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.
After watching a documentary on its making, see Terry Gilliam discuss Brazil at a recent BFI conversation:
Watch Werner Herzog discuss Les Blank:
At Slate, Paul Schrader discusses the debacle that is Dying of the Light:
Well, I fell in with some bad people. It happens. Because film directors are such personalities, you think, “Put me in the cage with the lions. I know how to treat the lions. I’ll have them all sitting on their stools.” It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the lions win.
I’m in the middle of negotiating several things now. Every time something like that happens, you swear it’s not going to happen again. But the problem is, they always come up with new ways to fuck you. You think, “OK, they’re never going to fuck you that way again.” Well, they’re probably not, but they’re going to find a new way. It’s kind of hard to protect yourself completely.
Particularly now, there’s so many people involved in motion pictures that don’t really care about movies. Movies used to be made by people who actually liked movies. There are so many people who really don’t care much about movies one way or another. Those are the kind of people I got involved with and I thought they had respect for me and they didn’t. So I got fooled that way.
Watch Vice‘s documentary on a potential inspiration for The Wolf of Wall Street:
At And So It Begins, Alex Withrow on the top 10 films shot by their directors:
The early boxing scene in Killer’s Kiss is visually remarkable. Kubrick chose to shoot the entire fight from low angles, with the camera placed outside of the ring, as if the audience is a cornerman watching the fight. Then, without warning, Kubrick cuts into the ring and takes the POV of the main protagonist right as he’s knocked down. The camera falls to the ground and pans up at the bright lights above the ring, just as the ref comes into frame and begins counting down. The whole thing is gorgeous. And that’s just one scene in the film. Kubrick does many interesting things with full focus framing, shadows, contrast, reflections and, of course, centered compositions. To watch Killer’s Kiss is to witness a master flex his unique talent for the very first time.