Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, 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.
Steve McQueen will direct and co-write a 6-part drama for BBC about a black community in west London over the course of five decades, Screen Daily reports.
Watch Tony Zhou‘s video essay on how to structure a video essay through the brilliance of F For Fake:
RogerEbert.com‘s Glenn Kenny on the melodrama of Woody Allen‘s critical reputation:
It’s Time We All Admitted That Woody Allen Is A Creep, Insists One Culture Writer. And Then What?
“Woody Allen is a genius. Woody Allen is a predator. He put those two sides of himself together, hand in hand, and dared us to applaud. And we did — over and over.” So writes Salon culture editor Erin Keane in a piece that went online last week, about an anecdote in Mariel Hemingway’s new memoir, and how it ought to spark another reassessment of Woody Allen as an artist and as a human being. Hemingway was one of the female leads in Allen’s 1979 “Manhattan,” playing a very young love interest (17; Hemingway herself was a year younger than that when the film was shot) of the film’s Allen-esque protagonist, Isaac, played, as was the custom of the time, by Allen himself. In her book she tells of a visit from Allen a couple of years later, when she was 18, and a proposal that her parents were enthusiastic about but which she herself was not, and how Allen slunk back to New York with his tail, such as it was, between his legs after the proposal was nixed. Allen does not come off particularly well in the story. (I don’t believe I can overstate that. Truly.)
Watch a trailer for Museum of Moving Image’s Tsai Ming-liang series:
Movie Mezzanine‘s Corey Atad on the rise of Christian film:
Last weekend, the Pure Flix-produced, inspirational drama Do You Believe? opened in theaters, and if you’re a regular moviegoer, chances are you didn’t see it. You might not have even heard of it. As its title suggests, Do You Believe? is about religion. More specifically, it’s a religious film, spreading messages preached by Evangelical Christians across America to appeal to those very same Christians. It’s part of a growing genre of faith-based films made to target this largely conservative religious community, and while that’s a pretty specific niche, the business model has proved surprisingly profitable of late.
Watch a video essay comparing Her and Lost in Translation: