1.

Why the Pope was an Eli Wallach fan“: In her obit for the veteran character actor, who died Tuesday at age 98, CNN‘s Carrie Rickey recalls a fan letter sent to the actor from the Pope. Related: Dan Callahan pens a remembrance of Wallach for RogerEbert.com. From the archives: Charles McNulty of the LA Times interviews the actor in 2010.

“Even the
Pope was one of Eli Wallach‘s biggest fans. So said the cheeky chameleon of an actor when he received an
honorary Oscar in 2010 and remarked that the pontiff — he didn’t say which one
— wrote him a fan letter extolling his performance as the bandito Calvera in ‘The
Magnificent Seven’ (1960). This struck Wallach as odd. ‘I’ve played more
bandits, thieves, killers, warlords, molesters and Mafiosi than you can shake a
stick at,’ he said. No doubt he got a pass from the Pope because as the bad
guy, the famed character actor, who died Tuesday at 98, had a smile as lethal
as his aim.”

2.

North Korea threatens war on US over Kim Jong-un movie“: The BBC is one of many news wires reporting on the rather outrageous statements made by a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman indicating that the upcoming Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy, “The Interview,” could start a war with the US. His words, of course, inspired a priceless tweet from Rogen, who has been no stranger to controversy this year. Related: Ottawa Citizen‘s David Pugliese argues that “North Korea should forget about Seth Rogen’s new movie and declare war over Team America.”

“Franco
and Rogen play a talkshow host and his producer who are invited to interview
Kim Jong-un, and are subsequently recruited by the US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) to assassinate the leader. The film’s teaser trailer, posted on
Youtube, shows a lookalike actor playing Kim Jong-un, as well as fight scenes
involving what appear to be North Korean tanks and helicopters, and a nuclear
missile launch. The North Korea spokesman was quoted by the state KCNA news
agency as saying: ‘Making and releasing a movie on a plot to hurt our top-level
leadership is the most blatant act of terrorism and war and will absolutely not
be tolerated.’ He added that the ‘reckless US provocative insanity’ of
mobilising a ‘gangster filmmaker’ to challenge the North’s leadership was
triggering ‘a gust of hatred and rage’ among North Korean people and soldiers. ‘If
the US administration allows and defends the showing of the film, a merciless
counter-measure will be taken,’ the spokesman was quoted as saying.”

3.

Remembering Peter de Rome: the maker of gay erotica loved by Warhol, Gielgud and the BFI“: The Guardian‘s Brian Robinson pays tribute to the groundbreaking director who died June 21st at age 89.

“He had no hang-ups
about his sexuality, and no trouble picking up men. Yet he was working at a
time when many like him were stricken with guilt and when it was largely
illegal to show explicit gay sex. He could probably have been arrested for
creating pornography but he found a way to trick the censors by shooting
something innocuous at the beginning and end of each reel. Astonishingly, his
Super 8 films were returned from the developers at Kodak regular as clockwork.
The results were screened, at first, at private parties where he turned up with
his portable projector and his own choice of musical soundtrack (Messaien,
Hindemith and Miles Davis were among his regular choices).”

4.

Dennis Hopper: The Missing Years“: At The Daily Beast, Liza Foreman reports on the exhibition, “Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album,” opening at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, showcasing photographs taken by the Oscar-nominated actor in the ’60s.

“He discovered his passion for photography
through James Dean, who he worked with on ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’ The photos, which constituted his first
show, were originally shown at the Fort Worth Art Center in Texas in 1970, and
all but disappeared until they were discovered in his garage after his death in
2010. What was uncovered between the boxes of Christmas tinsel in his garage in
Los Angeles was a documentation of the cultural upheaval of 1960s America, from
the civil rights movement to hippies, from pop art to the Beat poets and
Hollywood, groups at both ends of the extreme. Images include those of a famous
civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama in 1965, which marked
the high point of the movement and led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlawing
voting discrimination. Among Hopper’s photographs is one of Martin Luther King
Jr. making his famous speech.”

5.

Richard Linklater on ‘Boyhood,’ the ‘Before’ Trilogy and the Luxury of Time“: Justin Chang of Variety conducts an in-depth interview with the acclaimed filmmaker.

“One of Linklater’s crucial
early decisions was to shoot the entire picture on 35mm, a practical choice as
well as an aesthetic one, given the 12-year timespan and the volatility of new
digital formats. ‘I knew there would be nothing better than a 35mm negative to
get a consistent look,’ he says. Today, with celluloid seemingly going the way
of the dodo — the efforts of a few die-hards like Christopher Nolan and Quentin
Tarantino notwithstanding — ‘Boyhood’ can be read on one level as an elegy not
just for childhood, but for cinema itself. It is a film that, in every aspect
of its conception and execution, feels proudly out of step with the prevailing
logic of Hollywood, made by a director who couldn’t have defied conventional
wisdom had he not spent a significant amount of time working within those
conventions.”

Image of the Day

This infographic posted by Indiewire’s Melissa Silverstein illustrates the current state of institutional gender discrimination in the current studio system.

Video of the Day

A lovely vignette from the 2008 anthology film, “New York, I Love You,” starring Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman and directed by Joshua Marston (“Maria Full of Grace”).

Matt Fagerholm

Matt Fagerholm is the former Literary Editor at RogerEbert.com and is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. 

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