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.
At AV Club, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on how he “killed” At the Movies:
Should you ever find yourself hosting a TV show, remember that the basic tools of the format—cameras, lights, make-up—exist for the sole purpose of turning you into a character, and that said character is, by default, a prick. What no amount of coaching and tech rehearsal will teach you—what you end up discovering only when seeing the first broadcast—is that the person on screen is always someone else. You can’t “be yourself” on TV. Either you invent a character, or somebody invents the character for you, and you find yourself—week in, week out—playing this smarmy other who has your name, your voice, and a face that looks a lot like yours, only smoother and cleaner.
Thelma Schoonmaker and Frederick Wiseman will be honored with Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement at Venice 2014.
At New York Times, John le Carré writes about Philip Seymour Hoffman:
I reckon I spent five hours at most in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s close company, six at a pinch. Otherwise it was standing around with other people on the set of “A Most Wanted Man,” watching him on the monitor and afterward telling him he was great, or deciding better to keep your thoughts to yourself. I didn’t even do a lot of that: a couple of visits to the set, one silly walk-on part that required me to grow a disgusting beard, took all day and delivered a smudgy picture of somebody I was grateful not to recognize. There’s probably nobody more redundant in the film world than a writer of origin hanging around the set of his movie, as I’ve learned to my cost. Alec Guinness actually did me the favor of having me shown off the set of the BBC’s TV adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” All I was wanting to do was radiate my admiration, but Alec said my glare was too intense.
Japan is building a real-life Snowpiercer train, Slash Film reports:
The new luxury Cruise-style train has been commissioned by Japan’s JR East railway company and will be able to run on both electric and non-electric tracks. The 10-carriage train will cost about $50 million to develop, seat 34 passengers and hopes to begin running in spring 2017. The train was designed by Ken Okuyama, who worked as a chief designer for General Motors, a senior designer for Porsche AG and design director for Pininfarina, the company behind the Ferrari Enzo and Maserati Quattroporte.