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.
The Criterion Collection have announced their December line-up. Click the respective art for full details on each title:
Watch industry experts discuss day-and-date release models in a 50-minute conversation at TIFF:
At Talkhouse, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints director David Lowery on Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs:
I imagine every young filmmaker has that one “aha!” moment with another director’s work; that marvelous instance when whatever protozoan confluence of ideals and aesthetics has been swirling in one’s head finds itself all at once in precise, crystalline realization, right there on the screen, finishing your sentences and starting new ones. A particular work, or body thereof, presents itself to you, a lighthouse amidst the crashing waves, and suddenly everything about this art form clicks into place in a way that seems both universal and entirely personal.
I had that moment with Tsai Ming-liang when I discovered him while working my way through the pan-Asian films of the early aughts — works by Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo, from South Korea, Hou Hsiao-Hsien from Taiwan, Apichatpong Weerasethakul from Thailand, and Tsai, a Taiwan-based Malaysian. More so than Tarksovky or Tarr, these filmmakers showed me how time and incident might function together in cinema; how the latter’s effect could be attenuated so precisely by the former, and how the rules of form might sustain both to marvelous effect. I found that my hitherto painfully short attention span and my inability to follow complex dialogue were cured by these directors. Tsai, in particular, with his distended comic timing and ability to turn unendurably mundane moments into punchlines, felt revelatory. Static shots that last close to 10 minutes in which seemingly nothing happens? This was the cinema I’d been looking for!
Watch a trailer for Michael Koresky‘s recently released book on Terence Davies: