Articles by Lucas Miller
Michael James Miller, writer and arts critic, died aged 73 on November 14th, 2021, after a long illness with cancer. He was at home in North Adams, MA, his partner Joanna Gabler and youngest son, Lucas, beside him. His last word was “Peace.”
The Hottest Picture Show: A Look at the Eastman Museum’s Annual Celebration of Nitrate
Nitrate prints from international archives are loaned to the Museum and screened at its historic Dryden Theatre, one of only a few places left in the world where nitrate film can be legally projected due to its inherent safety risks.
You Can’t Take It With You
Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You first premiered on Broadway in late 1936, midway through FDR’s first term in office and still the Great Depression. The subject of the title – the It you …
Boyhood: An Intimate Epic
If Richard Linklater were anonymous, like one of those painters who never signed their work, maybe he’d be known as The Master of the Gimmick. His first film, Slacker, tracked talk like a contagion or a unit of currency …
Production Notes: Woody Allen’s Bop Decameron in Rome
Woody Allen is in Rome shooting his latest production, The Bop Decameron. Italian newspapers have been brimming with “Where’s Woody?” stories, and tourists and citizens have been tweeting their sightings. Woody is very popular in Italy and while this is his first Rome-set picture, he has been a frequent visitor in the past with his New Orleans jazz band.
in tow.
The Bop Decameron will be structured into four vignettes, two of which will be in Italian. Yesterday, Woody shot at Piazza Mattei with a predominantly Italian cast and crew. Jim Jarmusch used the same location in the Rome segment of Night on Earth, starring Roberto Benigni, who is also signed on for The Bop. Other cast members include: Penélope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, and Woody Allen himself.
Montezuma at the Edinburgh International Festival
Before the drawing of the curtains, five Mexicans squat on the stage, toiling timelessly, while a sixth peddles knicknacks in the stalls as though it were a plaza full of tourists with bulging pockets, which it is in a way. "Don't encourage him," one utters sheepishly as another plays patron of the quaint local arts and crafts, exported from Mexico to the Edinburgh International Festival.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? By Werner Herzog (with David Lynch’s name attached)
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? had its Gala UK Premier at the 64th Edinburgh International Film Festival. So far it has screened exclusively at festivals and popular distribution is uncertain. It is scheduled to be released on DVD in the USA on 14 September 2010.
Vacation! Summertime in America, in CinemaScope!
(Vacation! debuted at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It is twenty-something producer/writer/director/editor Zach Clark’s third feature film, hot on the heels of 2009’s Modern Love is Automatic, which also premiered internationally at Edinburgh. There, I met with Clark and two of his lead actresses, Lydia Hyslop and Maggie Ross. Press here for its EIFF page and trailer.)