For several months already, in the stalls of bookstores, well-known names have been enthroned but that we are not so used to seeing here. Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg or even John Waters: but what has stung the star directors of Hollywood? Not content to splash us with their dreams of cinema, the sacred monsters of the camera are now playing writers and hope to convince, pencil in hand. The thriller in the firmament: Michael Mann, Heat 2 See also on Konbini By dint of praying without ever seeing our wish granted, we had ended up giving up. Michael Mann would never shoot the sequel to his cult masterpiece, Heat (1995). A virtuoso staging, a breathtaking tension, a dark and sprawling Los Angeles, and then this confrontation, unforgettable, all in style and punchlines between the two legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino: to take advantage of this formidable gesture of cinema, it only remained for us to see this monument of thriller regularly, from all angles, savoring the scenes that we know by heart and crossing our fingers to discover a moment of grace that could have escaped our eyes as spectators. And then, last winter, Michael Mann surprised everyone by announcing, thanks to a cryptic trailer, the surprise release of Heat 2 in the United States. For a few years, Michael Mann had therefore been working on the continuation of his story. Nothing had filtered because it was not a film that he was preparing, but a novel that he was writing in the greatest secrecy. With the help of Meg Gardinier, one of the fine blades of American detective fiction who co-wrote the book, Michael Mann has given himself the means to offer us a dazzling second opus. Proof that this story has never ceased to haunt him. , the director begins his book just a few minutes after the end credits of his film and we follow Lieutenant Hanna (the character played by Al Pacino, therefore) in his overexcited hunt for Chris Shiherlis, the last survivor of the gang of robbers interpreted , at the time, by Val Kilmer. But Michael Mann builds a romantic puzzle much more complex than a simple sequel. If, in its first pages, the book takes the classic form of the sequel, it quickly alternates with the prequel. On the one hand the present, this ultimate duel between an obsessed cop and a thug on the run, on the other the past of the two emblematic characters of this story, Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) and Vincent Hanna.Michael Mann pulls off a trick strength by juggling with stories and giving a new dimension to his bewitching universe. The dilemmas that plague the heroes, the paradox between cruel violence and the irresistible charm of gangsters, the settings that gradually engulf the characters: Heat 2 is not just a masterful novel and the thriller of the year, it is the exciting manifesto of a cinema genius. And since good news never comes alone, the filming of Heat 2 is already in the pipeline. With a very probable return of Al Pacino and an Austin Butler (Elvis) approached for the leading role. Too many good news at once. Pan! bang ! : Al Pacino should return to his cult role in the sequel to Michael Mann’s HeatConfessions of a Mad Movie Lover: Quentin Tarantino, Cinema SpeculationsFor some time now, we’ve always heard the same refrain in interviews with Quentin Tarantino. He would soon be done with his film cycle, he would have already said everything, his tenth film would be his last. With each release of this kind, the same conclusion: he would be eager to open a new chapter of his life and become a writer. If we are entitled to doubt the announcements of the whimsical director, it is clear that a sort of artistic migration has begun. Last year already, he signed a novel entitled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a novelization of his last film which had not necessarily convinced. First, because the very concept of novelization did not have much interest, then, because the author’s bloated and grandiloquent style could, at times, annoy. Fortunately, Quentin Tarantino is now taking a magnificent revenge with this second book which has just been published and offers us an exciting autobiographical stroll through the life and cinephilia of a transfixed lover of the seventh art. The Dollar Trilogy by Sergio Leone, Bullitt, French Connection, Taxi Driver: at each film, its chapter mixing backstage, historical analysis, criticism and personal digressions. Abundant, sometimes disconcerting, always incredibly erudite, Cinéma Speculations is a hand-held dive into the Los Angeles of the 1960s and 1970s and a declaration of love for the neighborhood cinema, a magical place of youth and a life dedicated to cinema.Surprise: Quentin Tarantino will be on the stage of the Grand Rex for a unique evening on March 29Memory of a disgusting old man: John Waters, Mr. Know-It-AllThe gallery of monsters in Multiple Maniacs, the race to the horror in Pink Flamingos or the infernal journey of initiation in Female Trouble: you have to see the cinema of John Waters to believe it. Each work of the pope of trash, of the king of the underground, irremediably produces the same effect on the spectator. At the time of entering his world, we are torn between an almost childish joy, a desire to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the world and a terrible apprehension, the fear of being shocked by a perverse delirium that he would have pushed too far. Almost 40 years after Provocation, his first book, a horrible little treatise in bad taste that has become an unobtainable collector’s item over time, John Waters is taking a new literary trip and donning the writer’s costume to indulge in the perilous exercise of memories. At 75, would Grandpa Waters have calmed down and would simply like to tell us about his life? Impure advice from a disgusting old man: the subtitle alone gives us a fairly clear answer. Here, no nostalgia or repentance but a disgusting manual of manners to put an end to propriety and put insolence at the center of your existence. John Waters diverts the codes of personal development and dynamites ambient morality. Whether he evokes his underground period and his Hollywood setbacks or whether he delivers his thoughts on sexuality, militancy, drugs or death, the director takes out the sulphur and sprinkles us with destructive black humor. For a double dose of trash, Gaïa editions will publish its very first novel, Sale menteuse in May, which the author himself presents as an outrageous and deviant feel-bad romance. Surprised? David Cronenberg, Consumés In the category of barred directors, David Cronenberg is also very well placed. With dark, disturbing genre films, sometimes even bordering on unbearable, such as Videodrome, La Mouche, Crash or even more recently Les Crimes du futur, the Canadian has developed a poisonous universe that plays with the most perverse fantasies linked to technology. Societies plagued by the race for innovation, bodies mistreated by transhumanism, sexualities transformed by the advent of machines: welcome to futuristic worlds where Man is on the brink of the abyss. With the richness of his universes and the power of twriting his screenplays, it was only a matter of time before David Cronenberg took the plunge. Consumés is a hypnotic novel that concentrates all the director’s obsessions. Naomi Seberg and Nathan Math, two journalists who are both lovers and competitors, have made a name for themselves in sensationalist photojournalism and track down the most spectacular and sordid cases around the world. In Paris, Naomi embarks on a mad investigation in the footsteps of a Sorbonne professor accused of having killed and then eaten part of his wife. In Budapest, Nathan meets a controversial surgeon who is said to have specialized in organ trafficking. These two stories have nothing to do and yet they are linked. A hallucinatory trip to the land of the worst atrocities, the most outrageous sexual deviance and the delirious hold of technology on our lives. The only downside is the complex and convoluted form of the story, which suggests that between the screenplay and the novel, Cronenberg had trouble deciding… The vintage detective novel – Brian De Palma, Are snakes necessary? Brian De Palma his absence from film sets? At 82, the virtuoso director of the cult films Carrie au bal du diable, Scarface, Les Incorruptibles, Mission impossible or L’Impasse seems to be enjoying a well-deserved rest. Apart from the film Domino in 2019, which was completely shelved and a bitter commercial failure in 2012 with Passion, we have to go back to Dahlia Noir in 2006 to find the trace of Brian de Palma’s success. As a symbol of his dark and bloody work, a noir thriller, adapted from James Ellroy, a suffocating thriller over which hangs the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock. But in his old age, the director found a new way to tell his stories , more intimate, less ambitious, which does not require the same team above all. He is writing the novel for the film he will never be able to shoot. In the company of his wife Susan Lehman, he signs a deliciously vintage thriller. The story of an unscrupulous campaign manager who, to win the senator for whom he works, recruits a young waitress in charge of seducing a competitor. Above all, the story of a woman who has more than one trick up her sleeve. If the writing is light and the style simplistic, the galloping narration and the hushed atmosphere hit the mark. An unpretentious thriller, far from its masterful cinema but, whatever the case, we never tire of the leg Brian De Palma.
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