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 Public Domain Project has launched with 3,281,096 pieces of footage, 274,363 audio files, and 12,453,868 images free to use, Open Culture reports.
At The Dissolve, Scott Tobias the importance of second viewings as related to Inherent Vice:
So what was Inherent Vice like for me on a second viewing? It was, as I suspected, a revelation. Having already hacked through the thicket of overlapping cases and sinister conspiracies the first time around, I could immerse myself more in the film’s enveloping vibe, with its uniquely compatible mix of shaggy-dog wackiness and tugging melancholy. Though Anderson’s connection to the New Hollywood filmmakers of the era has been clear since Boogie Nights—and his affinity for Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye even more so here—Inherent Vice doesn’t feel like a nostalgia piece, but a genuine, imaginative attempt to plug into a certain era in the culture, and in filmmaking itself. All those things were there on first viewing, but hovering in the background, slightly out of focus, as I struggled with the ins and outs of the foreground. I can see it much clearer now. Items shifted during flight.
New Directors/New Films has revealed its initial 2015 line-up with Goodnight Mommy (review), The Tribe (review), and more.
Watch the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed, Ben Affleck-led SNL short Fanatic from 2000:
Glenn Kenny answers your American Sniper questions:
American Sniper does take the war in Iraq at face value, as in it was a war and that the United States was within its right to wage it and all that. And, you know, in a war, the body waging it sends soldiers, and one thing soldiers do, one of the main things soldiers do, some would argue, is kill. Killing is something every soldier is trained to do, I think. You know, I bet even the nice chaplain played by Leon Ames in Battleground is probably trained to kill. I doubt that he’s encouraged to kill, but he probably knows how to do it, and can if necessary. What the hell do I know about the military, I was 13 when they ended the draft and too old to enlist by the time people (none that I knew, though) would tell you it was the patriotic thing to do. Although come to think of it the Army might have made a better career than the one I’m enjoying now. But enough about me. In any event, given that Special Forces operative Chris Kyle, the subject of the movie, was trained and employed as a very specific kind of soldier, one who pretty much did nothing BUT kill, and because he did a pretty good job of it, by both the official record and his own accounting (which many have taken issue with, although the official record is apparently acknowledged as solid), and since the movie doesn’t really take issue with the notion that Kyle was what is generally referred to as a “war hero,” then yes, I guess the movie CAN be seen as “glorifying” a “killer.” But there’d have to be a lot of, what are they these days in sports records?…asterisk?…next to “killer” if you’re gonna go that route. I mean it’s not like he did all this killing in Iraq and then came home to face charges. It was all, like, state-sanctioned killing. Seems a little unfair to get all up in his face for that, no?