Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
Variety‘s Kris Tapley on the top 10 shots of 2015:
John Seale came out of retirement to shoot George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and he even turned 70 years old during production. Not only that, but he was up on top of those war rigs tearing through the African desert operating camera himself in many instances, grips hanging off of the sturdy sport sailer who got his sea legs long ago. He took to the film’s action-filled spectacle like a duck to water.
Liv Ullmann recommends a Vittorio de Sica film:
Rolling Stone‘s David Ehrlich on why westerns are tragically more relevant than ever:
America is the only country in the world that was founded upon an idea, rather than an ethnicity (though it’s one of many countries that was founded over an ethnicity). That idea — some people may need to be reminded — was to establish a place where all people, regardless of race or creed, could live together in peace as equals. Time and again across its three hours, The Hateful Eight reflects on how Westerns have always hinged on the idea that justice cannot exist without equality, and equality cannot exist without justice. The category is too big and unwieldy to unify with a single thesis, but from landmarks like The Searchers to off-shoots like Bad Day at Black Rock, these films have consistently argued that when only some lives have value, no lives have value (and death has its price).
After reading our interview with Andrew Haigh, watch him discuss a scene from 45 Years:
Also, James Marsh discusses the film at The Talkhouse:
How does a film focused exclusively on a week in the life of an utterly unremarkable aging English couple as they prepare to celebrate 45 years of marriage become a full-blown tragedy by its final scene? This is quite an achievement given that 45 Years doesn’t end in death or any outward calamity or act of destruction. It ends simply with an anniversary party and a dance between the married partners. But its final scene is devastatingly sad and upsetting, and by the end of this carefully controlled and beautifully acted film, there is the real spectacle of tragedy in the most unlikely context of a geriatric slow dance, a tragedy that has been patiently and stealthily seeded throughout the duration of the film – and one that offers precious little consolation to either its characters or its audience.
Reggie Watts lists his top 10 Criterions films.
Watch a 30-minute talk with Thomas McCarthy and Jonathan Levine on Spotlight:
Art of the Title on their favorite title sequences of 2015:
For the title sequences that bookend Rogue Nation, the fifth installment in the Mission: Impossible film franchise, LA-based studio Filmograph worked under fittingly impossible timelines to deliver not one but two sequences: an opening to declare the arrival of the film and a closing to round it off with levity, all at breakneck speed. The opening sequence acts as both trailer and primer, dousing the audience in style and rhythm while giving glimpses of the film to come. The familiar typography and that iconic Lalo Schifrin-composed score ground the sequences in the series’ origin as a ’60s television show, while stepping firmly into new territory.
After our picks for the best cinematography of 2015, see Keyframe’s selections:
Criterion‘s Girish Shambu on seeing The Apu Trilogy in Buffalo:
Cultivate Cinema Circle (CCC), the organizer of The Apu Trilogy screenings, is an energetic local initiative committed to the idea of dispersed public cinema showings—held at a variety of sites and in diverse contexts around Buffalo. Founded and run by two young critics—Jordan Smith and Jared Mobarak, who write for a range of online cinema outlets—it is a refreshingly eclectic and omnivorous group. In addition to Satyajit Ray’s work, the circle’s programming over the past few months has included challenging Russian art cinema (Alexei Gherman’s 2013 film Hard to Be a God), experimental cinema (the films of Stephen Broomer), activist documentaries (Fredrik Gertten’s Bikes vs. Cars, released this year), classic French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Le mépris), and a five-film series devoted to Agnès Varda, copresented with the Women and Gender Studies program at Canisius College. CCC has also forged relationships with a diverse range of organizations and had success in persuading several local small-business owners to sign on as cosponsors for screenings—an example that might be of broad use in cities across the country.