It’s been seven years since Charlie Kaufman’s last film, Synecdoche New York, was released, and finally, with the upcoming feature Anomalisa, we have more to look forward to from the always-surprising director. Kaufman’s new film, Anomalisa, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last week. It’s been noted that plot-wise, the film is far simpler than his others, which have gathered praise for their multilayered, psychologically dizzying stories. Anomalisa, however, follows a motivational speaker who’s lost motivation — and finds it again when he has an affair at a Cincinnati hotel. However, this isn’t exactly naturalism: all of the characters are played by puppets, voiced by David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan. The Guardian delves into the backstory of Anomalisa, as well as Kaufman’s career, in a new feature on the film, with interviews from Kaufman, Leigh and Noonan.
Meanwhile, a whole swarm of other films to anticipate has arrived in the New York Film Festival trailer, which features brief footage from Miles Ahead, in which Don Cheadle plays Miles Davis.
Shamir released a new video for his Ratchet track, “In for the Kill” today, accompanied by an interview in Rookie. The video sees Shamir as a cassette-playing pilot of a shiny, inflatable UFO. In a press release, Shamir said of the song, “I had to leave a lot of things back in [my hometown] Vegas in order to do music – family, friends, certain trinkets I collect because I’m a very sentimental person. ‘In For The Kill’ is about making sacrifices to do things that make you happy.” Disclosure also released a new video — the last in a dystopian trilogy that started with Caracal (their upcoming album) track “Holding On,” continued into “Omen,” and here ends with “Jaded,” which continues the story about the (futuristic!) police raid of a nightclub. Watch it over at Stereogum.
It’s been a big day for social media news, with two very familiar platforms slightly altering their features. Snapchat, for one, will be offering 3 replays per day — but it’ll cost you $0.99. Now imagine someone you knew shared this news on Facebook (not such a stretch) — and imagine you’re livid about the app changing its ephemerality rules. So livid as to be speechless, to not even want to leave a comment. Formerly, this would have meant you’d run out of options: you could either “like” something nonverbally, and if you had something negative to say, you actually had to explain yourself. But today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that they’ll soon be implementing the long-desired “Dislike” feature. Your disapproval must be thrilled.
Hopes and Fears published a roundtable with advocates of accessibility in music venues, noting how within social justice-oriented media, ableism is still overlooked. Music, it notes, often takes the form of a visceral resistance to oppression, yet concert venues often fail to properly accommodate people with disabilities. The roundtable is an in-depth discussion about the various ways this could be improved.