Shorts, 6/4.

Rob Walker's sharp and brief dissection of an ad for the Chevy Impala (which you can view from that page) is a good film-related segue to a non-film-related article I'd like to point to anyway: "Keepin' It Unreal."

Also in the Village Voice this week are two pieces on Sam Green and Bill Siegel's doc, The Weather Underground, J. Hoberman's review and Tom Smucker's open question: "The New Left's gone, not as an attitude or memory, but as an institution. Why?"

A quick run-down of related reads: Elvis Mitchell's review in the New York Times, Armond White's in the New York Press, Rob Nelson, briefly, in Mother Jones, Ron Jacobs, not briefly at all (he's the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground, after all), ruminating about a year ago in Counterpunch and our own Craig Phillips's interview with Mark Kitchell, director of Berkeley in the Sixties.

Back to the Voice. The backlash against Vincent Gallo's naysayers has begun in earnest and it looks as if it won't be long before it's critically incorrect to snub The Brown Bunny. Mark Peranson sorts out what the man said, how he was misquoted and generally appeals for a tolerant second look at the film. But the most detailed breakdown of the "scandal" has to be Frank DiGiacomo's blow-by-blow account (sorry) in the New York Observer. Interesting, isn't it, that not only could Lars von Trier not score a prize at Cannes (though many, like J. Hoberman, think he should've), he couldn't make his scandal ("anti-American" remarks; like that would be a big surprise) stick, either, upstaged as its been by Gallo's... bunny.

And back to the NYT. Dave Kehr looks at Controlled Chaos, "a fictionalized account of the four years [Azita] Zendel spent as an assistant to Oliver Stone." Which reminds me of a story in this morning's Berliner Zeitung, a profile of Heidi Ewing, director of the short doc Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project. That film, profiling the Cuban human rights activist, was shown at Tribeca this year instead of Stone's Comandante. You may remember that HBO sent Stone back to gather more footage and cut together a more balanced portrait of Castro. Anyway, in the BLZ story, Ewing gets in touch with Oswaldo Payá again - who tells her he's been contacted by none other than Oliver Stone.

Two docmakers, two interviews. Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans) in Salon and Nicolas Philibert (Être et avoir, wildly praised when it played here in Germany; more) in indieWIRE.

We've been pointing to Guy Maddin-related bits pretty often lately, but James Quandt's interview in Artforum definitely warrants another round.

"It was expected to be a modest hit at best... But much like the film's protagonist, Shane has endured." Michael F. Blake in the Los Angeles Times on the classic, 50 years on. Remember the surprise when Woody Allen chose to watch it a couple of years ago with the NYT's Rick Lyman?

That American Film Institute, I tell ya. They've gone and unveiled two more lists, the top 50 heroes and top 50 villains of American movies. Trumpeted with a TV special and news stories all around. s

If you've got loads of free time on your hands and enough disposable cash to not mind spending about three times as much as you'd really have to (few people have both), you can build your own TiVo. Of course, it wouldn't actually be a real TiVo. So, what's the point? Customization, flexibility. Leander Kahney explains the appeal of MythTV. Also in Wired News: Katie Dean on the smut-filterers vs Hollywood.

Apropos of today's Daily 5 at GreenCine: Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the premiere of WarGames. A thought: Though we no longer slap phone receivers down on our modems to get a connection, hundreds of years from now, Neo and Co. will still be racing to find a phone booth.

Online playing tip. Uncle Roy All Around You.



Posted by dwhudson at June 4, 2003 8:02 AM