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Entering what he described as “the Vatican of film,” composer Hans Zimmer decided to take a more solemn approach to his selections in the Criterion Closet. Pouring over the options, the Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve collaborator chose to recognize a fair amount of dark choices, starting with war film “The Battle of Algiers,” then moving on to Holocaust documentary “Night and Fog.”

“Oh, God, I went for all the heavy ones, didn’t I?” Zimmer said. “‘Night and Fog.’ The film that, to me, in its most unflinching way, describes the Third Reich, the Holocaust, and the concentration camps. So you have to have strong nerves to go and watch this one.”

Another bleak pick, Zimmer went on to grab Andrei Tarkovsky’s biographical drama “Andrei Rublev,” which uses the story of the 15th century artist to craft an intricate portrait of medieval Russia.

“Favorite film my whole life long.

The first screening of the uncensored version of ’Andrei Rublev’ by Andrei Tarkovsky has also been programmed.

Venice Classics will include a screening of ‘The Exorcist’ and tributes to late filmmakers Ruggero Deodato and Carlos Saura as part of its line-up of restored features for the 2023 edition.

The Exorcist, by William Friedkin, returns in a restored version, to mark the 100th anniversary of its distributor, Warner Bros.

Italian genre master Deodato passed away last year. One of his most extreme films, Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, has been programmed in tribute. This edition also pays homage to Italian actor Gina Lollobrigida, who died in January,...

Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival.

The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday.

“The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

“One From the Heart” and Arturo Ripstein’s “Deep Crimson” are “not just restored, but also revised by the filmmakers themselves in what are genuine Director’s Cuts,” Barbera and Gironi said, while Andrei Tarkovsky’s masterpiece “Andrei Rublev” will be presented in the reconstruction of the original version,...

4 random things that happened on this day, December 16th, in showbiz history

1966 Andrei Tarkovsky's classic Andrei Rublev premieres in Moscow but an actual release for moviegoers was blocked by the Soviet censors. The years will be kind to it and its reputation grows. It goes to Cannes in 1969, finally opens in the Soviet Union in 1971 (to sold out houses) and reaches US arthouses in 1973...

Venice main competition contender “Dear Comrades,” the latest feature from legendary Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, has been snapped up for world sales by Berlin-based Films Boutique, in what looks like one of the biggest sales agents deals on a title vying for the Golden Lion at 2020’s 77th Venice Intl. Film Festival.

Packing a brief stint in Hollywood in the 1980s, Konchalovsky’s now 60-year career runs a huge gamut, from co-writing Russian colossus Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1965 masterpiece “Andrei Rublev,” to adapting an unfilmed Akira Kurosawa script for 1985’s “Runaway Train,” a feature that spawned a friendship with Billy Wilder, to being fired from the 1989 Sylvester Stallone comedy “Tango & Cash.”

Unambivalent about Hollywood — “‘Tango & Cash,’ like every real Hollywood film, is a film for people who cannot read,” he once told The Guardian — “Good Comrades” delivers what many will see as Konchalovsky’s take on the Soviet regime,...

Ingmar Bergman once said of the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, “Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.” Indeed, a kind of forerunner in meditative, “slow cinema”— which always feels like a pejorative instead of the mystic contribution to cinema that it is, at least in this filmmakers hands— Tarkovsky’s gift was hypnotic sculpting of time that bestowed us stone-cold arthouse classics like “Solaris,” “Stalker” and “Ivan’s Childhood” and more.

Continue reading ‘Andrei Rublev’ Restoration Trailer: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Director’s Cut Gets A Theatrical Re-Release [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

Film critique and academia oftentimes produce fascinating video essays. From an investigation of slow motion to how makeup has been used to age actors to even a parody of video essays themselves, these clips have offered an insightful look into the art of filmmaking — as well as some hysterical laughs for the lack thereof. But when one looks at greats like Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, it’s bound to be a beautiful tribute, and Vimeo user Vugar Efendi has done just that in a comparison of the two giants’ styles.

Read More: ‘The Shining’ Board Game Viral Video: Watch The Twisted & Hilarious Stanley Kubrick Tribute

The two directors, as Efendi claims, “have defined and pioneered the cinematic language.” Lingering through Kubrick classics such as “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Shining” and “Full Metal Jackets” alongside Tarkovsky greats such as “Solaris,” “Andrei Rublev” and “The Mirror,” the video shows clear...

"About suffering they were never wrong, the old masters," W.H. Auden wrote in his poem on Brueghel. The words could easily have applied to both the subject and the creator of Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1966 masterpiece. A film about suffering and art, the spiritual journey towards transendence, and the muddy, sodden reality of day-to-day life. It is one of the most profound and moving experiences that cinema has ever conveyed. It begins with a prologue as a man, some Leonardo or Galileo of the Steppes perhaps, takes a giddy flight with a cobbled together hot air balloon.

A significant new retrospective of the legendary and hugely influential Russian filmmaker is a fresh opportunity to see some gorgeous films on a big screen. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Ingmar Bergman called him the greatest director. Lars Von Trier calls him “God.” The legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who died in 1986 aged only 54, is one of the most influential in the history of the medium, a cinematic philosopher who was constantly at odds with the Soviet government, which saw subversiveness in his morosely dreamy films… as, indeed, there may well have been. Tarkovsky called his style of filmmaking “sculpting in time,” and the ambiguous moodiness of his work often encompassed a particular Russian-flavored tumultuousness on the small scale of a human life reflected against human history, full of tragedy, trauma, and torment. But...

“I wouldn’t say that Westerns were a big influence on The Revenant at all, really,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu tells Film Comment. “I was looking more toward things like Dersu Uzala by Kurosawa, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev—which is maybe my favorite film ever—Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, even Apocalypse Now. These are movies that are epic, that have spectacle and are very grand statements, but are informed by the crazy fucking theatrical show that is the human condition. The beauty and harshness of nature impacts your state of mind in these movies. There’s a very intimate point of view from one single character in each. That’s the challenge. Anyone can film a beautiful landscape. Unless you have an emotionally grounded story in there, it’s all just fucking sorcery.”

While we’ve debated the merits of The Revenant‘s “emotionally grounded story,...

Jack Fisk at the Oscars for "There Will Be Blood" with his Best Actress wife Sissy SpacekThe Revenant, just nominated for eight (!) BAFTAs, opens nationwide today so here's our last interview of the week to celebrate this wilderness epic. 

Jack Fisk, the Oscar-nominated Production Designer (There Will Be Blood) is no stranger to outdoor challenges. Many of his most famous films, due in no small part to his long collaboration with Terrence Malick, feel the spiritual pull of nature as does the man who designs them. He prefers to build on location and with the tools that would have been present at the time, whatever time the movie happens to take place in.

When he signed on for The Revenant, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu gave him a copy of Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev which he used for inspiration of scale and detail. His longtime collaborators Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki (Cinematographer) and...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Not too long ago, Black Dragon Press released the first installment in a series of licensed alternative movie posters celebrating the work of cult director Andrei Tarkovsky by artists Edward Kinsella and Victo Ngai. These illustrations beautifully capture the sense of awe and beauty in Tarkovsky’s work, and are easily some of the most beautiful posters I’ve seen released this year. Check out the posters below.

Andrei Rublev by Edward Kinsella

Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky is dark, bleak, vast, and quiet. It’s about oppression, corruption, war, and death. It’s about an artist finding his way through an oppressive world and all the trials he faces along the way. There was so much material to draw from for this poster. What I aimed to create was a powerful/quiet image of Andrei Rublev, trapped, but still moving, through a suffocating forest.” – Edward Kinsella

Andrei Rublev (regular...

Let’s get the obvious question out of the way: why in the world is Criterion Cast posting a review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture? The film was released in the late Seventies, no new version has been recently issued on either Blu-ray or in a new theatrical run, and while it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility for this site to take a look at mainstream big budget productions aimed at the mass audience, it’s also pretty obvious that St:tmp isn’t the sort of movie that fits all that comfortably alongside the foreign, independent and alternative cinematic expressions that typically draw our critical attention.

The reason I’m posting this review here is that I agreed to participate in the 2015 White Elephant Blogathon, a project organized by Philip Tatler in which he solicits nominations from a couple dozen movie bloggers for offbeat films...

One of our favorite directors, Olivier Assayas ("Summer Hours," "Clouds of Sils Maria") has a predictably eclectic Top Ten List, detailed at Criterion, which is actually a much longer list than ten. He offers American entries from Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Michael Mann, Robert Altman, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach! Have you seen them all? I've never seen the director's cut of Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate," the TV cut of Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander," Sacha Guitry's "Désiré" or "Judex" by Georges Franju. I will have to remedy that.  1. "The Leopard" (Luchino Visconti) 2. "Pickpocket" (Robert Bresson) (tie) "Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky) (tie) "White Material" (Claire Denis) (tie) "A Christmas Tale" (Arnaud Desplechin) (tie) "Chungking Express" (Wong Kar-wai) (tie)  "Dazed and Confused"...

Above: a 1973 UK quad poster for Andrei Rublev (1966), artist unknown.It’s hard to say exactly when the 50th anniversary of Andrei Rublev should be celebrated. Andrei Tarkovsky’s biopic of the great 15th century Russian icon painter—originally titled The Passion According to Andrei—had initially been proposed to Mosfilm in 1961, took 4 years to get off the ground, and spent five years in bureaucratic limbo until it was finally released in the Ussr in 1971. 50 years ago, in May 1965, Tarkovsky was a month into the year-long filming of his magnum opus.As befits one of the great films about an artist and about artistic creation (although we almost never see Rublev at work in the film), Tarkovsky’s film has inspired many a great poster artist over the years. On the occasion of this tentative anniversary and also of a rare 35mm showing of the film at Bam this month,...

There's a scene near the exact midpoint of Leviathan where the main characters, their legal troubles apparently over, go for an idyll on the Russian coastline. They tease each other, drink vodka, and create their own makeshift shooting range—first with empty bottles, then with a framed portrait of Brezhnev. There's a tartness to the scene, not just from the booze and guns, but from the fact that just about everyone in the film has a dark, boorish side; corruption on a small scale instead of a large one. But there's a merry populism mixed in as well. One of the true surprises of Leviathan is how, for such a dour film, so much humor can be found in it. These people could just as easily be the townsfolk of Bedford Falls or John Ford's Ireland, and the film feels genuinely fond of them, corruption and all. It's easily Leviathan's funniest,...

Andrei Tarkovsky belongs on a very short list with a group of directors that includes Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger: shit-kicking rebels who brought ruthless and transgressive art cinema into the second half of the twentieth century. These men simultaneously destroyed and re-defined the boundaries of what was, at the time, considered to be a traditional cinematic narrative. Their weapon of choice was celluloid. Ingmar Bergman once proclaimed the Soviet-born Tarkovsky as “the greatest [director] of them all… the one who invented a new language” (Bergman’s cinematographer Sven Nykvist lensed Tarkovsky’s last feature “The Sacrifice,” about a man who makes a bargain with God to save the world) and although I’ve only seen three of his seven features – “Ivan’s Childhood,” a tone poem to war and youth; “Andrei Rublev,” a stark and brilliant evocation of 15th-century Moscow; and his epochal “Solaris...

The 16th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival announced its line-up in a press conference today.

Here is the complete list of films which will be screened at the festival:-

International Competition

Difret

Dir.: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari (Ethiopia / 2014 / Col / 99)

History of Fear (Historia del miedo)

Dir.: Benjamin Naishtat (Argentina-France-Germany-Qatar-Uruguay / 2014 / Col / 79)

With Others (Ba Digaran)

Dir.: Nasser Zamiri (Iran / 2014 / Col / 85)

The Tree (Drevo)

Dir.: Sonja Prosenc (Slovenia / 2014 / Col / 90)

Next to Her (At li layla)

Dir.: Asaf Korman (Israel / 2014 / Col / 90)

Schimbare

Dir.: Alex Sampayo (Spain / 2014 / Col / 87)

Fever

Dir.: Raphaël Neal (France / 2014 / Col / 81)

Court

Dir.: Chaitanya Tamhane (India (Marathi-Gujarati-English-Hindi) / 2014 / Col / 116)

Macondo

Dir.: Sudabeh Mortezai (Austria / 2014 / Col / 98)

India Gold Competition 2014

The Fort (Killa)

Dir.: Avinash Arun (India (Marathi) / 2014 / Col / 107)

Unto the Dusk

Dir.: Sajin Baabu (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 118)

Names Unknown (Perariyathavar)

Dir.: Dr. Biju (India (Malayalam) / 2014 / Col / 110)

Buddha In a Traffic Jam

Dir.

Other worldly. Out of time. Languid. Uncanny. Meditative. These are all fine and easy ways to describe the promo reel for veteran Russian-American director Andrei Konchalovsky's latest, The Postman's White Nights, which will be playing in competition at Venice early next month.Konchalovsky may be best known to Twitch readers as the director of the 1985 thriller Runaway Train, as well as the co-screenwriter with Andrei Tarkovsky on Andrei Rublev. Konchalovksy has certainly proven a versatile storyteller in his near six decades in the business, as this one is a big shift from his last, The Nutcracker in 3D. Check out the full synopsis and that gorgeous promo below.Separated from the outside world with only a boat to connect their remote village to the mainland, the...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Andrei Tarkovsky recalls his first impression of cinema in this 50-minute BBC special, saying he failed to connect with the medium and declared “cinema an enigma.” Those initial and perplexing feelings found residence in the works of the Soviet director with masterpieces such as Stalker, Andrei Rublev, and The Sacrifice remaining haunting mysteries. In Tarkovsky’s films, characters face ethical or spiritual dilemmas […]...

And here we are. The day after Easter and we’ve reached the top of the mountain. While compiling this list, it’s become evident that true religious films just aren’t made anymore (and if they are, they are widely panned). That being said, religious themes exist in more mainstream movies than ever, despite there being no deliberate attempts to dub the films “religious.” Faith, God, whatever you want to call it – it’s influenced the history of nations, of politics, of culture, and of film. And these are the most important films in that wheelhouse. There are only two American films in the top 10, and only one of them is in English.

courtesy of hilobrow.com

10. Andrei Rublev (1966)

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky

A brutally expansive biopic about the Russian iconographer divided into nine chapters. Andrei Rublev (Anatoly Solonitsyn) is portrayed not as a silent monk, but a motivated artist working against social ruin,...

Elitist and pretentious, or an endangered species? Whatever your feelings, there's no doubt that arthouse movies are among the finest ever made. Here the Guardian and Observer critics pick the 10 best

• Top 10 romantic movies

• Top 10 action movies

• Top 10 comedy movies

• Top 10 horror movies

• Top 10 sci-fi movies

• Top 10 crime movies

Peter Bradshaw on art movies

This is a red rag to a number of different bulls. Lovers of what are called arthouse movies resent the label for being derisive and philistine. And those who detest it bristle at the implication that there is no artistry or intelligence in mainstream entertainment.

For many, the stereotypical arthouse film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin was a classic art film from the 1920s and Luis Buñuel investigated cinema's potential for surreality like no one before or since. The Italian neorealists applied the severity of art to a representation...

Russian cinematographer whose work with the director Andrei Tarkovsky produced poetic and powerful films

It is sometimes difficult to assess how and how much directors of photography contribute to films. However, nobody watching Andrei Tarkovsky's visual masterpieces Andrei Rublev (1966) and Solaris (1972) could fail to be struck by the remarkable cinematography of Vadim Yusov, who has died aged 84.

Yusov was Tarkovsky's favourite cinematographer, having shot four of the director's eight films, from the medium-length The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) to Solaris. Yusov also shot four features for Sergei Bondarchuk, another great of Russian cinema.

Tarkovsky's films are some of the most personal, poetic and powerful statements to have come out of eastern Europe. In contrast, Bondarchuk's films, while also imbued with a rich pictorial sense, have an objective, epic grandeur. "Tarkovsky and Bondarchuk were worlds apart," declared Yusov. "It was my job to enter both their worlds."

Yusov's relationship with the two directors also differed.

Looking for any excuse, Landon Palmer and Scott Beggs are using the 2012 Sight & Sound poll results as a reason to take different angles on the best movies of all time. Every week, they’ll discuss another entry in the list, dissecting old favorites from odd angles, discovering movies they haven’t seen before and asking you to join in on the conversation. Of course it helps if you’ve seen the movie because there will be plenty of spoilers. This week, they marvel at the mastery on display in Andrei Tarkovsky‘s anti-biopic about Russia’s tumultuous 15th century as seen through the mental state of the time’s most famous artist. Sprawling and deeply engaging, it’s perfect summer superhero programming. In the #24 (tied) movie on the list, a monk witnesses and affects some incredibly important events over a time spanning a quarter of a century. But why is it one of the best movies of...

No other recent Indian film has received so much acclaim for its cinematography as “Ship of Theseus”. The film won technical excellence awards at Mumbai and Tokyo film festivals and the award for best cinematography at Transilvania Film Festival. The awards have taken cinematographer Pankaj Kumar by surprise whose idea was “to keep the cinematography completely invisible”!

Pankaj Kumar, who graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India (Ftii) in 2004, comes across as a passionate, unassuming and highly articulate person. During his school days, he chanced upon Tarkovsky’s “Mirror” and “Andrei Rublev” on Doordarshan. The poetic imagery of the master left him eternally inspired to seek a career in cinema.

DearCinema Associate Editor Nandita Dutta in conversation with Pankaj Kumar.

Pankaj Kumar

On winning accolades for Ship of Theseus’s cinematography (Best Cinematography award at Transilvania, Best Artistic Contribution award in Tokyo and Jury award for Technical Excellence...

Welcome to Full Disclosure, in which Team Twitch confesses to the classics that they have never seen, then remedies the situation by casting fresh eyes on those films for the very first time. For June we are mixing up the format a little bit, presenting our selections in a more easily digestible gallery format, if for no other reason than to include everyone's submissions in a single post.But make no mistake, this month is as chock full of cinematic gems as ever: Roman Polanski's Chinatown is tackled by three of our collective, Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev gets a serious grilling, we also have films from the likes of Wong Kar Wai, Charlie Chaplin and even Bruce Lee being savoured as never before. So simply click...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

The "What Are You Watching" post on Friday seemed to be successful and may be a great way to remind people what's in theaters and get people chatting and prepped for the "What I Watched" articles. So I think I'll consider a few things to add to it to beef it up and hopefully make that a regular thing going forward as long as everyone is up for participating. As for how things turned out with my attempts to watch my new Blu-ray of Django Unchained, the new Blu-ray restoration of Cleopatra, Alex Cox's Repo Man and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, it wasn't too bad. I was able to watch Repo Man -- I'll have more on that at the beginning of the week -- and Django Unchained, which only gets better the more you watch it and I will reiterate what I wrote in my review last...

I'm not sure if I'll make this a regular column or not, it will depend on the interaction this one gets, but I felt it might be a fun new companion piece to Sunday's "What I Watched" columns, so we'll see. My copy of Django Unchained on Blu-ray finally arrived and I've been meaning to get to the new Blu-ray restoration of Cleopatra, but this weekend the first order of business will be the two Netflix titles above, Alex Cox's Repo Man and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, neither of which have I seen. I also have the season finale of "Hannibal" to watch and the fact Rublev is three hours and 25 minutes long, Cleopatra is over four hours and Django runs two hours and 46 minutes I'd say my odds on finishing all of them are slim... but a man can dream. What are you watchingc You heading to...

"I think the point about Marketa Lazarova is that when you first see it you're confused, and by that I mean you know that the whole story of what you're looking at is obscured, but it's still there, but you have to look hard." Peter Hames (film historian) Quick, name a Czechoslovakian film or film director... I would expect most of you are either drawing a blank or shouting out Milos Forman. The reason I ask is because on the back of Criterion's new Blu-ray release of Marketa Lazarova it reads, "In its native land, Frantisek Vlacil's Marketa Lazarova has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation." I can't speak to the first part of that statement as I believe this was the first, bonafide Czech film I've ever seen, but the second rings true. When it comes to Czech cinema,...

Above: Japanese poster for Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 2012); Designer: unknown.

Since I’ve now been running the Movie Poster of the Day Tumblr for a year and a half I thought it was high time I did another six month round-up of the most popular posters on the blog.

For some reason this Japanese poster for Zero Dark Thirty—an even more striking version of the American teaser—which I posted three months ago recently went semi-viral, racking up over 1,400 “notes” to date, making it by far the most popular (in as far as likes and reblogs really gauge popularity) in the history of the blog which now has, according to Tumblr, over 198,000 followers.

I’m especially pleased with the popularity of the second and third ranked posters: a couple of quite eccentric pieces of Eastern European illustration for lesser known films. It’s probably no surprise that...

Andrei Tarkovsky doesn't exactly have the largest filmography, but it's a well respected one that I am only beginning to explore. I've seen Solaris and his final film The Sacrifice, but haven't yet taken the time to explore such highly regarded films as Andrei Rublev and Stalker. With so few feature films to his credit, you'd think it would be easy to see them all, but considering the two I just mentioned clock in at over 160 minutes each (205 for Rublev) I want to be sure I watch them uninterrupted once I give them the chance. This brings me to Criterion's latest Blu-ray presentation of Tarkovsky's feature film debut, Ivan's Childhood, and while watching, three things came immediately to mind, 1.) Ingmar Bergman, 2.) Robert Rossellini's Germany Year Zero and 3.) the mixture of religious imagery and destruction as seen in Ashes and Diamonds. When it comes to Bergman, the visual comparisons are obvious,...

Last week, legendary Russian cinematographer Vadim Yusov was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 20th annual Plus Camerimage festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland and ComingSoon.net was on hand to speak (through a translator) with the man responsible for the photography in unforgettable celluloid masterworks like Ivan's Childhood , Andrei Rublev and Solaris . Now 83, a young Yusov met an even younger Andrei Tarkovsky in 1960, teaming for the short stage play adaptation "The Steamroller and the Violin." After continuing their creative partnership for over a decade, Tarkovksy and Yusov parted ways just prior to 1975's The Mirror . Yusov, who continues to work on feature films to this day, has also served as the head of Russia's Gerasimov Insitute of Cinematography...

There was plenty of discussion across the movie blogosphere following last week's announcement that Vertigo had dethroned Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time according to Sight & Sound's decennial poll. In addition to revealing the top 50 as determined by critics, they also provided a top 10 based on a separate poll for directors only. In the print version of the magazine, they have taken it a step further by reprinting some of the individual top 10 lists from the filmmakers who participated, and we now have some of them here for your perusal. Among them, we have lists from legends like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Quentin Tarantino, but there are also some unexpected newcomers who took part including Richard Ayoade (Submarine), Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Some of these lists aren't all that surprising (both Quentin Tarantino...

Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky, Audrey Hepburn, Clara Bow Movies: Packard Campus May 2012 Schedule Friday, April 27 (7:30 p.m.) Solaris (Magna, 1972) An alien intelligence infiltrates a space mission. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. With Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis. Sci-fi psychological drama. Black & White and color, 167 min. In Russian and German with English subtitles. Saturday, April 28 (7:30 p.m.) To Kill A Mockingbird (Universal, 1962) A Southern lawyer defends a black man wrongly accused of rape, and tries to explain the proceedings to his children. Directed by Robert Mulligan. With Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Brock Peters and Robert Duvall. Drama. Black & white, 129 min. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1995. Thursday, May 3 (7:30 p.m.) The Little Giant (Warner Bros., 1933) A Chicago beer magnate about to lose his business with the repeal of Prohibition, moves to California and tries to join society's upper crust, but his gangster origins prove tough to shake.

Andrei Tarkovsky would have turned 80 years old on Wednesday and the Tumblr and Twitterverses were buzzing with tributes to the Russian grand master. My favorite was the concise observation by one Raúl Pedraz [Update: actually a quote from Chris Marker’s One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich] that Tarkovsky was the only filmmaker whose entire work lies between two children and two trees.

It’s a couple of days late but I wanted to offer my own tribute to one of my very favorite filmmakers (Mirror being the film that I always hold up as my favorite film of all time). It is very hard to find Tarkovsky posters that have not been seen before so I was happy to stumble upon this rare East German poster for Tarkovsky’s first feature, Ivan’s Childhood, featuring, happily, a boy and a tree.

[Update: Thanks to Criterion I just discovered that, by happy coincidence, Ivan’s Childhood had its world premiere in Moscow exactly 50 years ago today!]

Tarkovsky is one filmmaker for whom I’d gladly have posters that simply feature gorgeous images from his film (of which there...

Andrei Tarkovsky, who would have been 80 today — he died too young, 54, at the end of 1986 — has been brought back to many minds lately. One prompt would be the passing just last month of screenwriter Tonino Guerra, with whom Tarkovsky wrote Nostalghia (1983). The two documented the long gestation of Tarkovsky's first film made outside of the Soviet Union in Voyage in Time (shot in 1979 but only officially released in 1983). In this entry, you'll find not only a clip from Voyage but also an excerpt from Pj Letofsky's forthcoming documentary Tarkovsky: His God, His Devil in which Guerra, filmed in 2009, looks back on his collaboration with Tarkovsky.

For a few months now, Geoff Dyer has been sparking conversations about Tarkovsky with Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room, which, as Ethan Nosowsky puts it in the Believer, "Dyer dons a metaphorical head-lamp to mine the ore" of...

On what would be his 80th birthday, we take a look back at Andrei Tarkovsky and his profound mark on cinema.

“The director’s task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable. Of course an artist can lose his way, but even his mistakes are interesting provided they are sincere. For they represent the reality of his inner life, of the peregrinations and struggle into which the external world has thrown him.” ― Andrei Tarkovsky

As a young man, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky visited a gypsy to have his fortune told, specifically, about his cinematic future. She bluntly told him he would only live to make seven films, but that each one would be an important and cherished work. The details surrounding this urban legend...

"I wanted to make a film for children, one that they will show to their children and so on. Something like "Mary Poppins" or "Bambi" that survive generations, because they talk about fundamentals of human life."--Andrei Konchalovsky on the red carpet for "The Nutcracker 3D" So says director Andrei Konchalovsky (and also writer of "Andrei Rublev" and helmer of "Tango and Cash") with a soft spoken kindness that exudes a grandfather-like love for children. Unfortunately, it is this caring nature that bore the abomination that is "Nutcracker 3D," and all the goodwill in the world could never make this a…...

Roman Polanski's 'neo-noir' starring Jack Nicholson and a killer last line takes first place in poll of Guardian and Observer critics

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It's the film that cemented Jack Nicholson's reputation as the best American actor of his generation, and it was the last film Roman Polanski would make in the Us before he fled the country in disgrace. Now, almost 40 years later, their 1974 release Chinatown has now been named the greatest film ever made.

The Chandleresque "neo-noir", with an Oscar-winning script by Robert Towne and a superlative performance by Nicholson as detective Jj Gittes, was voted into first place by a panel of Guardian and Observer critics.

Chinatown beat six other films in a shortlist...

A panel of The Guardian and Observer critics voted on the seven greatest films of all time, choosing Jack Nicholson's "Chinatown," which was the last movie Roman Polanski directed in the Us before fleeing the country. The Guardian's film critic, Peter Bradshaw, said that "Chinatown" is "such a powerful piece of mythmaking, a brilliant evocation of Los Angeles as a spiritual desert." The Observer's Philip French considers it a movie of "near perfection," ending "unforgettably with the line 'Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.'" Check out the full list below, which doesn't include "The Godfather" or anything before the 1980s. 1. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) 2. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) 3. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966) 4. Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1976) 5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) 6. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945) 7. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)...

Sydney, Oct 25 – After 36 years of its release in 1974, ‘Chinatown’ has now been voted as the greatest film ever made.

The Chandleresque “neo-noir”, with an Oscar-winning script by Robert Towne and a superlative performance by Nicholson as detective Jj Gittes, was voted into first place by a panel of Guardian and Observer critics.

Chinatown beat six other films in a shortlist drawn from the recently published seven-part newspaper series on “The Greatest Films of All Time”.

Equal second were Alfred Hitchock’s ‘Psycho’ (from the horror section) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’ (leading film the arthouse section).

Guardian.

A late honour for Jack Nicholson and Roman Polanski, with Hitchcock's Psycho coming in second

It's the film that cemented Jack Nicholson's reputation as the best American actor of his generation, and it was the last film Roman Polanski would make in the Us before he fled the country in disgrace. Now, 36 years later, their 1974 release Chinatown has been voted the greatest film ever made.

The Chandleresque "neo-noir", with an Oscar-winning script by Robert Towne and a superlative performance by Nicholson as detective Jj Gittes, was voted into first place by a panel of Guardian and Observer critics. Chinatown beat six other films in a shortlist drawn from the recently-published seven-part series of The Greatest Films of All Time, which concluded today. Equal second were Alfred Hitchock's Psycho (from the horror section) and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (the leading film in the arthouse section).

The Guardian's film critic,...

From the Guardian, 16 August 1973

Tarkovsky's film Andrei Rublev switches from black and white into colour for the last five of its 146 minutes, and the camera tracks quietly over Rublev's masterpiece, "Abraham's three angels". This is the first we see of the great icon painter's work, yet Tarkovsky makes his film one of the most convincing portrayals in art of an artist; he succeeds by concentrating on the man's humanity.

It may be the theme of the individual bucking the system that has brought about the film's strange fate. It won a prize at Cannes in 1969 then disappeared. It has been announced on occasions since, but failed to appear. Other than the press screening at the Nft this week, no shows in London have been planned. Maybe its producers, Mosfilm, are waiting for reactions to its single screening at the – dare one say? – relatively obscure Edinburgh International film festival to decide...

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966

Viewers and critics always have their personal favourites, but some films achieve a masterpiece status that becomes unanimously agreed upon – something that's undoubtedly true of Andrei Rublev, even though it's a film that people often feel they don't, or won't get. It is 205 minutes long (in its fullest version), in Russian, and in black and white. Few characters are clearly identified, little actually happens, and what does happen isn't necessarily in chronological order. Its subject is a 15th-century icon painter and national hero, yet we never see him paint, nor does he do anything heroic. In many of the film's episodes, he is not present at all, and in the latter stages, he takes a vow of silence. But in a sense, there is nothing to "get" about Andrei Rublev. It is not a film that needs to be processed or even understood, only experienced and wondered at.

Sometimes, some of cinema’s most legendary filmmakers don’t quite get the chance to thrust their art into the zeitgeist as much or as many times as they, or we for that matter, really would like. One of these filmmakers happens to be Andrei Tarkovsky, and with only seven feature length films to his name, it looks like his entire filmography (or at the time of this writing, most of it) is now available online, for free to the public.

According to Open Culture, Film Annex now has five films available, including The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia, The Sacrifice, and Voyage in Time, available for free to stream online at their website. They had Ivan’s Childhood, Solaris and Andrei Rublev online, but apparently a right’s issue arose, and they have since been pulled down. All three films are current Criterion releases, and are also all available on Netflix,...

Repertory theaters on the coasts are truly offering a window onto the world this spring, with Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho retrospectives, as well as New French Cinema in New York, "Freebie and the Bean," "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and Jason Reitman's favorite films invade Los Angeles, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is offering a fond farewell to the video cassette. But consider this a hello to seeing classics, oddities and rarities on the big screen over the next few months.

Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]

[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]

New York

92YTribeca

Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.

The Russian director reflects on his eclectic Hollywood career and a new biopic of the great writer

Andrei Konchalovsky is an apt director for The Last Station, the new biopic of Tolstoy, given that his background would not be atypical for a character in one of the great author's novels. Not only is he distantly descended from ­Tolstoy (one of his great aunts was married to Tolstoy's son), but Konchalovsky is born into proper Russian aristocracy.

Born Andron Sergeyevich Mikhalkov, he is an offspring of a famous clan. His great grandfather was an imperial ­governor of the city of Yaroslavl. His father, Sergei, who died last summer aged 96, wrote the lyrics to the Russian national anthem. His uncle, Mikhail, was a war hero who wrote a book about his wartime espionage operations. ­Konchalovsky's brother, Nikita ­Mikhalkov, is a major film director in his own right, winning the grand prix at...

I know a guy who likes to torture his friends by making them sit through Tarkovsky films. His stuff is slow, ponderous, and never less than two hours long. It's not for everyone-even among movie buffs.  Tarkovsky's sprawling medieval-era biopic Andrei Rublev "suffers from the rhetoric and depersonalization that have always hung over Russian cinema," in the words of eminent film scholar David Thomson, while Solaris, the filmmaker's 1972 foray into sci-fi, is a series of "senselessly elaborate" visuals.

On the other hand, The Sacrifice (1986) "has some of the most glorious extended shots in film history," to quote Thomson again, and Solaris put Steven Soderbergh under such a spell that he remade it, rather unsuccessfully, in 2002.  Tarkovsky is definitely alive and well in the minds of filmmakers. All of a sudden, there's a handful of documentaries about him either kicking around the festival circuit or in the works.

Without a doubt, the hands-down best movie related magazine on the market is Empire. Every month they bring news, reviews, interviews and many more things ending in ‘-ews’.

This month they have released their list of the 500 greatest movies of all time, as voted for by both the general public, directors such as Quentin Tarantino, and ‘industry insiders’ i.e. everyone on the Empire payroll. They are billing it as the ‘biggest movie poll of all time’.

Looking at the list of the top 50, it’s nice to see genre favorites like Evil Dead II, This is Spinal Tap and Terminator 2 in there rubbing shoulders with the likes of Schindler’s List and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also it’s good to see that Raiders of the Lost Ark has taken it’s rightful place above Star Wars in the list (I’m amazed how often the obviously superior ‘Raiders...