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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Martin Scorsese's Favorite Movies: 86 Films the Director Wants You to See
'The clouds lifted' for cinema's future recently. At least that was how Martin Scorsese felt after he saw 'TÁR,' on which he lavished praise at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner in early January 2023. That kind of praise means a lot. Scorsese is not just one of the greatest filmmakers of all time: he's one of its greatest cinephiles. In recent years, he's become known for the movies — or, as he might say of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 'theme parks' — he doesn't enjoy. But the Oscar-winning director's favorite films are as wide-ranging in genre, year of release, and national origin as you might imagine, from Ti West's 'Pearl' to the horror flicks of Val Lewton and the works of Senegalese master Djibril Diop Mambety. He's such an avid movie buff that, in a recent interview with Time Magazine, he admitted he's against 10 best movie lists due to finding them limiting. More from IndieWire Acting Is More Than Performance: The Stars of 'Sinners,' 'Nickel Boys,' and More Offer Guidance How Chilling Sound Design, POV Shots, and an Uncanny Creature Create a Cinema of Perception in 'April' Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson Run a Western Town in Revenge Thriller 'The Unholy Trinity' - Watch Trailer 'I try to make lists, over the years, of films that I personally feel are my favorites, whatever that means,' Scorsese told Time. 'Then you find out that the word favorite has different levels. Films that impressed you the most, as opposed to those you just want to keep watching, as opposed to those you keep watching and learning from. They're varied.' Of course, that didn't stop him from joining Letterboxd. Scorsese has also been an unflagging champion of film preservation and discovery, helping to restore many films through his Film Foundation and World Cinema Project. He's also talked at length about his personal favorites in his documentaries 'A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies' (which it must be noted, has supplied a great deal of the films below), 'My Voyage to Italy,' and 'Letter to Elia.' You can screen many of these titles for free on the Film Foundation's website. Scorsese's knowledge of film history suffuses his filmmaking as well. Many have noted how Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito shooting into the camera at the end of 'Goodfellas' is a nod to the final shot of 'The Great Train Robbery.' Meanwhile the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring 'Shutter Island' throws back to film noir, and even something like 'The Wolf of Wall Street,' with its heady mixture of depravity and moralism, seems inflected by his love of Cecil B. DeMille. There's even 'Hugo': a historical fiction adaptation anchored in the transcendent, turn-of-the-century silent short 'A Trip to the Moon' from Georges Méliès. Below is an incomplete collection of 86 of Scorsese's favorite movies, listed in no particular order. It was compiled from years of interviews with the director, as well as clear cinematic references from Scorsese's filmography and his ballot for the 2022 Sight & Sound poll. With editorial contributions from Christian Blauvelt, Alison Foreman, and Zack Sharf. [Editor's note: The following was originally published in July 2020 and has been updated multiple times since.] Best of IndieWire Christopher Nolan's Favorite Movies: 44 Films the Director Wants You to See The 25 Saddest TV Character Deaths of This Century Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Movies: 64 Films the Director Wants You to See
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'All We Imagine...' coming to Cannes helped film's release in India, says Payal Kapadia
Director says the recognition " All We Imagine As Light " received at last year's Cannes Film Festival played a key role in securing the film's distribution in her home country India. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "All We Imagine...", a Malayalam-Hindi film about two Malayali nurses in Mumbai and their friendships, created history by becoming the first from India to win the Grand Prix at Cannes in May last year. The filmmaker said she is grateful to the festival and film critics for giving visibility to the movie, which also marked her feature directorial debut. Kapadia is part of the jury panel, led by French star Juliette Binoche, for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. She was speaking at the opening press conference of the gala on Tuesday evening. "Our film coming here in Cannes and getting the recognition and all of you writing about it really helped us to get the film out. Even the distribution in India was helped by that. "I'm really grateful. The one thing (you want) as a filmmaker is that your film should be watched by the people in your own country and everywhere else. So that was a really big bonus for me," she told international media at the presser. "All We Imagine..." received a limited release in Kerala last September, before opening nationwide in November to positive reviews. It was distributed in India by Telugu cinema star Rana Daggubati's Spirit Media. Besides the Grand Prix, the film received many accolades across the globe, including Jury Grand Prize at Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Best International Feature at Gotham Awards, was named Best International Film by New York Film Critics Circle, Best Film at Asian Film Awards. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It was also nominated at the Golden Globe Awards in Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film categories. The Cannes jury panel also includes American actor and filmmaker Halle Berry, Italian actor Alba Rohrwacher, French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, Congolese director-producer Dieudo Hamadi, Korean director and screenwriter Hong Sangsoo, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas and American actor Jeremy Strong. As a member of the jury, Kapadia said it's a privilege to watch the films that will compete for the top prize, Palme d'Or. "It's like you see the best of world cinema for the very first time. And also for me, being a cinephile, I'm just so excited," she added. The Mumbai-born filmmaker said she is currently working on two films set in her city, which will form a trilogy along with "All We Imagine..." "I'm right now working on two films based on my city, which is Mumbai. So, to have a trilogy but with different characters. It's a city that's complex and full of contradictions. There's a lot for me to explore still and I need to get that out before I move on to anything else." The 78th Cannes Film Festival, which kicked off on Tuesday, will come to a close on May 24.
New York Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Overlooked No More: Ethel Lina White, Master of Suspense Who Inspired Hitchcock
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times. Before Alfred Hitchcock made his name in Hollywood, he turned to the work of the British suspense novelist Ethel Lina White. White was a powerhouse of the genre in the 1930s, publishing more than 100 short stories and 17 novels, three of which were adapted into films, most notably Hitchcock's 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938). That movie, filmed in England, was named one of the top 100 films of the 20th century by the British Film Institute. It won Hitchcock the best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle — one of the few awards he would ever win for his directing — and it was the last film he made in England before he moved to Los Angeles. 'The Lady Vanishes' was based on White's book 'The Wheel Spins' (1936), a masterwork of horror and suspense that follows Iris Carr, an Englishwoman on holiday, who suffers a head injury before embarking on a train ride across Europe, where she engages in conversation with another Englishwoman, Miss Froy. When Miss Froy disappears, everyone on the train disavows any knowledge of the woman's existence. 'The Wheel Spins' cleverly puts the screws to poor Iris, teetering between sanity and madness as her continued investigations threaten to reveal an overarching conspiracy. Even before the book was published, White had established herself with two of her greatest works: 'Fear Stalks the Village' (1932), in which the peace of a small town is disrupted when anonymously written poison-pen letters leave death and destruction in their wake; and 'Some Must Watch' (1933), in which a young, beautiful heroine who cannot speak fears she will be the next victim of a serial murderer who has been targeting disabled women. White, whose books often centered on ordinary women who found themselves in peril, achieved commercial success. But she did not like to be noticed. In fact, when asked about her life, she told the crime writer and critic Peter Cheyney: 'I was not born. I have never been educated and have no tastes or hobbies. This is my story and I'm sticking to it.' The facts, however, suggest otherwise. Ethel Lina White was born on April 2, 1876, in Abergavenny, Wales, one of three daughters of William, White, a carpenter and laborer, and Charlotte Elizabeth White. She grew up on Frogmore Street in a mock Tudor-style house, known as Fairlea Grange, that would inspire settings in 'Some Must Watch' and 'Wax" (1935), a murder mystery set in a wax museum. In 2021, a plaque commemorating her legacy was placed at her childhood home, which still stands. Little else is known about her childhood save for details she recounted in a letter to her publishing company, William Collins. She described her upbringing as 'jolly' and wrote that books like 'Little Women' and the magazine Harper's Young People kept her company. She wrote that she was surrounded by 'Welsh nursemaids, whose lurid stories were probably excellent training for a future thriller writer.' What is known, however, is that White was writing from a very young age, and that by her teens she had already published poems and stories in a children's magazine. Her fate was sealed when she was paid 10 pounds by The Royal Magazine to publish her short story 'An Advertisement Baby,' about a woman who poses as a destitute mother seeking donations, only to be outwitted by a clever nurse who uncovers that the baby she is toting is not hers. When the story was published in the magazine's June 1906 edition, White turned more of her attention to writing. After White's mother died in 1917, and the family business, which had supported her and her sisters, was sold off, White moved to London, where she worked as a clerk for the Ministry of Pensions. She quit in 1919 to devote herself fully to fiction, and she published short stories from 1919 to 1926. 'I couldn't stand office life, because of the lack of fresh air,' she wrote. Her first novels were romances. 'The Wish-Bone' (1927) took its storytelling cues from Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre,' while ''Twill Soon Be Dark' (1929) and 'The Eternal Journey' (1930) were in literary conversation with Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. When the bottom dropped out of the romance market, White switched to suspense. It was a wonder she got any writing done. 'My method of working is so weird that it is a mystery to me that there really is a novel to show for it,' she wrote to her publisher. She went on to outline a typical day: 'I begin, about 12, with writing materials, write a few lines, then get a glass of water — another line or so — smoke a cigarette — another line — play with the kitten — and then break for a cup of tea. But somehow, a book does get written.' The scholar Alex Csurko described White's innovative approach to suspense in a paper: 'She took a style in its infancy and added so many threads of classical literature to it.' For example, in the preface to 'Put Out the Light' (1931), a Gothic suspense story featuring a controlling spinster, she explained: 'Most stories of crime begin with a murder and end with its solution. But as the victim is the dominant character in this novel, she has been retained as long as possible.' White suspected, she wrote, that readers might decide who killed the main character 'before the murder is actually committed. They will probably reach the goal before the detective, who is built to last and not for speed.' It was little wonder Alfred Hitchcock was attracted to her work. 'The Lady Vanishes,' with a script written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder and with Margaret Lockwood as Iris, became an instant hit. It was among the most successful British films of its time, and it was popular in America as well. Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times gave it a rave review, while the Guardian film critic Philip French, writing in 2012, called it 'one of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era.' (White's original novel was adapted into a film again in 1979, starring Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd, and by the BBC for television in 2013.) White attended a screening of the film in her hometown on Feb. 20, 1939, when she was invited onstage by the mayor. She accepted his congratulations but in her typical demure style said that she was present only because she 'did not take up much room.' White published nine more novels. Her other film adaptations were 'Her Heart in Her Throat' (1942), which was adapted in part by Raymond Chandler into 'The Unseen' (1945), and 'The Spiral Staircase' (1946), a noir chiller directed by Robert Siodmak that was based on 'Some Must Watch.' But she died on Aug. 13, 1944, in London before either film was released. She was 68. The cause was ovarian cancer. White left all of her worldly belongings to her younger sister Annis, along with a rather macabre missive in her will, born out of a pathological lifelong fear of being buried alive: 'I give and bequeath unto Annis Dora White all that I possess on condition she pays a qualified surgeon to plunge a knife into my heart after death.'
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Oscar Winner Walter Salles Talks Impact of ‘I'm Still Here' on Brazilian Youths and Upcoming Project on Brazilian Soccer Player Sócrates at Doha Qumra Workshop
Oscar-winner Walter Salles, fresh from scoring the best international feature statuette for 'I'm Still Here,' discussed the impact of his political drama on youth audiences in Brazil and underlined the importance of cinema as 'an extraordinary tool of resistance' while attending the Doha Film Institute's Qumra workshop in Qatar. 'I'm Still Here,' the story of Brazilian activist Rubens Paiva's 1970 disappearance at the hands of the Brazilian military dictatorship and his wife Eunice Paiva's subsequent search for justice, recently marked a historic first Oscar win for Brazil. Salles also pointed out that the film has now been 'embraced by young generations of Brazilians' for whom it provided 'access to a part of their history that had somehow been hidden.' More from Variety Michelle Williams Shades 'Crash' Winning Best Picture Oscar Over 'Brokeback Mountain' by Asking: I Mean, What Was 'Crash'? Doha Film Institute's Qumra Workshop to Preview Timely Arab Films, Including Several Palestinian Projects, With Mentorship From Walter Salles, Johnnie To, Lav Diaz New York Film Critics Circle Sets January 2026 Awards Date 'The film has become their film,' Salles added, noting that Brazilian youths 'took possession' of 'I'm Still Here' and then 'went to social media to narrate their own stories and the stories of their families during the dictatorship in Brazil.' As for what's on the horizon, Salles, speaking to journalists, said he is editing a five-part doc series on Brazilian footballer and political activist Sócrates Brasileiro that he plans to finish by the year's end. 'He was born in the Amazon, in Pará, so it's really about internal migration in Brazil at the very beginning,' Salles said. 'Then it becomes a project about football, and then how he soon perceived that soccer was an extraordinary vehicle for political transformation and he blended all of that into one journey.' During a wide-ranging masterclass moderated by former New York Film Festival chief Richard Peña, Salles discussed other standout works in his filmography besides his Oscar-winner, including his first feature 'Foreign Land' – which marked the first time Salles worked with 'I'm Still Here' star Fernanda Torres – as well as 'Central Station,' that instead features Fernanda Torres' mother Fernanda Montenegro, and 'The Motorcycle Diaries' which stars Gael García Bernal as Che Guevara but also features quite a lot of non-professional actors. The latter film, Salles recalled, stemmed from an offer made to him by Robert Redford, who had purchased rights to the book with an eye on directing the film himself, but then proposed the project to Salles saying: 'I want to offer it to a Latin American director.' Salles' immediate reply was that he needed to think about it. Salles also recalled telling Redford that 'In order to be faithful to that book, you have to basically work with non-actors or actors who are starting out' and that 'you really have to do the long journey, which means that it was a complex project,' he said. Redford closed his eyes for 30 seconds and replied: 'OK, we either do it like this or we don't do it,' said Salles. 'And he embraced it. He embraced this idea, which was really, really great of him.' In closing the masterclass, Salles urged young Arab directors to follow his footsteps, urging them to make movies amidst injustices. 'Cinema is a way to construct memory and fight against erasing it,' he said. 'Whether you shoot it with an iPhone or make a feature film, it's an extraordinary tool of resistance.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
CairoScene
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Palestinian Film 'No Other Land' Wins Oscar for Best Documentary
'No Other Land' has become the first Palestinian film to win the Oscar for Best Documentary, despite having no US distributors. Mar 03, 2025 Palestinian-Israeli film 'No Other Land' won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. 'No Other Land' reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,' Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra stated in his acceptance speech. The documentary follows Palestinian Basel Adra as he resists the Israeli army's efforts to forcibly displace his community in Masafer Yatta, where soldiers tear down homes to establish a military training zone. Much of the film relies on camcorder footage from Adra's as he captures the atrocities commited by Israeli forces, such as the bulldozong of a village school in the occupied West Bank. The film also follows Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, who develops a connection with Adra and co-directs the film. 'No Other Land' was shot between 2019 and 2023, before the Al-Aqsa Flood of October 7th. The other nominees for Best Documentary include 'Black Box Diaries', 'Porcelain War', 'Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat' and 'Sugarcane'. This marks the first time a Palestinian film has won an Oscar in the Documentary category. 'No Other Land' has had a successful festival run, having won the audience award and documentary film award at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024, and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Non-Fiction Film. Despite having distributors in 24 countries, it still has none in the United States.
