Ben Gazzara died.

Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott’s first feature film, Cherry, has been accepted into the Berlin International Film Festival. The film will make it’s world premiere February 16 at the 1,600 seat Friedrichsstadtpalast in Berlin.

About Cherry. Stills from the movie.

Cherry is going to Berlin.

We don’t usually do lists, but when the Academy’s list of Best Director nominees is 100% dudes, an exception seems necessary. Canonball chronicles five female directors “whose direction deserved more attention this year.”

“I really hope I don’t have to do this every year. After this morning’s announcement we feminist film enthusaists, once again, find ourselves frustrated at Hollywood and the Academy’s gross oversight of the work of female directors. This year, the omission of women and people of color from the Best Director category comes as no surprise to most including the key players involved, the directors themselves.”

Today we posted stills from Rumpus editor Stephen Elliott’s forthcoming film, Cherry.

Are you curious to learn more about the movie? Click here.

Director Ed Burns decided he’d rather shoot films on a micro-budget, like his first feature The Brothers McMullen, and go straight to video on demand.

“Any professional would tell you, “He’s full of (expletive). You can’t make a movie like that,” and anyone who tells you that doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Salon converses with David Lynch about his new album Crazy Clown Time. The director discusses transcendental meditation, his attraction to sound, and finding humor in the disturbing.

“When you get something that’s thrilling, if it’s working on a couple of different levels, it’s more thrilling. How you get there is not an intellectual thing. You stumble on it, really.”

Rumpus columnist Nicholas Rombes explores the “Occupy zeitgeist” in 2011 cinema over at Filmmaker. Rombes reveals how films such as Drive, Meek’s Cutoff, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Tree of Life, while seemingly “far removed” from the movement, “speak to Occupy anxieties of this past year.”

“…It’s possible that films like Tree of Life somehow capture — in their very structure — the decentralized fantasy of the movement. All four films… are defined by lack. In each one, it’s not clear precisely what the protagonists want, although they each clearly want something, and this generates a sort of outsized tension, a puzzle for the audience that somehow makes us complicit.”

The New York Times dissects the advent of the novel to television adaptation with a focus on Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad. Craig Fehram breaks down the differences between television and movie adaptations in arguing that “where a movie means paring a novel down, a TV show can mean breaking it wide open.”

In an earlier essay at Salon, Laura Miller also took on the novel-TV marriage, asserting “while not exactly soul mates,” the two “have a lot more in common than the novel and theatrical film.”

(Via Vintage and Anchor)

San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral is launching an Artist in Residence program. Their first artist is awesome playwright, actor, and author Anna Deavere Smith, who will “share in the life of the cathedral, preach, host Forum events, and create a new work centering on the topic of grace” throughout this approaching January and February! This is the perfect excuse to review all her work over the holidays, starting with the first four seasons of The West Wing and her book Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts — For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind.

Breaking down the resolutions of three specific conflicts over the course of the “Classic Muppet years,” this article reveals examples for anyone attempting to preserve their art while also making money.

“…The lesson to take away from Henson’s management style is to freely and honestly give no for an answer, to listen well and then say it calmly but firmly, to protect the quality of your work. Three conflicts and three resolutions. This is a lesson for Disney—as it goes forward with Muppet films—and for any creative entrepreneur, anyone interested in making (good) art pay.”

This is so amazing. Sit down for a couple of hours, relax, get your Woody on. …more

This article discusses the Klingon language—its creation and lasting influence (“people get married in Klingon ceremonies; one man tried (unsuccessfully) to make it his son’s native tongue”). The piece ends with a video in which linguist Marc Okrand explains how he invented Klingon.

(Via Maud Newton)

Errol Morris on the man standing under the black umbrella in the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination. Be careful with your assumptions.

Wired interviews Guillermo del Toro, whose co-authored vampire book trilogy concluded with last month’s publication of Night Eternal. Del Toro discusses science and religion; vampire myths and folklore; and his current projects, one of which is a video game.

“I feel like science and religion are like a Möbius strip. When you dig deep enough into religion, you find science to explain it, and when you dig deep enough and long enough into science you find things that are unexplained.”

“The problem with pulling this kind of thing the wrong way in a speculative-fiction story is that science fiction, fantasy, and horror don’t necessarily share mainstream fiction’s baseline expectations for how reality works, and it’s far too easy to leave audiences feeling cheated, annoyed, or just plain confused when the rules change abruptly, or were ill-defined in the first place.”

This A.V. Club article zeroes in on the necessity of “rigid rules” in fiction’s “freest genres,” reminding us of the importance of setting up–and sticking with–the story’s internal rules.

(Via Largeheartedboy)

A trailer for Being Flynn, the film based on Rumpus pal Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, is now online.

“But every so often a filmmaker sneaks a piece of mini-perfection into their movie that’s so self-contained, such an unnecessary tangent, it can stand alone as its own perfect short.”

Nerve archives “five great short films” that can be found inside full-length ones. The article breaks down how each short film fits (or doesn’t) within the larger works of Mulholland Drive, The Social Network, Magnolia, A Serious Man, and The Rules of Attraction.

(Via Largehearted Boy)

Filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Les Blank explore the shifting definition of the phrase “women’s work” through the lens of the Oakland Museum Women’s Board (and the board’s renowned White Elephant Sale) in their new short documentary, White Gloves.

The Oakland Museum will screen the movie, which you can learn more about here, this Friday evening at 7pm. You can view the trailer here.

A film on Joan Didion is being created by her nephew, actor and director Chris Dunne. In a clip from the film—which Dunne describes as an “audiobook for the eyes”—the author reads from Blue Nights. …more