Martin Scorsese said Sunday he's keeping an open mind about the cinema "revolution" sparked by the rise of video streaming services, as his Netflix-backed mafia epic "The Irishman" closed the London Film Festival .
The director said the rise of streaming platforms was "an even bigger revolution than sound brought to cinema" because it "opens up the original conception of what a film is" and how it should be seen.
Scorsese told reporters he thought it was still important that movies be experienced communally.
"Homes are becoming theatres too but it's a major change and I think one has to keep an open mind," he said.
"The Irishman" — about the reflections of a former Jimmy Hoffa associate and hitman — is due to have a theatrical run from Nov. 1 before its Nov. 27 release on Netflix.
Scorsese took the project to Netflix after other studios turned it down, partly due to its length and the expensive de-aging digital effects used to make stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci appear decades younger.
Scorsese said the CGI effects, which have come in for some criticism, were simply "an evolution of makeup."
"You accept certain norms in make-up — you know he's not that old, she's not that young," he said. "You accept the illusion."
The 209-minute film is Sunday's closing night gala for the 12-day London festival.
On Saturday the festival awarded its best film prize to Colombian director Alejandro Landes' child soldier thriller "Monos."
The first feature prize went to French director Mati Diop's Senegal-set drama "Atlantics," and the documentary award was won by Rubika Shah for "White Riot," the story of the 1970s British movement Rock Against Racism.
"Fault Line" by Iran's Soheil Amirsharifi won the short film trophy.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More