New Miyazaki flick? Count me in.
The first feature–length film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki since 2013's The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu), and possibly his last,
 How Do You Live (Kimitatachi wa Dou Ikiru Ka), is in post–production and slated for release in Japan July 14, 2023.



The title's meaning appears to be lost in the translation, since the question "How do you live" is already an English expression with its own connotations. I'm pretty sure the intended meaning is a philosophical question, as in "What kind of life are you leading?" Also important is that the “you” in the title is a plural diminutive form, as in the case of an adult speaking to a number of children (there are other cases but I don't want to take this too deep into the weeds).

So I think a more faithful translation of the title would be something like "What sort of life are you (children) leading?"

The film’s producer, Toshio Suzuki, is on record saying Miyazaki is making the film for his grandson as his way of saying "Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon but he is leaving behind this film." 

Also, the scenes in the new Scream trailer showing Ghostface in the convenience store and the subway really rub me the wrong way. Maybe the movies will find a way to pull it off, but I feel like slasher villains wouldn't really work in a public context given that they're supposed to be stealthy and what have you.

You may have heard the news this week that Steven Spielberg and HBO have announced that they intend to make an adaptation of the 147 page unused Stanley Kubrick screenplay for his planned Napoleon project.  The script was only relatively recently discovered in an MGM vault about a decade ago.

Personally, I'd rather just read the script.  Kubrick's scripts aren't necessarily the primary ingredient to their greatness, but it would provide an interesting hypothetical.  Kubrick was the opposite of such meticulous masters, like Hitchcock, who very carefully planned each shot before filming.  Although Kubrick's voracious, bottomless research during pre-production is well-known, during filming he was more prone to "finding the shot" on set, using a variety of angles and coverage and, notoriously, pushing his actors through multiple variations of takes until he was satisfied with the results.  Given this experimental nature of his method, it would be impossible for anyone to truly make an approximation of a Kubrick film with just his script, however strong said script is.  And unlike A.I., the project that Kubrick passed along to Spielberg to realize, this project does not have Kubrick's accompanying detailed storyboards and pre-production notes to aid in understanding his vision (or the assistance of the long private correspondence between the men about the project as it was being developed).

Rather than a film, HBO is set to make it a 7-part mini-series, which seems to me pretty bloated for a script that at 147 pages is better suited for a three hour runtime.  This gives me trepidation that they'll do something stupid, like the Hobbitt trilogy, and try to blow an entire battle sequence into an hour or something.  It isn't clear if Spielberg is intending to direct or simply produce, and if he does direct he'll most likely only do so for one or two of the seven segments.  It is slightly more promising that Kubrick's long-term assistent producer, Jan Harlan, will be overseeing the project alonside Spielberg.  No other talent has been announced, and it's doubtful that we'll see any product before next year at the earliest.
 

crumbsroom wrote:

I have a book about Kubrick's Napoleon project that I probably close to a thousand pages of all of his notes and suggestions for costumes and locations and character notes on and on and on.

Oh great!  What's the name?

I doubt Spielberg would be willing to do a TV show anyway at this point in his career, but who knows.  I know that I definitely wasn't excited when I saw Baz Luhrman's name as a possible candidate.  The other name mentioned, Cary Fukunaga, would be more promising, but it looks like he's had a lot of #metoo trouble over the last year.  Hey, as long as they keep the project away from the Game of Thrones people, I'll give it a shot.

Sorry to interrupt (I know it's a sin), I just need to sneak in this little announcement:

Chris Rock is live–streaming a new standup performance on Netflix this coming Saturday March 4th at 10pm EST.

Fingers crossed it doesn't turn out to be a password–sharing sting operation.

I don't know if I'm the last one to hear about this but I wanted to get the word out just in case, given its time–sensitive nature.

Right then. Thanks for the interruption. Carry on.

Jinnistan wrote:

I have never live streamed anything on Netflix, so I hope my app has the capability.  No extra charge, I gather?

I think this is the first time Netflix has done a live streaming event, so I guess this is their big rollout. 
No extra charge, not to my knowledge, anyway. If they do charge, I think it will be a bit of bait–and–switch action. 

Goddamit.  As if I wasn't really impressed by the above trailer enough, now I learn that this remake is actually going to be a 6 episode miniseries.  This has become a popular trend for a studio to milk anything that they feel they can't squeeze into a movie theater.  If people are going to be watching this at home, we might as well bloat it out for hours.  Bingeable!  And people eat this shit up, same people who like to complain about having to watch a 3 hour movie will gladly binge multiple hours of some stupid show.  I see where the remake of Fatal Attraction (an even less enticing proposal) is also being blown up into a work-day length miniseries.  Why?  Because some people don't have anything better to do.

Alex Gibney has announced a "definitive and unvarnished" and "rigorous" documentary on Elon Musk that's already, apparently, months in development.  The news comes a day after it was reported that Musk is using bodyguards around the Twitter office in fear of his employees attempting to assassinate him.

The article uses Gibney's Going Clear documentary on Scientology to sell his credentials, but Gibney is a prolific award-winning documentarians, and probably the pre-eminent documentarian in current American cinema.

In other news, it looks like Coppola has wrapped the shooting of his anticipated Megalopolis project, shot on a high-tech studio soundstage in Atlanta, using around $120 million of Coppola's own money.  Hope to see this one by next year or possibly (*fingers crossed*) by Christmas.  Given his more sparse late-career output, this could be the final final in the 84 year old Coppola's esteemed career.
 

Rock wrote:

Speaking of Coppola, apparently there’s a new cut of Twixt? IIRC you were a fan of that one, figured I’d give you a heads up if you weren’t already aware.

I like it, but it may be my least favorite of Coppola's 21st century films.  I'm interested in a new cut, and it sounds like they had fun doing it, but I don't like that they cut the Tom Waits part.  I'll look out for it.

That looks a little emasculating actually.  I couldn't pull off that thong.

It is interesting to consider if the age gap between me and JLaw were flipped, and I was one of those lucky boys who's spent the last decade considering her as like a Bo Derek-esque grown woman fantasy.  As opposed to me trying not to think of JLaw as being younger than my niece.