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.
William Becker, an imperative figure behind Janus Films and The Criterion Collection, passed away at the age of 88. He’s remembered in an excellent piece by New York Times.
Ridley Scott talks to Deadline about the financial failure of The Counselor:
I think people were horrified, but I don’t know quite why. I was very cautious about not showing too much violence, until the end. I thought the intellectual complexity of it was just brilliant, the screenplay was bloody marvelous. Fassbender read it and said, this is about the best thing I’ve ever read. But it didn’t play. I think Fox may have gotten afraid of it. I am not a believer in previews because you ask people to sit down and do something they’re never asked to, which is to become critics. At the end, the studio attempts to get scientific. I say, if you need to have a preview, ask four questions and be done. Don’t start with, what did you think of the color of his shirt? Suddenly, they get into all the ridiculous details and unpick the play. I am very proud of that film.
Watch Brian De Palma and Noah Baumbach discuss the recent Criterion release, Dressed to Kill:
Another Nickel in the Machine looks at the locations of Blow-Up:
If you walk towards the Brixton end, however, and you stop and look carefully at the end of a terrace, you can see a tiny bit of maroon-ish red paint showing through some peeling cream emulsion. It’s the remnants of a lot of red paint and a clue that in the winter of 1966 this road made a glamorous appearance, alongside David Hemmings, the model Veruschka, and Vanessa Redgrave, in THE swinging Sixties film – Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. It was the Italian director’s first film in English (he had just signed a lucrative deal to make three English-language pictures for Italian producer Carlo Ponti), and it was David Hemmings’ first major film role.
Werner Herzog at the 1979 Telluride Film Festival: