Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, 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.
At NY Times, Tilda Swinton picks her favorite books:
“The Complete Essays,” Michel de Montaigne
This book should, in my humble opinion, replace Gideon in hotel bedside tables the world over. An examination of what it means to be alive, an essay for every possible constituent part of the human experience, built upon the endearing and radically joyous motto “What do I know?” An uplifting and companionable fellow traveler for us all. A timely reminder of how toxic doubtlessness can be. Straight from the 16th century into the now. Forever and ever.
Watch a talk with Justin Lin and Joe Russo on Star Trek Beyond:
The Art of the Title looks at The Neon Demon‘s opening titles.
David Bordwell looks at the novelistic touches in James Schamus‘ Indignation, plus watch a talk with the director:
Like the book, the film is an exercise in restricted point of view. That involves not simply the voice-over commentary that weaves in and out. (In a film, that technique doesn’t guarantee restriction the way first-person narration would in a novel. Movies can be more promiscuous in breaking with what one character thinks and knows.) And the restriction isn’t wholly a matter of a subjective plunge either, though we do get Marcus’s dreams and fantasies and some fragmentary flashbacks.
BFI‘s Nick Pinkerton on ‘expanded cinema’ and the humbling of the movies:
If you go to a movie in the United States at a theatre belonging to the Cinemark chain, you will witness a pre-show etiquette lesson meant to dissuade patrons from fidgeting with their smartphones during the feature presentation. The spot, which is just awkward and awful enough to be worth quoting, encourages viewers to say, “No way, pocket screen” to their phones, and instead to open themselves up to enthralment by a “movie that’s about to start on this movie-sized screen that was made for movies”.
Watch a tribute to the films of Béla Tarr:
After Ellen reports some airlines are showing edited versions of Carol with zero same-sex kissing:
The studio in question, The Weinstein Company, has not responded to request for comment, but it’s peculiar that they would edit out every instance of physical intimacy between the women and not just the one fairly non-explicit and short sex scene. That kind of censorship is more worrisome, considering several queer women seemed to have only viewed Carol in-flight and assumed that there was never any payoff for the Carol/Therese relationship.
Watch a video on Michael Cimino‘s wide shots: