A pretty crazy bit of news this week: we might get to see the very last movie River Phoenix was shooting when he died of a suspected drug overdose in front of a nightclub in Los Angeles in 1993, during production. The movie is called Dark Blood and the director, George Sluizer, has recently announced that the movie will be completed in time for a 2012 release. To supplement the footage Sluizer plans on asking Joaquin Phoenix to overdub his brother’s voice, as reported in The Hollywood Reporter. Starring alongside Phoenix are Jonathan Pryce and Judy Davis.

Why are art films becoming horror films? Perhaps art film directors are finding that the most effective way to relate to our frazzled age is to mask it in the aesthetics of terror. Last year’s apocalyptic ballet movie, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, heralded this new trend--that movie might as well have had zombie dancers. This year it’s Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols' story of mental illness, marriage, and prophecies of doom. Shelter stars

As I watched The Texas Killing Fields, I had one question running through my mind: why don’t they make more films like this? I don’t mean this in the Terrence Malick random acts of genius sort of way, as in “why can’t every filmmaker take seven years in post-production to create a high-minded masterpiece?” I mean it in a “whatever happened to the if it’s Friday, it-must-be-a-new-police-procedural movie” sort of way.

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Steve McQueen's second feature reprises his collaboration with Hunger star Michael Fassbender and the effect is no less spellbinding. This time, instead of starving for a cause, Fassbender plays a man at the mercy of his urges rather than in control of them: a sex addict. In the frenetic world of New York City it's easy for Fassbender's Brandon to keep his private life a secret. When a vat of pornography is discovered on his work computer

Richard Peña will be stepping down from his post as programmer-in-chief at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, it was recently announced. The Society’s executive director, Rose Kuo, has said, "Richard has been a shining light for more than two decades at the Film Society, guiding us in the discovery of artists like Pedro Almodovar, Mike Leigh, Lars Von Trier, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Sang Soo and many more.”

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