both movies without too much tonal clash. It’s just a shame that the end result never amounts to more than a “fine,...

In today’s film news roundup, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” sets a studio record, Chris Meledandri and Glenn Close are honored, an art-house streaming service is unveiled, and “Cliffs of Freedom” gets a release.

Trailer Stats

The first “Spider-Man: Far From Home” trailer has set a record as the biggest digital launch in Sony Pictures history after 24 hours.

The teaser trailer was unveiled Jan. 15 and generated 130 million views, topping the 116 million views for the first “Spider-Man: Homecoming” trailer. Sony said Friday the trailer was shared at twice the frequency of the first trailer for “Homecoming” and social conversation volume was also the highest in the studio’s history, topping 1.1 million posts in the first day. The studio reported that audiences were particularly excited to see Tom Holland’s return as Spider-Man and Jake Gyllenhaal’s debut as Mysterio.

The trailer began with Holland embarking on a European adventure that’s...

With FilmStruck gone and Fandor recently sold to a new entity, cinephiles would appear to be running out of streaming services catered toward them. Here to fill that void is Ovid.TV, a new venture from six different independent film distributors — Bullfrog Films, Distrib Films Us, First Run Features, Grasshopper Film, Icarus Films, and KimStim — set to launch in March. In a statement announcing the new Svod platform, Ovid is is said to be “designed to provide North American viewers with access to thousands of mostly un-streamable documentaries, independent films, and notable works of international cinema.”

Jonathan Miller of Icarus Films, who will serve as director of Ovid, said, “the time for this kind of partnership is now, as the streaming giants focus on generating fast-turnaround new content, this coalition will offer new access to high-quality catalogs found nowhere else, featuring some of the most celebrated filmmakers and films in the canon.