Shorts, 5/28.

And we begin today with just that: Shorts. Wong Kar Wai, Tsui Hark, Peter Chan, Fruit Chan, Stephan Chow, Joe Ma, Brian Tse, Johnnie To, Teddy Chan, along with the duos Alan Mak and Andrew Lau and Alex Law and Mabel Cheung, are among the directors filming government-sponsored shorts aimed at lifting Hong Kong's spirits months into the SARS crisis. Silvia Wong reports for Screen Daily. (Image sampled from Basefield Projects.)

"I have seen the future of DVDs and it is Donnie Darko." Daragh Sankey explains why "learning more about the film from inside rather than from without" beats all else.

Laura Miller tackles the befuddlement of many over a pair of visual delights:

Both Far From Heaven and Down With Love seem, well, weird. You could blame that on their being so highly stylized, but when was the last time anyone found the artificiality of The Importance of Being Earnest unsettling? Or, for that matter, the ritualized theatrics of Throne of Blood? We can easily accept that none of the characters in Oscar Wilde's play or Akira Kurosawa's fusion of King Lear with Japanese Kabuki act like anyone we've ever met, because the worlds they inhabit are so remote. Audiences buy piles of tickets to Merchant-Ivory movies and don't walk out fretting because they can't figure out what the filmmakers are trying to say about Victorian society. The problem seems to be that we aren't ready to put mid-20th-century America in the same category.

And here's my take on my favorite film of last year.

Steve Monaco further indulges his appetite for Jose Mojica Marins, aka Coffin Joe, who "belongs in the first rank of '60s horror directors, a group that includes Roger Corman, George Romero, and Mario Bava." Going by the ratings alone, GreenCiners don't seem to agree, but taste's a less relevant factor over in this corner. On the Brazilian filmmaker's "cracked autobiography," Demons and Wonders: "In between these poverty-row recreations of his bad breaks are many newspaper headlines from his past, and they're an unexpected treat - my favorite is the one pertaining to Joe's unorthodox acting auditions: EAT ROACHES AND LICK SKULLS TO GET ROLE IN MOVIE!"

Speaking of B (well, maybe Z) movie kings, JR Taylor chats up Robert Kerman in the New York Press.

"Q: In The Return of the King, when Sam rescues Frodo, and Frodo is lying in his arms, Sam kisses Frodo on the forehead. Has this small element has made it into the film version? A: I wasn't in this scene but don't think you will be disappointed." Ian McKellen updates his site, answering a dozen or so questions. Via Movie City Geek.

More mail: Bruce Feirstein has a blast typing up a memo from Myndee Brady-Stahr, Director of Development, Trans-National Pictures, to Jayson Blair, c/o David Vigliano Literary Agency, New York: "And I, like, totally agree that Vin Diesel is perfect casting for your character. He's a newsman who kicks ass - and takes names later. Or maybe never. Or maybe he just makes up the names. Whatever."

"For Uday Hussein, the cutthroat son of Saddam, high culture came to Iraq when Russell Crowe entered the arena, sword in hand, ready to kill." Patrick Healy sorts through a masochist's video collection in the Boston Globe. Via Movie City News.

The Otohime Mutsumi in Swimsuit Statue will be the latest in Tokyo Mint's Love Hina series, a cold cast resin figurine and yours as of November for a low, low $149. Which is a helluva lot cheaper than a Murakami.

That's via ICv2 where there's currently a tremendous amount of grumbling going on over Kevin Smith's failure to deliver the comics he promised Marvel.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian's Dennis Harvey revs up for a local mini-retrospective of Czech director Vera Chytilová's work. Of Daisies, he writes:

It's still jolting, hilarious, endlessly inventive, a delight to the eye and mind. I've seen it many times and still laugh out loud. It remains an art-school feminist favorite, appealing in the same way more commercial expressions of rampaging grrrlhood as Times Square or even Freaky Friday are. (It's not a lesbian movie, but some of its best friends are.)

And, while some have been underwhelmed by Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme's A Decade under the Influence, Harvey isn't.

Online viewing tip. "Click 'view teaser' then try to ignore the terrible voiceover and concentrate on the the animation. Splendid," writes jc at Coudal Partners of Nocturna.



Posted by dwhudson at May 28, 2003 7:13 AM