Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, and other highlights from our colleagues across the Internet — and, occasionally, our own writers. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
“The Central Park Five,” the subjects of the recent documentary, have agreed to a settlement of about $40 million from New York City, NY Times reports.
At BFI, John Berra highlights 10 great films set in Beijing:
Beijing is a complex city which gives rise to complex films. China’s capital is a place where commerce, history, modernity and tradition converge, not always harmoniously, with its cinematic identity often being one of inherent tension or contradiction. As the city is the base of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, its screen image is often subject to strict control, although independent directors have endeavored to capture the reality behind its rapid acceleration.
David OReilly, the animator behind the video game in Her, has announced his first actual game Mountain, Mashable reports. See excerpts from his work in Spike Jonze‘s film below:
There’s two great essays for recent Criterion releases. The first is by Megan Abbott for Picnic at Hanging Rock and the second is by Farran Smith Nehme for All That Heaven Allows:
The first thing we think about when we think about Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is likely its resolution, or lack thereof. In the first half hour, a mystery is set up—three schoolgirls and a teacher disappear on a sightseeing trip. We are given clues, or we feel as though we are, but ultimately none lead anywhere. We never learn their fate. At an industry screening of the film, Weir recalled in an interview, one distributor “threw his coffee cup at the screen at the end . . . because he’d wasted two hours of his life—a mystery without a solution!” Many viewers and critics shared in the frustration. “That’s Weir, as in weird,” People magazine noted snarkily, deeming the film “unsatisfying.”