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.
Ryan Gosling, Sally Field, Amy Schumer, Jeff Nichols, Michael Shannon and more will take part in conversations at this year’s SXSW Film Festival.
Watch a video essay on the use of Bach and fire in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky:
Jim Jarmusch has come on board as an executive producer of Gabe Klinger’s Porto Mon Amour, Screen Daily reports.
Film School Rejects‘ Landon Palmer on when the Oscars started ignoring comedy:
On March 10, 1938, upon receiving the Academy Award for Best Director for his hit 1937 screwball comedy The Awful Truth, filmmaker Leo McCarey reportedly opened his acceptance speech by stating, “Thanks, but you gave it to me for the wrong picture.” McCarey was referring to his other 1937 film, Make Way for Tomorrow, a heartbreaking and delicate work of cinematic humanism that depicts an older couple’s struggle as they shuffle between their grown children’s houses after growing too old to work. Far from the blockbuster that was The Awful Truth, Make Way for Tomorrow was a labor of love for McCarey, a genuine human drama that serves as a rare example of deeply personal filmmaking within the assembly line system of Classical Hollywood. To the director, it seemed obvious that his true value as a craftsman behind the camera was most evident in his most recent drama, not his most recent comedy.
Wim Wenders and Bono will executive produce Lian Lunson’s Waiting For The Miracle To Come starring Willie Nelson and Charlotte Rampling, Screen Daily reports.
Watch the directors of the Oscar-nominated short films discuss their work, and read our reviews of all of them:
At The Dissolve, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson discuss their love for Playtime:
There is a widespread belief among many critics that art, including films, should teach us something by making us face up to the realities of the world. This is odd, since we face the realities of the world every day, both in our own lives and in news reports. If you assume instead that films, like other artworks, affect us by renewing our perceptions of the world, then comedies and serious films can be equally valuable. Many people have noted that when one goes out of the theater after watching a Tati film, one tends to notice odd sounds and gestures and so on, and find them amusing. There are few filmmakers in the world who can have that effect.