THE PANDEMIC STREAMING WORLD: Oscilloscope, Kino Lorber, Music Box Films

JEANNE FINLEY: SEAHORSE (2019)

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Director Jeanie Finlay charts a transgender man's path to parenthood after he decides to carry his child himself. The pregnancy prompts an unexpected and profound reckoning with conventions of masculinity, self-definition and biology.

AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL AND ON-DEMAND FROM JUNE 16, 2020. WATCH THE FILM HERE

This sounded like something that would, frankly, make me very uneasy. But Freddy McConnell, the person in question, who narrates, is an engaging young British man who gained my confidence quite quickly.

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Freddy is 30 and yearns to start a family but this poses unique challenges. He is a gay transgender man. He is unprepared for the physical and emotional realities of pregnancy. To him what feels pragmatic, to others feels confrontational; this was not part of his plan. Against a backdrop of hostility towards trans people, he is forced to confront his naivety. Made with unprecedented access & collaboration, Seahorse is an audacious and lyrical story about family, gender and love. FILMLEAF REVIEW HERE.

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Rent or buy using Vimeo - in all countries except USA, Canada and Denmark.
USA - Virtual Cinema exclusively at Museum of Moving Image, NYC. RENT HERE
USA - Prebuy on Itunes / Apple TV (available June 16)
Canada - Available on CBC Gem June 21.

CRISTINA COSTANTINI, KAREEEM TABSCH: MUCHO, MUCHO AMORE

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Once the world's most famous astrologer, Walter Mercado seeks to resurrect a forgotten legacy. Raised in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, Walter grew up to become a gender non-conforming, cape-wearing psychic whose televised horoscopes reached 120 million Latinx viewers a day for 30 years before he mysteriously disappeared.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and co-creator of Hamilton, regards him as almost a god. Walter Mercado, whose story and celebration this is, is a legend in the Spanish-speaking world and far beyond. For fifty years he was the asexual, feminine, big-haired, magnificently caped shaman on Spaish language TV (though in the film he speaks good English) whose horoscopes could fill an hour-long show, or be the first thing people wanted to hear and see every morning. The most famous astrologer in the world. The documentary comes to Netflix July 8, 2020. In it, you find out Walter seemed to bring a bird back to life with his breath as a young boy in Porto Rico and became a local healer visited by many. Then he studied dance and acting and did ballet and drama (we see how handsome he looked), settling into telenovela - until he did a horoscope and the producer said: More of that, Walter! and it became all he did. His effeminate grandiosity - big hair, big rings, fabulous, weighty and costly costumes - is reminiscent of Liberace. But he represents something warmer, more directly, intimately appealing to the audience. With its extensive interviews, many voices, magnificent inter-titles, and coverage of a grand celebratory apotheosis and love-fest at the opening of a Walter Mercado museum in Miami three months before his passing at the age of 87, this is a fitting portrait. The cape outfits and their richness and variety are worthy of the fashion collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Walter Mercado leaves a warm impression of someone who brought magic to people.

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ROD LURIE WITH PHOTO OF LOST SON AND CAST MEMBERS OF THE OUTPOST

Eleven coming reviews on Filmleaf.
Mostly online releases now except for THE OUTPOST - part of a Fourth of July weekend reopening plan.

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June 26
HOUSE OF HUMMINGBIRD
A sensitive Korean coming-of-age film. Feature debut.
July 3
THE OUTPOST Intense Afghan war thriller by Rod Lurie. This will also be a theatrical release.
JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE Documentary about the veteran congressman and pioneer civil rights fighter
July 7
THE MEDICINE (doc about ayahuasca)
July 8
MUCHO MUCHO AMOR
A bio doc - already thumbnail reviewed in this thread above.
July 10
RELIC
Classy horror flick with Emily Mortimer.
WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES ( Makoto Nagahisa)
Busy, clever Japanese youth film
July 17
THE CLIMB
Smart, inventive, funny feature debut by Michael Angelo Covino.
THE PAINTED BIRD
Black and white adaptation pf the famous Jerzy Kozinski novel of the sixties by Václav Marhoul.
July 21
THE GRAND UNIFIED THEORY OF HOWARD BLOOM (Charlie HOxie 2019)
Quirky thinking from Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Documentary.)
July 29
NOSE TO TAIL
Short drama by Jesse Zigelstein about a stressed high end Toronto chef played by Aaron Abrams.

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LENNIE BURMEISTER, TRINE DYRHOLM AND DEVID STRIESOW IN BUNGALOW

July 4
Grasshopper Films releases Ulrich Köhler's auspicious and original 2002 debut feature Bungalow today in their virtual theater. This is an exciting opportunity to see the beginning of one of the leaders of the Berlin School.

Filmleaf review

Mucho Mucho Amor

The film celebrating the colorful Latin American astrologer goes on Netflix today.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/enter...iew/index.html

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER

See also Film at Lincoln Center's new offerings. They have a weekly newsletter announcing their new offerings.

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We Are Little Zombies, the inventive Japanese celebration of youth, courage, and gloom from Oscilloscope, is out now and receiving good reviews; a New York Times Critics Pick accompanies a glowing description from the paper's Jeannette Catsoulis. To watch it in pay-for-view benefitting a selected theater, go H E R E.

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KYLE MARVIN AND MICHAEL ANGELO COVINO IN THE CLIMB

THE CLIMB opened in MK2 theaters in Paris today.

Creator Michael Angelo Covino and his co-author and co-star Kyle Marvin can be happy that they've gotten that opportunity in the country to which it's partly a love letter. But when can it come out in US theaters? The current July 31 date seems unlikely. In March, Covino told Eric Kohn of Indiewire:

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“We really want a theatrical opening, and feel it’s important that independent comedies do well in theaters. Whether or not that happens, I want to support that possibility.”

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Who doesn't fervently agree?

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A return treat for Bob Marley fans.

On the occasion of what would have been his seventy-fifth birthday, a special rerelease of a documentary has opened in both virtual and some traditional cinemas today, July 31, 2020. Directed by: Kevin Macdonald (in 2012) - who made Touching the Void and [I]The Last King of Scotland[/I. Produced by: Ziggy Marley, Steve Bing, Charles Steel. Metascore: 82%.

I've watched this film and it pulsates with Bob Marley's charisma and the catchy rhythm and positive, unifying spirit of his songs. It digs deep into his impoverished origins in the ghetto of ghettos in a remote Jamaica town, his pivotal conversion to Rastafarianism, his hard fought fame in America and Europe. It's hard to watch the end, his possibly unnecessary death from a melanoma that started at his big toe, and carried him away at the age of 36 - though he left many songs, a permanent global fame, and 11 children from 7 mothers. Rolling Stone ranked him No. 11 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. In him, the spirit of the seventies lives on.

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[PR release.]
Born into poverty in rural Jamaica, Bob Marley became a prophet for the world’s oppressed, preaching peace, love, and understanding with a universal language - song. Now in 2020, the Marley family has rolled out a yearlong MARLEY75 commemorative series of events across all forms of media in celebration of the legendary cultural icon, on what would have been Marley’s seventy-fifth birthday. As part of this series of special events, audiences can see in virtual and traditional theaters a special re-release of MARLEY, in which Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin Macdonald combines unheard tracks, unseen footage, and intimate interviews to paint a definitive portrait of the legendary artist.

With each ticket purchase, recipients will receive an exclusive Ziggy Marley song download pack. Additionally, all ticket purchases will be entered to win a grand prize package, including a yet to be released Bob Marley photo book, Marley vinyl and select other Marley merchandise.

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A DESERTED VENICE FILM FESTIVAL HEADQUARTERS > vULTURE /NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

FESTIVALS AND THE PANDEMIC

Each big festival is making its own decisions. Cannes cancelled and did not follow through on the idea of linking up virtually with some other festival. Venice has decided to go ahead, under special conditions, fewer films, more venues, controlled attendance. Telluride has decided to cancel but has published its entire program-that-is-not, with notes on where or how individual films on its list might be seen.

What's coming: Toronto plans a program of "physical screenings and drive-ins, digital screenings, virtual red carpets, press conferences, and industry talks," with a greatly reduced program, down from 200 feature films to 50. NYFF so far has named its Centerpiece film, Chloe Zhao's NOMADLAND (also featured at Venice ant the not-Telluride); Lincoln Center has not announced any logistics or plans otherwise.

Vulture, the main website of New York Magazine, had an article a fortnight ago by Nate Jones on "How Each Major Film Festival Is Responding to the Coronavirus."

Criterion Channel

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Let's not forget that the Criterion Channel offers outstanding selections all the time for a reasonable fee.

Today they are featuring Seventies Black indie director Bill Gunn.

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Three by Bill Gunn
One of the most electrifying but unjustly neglected talents to emerge from the creative ferment of 1970s American cinema, actor, writer, and director Bill Gunn blazed a new trail for Black independent filmmakers with his avant-visionary, Afrocentric vampire myth GANJA & HESS and PERSONAL PROBLEMS, an epic, intensely intimate “meta-soap opera” (as writer Ishmael Reed called it) that went virtually unseen for decades before reemerging to widespread acclaim. Those twin masterpieces are presented alongside Ján Kadár’s THE ANGEL LEVINE, an overlooked Bernard Malamud adaptation cowritten by Gunn and starring Zero Mostel and Harry Belafonte. With their bold, iconoclastic style and focus on the lives of intellectual and middle-class Black characters, Gunn’s uncompromising films were decades ahead of their time—only now is the world beginning to catch up.

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Secret: You can watch Ganja & Hess in its entirety on YouTube free. Watch the first minute and you'll see the ease of a master.

Hollywood assesses the damage.

This paragraph comes from the New York newsletter, via Vulture One Great Story:

The Year of Movies That Never Was - What would Hollywood have looked like in 2020 if a pandemic never happened? We were almost too afraid to ask.
By Joe Reid

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We’re living in the year of the Hollywood asterisk. After an entire summer movie season was postponed, the entertainment industry is existing on a prayer, hoping that movie theaters magically reopen this fall so studios won’t have to keep releasing their blockbusters abroad and surrendering the rest to a willing streaming platform. The Oscars are delayed until April either way, pushing all the big awards-bait films to January or February as a result; it’ll be eight more months before we even know what 2020 had to offer. In this fraught and chaotic new reality, up is down, light is dark, Elisabeth Moss in The Invisible Man is vying for Best Actress, and Hamilton is a film. It’s hard not to think about the year of movies that could have been.

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WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES Available on VOD/Digital Platforms Today!

It's a cute and visually and aurally unique little Japanese film. Based on a manga, of course.

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Metrograph has an online membership program. You join up and pay $5 a month, and for that you can watch any of their online offerings during the period offered.

https://metrograph.com/

So, with Metrographs's Rohmerx3, Boyfriend and Girlfrfiends is onlilne Sept. 4-11, 4 Adventures of Reinnette and Mirabelle Sept. 11-18, and The Aviator's Wife Sept. 18-24, 2020. Other films are available at the same time.

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New York Film Festival 2020

I was forgetting the most obvious coming oneline event - the New York Film Festival.
You can log in and buy "tickets" for all the NYFF films - but you have to watch them in a "virtual cinema" fashion, meaning during a limited, mostly 5-day, time-frame. Why a virtual screening would sell out I don't know, but the first day of sales, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, the Hong Sang-soo had sold out. I got tickets for a lot but not all of these.

GENERAL FILM FORUM

The 58th New York Film Festival Main Slate

Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen 2020) Opening Night
Nomadland (Chloé Zhao 2020) Centerpiece
French Exit (Azazel Jacobs 2020) Closing Night
Atarrabi and Mikelats (Eugène Green 2020)
Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili 2020)
The Calming (Song Fang 2020)
City Hall (Frederick Wiseman 2020)
Days 日子 (Tsai Ming-liang 2020)
The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane 2020)
Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky 2020)
I Carry You with Me/Te Llevo Conmigo (Heidi Ewing 2020)
Isabella (Matías Piñeiro 2020)
Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu 2020
Mangrove (Steve McQueen 2020
MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard 2020
Night of the Kings/La Nuit des rois (Philippe Lacôte 2020)
Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi 2020) doc
Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen 2020
The Salt of Tears/Le sel des larmes(Philippe Garrel 2020
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue/一直游到海水变蓝(Jia Zhangke 2020) doc
Time (Garrett Bradley 2020
Tragic Jungle/Selva Trágica (Yulene Olaizola 2020
The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw 2020) doc
Undine (Christian Petzold 2020)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo 2020