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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended Viewinga completely charming trailer for Greta Gerwig's directorial debut Lady Bird.Following his Palme d'Or winner The Square (read our review from Cannes), Ruben Östlund's Berlinale award-winning short Incident By a Bank (2009)—which was featured on Mubi in 2010—has been made free to watch on Vimeo. Another beguiling cinematic experience, it is a single-shot recreation of a bank robbery which took place in Stockholm.Richard Linklater teams up with what looks to be an incredible ensemble as seen in the trailer for his latest, Last Flag Flying, set to premiere at the New York Film Festival this fall.Frederick Wiseman continues his exploration of American institutions with Ex Libris, which delves into The New York Public Library.Takashi Miike is back with his 100th film, Blade of the Immortal. (Read our...

La Poison

Blu-ray

Criterion

1951 / 1:33 / Street Date August 22, 2017

Starring: Michel Simon, Germaine Reuver

Cinematography: Jean Bachelet

Film Editor: Raymond Lamy

Written by Sacha Guitry

Produced by Jean Le Duc, Alain Poiré

Music: Louiguy

Directed by Sacha Guitry

One of the most insightful commentaries on Sacha Guitry’s La Poison can be found right there on the cover of Criterion’s beautiful new blu ray release, a typically “warts and all” portrait by Drew Freidman of the film’s stars, Michel Simon and Germaine Reuver. The film’s diabolic mix of humor and horror is illuminated by Freidman’s precise rendering of Simon’s sagging jowls, Reuver’s venomous stare and the dingy trappings of the cramped little kitchen that threatens to suffocate these damned souls before they can get around to killing each other.

Filmed in just eleven days in 1951 by the speedy Guitry, La Poison tells the story of...

Groucho Marx once drolly remarked, “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?” Such is the state of the cursed union at the center of Sacha Guitry’s 1951 dark comedy La Poison, an acid-tongued condemnation of a contract designed for until death do you part—which is the literal interpretation of the matter.

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Watching Sacha Guitry’s Blu-ray debut in the Criterion Collection provokes a bittersweet sensation, on multiple levels. First and foremost, there’s the acerbic theme and humorous treachery of La Poison itself – a pitch-black comedy that wittily dissects the miseries inherent in a marriage of French peasant folk that endures far longer than either of the bedraggled spouses are capable of withstanding. As a man who happily celebrated my 33rd wedding anniversary over the past weekend, nevertheless, I’m more than familiar with the unique strains that can develop between two persons over the course of a few decades lived in close proximity to each other. Even though I’ve never approached the point of murderous intentions that afflict the couple at the heart of this story, the basic impulses that drove them to such desperate measures are well within my frame of reference. And all things considered, there’s...

Apart from the three sneak screening titles that will stir up the buzz in the coming days, Julie Huntsinger and Tom Luddy’s 40th edition of the Telluride Film Festival excels in bringing a concentration of solid docus from the likes of Errol Morris and Werner Herzog who this year cuts the ribbon on a theatre going by his name and introduces Death Row, a pinch of Berlin Film Fest items (Gloria, Slow Food Story, Fifi Howls from Happiness) Palme d’Or winner (this year Abdellatif Kechiche will be celebrated), upcoming Sony Pictures Classics items (Tim’s Vermeer, The Lunchbox), Venice to Telluride to Tiff titles (Bethlehem, Tracks and Under the Skin), the latest Jason Reitman film (Labor Day) and the barely known docu-home-movie whodunit (by helmers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine) The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden which features narration from the likes of Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger and Connie Nielsen.

(Sacha Guitry, 1951; Eureka!, PG)

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Directed by the prolific actor, screenwriter and playwright Sacha Guitry (1885-1957), a film-maker much admired by the Nouvelle Vague, La Poison is a calculatedly amoral black comedy set in an undistinguished, impoverished French village. He wrote it for Michel Simon (1895-1975), the plug-ugly, gravel-voiced, ungainly, infinitely expressive Swiss-born actor, France's Charles Laughton. Simon plays Paul Braconnier, unhappily married for 30 years to the noisome, charmless alcoholic, Blandine. Both are contemplating murder, Blandine using rat poison, Paul employing information craftily acquired from a lawyer celebrated for winning acquittal for murder suspects. It's a cleverly plotted film, wittily mocking the French legal system, conventional morality and horrors of small-town life. It was made at a time when divorce was almost unthinkable among the poor, and the guillotine was standard punishment for murder.

Simon's outrageously misogynistic Paul is a remarkable creation,...

Rock bands had a hard time breaking through in 2010, but our critics say new indie groups might be nirvana for the genre.

By Gil Kaufman

Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig

Photo: Karl Walter/Getty Images

There was a time not long ago when good-old fashioned meat-and-potatoes rockers like Nickelback, Hinder and Disturbed frequently landed albums in the top 10 and reeled off solid chart singles. Then came a new generation of bands like Mgmt, Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire who were heralded as the saviors of a limping-along genre that had been overtaken by pop cuties like Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.

"In 2010, we just didn't see the people like the MGMTs, who potentially could have taken over the top from being a great niche artist to being a pop sensation [take off]," said Noah Callahan-Bever, editor in chief of Complex magazine, addressing the psychedelic duo's confounding, sometimes confusing second album,...