Shorts, 5/8.

"We were in for the best of what this cinematic tradition has to offer: its wealth and wisdom, beauty and passion, tragedies and dramas, failures and victories and, mainly, its people." Alla Verlotsky, co-producer of Russian Ark, is also a co-curator of a film program: Films Along the Silk Road, showcasing the national cinemas of five Central Asian republics stretching westward from China to the Middle East: Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The retrospective, 39 films in all, runs in New York at the Walter Reade Theater through May 29 and then tours the US and Canada for a full year. Verlotsky writes about her "very personal journey back to the countries and film communities that had forged my personal and professional path" in Central Europe Review.

Of all the "stans," the one most recently on most minds, of course, is Afghanistan. In Salon, Suzy Hansen talks to Taran Davies about his documentary, Afghan Stories: "When I left for Afghanistan, there was only one film being shown on CNN, Beneath the Veil, which served a great purpose but, I felt, didn't give us a sense of who the ordinary Afghans were, the ones who weren't terrorists or refugees, the ones leading quasi-normal lives. These were the people we were going to bomb, too."

"Father Geek" introduces Scott Green's Ain't It Cool News weekly round-up of anime news and reviews (highlight: a link to the trailer for Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy) with an enthusiastic "It's Right Here!," the "It" being the fourth episode of The Animatrix.

At 78, Paul Newman is still hanging around the race track.

Richard Schickel reviews Betsy Blair's The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris ("not an uninteresting life. But her account of it... is uninteresting, largely because of her blithe detachment"; but Janet Maslin offers more detail and a more positive assessment) and Sheila Weller's Dancing at Ciro's ("there is something haunting - and instructive - in its awareness of how contingent success is, how close we always are to ruinous misstep"). And here's one that sounds intriguing: Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Ah, The Onion. "During a speech Monday, President Bush disclosed for the first time the pivotal role the 1984 science-fiction adventure film The Last Starfighter played in his decision to enter politics."

"Let's talk about The Breakfast Club," Roger Avary blogged a few days ago. Nearly 200 comments so far.

Online viewing tip. Chuck Olsen is making a documentary about blogs. He's calling it Blogumentary and you can almost hear Rob Reiner adding, "if you will." Anyway, recently, he's been posting clips and the stories he's got to introduce them with are just as amusing.



Posted by dwhudson at May 8, 2003 6:43 AM