Livres

Death is always the issue—in life, and in the Western. Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a movie of six Western stories. In each, our common destination is approached by a different road. Through each, diverse characters hurry for their final appointment: Oregon Trail-travelers, a gold prospector, a motley crew of stagecoach passengers, a high-plains drifting bank robber, even a singing cowboy. These six stories escort them with a care that either respects, or mocks, the dignity of all.
The film stars Tom Waits, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tim Bake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and is shot with the harsh grandeur of the classic John Ford westerns.

In recent years, the television landscape has seen the glorious rise of women to key positions of power within the industry, from writers to producers to directors. Successes like Shonda Rhimes’s Holy Trinity of shows as a producer—Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder—and critical darlings like Lena Dunham’s Girls, Jill Soloway’s Transparent and Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is the New Black have heralded a revolution and inspired women creators to put their smartest and boldest art onto screens everywhere.

The Innocence of Memories is an important addition to the oeuvre of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk. Comprised of the screenplay of the acclaimed film by Grant Gee from 2015 (by the same name), a transcript of the author and filmmaker in conversation, and captivating colour stills, it is an essential volume for understanding Pamuk’s work.

Drawing on the themes from Pamuk’s best-selling books, The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul and The Black Book, this book is both an accompaniment to the author’s previous publications and a wonderfully revelatory exploration of Orhan Pamuk’s key ideas about art, love, and memory.

Over the past year the success of British films at international film festivals – as well as the numerous awards bestowed on 12 Years a Slave – have demonstrated that British cinema has undergone a genuine renaissance that has caused new voices to emerge. At the same time, directors whose work have enthralled over the past five years have also continued to develop and expand their visions.

In Directing Herbert White James Franco writes about making a film of Frank Bidart’s poem, Herbert White. Though the main character, Herbert White, is a necrophiliac and a killer, the poem – and the film – are an expression of life’s isolation and loneliness. A poem became a film.

In the rest of book, Franco uses poems to express what he feels about film: about acting; about the actors he admires – James Dean, Marlon Brando, Sean Penn; about the cult of celebrity and his struggles with it; about his teenage years in Palo Alto, and about mortality prompted by the death of his father.

In his highly acclaimed novel Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day) created a remarkable story of love, loss and hidden truths. In it he posed the fundamental question: What makes us human? Now director Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo), writer Alex Garland and DNA Films bring Ishiguro’s hauntingly poignant and emotional story to the screen.

This unsettling black comedy about private passion and public shame is based on Zoe Heller’s acclaimed novel, adapted for the screen by celebrated dramatist Patrick Marber (Closer).

With Venus, Hanif Kureishi turns his piercing gaze onto the pains of old age. Maurice (Peter O’Toole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ian’s niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). While Jessie’s housekeeping skills make for a bone of contention with Ian, Maurice finds himself attracted to her.

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s ‘unauthorised sequel’ to his debut hit sex, lies and videotape is an exhilarating romantic comedy set in Los Angeles and featuring a stellar cast.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy both passed away in the 1950s, yet their films still have the power to reduce audiences old and new to helpless laughter. There has been no comprehensive account of their lives and work, until now. The roots of their comic greatness lay in 19th century variety theatre. Lancashire-born Stan Laurel was steeped in the traditions of the music hall, and found himself touring the USA in the 1910s as Charlie Chaplin’s understudy. American Oliver Hardy had established himself as a ‘fat funny man’ by the time he and Laurel were first paired in 1927.

Writer-director Don Roos is one of the smartest voices in new Hollywood cinema: witty, acerbic, and brilliantly observant of human foibles and frailties. Here, collected for the first time, are the screenplays of his hit comedies Bounce and The Opposite of Sex.

Mark Renton is an unrepentant drug abuser, doing his level best to elude the claims and responsibilities Life throws up to him. His pals – Spud, Sick Boy, Tommy and Begbie – are devoted to much the same heroically seedy existence. Both harrowing and hilarious, Trainspotting charts the disintegration of this unlikely gang, as their appetites for intoxication and mayhem lead them unerringly into the worst kinds of trouble.

Adapted by Shallow Grave screenwriter John Hodge from the novel by Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting was an international hit in 1996, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle.