criterionforum.org

Posted: **Sun Sep 20, 2020 10:47 pm**

It's remarkable how closely Sanders's suicide note corresponds to his ironic, world-weary film persona. You can hear practically any of his characters reading it aloud.

Posted: **Sun Oct 18, 2020 10:09 pm**

Came across Schrader's response to Film Comment's "Best of the Nineties" poll. He includes a list of twelve films, one of which is Light Sleeper. (As pointed out elsewhere, he voted for First Reformed as the decade's best film when Film Comment ran a poll last year.)

Posted: **Tue Mar 16, 2021 3:55 am**

Posted: **Tue Mar 16, 2021 6:43 am**

BUUUUUUUUURN

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:33 am**

Richard Brody interviews Schrader for The New Yorker, and he mentions an interesting project:

Have you ever entertained the possibility of working for a streaming service directly, whether a feature film or a series?

Yeah. Well, Scorsese and I are planning something, and it is . . . it would be a three-year series about the origins of Christianity.

Fiction? Drama?

No, no, no. It’s based on the Apostles and on the Apocrypha. It’s called “The Apostles and Apocrypha.” Because people sort of know the New Testament, but nobody knows the Apocrypha. And back in the first century, there was no New Testament, there’s just these stories. And some were true, and some weren’t, and some were forgeries.

But these will be dramatized like “The Last Temptation”?

Yeah.

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:45 am**

I dearly want this to happen, but have trouble imagining those two old men putting aside enough time to actually get it made.

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 2:32 pm**

I'm sure it'll happen, just like the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra biopics.

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:03 pm**

MichaelB wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:16 am
colinr0380 wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:11 am Has Greenaway attached a special significance to that particular age number, or just likes the mathematical preciseness of it in some way?
He firmly believes that 80 marks the point where you stop being a productive member of society and start being a drain on it. He made that decision years ago and clearly intends to go through with it. (I doubt very much my experience was unusual, and he'd already gone public so I'm not betraying any confidences.)

Anyway, we'll know on 5 April 2022, or shortly afterwards.

ellipsis7 wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:01 am
So Greenaway's been 80 for a few weeks now and is still alive and kicking. Has he changed his mind?

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:30 pm**

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:51 pm**

stevewhamola wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:30 pm2022

Oops. Guess PG has nearly another full year of being a productive member of society.

Posted: **Fri Apr 23, 2021 6:32 pm**

Telstar wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:51 pm
stevewhamola wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 5:30 pm2022
Oops. Guess PG has nearly another full year of being a productive member of society.

He's making a film with Morgan Freeman right now. Plus, there are a few HD transfers he needs to supervise before he can leave this mortal coil.

Posted: **Wed Jun 29, 2022 9:13 pm**

Paul Schrader just posted on Facebook about his 2017 re-edit of Dying of the Light (2014) — Dark — being removed from YouTube by Lionsgate.

If you still want a chance to see it, it’s up at the moment at the Internet Archive.

Now I’m curious to re-watch Adam Curtis’ The Power of Nightmares (2004), which I’m guessing was one of Schrader’s inspirations here.

Posted: **Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:40 pm**

According to this Curbed profile, despite moving into an assisted care facility to care for his wife, Schrader has finished multiple screenplays in recent years, including an unnamed project he optioned as directorial vehicle for Elisabeth Moss; another adaptation of a Russell Banks novel (Foregone) that he wants to direct this summer with Richard Gere in the lead role; and Three Guns at Dawn, about a trio of estranged brothers on different sides of the law and which he’s shopping to potential directors.

Posted: **Tue May 16, 2023 3:09 pm**

I loved this quip from the recent interview with Schrader in Sight & Sound:

Given that you excluded recent films from your Sight & Sound ballot, can I ask which contemporary films interest you? The second edition of Transcendental Style in Film, published in 2018, has a new introduction in which you talk a lot about slow cinema.
It's hard to keep up. They're making slow movies faster than we can watch them.

Posted: **Tue May 16, 2023 5:07 pm**

colinr0380 wrote: Tue May 16, 2023 3:09 pm I loved this quip from the recent interview with Schrader in Sight & Sound:
Given that you excluded recent films from your Sight & Sound ballot, can I ask which contemporary films interest you? The second edition of Transcendental Style in Film, published in 2018, has a new introduction in which you talk a lot about slow cinema.
It's hard to keep up. They're making slow movies faster than we can watch them.

Brilliant. How many filmmakers are left today who show that kind of intelligence?

Posted: **Sun Aug 13, 2023 9:51 pm**

I'm wondering what people here would refer to as the tenets of Paul Schrader films. I'm sure that there's something in there about voice over, type of protagonist, journals, etc., and I know he loves Pickpocket and Bresson. But was wondering if anyone here had particular thoughts on what may truly distinguish Paul Schrader films as being 'solid' or even 'of a certain ilk.' I believe I've seen all of them except American Gigolo, Hardcore, and Mishima. I know how crazy that probably seems considering my having seen the rest of them first. Am really looking forward to Mishima as I acquired it recently. Any thoughts on even why people (in a sort of collective conscious way) may dig his films? /Apologies on bad english

Posted: **Thu Oct 12, 2023 12:17 pm**

DarkImbecile wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:40 pm Schrader has finished multiple screenplays in recent years... another adaptation of a Russell Banks novel (Foregone) that he wants to direct this summer with Richard Gere in the lead role

Schrader has wrapped principal photography on Oh Canada, an adaptation of the Banks novel starring Richard Gere. While Jacob Elordi's casting was already confirmed, I believe Schrader's nonchalant thank you to Uma Thurman on FB is the first mention of her being attached to the project

Posted: **Thu Oct 12, 2023 3:37 pm**

therewillbeblus wrote: Thu Oct 12, 2023 12:17 pm
DarkImbecile wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 6:40 pm Schrader has finished multiple screenplays in recent years... another adaptation of a Russell Banks novel (Foregone) that he wants to direct this summer with Richard Gere in the lead role
Schrader has wrapped principal photography on Oh Canada, an adaptation of the Banks novel starring Richard Gere. While Jacob Elordi's casting was already confirmed, I believe Schrader's nonchalant thank you to Uma Thurman on FB is the first mention of her being attached to the project

A 43-year gap between Gere and Schrader first collaborating. Is this the longest ever between a major directing/star pair? Walter Hill and Willem Dafoe went 38 years between projects, and Billy Wilder/William Holden were 28 years

Posted: **Thu Oct 12, 2023 4:07 pm**

Ingmar Bergman/Erland Josephson had 45 years between Brink of Life and Saraband, or it's as much as 57 years if you count Josephson's uncredited appearances in a few earlier films

Posted: **Thu Oct 12, 2023 8:26 pm**

Bergman and Josephson go back to the mid-1940s - he’s in It Rains On Our Love, and I daresay there were stage projects too.

Josephson has the unique achievement of appearing in at least one film for each of the seven decades of Bergman’s career.

Posted: **Thu Oct 12, 2023 9:01 pm**

MichaelB wrote: Thu Oct 12, 2023 8:26 pm
Josephson has the unique achievement of appearing in at least one film for each of the seven decades of Bergman’s career.

Interesting. Kind of like Sidney Lumet and Jack Warden

Posted: **Thu Dec 28, 2023 10:28 pm**

Paul Schrader has an interview in Le Monde, though only subscribers have access.

Two translated excerpts, courtesy of Richard Brody:

On his new film, Oh, Canada: "The shoot was only seventeen days. I kept all the scenes we shot. The rough cut was ninety minutes. The final cut is ninety-one minutes. That's how I work. To the bone."

"It's the first time, since Mishima, that I've made a puzzle-film. Which is to say, an assemblage of scattered memories, disparate formats, fragments."

Posted: **Thu Dec 28, 2023 11:17 pm**

You can read the full article by pasting the link into an archival website.

Highlights spoiled for length

Schrader says that the editing is done but that the "only thing missing" is the soundtrack, to be recorded by Phosphorescent (Matthew Houck). He expects the film to be at the Cannes Marché du Film, but he also says that, since what Thierry Frémaux likes "tends to scare him," he figures he might show the movie at the more supportive Venice fest rather than Cannes. He discovered Jacob Elordi in Euphoria (yay!) and counts it alongside A Spy Among Friends as a "good" TV series; he still watches the "bad" ones, like The Gilded Age ("the one-upsmanship of costumes and extras annoys me"), though. His entire answer to a cultural question deserves to be reproduced here:

Interviewer: What's your take on your fellow New Hollywood filmmakers and their increasingly elongated films?
Schrader: Francis Ford Coppola has always loved his big toys; it's his thing. He sold his vineyards to shoot Megalopolis, I can't wait to see it. Such a huge expense has to serve very specific intentions. Sam Peckinpah needed four or five months to shoot The Wild Bunch, but it was justified: he was filming nothing less than the death of the western! Marty (Scorsese) compares me to a Flemish miniaturist. He'd rather paint Renaissance frescoes. Give him 200 million dollars and a good movie will inevitably come of it. That said, I'd have preferred if Leonardo DiCaprio played the role of the cop (in Killers of the Flower Moon) rather than that of the imbecile. Spending three and a half hours in the company of an idiot, it's a bit long. You see this nasty cut on my finger? This is Marty's last contribution to my existence. We had dinner together three nights ago - one of his dogs bit me. What a shithead! (He laughs).

Also of interest is his description of Quentin Tarantino's next project:

Spoiler for QT's tenth movie I guess?

Interviewer: Quentin Tarantino's next film is inspired by the life of critic Pauline Kael, who encouraged you to write about film when you were starting out. Did he contact you?
Schrader: Yes. Quentin is going to use clips from films from the '70s. And he's going to make his own versions of films from that era. He asked me permission to shoot the ending of Rolling Thunder, by John Flynn, as I had it in the original script - before it was completely rewritten and watered down.

He doesn't discuss any other projects than the script he gave to Elisabeth Moss to direct and the other one (a noir called "Three Guns at Dawn" about three brothers in South Central L.A., a cop, a drug dealer, and a serial killer, to either be directed by or co-directed with Antoine Fuqua), and gives the answer to the question of "what do you think of cultural appropriation" that you'd expect Paul Schrader to give. I did not expect that it'd involve him calling Joaquin Phoenix "the least charismatic actor around" and saying that Ridley Scott's Napoleon biopic wasn't believable because of how bland Phoenix is! He liked Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Maestro, though.

Posted: **Wed Jun 26, 2024 12:22 am**

Get your own

Posted: **Wed Jun 26, 2024 1:07 am**

Is this available in 4K?

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