Amy Taubin on Tribeca highlights and beyond

Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,

This week I spoke with Amy Taubin on the podcast about highlights from the Tribeca Festival, which, as she points out, has removed “film” from its name. That doesn’t stop us from talking about the movies that we enjoyed, which, with any luck, will wend their way into theaters. A delight as always!

True, it is likely you might be out enjoying some balmy July weather, but on the other hand: what if… not? How vexing! But not to worry, I’ve also pulled together a recent spate of writing and a diverting array of streaming picks.

Thank you to all the supporters of The Last Thing I Saw!

Sincerely,

Nic

THE PODCAST

Amy Taubin on the Tribeca Festival 2023 and Beyond [Ep. 189]

This week I talk with the one and only Amy Taubin about the 2023 edition of the Tribeca Festival. We discuss Taubin’s standout film from the festival; a couple of gripping documentaries, Transition and Rule of Two Walls; video game titan Hideo Kojima and auteurs in dialogue David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh; and other notable titles like Mountains and A Strange Path. Plus thoughts on recent viewing and what’s to come.

Amy Taubin wrote a report about this year’s Tribeca Festival for Artforum, where she is contributing editor.

Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at other podcast places such as Spotify.

For more information on the podcast’s opening and closing music by The Minarets (gratefully used with permission), follow the band on Instagram:

@theminaretsmusic

RECENT WORK

For The New York Times, I wrote about the 1932 film Freaks and why it has been embraced by many scholars in disabilities studies.

For W Magazine, I spoke to up-and-comer Grace Edwards, who’s terrific in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City as Dinah, a Junior Star Gazer whose mother happens to be a movie star (played by Scarlett Johansson).

For The New York Times, I reviewed a new documentary about Umberto Eco, most famously the author of The Name of the Rose, and generally an intellectual who had a playful approach to literature, seeking out its stranger corners.

Also for The New York Times, I interviewed the director of Casa Susanna, a documentary about a boardinghouse that was a remarkable refuge for cross-dressing in the 1950s and 1960s.

THIS CRITIC’S PICKS

M3gan (Amazon) Indeed!

Cutter’s Way (Criterion) Fourth of July pick

Tyrel (HBO MAX) Sebastian Silva

A Touch of Sin (Metrograph) Jia Zhang-ke

Honeyland (HBO MAX) Beekeeping in Macedonia

THE END

Here I may end with a song.

ABOUT ME

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold.

Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer and an editor. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, and W Magazine. (Plus dearly departed publications such as The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) For notes on past programming, drop me a line.

On the editorial side, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was in editorial for 15 years in all. There I assigned and edited both web and print, hosted The Film Comment Podcast and Talks, curated and hosted Film Comment Selects screenings, learned from brilliant writers, and wrote a lot, including interviews with Spike Lee, Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Costa, and Frederick Wiseman. Film Comment received the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics.

Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, moderating, programming, podcasting, etc.

nicolas.rapold@gmail.com