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Experimental French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico isn’t for everyone — i.e. an acquired taste whose visions push boundaries of cinematic expression — but he’s achieved something of a cult fandom over the last three decades. After last pairing with the director on 2022’s “After Blue” and 2017’s uninhibited Venice winner “The Wild Boys” — Cahiers du Cinéma’s top film of 2018 — the distributor Altered Innocence again teams with Mandico on another provocation. His 2023 Cannes premiere “She Is Conann,” nominated for the Queer Palm before going on to play at other festivals including Locarno, is an acid-trip transgressive riff on the Conan the Barbarian myth. IndieWire shares the trailer here.

Influences on the film include Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Throw Ken Russell in there for good measure, with profane images in “She Is Conann” reminiscent of “The Devils.

Donyale Luna: Supermodel director Nailah Jefferson with Anne-Katrin Titze on Beyoncé’s 2018 Vogue cover, shot by Tyler Mitchell: “It was the first Vogue cover that had ever been shot by a Black photographer.”

“My name is Luna, I come from the moon” is how Donyale Luna used to introduce herself. It looks as though the memory of the supermodel’s brief, brimful life had gone back up to the heavens with her for decades. Nailah Jefferson’s insightful and revealing documentary ameliorates this and celebrates an extraordinary woman’s journey. William Klein’s 1966 fashion film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?, Federico Fellini’s Satyricon, a Vogue cover and one for Harper’s Bazaar, collaborations with Richard Avedon and David Bailey (interviewed here), images that show her with Salvador Dali and Groucho Marx, relationships with The Rolling Stone’s Brian Jones and Klaus Kinski, Andy Warhol bondings, and and and...

Garth Craven, the British-born sound and film editor and second-unit director whose credits included six Sam Peckinpah features, as well as Turner and Hooch, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Legally Blonde, has died. He was 84.

A resident of Malibu, Craven died May 20 after he suffered a medical emergency while flying back to Los Angeles from a safari in Namibia, his daughter, Willow Kalatchi, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Craven collaborated with the maverick director Peckinpah on Straw Dogs (1971), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975) and Convoy (1978).

He worked with fellow editor Roger Spottiswoode on the first three of those films, and when Spottiswoode graduated to director, they partnered on the features Shoot to Kill (1988), Turner and Hooch (1989) and Air America (1990) and on two HBO telefilms: 1989’s Third Degree Burn and 1993’s And the Band Played On.

Craven also cut Gaby: A True Story...

Film and sound editor Garth Craven, who edited films including “Legally Blonde” and got his start in film editing with Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” died May 20 in Barcelona. He was 84.

His death was only recently announced by his daughter Willow.

Craven not only worked in the cutting room but also in sound departments and served as second unit director on several films. At the beginning of his career, Craven worked on Federico Fellini’s fantasy drama “Satyricon” (1969) in the sound editing department, which served as his introduction to filmmaking.

Back in England, he continued working on films in London. Resuming his work in the sound department, Craven received a BAFTA for the critically acclaimed romantic drama “The Go-Between” (1971) directed by Joseph Losey.

He eventually became a frequent collaborator and friend of Peckinpah. Craven worked as a sound consultant on “The Getaway,” a sound editor on “Straw Dogs,...

Bill Murray, Wes Anderson, Ron Howard, Bret Easton Ellis and Hirokazu Kore-eda all confirmed for masterclasses.

Bill Murray will receive the lifetime achievement award from this year’s Rome Film Fest (Oct 17-27) in an accolade to be presented by longtime collaborator Wes Anderson with whom he has worked on films including The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and Moonrise Kingdom.

Anderson will also host a masterclass with Murray.

Additionally, the festival will host the a screening of Ron Howard’s documentary Pavarotti and a masterclass with the Us director.

The complete line-up of the festival will be unveiled onf...

Wikipedia

Throughout history, professions have flourished then suddenly died out. Some disappeared because technological advances made them redundant, others went because changes in our cultural tastes rendered them superfluous.

Most of these dead careers seem alien to our 21st century minds, yet understandable in the context of history. Some however were just plain weird. Like the man who was employed by Henry the 2nd to fart on cue, or the people whose job it was to plan orgies for the Roman elite.

There were those who had to whip dogs to stop them interrupting church services, the doctors who ripped live toads apart to heal people, and the kids who had to scavenge for excess cotton in mills and often ended up getting scalped by the looms above them.

These and more are some of the strangest things that anyone has ever done to earn a living…

10. Orgy Planner Wikipedia

Today we have wedding planners,...

Fellini’s Satyricon finally reaches London, plus the first film appearance of Emmanuelle

1 November 1993: Federico Fellini, giant of film, dies

At last the Fellini Satyricon has hit London, dubbed in English, evidently to its maker’s satisfaction, edited down a bit since Venice, 1969, and accommodated on a screen at the Prince Charles which is almost, but not quite, equal to its visual virtuosities. Goodness knows how people are going to react to it. But I hope they find themselves in less of a quandary than I do, having written only last week rather disparagingly and now, after a second visit, wishing I hadn’t.

It seems to me at this moment a much more considerable achievement than thought - a concoction of such depth of imagination and command of style that one ought surely to be able to forgive what Richard Roud called its “near-prurient outsider’s view” of Petronius’s unholy Roman Empire.

By the late 1960s, Federico Fellini had more or less permanently transitioned from filmmaker to icon. The autobiographical 8½ basically ensured his films would be permanently inseparable from himself, the sort of commercial accomplishment of which most film directors can only dream. Most directors are fortunate to be recognized for putting their “touch” into an accepted format. Fellini was the format. His follow-up, Juliet of the Spirits, is an equally indulgent affair that serves loosely as an apology to his wife (Giulietta Masina, who also stars in the film), on whom he cheated for more or less the entirety of their marriage; the resulting film is as much his fantasy (sexual extravagance) as hers (Masina had a keen interest in the psychic realm). And so the template is set – Fellini would continue to make films about himself, but largely under the guise of someone else’s perspective.

He wasn’t shy...

★★★☆☆ If you've ever felt any uncertainty about precisely what the term 'Fellini-esque' means, then Satyricon (1969) is a definitive, two hour, larger than life, example. Denoting a particular variety of vacuous revelry, the director's most celebrated works contain fleeting glimpses of it, but this is an audacious feature-length paean to debauchery and excess. Described by Fellini himself as a Science Fiction film, but set during the reign of the Emperor Nero - and based on a book written at that time by Petronius - it's like a wanton phantasmagorical fresco scrawled on the wall of some imagined brutalist Roman temple. It's both as stunning and testing as that sounds.

The maestro’s thumb-through of Petronius finds ancient Rome to be as joyless and overheated as modern Rome. Fellini described it as “science fiction of the past”. Much revelry, debauchery and grotesquery ensues in a world that bears less resemblance to history than to Fellini’s subconscious. A gorgeous but deeply pessimistic film. Fellini’s name was later added to the title to distinguish his film from the previous year’s copycat Satyricon from producer Alfredo Bini.

When he wasn’t creating top ten lists, director Federico Fellini filled his time by creating one of the most celebrated filmographies ever. Last week, everyone’s favorite boutique home video label Criterion released a lovingly restored “Fellini Satyricon” on Blu-Ray and DVD and now they have released a video detailing the three reasons you should part with your hard-earned cash for this beautiful release. Running just under a minute and a half, the video does a fine job of highlighting the aggressively wild and surreal nature of Fellini’s self-described “science fiction of the past” milieu. The looks of “faces from another time” and the infamous “Roman appetites” for sex & violence seen in the film are some of the reasons listed to check out the film. Even by today’s standards, Fellini’s film, which only included his name in the title so as to differentiate itself from Gian Luigi Polidoro’s “Satyricon,...

I'm a huge fan of Federico Fellini's films, films that have essentially become part of the the fabric of cinema history. This largely refers to La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, La Strada, The Nights of Cabiria and Amarcord. Of course, I've also seen and enjoyed I Vitelloni and Juliet of the Spirits while also not particularly loving The White Sheik or Ginger & Fred. I mention this only as a note that I will pretty much devour whatever Fellini feature is placed in front of me, and as much as I was ready to delve into this new Criterion release of his 1969 feature Fellini Satyricon, I can't say the trip was an enjoyable one. Admittedly, Criterion always manages to deliver something intriguing with their releases and this new Blu-ray edition of Fellini Satyricon is no different, but not for the film itself, more for the supplemental material that makes you start to...

Considered amongst the few surviving ancient novels as one of the best depictions of the wild debauchery that seized early Roman society, Petronius’s episodically fractured text The Satyricon tells the tale of Encolpius and his friend and occasional lover Ascyltus, a pair of former gladiators, as they venture through a society rife with overindulgence, sexual proclivity and flippant violence, rotating in form and tone from serious to silly, poetic narrative prose to lyrical verse throughout. Fellini Satyricon, Federico Fellini’s extremely loose adaptation of Petronius’s novel, takes this already loose narrative form and applies the structure as a lens for interpreting the history of antiquity itself – vividly alien, wholly broken and humanly detached from our own worldly norms. The result is a film that, in its unleashed inhibitions, leaves us as an audience in awe of its cinematic freedom, yet at odds with the tale as an empathetic journey through time.

Last week’s most viewed commentaries!

Let’s try this: every week, we’ll put together a list of fan-favorited videos from the last week, judging simply by what’s been the most popular (and excluding any of last week’s new releases, which tend to tip the scales unfairly). Over the years, we’ve accumulated a massive library of titles, so if nothing else, it should be fun to see what’s been jumping on and off people’s radars. So here they are, the top 5 most viewed Trailers From Hell commentaries for the week of March 18th.

Jack Hill on The Big Doll House

Jack Hill recalls the making of his mega-hit, the Roger Corman/Cirio Santiago jungle prison flick that started the avalanche of busty-broads-behind-bars pix that packed the drive-ins throughout the 70s.

John Landis on Fellini Satyricon

The maestro’s thumb-through of Petronius finds ancient Rome...

The maestro’s thumb-through of Petronius finds ancient Rome to be as joyless and overheated as modern Rome. Fellini described it as “science fiction of the past”. Much revelry, debauchery and grotesquery ensues in a world that bears less resemblance to history than to Fellini’s subconscious. A gorgeous but deeply pessimistic film. Fellini was added to the title to distinguish his film from the previous year’s copycat Satyricon from producer Alfredo Bini.

Producer of Pier Paolo Pasolini's early films

Though an enterprising film producer, often ahead of his times, Alfredo Bini, who has died aged 83, is best remembered for having given the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini the chance to make his debut as a film-maker with Accattone (1960), when no other film company was prepared to back it. Bini produced more than 40 films, including all the features made by Pasolini up until 1967, including Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964). Among his other films were many starring his wife, Rosanna Schiaffino.

Bini was born in Livorno, Tuscany, and, during the second world war, ran away from home to join the army. He was wounded and got a medal, but went back to finish his studies in biology. He soon gave up the idea of a scientific career and in 1945 moved to Rome, where, after taking on various jobs, he managed a theatre group.

Now that the 2010 line-up for the Criterion Collection has finally been announced with last week’s December titles, we can begin speculating on what we’ll get in 2011. With over 50 spine numbers in 2010, will we see # 600 in 2011? At the rate that Criterion is churning out these discs, we have to assume so. Where will they get all of these upcoming titles from?

Well, over the past few months we’ve seen several titles from MGM’s catalog announced, and hinted at in their monthly newsletter. Most likely due to MGM’s current financial problems, it’s nice to see Criterion stepping up to rescue these films from the abyss of “out of print”. If you head over to the various forums (CriterionForum.org, Mubi, etc.) you’ll find many people speculating on the MGM titles that Criterion has acquired the rights to. While some are mostly speculation, I have had...