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.
Abderrahmane Sissako will preside over Cannes’ Cinefondation and Short Film Jury, Variety reports.
Criterion have unveiled their May 2015 line-up (click titles for more details):
Watch Richard Linklater‘s new Boyhood-inspired PETA ad:
Vulture‘s Bilge Ebiri on 12 great director’s cuts:
Last week, discussing Lana and Andy Wachowski’s upcoming Netflix series Sense8, Ted Sarandos let slip that he had seen a four-hour cut of the directors’ 2012 film Cloud Atlas “that will blow your mind.” Sarandos was naturally trying to do some damage control in the wake of the failure of the Wachowskis’ recent release Jupiter Ascending; Netflix has invested a lot of money in their new show. But it’s also understandable that the Wachowskis, with their imaginations always working in overdrive, might have a better, more effective cut of the troubled, divisive Cloud Atlas somewhere. This news also came right as the Berlin Film Festival was preparing to screen a director’s cut of 54, the clubland opus starring Salma Hayek, Ryan Philippe, and Mike Myers, that came and went back in 1998; it turns out director Mark Christopher had been forced to remove about 37 minutes, much of it having to do with his lead character’s bisexuality, before the film’s release. So, will we be seeing these longer cuts of Cloud Atlas and 54 on our screens at some point? And might they be better? History shows that this wouldn’t be the first time that a substantially longer version of a film came out some time after its initial release and turned out to be the better movie. Here are 12 examples of films that were later released in superior, significantly longer versions.
Watch a video essay on how Bronson subverts the conventions of a prison film (via Press Play):
The Dissolve‘s Andrew Lapin on why cinephiles need to care about PBS before it’s too late:
What if there was a place for movies where nothing was impossible? A place where veteran auteurs shared the spotlight with first-time directors? Where diversity of voices was of the highest importance, rather than the lowest? Where budget size didn’t matter, and every topic, big or small, was covered with the same attention to detail? Where films could actually change the world?
This place already exists, and it has for decades. It isn’t Tomorrowland. It’s the PBS documentary showcase made up of the nonfiction anthology series POV and Independent Lens. And it’s slowly dying.
NY Times profiles the making of the Oscar-nominated Wild Tales:
As the Argentine film director and screenwriter Damián Szifrón sees it, “what separates civilization from barbarism” is “a complex battery of social inhibitors” that prevent us from retaliating with violence to the many slights and aggravations of daily life. But that’s definitely not the case with the characters he created for his dark and sometimes surrealistic comedy “Wild Tales,” which has been nominated for the Oscar for best foreign-language film and opens Feb. 20.