Octopus Reading List #2: VHS Forever
In which I watch the Oscars and VHS tapes.
- The Sundance Film Festival has come and gone. This was the final year in Park City, Utah, before the festival moves next year to Boulder, Colorado. This is an old news item but as a Coloradoan I am still very excited over this news.
- Read a brief piece on the anti-ICE protests at Sundance over at The Guardian.
- Also at The Guardian, and also relevant to any discussion of the state of the U.S., take a look at the nightmarish Trump White House premiere of the new Amazon-produced Brett Ratner film Melania, which is a deeply upsetting sequence of words to have to type. (Another old news item I couldn’t resist putting down here.)
- The Oscars have also come and gone. I won’t rehash them, but Sinners and One Battle After Another came up the biggest winners.
- Read A.S. Hamrah on the nominated films.
- I’ll be honest, I was too enrapt in the story of No Other Choice to notice the computer generated visuals too much, but at MUBI’s Notebook Jadie Stillwell writes an interesting piece on “the visibility of No Other Choice’s VFX components” in relation to the film’s social commentary.
- An interesting read on the use of AI to recreate the would-be original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. I hate everything about this callous, hollow project.
- Criterion has announced their June releases, including a favorite of mine, High Art.
- Also at Criterion: Clyde Folley, editor of Videoheaven, interviews Alex Ross Perry, director of Videoheaven, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of VHS. This also marks the “VHS Forever” collection on the Criterion Channel, programmed by Folley.
- The VHS Forever collection is pretty gnarly, including Videoheaven, Body Double, Videodrome, Clerks, and even more goodness I won’t list here.
- From back in February: Park Chan-wook to lead the next Cannes jury.
What cool things have you read lately? Let me know in the comments.
