Rushes | China May Ban American Films, Sundance to Boulder, Bingeing the Beatles

This week, we are pleased to introduce Rushes Extra, a new series of reported pieces that go beyond the headlines to take a closer look at developing stories from throughout the film world. In this first installment, Vikram Murthi reports from the picket lines of the New York cinema workers strike at Alamo Drafthouse.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.

NEWS

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (John Hughes, 1986).

• Chinese authorities are reportedly considering “reducing or banning the import of US films” in response to President Trump’s global tariffs. Though US studio earnings in China have decreased as the country has invested in their own film industry, losing access to the world’s second-largest film market would be a major blow to the American film industry.
• The Sundance Film Festival has chosen Boulder, Colorado, as its new home beginning in 2027. Park City, Utah has hosted the festival since 1981, but the long-tail effects of the COVID pandemic, local concerns about festival traffic, and the Sundance Institute’s political disagreements with the state government forced a move.
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued an apology for omitting No Other Land (2024) codirector Hamdan Ballal’s name from their initial statement after the filmmaker was violently detained by Israeli settlers. The Academy initially condemned the act of “harming artists” without naming any specific individuals, prompting over 800 Academy members to sign a letter criticizing leadership. Meanwhile, the New York Film Critics Circle joined three other critics groups condemning the attack on Ballal.
• AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron says “three of the six major studios” agree that the industry needs to bring back the 45-day exclusive theatrical window for new films. Shorter theatrical windows adopted by studios post-pandemic have negatively impacted the exhibition business. “It is an experiment that has failed,” says Aron, “and Hollywood collectively is training people to stay home.”

DEVELOPING

Help! (Richard Lester, 1965).

• The stars of Sam Mendes’s upcoming interconnected Beatles films have been chosen: Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn, and Barry Keoghan will respectively play Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The films will be released in April 2028 and are being billed as “the first bingeable theatrical experience.”
• Zendaya is set to play Ronnie Spector in Barry Jenkins’s Be My Baby, reportedly handpicked by Spector before her death in 2022. The script, by longtime Luca Guadagnino collaborator David Kajganich, will center on the Ronettes frontwoman and her troubled marriage with producer Phil Spector..

• Brad Pitt is poised to reprise his Oscar-winning performance as Cliff Booth in a quasi-sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), which will be penned by Tarantino and directed by David Fincher for Netflix.
• David Mamet will soon release a film adaptation of Henry Johnson (2025), a prison drama he staged in 2023, his first directorial effort since Redbelt (2008). The film, starring Shia LaBeouf, will be available to rent directly from the official website starting May 9 and will receive a simultaneous theatrical release in Los Angeles.

REMEMBERING

The Doors (Oliver Stone, 1991).

• Val Kilmer has died at 65. The American actor initially garnered acclaim in comedies like Top Secret! (1984) and Real Genius (1985) before breaking out as a dramatic actor in Top Gun (1986). He quickly became well known for a variety of diverse lead performances, such as Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991), Doc Holliday in Tombstone (1993), and Batman in Batman Forever (1995). His supporting turns in films like Heat (1995), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), and MacGruber (2010) also endeared him to audiences across generations. A true eccentric, Kilmer felt just as comfortable in direct-to-video entertainment as he did playing Mark Twain on stage. His final film role was in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), in which he reunited with costar Tom Cruise. In The Atlantic, Beatrice Loayza writes in tribute, “He was an actor who could complicate the entire meaning of a film with a strut and a glimpse, and convey savagely weird and wonderful humanity in a brief encounter.”
• Masahiro Shinoda has died at 94. The Japanese New Wave director joined Shochiku Studio in 1953 as an assistant director and worked under numerous directors, including Yasujiro Ozu, before being promoted to director alongside peers like Nagisa Oshima and Yoshishige Yoshida. He turned to independent filmmaking in 1966, after his acclaimed Yakuza noir Pale Flower (1964) caused internal controversy at Shochiku (cowriter Masaru Baba accused Shinoda of making an “anarchic” film). Across his four-decade career, Shinoda directed such celebrated works as the historical drama Double Suicide (1969)  and the surreal kabuki film The Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan (1970). He won the Silver Bear at Berlinale for Gonza the Spearman (1986) and the Japan Academy Prize for Best Director for Childhood Days (1990). Shinoda retired from filmmaking in 2003 following the release of his final film, Spy Sorge (2003).
• Richard Chamberlain has died at 90. The American actor became a teen idol during his tenure as Dr. Kildare (1961–66) on the medical soap opera of the same name. He’s best known for his work during the post-Roots (1977) miniseries boom in the late 1970s and ’80s, including starring turns in Centennial (1978-79), Shōgun (1980), and The Thorn Birds (1983). He also made a strong impression on the big screen with a key supporting turn in Richard Lester’s Petulia (1968), as well as Aramis in the The Three Musketeers (1973) and its sequels, and ​​Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines (1985). He was the first actor to play Jason Bourne in the two-part TV adaptation of The Bourne Identity (1988).

RECOMMENDED READING

The Chosen (Dallas Jenkins, 2017–).

• “Though the world is currently short on neither right-wing governmental drift nor parallel evangelical movements, there is something uniquely and unexportably American about these films.” For Film Comment, Vadim Rizov unpacks the recent wave of Christian evangelical filmmaking in the US.
• “Whenever I did a Q&A, someone would attack me. Even in 2010, I was showing films in Denmark. Someone said, ‘These films are terrible, why are we even seeing this?’ I said, ‘I got paid $1500 to come! That’s why you’re watching it!’” For the inaugural issue of Big Toe Magazine, co-editors in chief Ryan Akler-Bishop and Vicky Huang interview underground filmmaker Richard Kern about his long career, the Cinema of Transgression, and his Gen Z following.
• “Not unlike a tarot reading, the film deals in a number of central questions that it turns over for interpretation and, though its deeper themes are grand, they are held lightly, even tenderly, by the filmmaker, who enjoys the visual world of concrete, mirror, glass, feathers and fluff that she captures.” For Frieze’s Film Issue, Laura McLean-Ferris unpacks the lasting influence of Agnes Varda's sophomore feature Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) in light of her recent motherhood.
• “I needed an escape, but not to a phony world where everything is awesome. In Twin Peaks, I found a warm bath—of cyanide. A refuge where good and evil are, at best, evenly matched.” For Vanity Fair, Mike Hogan dives deep into the history of Twin Peaks (1990–91, 2017), its lengthy fan-driven afterlife, and its enduring appeal among writers and political operatives alike in the context of its 35th anniversary and David Lynch’s recent death.

RECOMMENDED EVENTS

Kitch's Last Meal (Carolee Schneemann, 1973–76).

• Barcelona, April 10: The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona presents a screening of Robina Rose’s film Nightshift (1981) in a tribute to the late British independent filmmaker.
• San Francisco, April 11 through 13: The Lab presents the 2025 edition of Light Field, an annual exhibition of recent and historical moving image art on celluloid in seven programs across three days.
• Los Angeles, April 11 through June 7: Lisson Gallery presents Carolee Schneemann, the late experimental visual artist’s inaugural solo exhibition in Los Angeles, which will focus on her practice “two decades into her career, centering on a unique multimedia installation engendered by a dream she had while visiting Los Angeles in the summer of 1985,” and will include film works, drawings, and collaged paintings.
• Vienna, through August 10: The KunstHausWien presents “Antimatter Factory,” a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the work of video artist Mika Rottenberg, which covers her best-known films, installations, and interactive sculptures dating back to 2003, including her most recent work, Lampshares (2024), “which combines natural organic structures with coloured lampshades made of recycled plastic.”

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• Warner Bros. has released a trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025), a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland starring Leonardo DiCaprio, scheduled to be released on September 26.
• Metrograph Pictures has released a trailer for Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April (2024), in which an obstetrician in rural Georgia who offers illegal abortion services comes under investigation.
• In the latest entry in MoMA’s Art for All series, filmmaker John Wilson discusses his artistic practice and daily routine, with a sneak peek inside his new microcinema.
• Le Cinema Club presents Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s archival short film Moune Ô (2022), about his father’s troubled relationship with French Guiana, on the occasion of the New York premiere of Jean Baptiste’s feature debut, Kouté Vwa (2025), at New Directors/New Films.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

• In an episode of BBC’s radio program The Essay, Dr. Becca Voelcker briefly unpacks the history of what she dubs “Land Cinema,” a globally diverse, non-fiction activist film movement that sought to cultivate environmental justice in the face of extraction capitalism. Her forthcoming book on the subject, Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction, will be released by University of California Press in 2026.

RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK

Photograph by Eleanor Petry.

• “We will fight until the bitter end.” Vikram Murthi’s report from the picket lines of the Alamo Drafthouse cinema workers strike in New York is the first in a new series of in-depth journalism from Notebook.
• “Hell, upside down.” Adrian Curry considers the decade Mort Künstler spent painting rip-roaring posters for genre films—including The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), and Breakheart Pass (1975)—before turning to historical subjects.
• “It took us seven months to be able to show Paul the final cut. It was the first time he looked me in the eye.” Leonardo Goi speaks to Denis Côté about Paul (2025), a documentary following the travails of a self-proclaimed “simp” who takes pleasure in cleaning the homes of dominatrices.
• “The object of his journey is a fantasy, a terminal where no one can disembark.” Robert Rubsam delves into the distinct melancholy of travel in a changing world, as seen in Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour (2024).

WISH LIST

Martina’s Playhouse (Peggy Ahwesh, 1989).

• Tight Heads, a book collecting Polaroid photographs of 1970s film luminaries by Candy Clark, is available to order from All Night Menu. It features never-before-seen images of Jeff Bridges, Anjelica Huston, David Bowie, and many more.
• The Attractions of the Moving Image: Essays on History, Theory, and the Avant-Garde—a collection of new and selected essays by cinema and media studies scholar Tom Gunning—is available to purchase from University of Chicago Press.
• The Virgin Suicides, a volume of photographs by British fashion photographer Corinne Day taken during the film’s 1999 production, featuring new texts by director Sofia Coppola and Jeffrey Eugenides, who wrote the novel. It’s available to pre-order now from MACK and will ship in May.
• A collection of sourcebooks from experimental filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh is available to purchase from the Visual Studies Workshop. It includes “facsimiles of articles, letters, images, and notations and drawings” collected through the production process of such films as The Deadman (1987) and Martina’s Playhouse (1989), as well as a link to a playlist of audio recordings selected by the filmmaker.

EXTRAS

• Applications are open for the seventh edition of the European Workshop for Film Criticism, comprising two weeklong sessions during Curtas Vila do Conde in July and the Ljubljana Short Film Festival in August. The workshop is organized by the European Network for Film Discourse (END) and Talking Shorts and hosted by Notebook’s own Leonardo Goi.
• Prada, in collaboration with director Wong Kar-wai, has launched Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai, its first standalone restaurant in Asia. With a design inspired by the aesthetic of Wong’s films, the restaurant is housed in Shanghai’s historic Rong Zhai mansion and offers an “all-day dining experience, blending Italian cuisine with Chinese influences.”