The Complete Venice 2024 Collection + Catching Up with Between the Temples
All the upcoming movies you should know about from the Venice film festival, plus interviews with Carol Kane and film chat with Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells
Dear Last Thing I Sawfolk,
It’s been a little while because I was called away on business in Venice. Show business, that is! And while I was there, I recorded a few podcasts about movies you’ll be hearing about soon, or should be hearing about—The Brutalist, a new Almodóvar, April, discoveries, Familiar Touch, and a music film or two or three.
Also, did I really interview Carol Kane? Read on and see, and pair it with a pulse-quickening journey through (recently viewed) movies with Kane’s Between the Temples writer-director Nathan Silver and co-writer C. Mason Wells. (Also, I finally post a conversation about a few movies shown at the Locarno festival!)
It’s all right here, with gratitude to the supporters who make The Last Thing I Saw possible!
Cinematically yours,
Nic
THE PODCAST
Venice 2024 #6: Jessica Kiang on April, Queer, Vermiglio, Happyend, 2073
Venice 2024 #5: Edo Choi on Pavements, Familiar Touch, Mistress Dispeller, plus My Joker 2
Venice 2024 #4: Guy Lodge on Harvest, Babygirl Redux, Peacock, Diciannove (Nineteen)
Venice 2024 #3: Glenn Kenny on The Room Next Door, I’m Still Here, Wolfs, Separated, Finally
Venice 2024 #2: Jordan Cronk on The Brutalist, Cloud, Baby Invasion, The Day the Clown Cried
Venice 2024 #1: Jonathan Romney on Maria, Babygirl, The Quay Bros., One to One: John & Yoko, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Nathan Silver and C. Mason Wells of Between the Temples on The Strange Mr. Victor, Serpent’s Path, Parenthood
Locarno 2024 with Keva York: Invention de Courtney Stephens, Zurchers’ Sparrow in the Chimney, Mandico’s Dragon Dilation, Vernier’s Cent Mille Milliards
Episodes of The Last Thing I Saw are also available at many other podcast places.
A big thanks to all of my brilliant guests!
Nathan Silver directed the hit film Between the Temples starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, which he co-wrote with C. Mason Wells. Years ago I wrote a NYT feature about Silver.
Edo Choi is Associate Curator of Film at Museum of the Moving Image, and a contributor to Reverse Shot.
Jordan Cronk is a freelance film critic and programmer based in downtown Los Angeles. He's the founder of Acropolis Cinema, where he will screen GIFT, a film by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, with a live score by Eiko Ishibashi, on September 28.
Glenn Kenny writes for The New York Times and Roger Ebert.com. He is the author of The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface and Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas.
Jessica Kiang is a Berlin-based film critic, essayist and programmer. Since 2022 she has been the international programmer of the Belfast Film Festival. She wrote about Venice for Variety and Sight & Sound.
Guy Lodge is a critic for Variety, a columnist for The Observer, and co-editor of the independent review site Film of the Week. His new Criterion Collection essay on All of Us Strangers is available here.
Jonathan Romney is a longtime contributor to Screen and also writes for The Observer and Sight & Sound, and teaches at the UK’s National Film and Television School.
Keva York is a Sydney-based writer and critic. She reviews films for ABC Arts.
RECENT WORK
So here’s that chat with Carol Kane for The Financial Times, conducted on the Upper West Side. Since it’s not a Q&A-style article, it’s really just a portion of a conversation which covered all of her work, which goes far beyond comedy. There’s more, if you’re interested.
From Venice proper, let’s begin with an interview and a review. For Filmmaker, I spoke to Sarah Friedland for triple-prize-winner Familiar Touch, her debut feature, starring the great Kathleen Chalfant as a woman transitioning into assisted living. And then a Sight & Sound review of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s very good Cloud, an apocalyptic movie about internet resellers.
Before the festival, I wrote this preview for The New York Times talking to filmmakers who were finalizing their movies in the months leading up to their festival premieres. Really gives one an appreciation for the care and the work that goes into making a film look and sound exactly as intended.
For The New York Times I gave a critic’s pick to In the Rearview, an innovative documentary about Ukrainians seeking refuge from the Russian invasion, shot mostly in a bus spiriting them away.
THIS CRITIC’S PICKS
The Last of Sheila (Criterion) Fun and games!
The Heart of the World (Vimeo) Guy Maddin’s pulsing short came to mind while listening to The Brutalist
The Target Shoots First (Le Cinema Club) One week only!
Lumumba Death of a Prophet (Criterion) Raoul Peck directs
Rotting in the Sun (MUBI) Sebastian Silva unbound. Came up while talking about a Venice film
THE END
Here I may end with a song.
Catherine Ribeiro, R.I.P.
ABOUT ME
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw! I’m your host, Nicolas Rapold. Feel free to get in touch re: writing, editing, programming, moderating, podcasting, etc. by writing me at nicolas.rapold[at]gmail.com
Besides hosting the podcast, I’m a writer, editor, and programmer. My features, interviews, festival reports, and reviews are published in The New York Times, Screen Slate, Sight & Sound, Filmmaker, Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, and W Magazine. (Dearly departed publications include The Village Voice, Stop Smiling, The New York Sun, and The L Magazine.) I’m also proud of the series and one-offs I’ve programmed, both revivals and premieres, so do drop me a line if you’d like to collaborate.
Editor-ially speaking, I worked as editor-in-chief of Film Comment magazine, where I was for 15 years in all. 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.