Shorts, 5/30.

Can he get a witness? You bet. Carl Theodor Dreyer could hardly ask for more impressive testimony than what Jonathan Rosenbaum offers up today in the Guardian: "For roughly two decades, my three favourite dramatic features have all been the work of the same man - and my favourite among these depends almost entirely on which one I've seen most recently." Today's must-read, hands down.

Ordet

Meanwhile, back on his home turf, the Chicago Reader, Rosenbaum reviews The Decay of Fiction.

Bangkok-based SF Bay Guardian regular Chuck Stevens has turned up in the other Guardian as well to write not only about Monrak Transistor, the new film by Pen-ek Ratanaruang, "modern Thai cinema's foremost satirist and a hilariously cynical romantic," but also about the state of modern Thai cinema as an ever-shapeshifting whole.

Also in the Guardian, a preview of Cheeky, written and directed by - and starring - David Thewlis. And: Happy Birthday, Christopher Lee. Victoria Barrett's is a good interview, but I still like ours, naturally.

It's only just hit me what this blog's been missing: Funny pointers to can-you-believe-that stuff for sale at eBay. Unfortunately, I'm too late to recommend a bid on that pair of Hanes signed by Keanu Reeves, but the good news is that the $10,100 they eventually went for will be going to charity. If you've got an extra $180K, though, you can still get a bid in on the actual condo in which Bob Crane was killed, as depicted in Auto Focus.

I've been holding pointing to Tad Friend's fine profile of Roy Lee in the New Yorker because I wanted to say stuff about it, but as poet Albert Goldbarth has put it, "The days go by. Then more days go by." So, without the questionable benefit of my commentary: Click here for an explication of this:

Roy Lee's Asian initiative enables Hollywood, in effect, to test fully realized cinematic ideas in front of millions of people, and then go forward with remakes of movies that are already proven hits. Everyone benefits: Asian studios get a windfall; American studios get a buffet of market-tested ideas; and Lee gets a producer’s fee in the range of three hundred thousand dollars whenever one of his remakes goes into production.

Back in March, Nathan Alderman argued in TeeVee that 24 is a blatantly misogynist series. He hasn't changed his mind, either, and has, in fact, gathered more evidence that the show has a "mile-wide woman-hating streak."

Online viewing tip. Besides the trailer, there are six minutes of Danny Boyle's apocalyptic 28 Days Later, the spazzed-up zombie flick that topped the UK charts last Halloween and is now getting ready to roll out in the US. Fortunately for Res, Boyle shot it on digital video, which gives the magazine a good excuse to interview him. The results are brief but solid.



Posted by dwhudson at May 30, 2003 9:46 AM