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.
Cliff Martinez (Drive, The Knick) will score Cary Fukunaga‘s next feature Beasts of No Nation, according to Film Music Reporter.
Watch the anatomy of a gag in Playtime, now available on Criterion Blu-ray:
Google Glass has officially been banned by the MPAA and NATO, Variety reports.
Cinematographer Reed Morano has launched a petition to stop making “smooth motion” the default setting on all HDTVs:
We would like to request that the tvs come to the consumer with “smooth motion” turned off so they are seeing everything in it’s original look intended by the filmmakers. Motion Interpolation was an effect that was created to reduce motion blur on HDTVs but a very unfortunate side effect of using this function is that is takes something shot at 24 fps or shot on film and makes it look like it was shot on video at 60i. In short, it takes the cinematic look out of any image and makes it look like soap opera shot on a cheap video camera. It is unbelievable that this is a default setting on all HDTVs because essentially what it is doing, is taking the artistic intention away from filmmakers. As artists, these new HDTVs are preventing our vision from being seen the way we shot it and it’s also affecting the viewer’s experience with the story because they are often put off by the odd “home video” look. It’s actually very distracting watching a classic like “Five Easy Pieces” and having it look like a sitcom shot on video.
At Criterion, read Scott Foundas‘ essay for The Vanishing, now available on Criterion Blu-ray:
Given that this is a movie with one of the most famous endings in modern cinema, let’s start at the beginning. A man and a woman are traveling through the South of France, near Nîmes. They part from the highway to take the scenic route—often a fatal error in movies that open on seemingly happy couples traveling rural countrysides. Then comes the second harbinger of doom: the car runs out of gas halfway through a mountain tunnel, and the man (whose name is Rex) sets off alone in search of gas, despite the pleas of his girlfriend (whose name is Saskia) to wait for her to find a flashlight. Again, our pulse quickens. But no, soon enough Rex and Saskia are on their way again, safe and sound. They kiss and make up. He says he has never felt more in love with her. She forgives him. Then they stop at a gas station for a proper refueling. It is broad daylight, and the place is packed with fellow travelers. And it is only then, when we least expect it, when we may even have forgotten the title of the movie we are watching, that Saskia disappears without a trace.
Watch Brian Crano‘s Dog Food, an SXSW short film starring Amanda Seyfried:
At The Talkhouse, David Lowery reviews Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure:
Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure opens with a family posing for an offscreen photographer. They’re staggered in classical fashion — dad, mum, daughter and son — against the backdrop of the Alpine ski chalet where they’ve gone on vacation. Over the course of a single shot, a disembodied voice directs the family into a series of nuclear tableaux; it is just distended enough to do that wonderful thing that opening shots do sometimes, which is to function as an abstract of an entire film. Everything you need to know about this movie is laid out at once: theme, form, tone, principal cast — everything is there but Vivaldi.