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.
Watch an interview from last year with Searching For Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul, who tragically committed suicide yesterday at the age of 36, according to AP.
Cannes 2014 has officially begun. Watch footage from the first-ever festival in 1946 below and see our 30 most-anticipated titles here.
At Vulture, Bilge Ebiri on the late H.R. Giger and how his designs helped change the way movies look:
Over the course of his five-decade-plus career, H.R. Giger, who died yesterday, produced countless paintings, sculptures, interior decorations, films, books, and furniture designs. But of course, it’s the main creature from Alien for which he is best known today. And while this doesn’t do justice to his immense body of work, the importance of Giger’s achievement in that film cannot be overstated. Initially, director Ridley Scott and his producers fought the Fox suits who were worried that Giger’s work was too disturbing. (He helped design not just the infamous “xenomorph,” but also the “facehugger,” the “chestburster,” the derelict spacecraft, and the infamous “Space Jockey” remnant.) Here’s the thing: The Fox suits were right. The alien was too disturbing. It was the kind of thing that might have sprung from the mind of a tormented Swiss surrealist racked with night terrors. It was not the kind of thing you were supposed to find in a Hollywood studio blockbuster. It crossed a line. It was transgressive. And it immediately entered our nightmares, where it continues to kick around.
David Lynch speaks on where ideas come from at a BAM talk from April 29th:
At Film School Rejects, Christopher Campbell wonders if we’ll ever get a dialogue-free blockbuster:
“Let them fight.” As we see in the “Asia trailer” for Godzilla, at some point Ken Watanabe’s character says the above line, and it’s definitely a meta moment for a monster movie featuring a ton of human characters. Godzilla in action is what audiences are most interested in seeing. But is it the only thing? Do they want a human angle, too? What if there were no people in this new reboot, or at least none that had any narrative arc or dialogue? Would we be interested in a nearly “silent” film in which the King of Monsters destroys cities for our enjoyment while ant-like military men shoot at him anonymously? What if another monster is thrown in there so there’s some discernible “plot” entailing a battle between the giant beasts, both of them just roaring and screeching at each other?
Zentropa releases a video on restoring the works of Lars von Trier: