June 21, 2003

Shorts, 6/21.

The article I expected to appear a lot sooner after Gus Van Sant picked up the top awards at Cannes last month has finally popped up in the British monthly, Prospect. But with "Cannes vs America," Mark Cousins heads off in a different direction than you might think. The bone Cannes has to pick with America, he argues, is not a political but an aesthetic one.

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Manohla Dargis on Luis Buņuel: "The director of Belle de Jour, mellowed by life, was no longer hostage to the reflexive 'No,' to provocation for provocation's sake. He had abandoned Surrealism - just as he had abandoned God - but he remained in thrall to the mysterious, the irrational and the unknowable."

And, in general, the weekend editions of the Los Angeles Times are pretty darn bountiful:

  • Arthur D. Murphy, who died on Monday, was "the dean of box office reporting," writes Lorenza Muņoz, a writer for Variety who created a monster that's bust loose and out of control;
  • Bob Baker profiles Parker Posey;
  • Elaine Dutka talks briefly with McG;
  • another car chase piece;
  • Nancy Tartaglione on Simon West's plans for "an old-fashioned grand opus, The Sailmaker";
  • Claudia Eller previews Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean with Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom;
  • A judge has fined those Bumfights guys;
  • and it's official: DVDs surpass VHS in rentals.

    "So I picked up the new Cineaste today at Borders and it's a great issue." Doug Cummings gets all generous again with the ink-to-pixels translation of the best bits.

    Uday Chopra Screen India interviews Uday Chopra, who explains why the answer to the first question about his new movie is "No": "Is Supari a deliberate attempt to go for a change of image from the soft romantic teenager in Mohabbatein and Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai you've played so far?"

    Now that the "Goodbye, Buffy" wave has subsided, a few outlets have decided to eulogize Sex and the City, even though its final season has just begun. In the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley writes, "The city has changed, and the sex has grown a little stale, but the show continues to fascinate." Salon's Stephanie Zacharek asks, "Would the 1998 Carrie Bradshaw be able to stand the 2003 version?" "But," adds Heather Havrilesky, "a sanctimonious, mixed-up Carrie was just the tip of the iceberg-wedge salad... the party's over."

    Back to the NYT: David Freeman reviews Norma Barzman's The Red and the Blacklist: The Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate.

    "I went to a flat Sergio was renting in New York and, as the sun made its way across the sky, he told me, shot for shot, the entire movie. And what he told me that day was what he ended up filming." And that may have been the last pleasant memory Elizabeth McGovern has about Once Upon a Time in America. At least that's the impression you get from Fiona Morrow's interview with her in the Independent. Also: Sheila Johnston talks to Charlotte Rampling and Carole Bouquet.

    "There are so many homoerotic overtones between Ben and Owen's character that it's just absolutely hilarious," says Juliette Lewis of Todd Phillips's remake of Starsky & Hutch. "Leave it up to Todd to hire me for the T&A factor in the movie, when I'm so not that girl."

    In the Guardian:

  • Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Crime of Father Amaro. Mexican cinema is booming, right? Wrong, reports Jo Tuckman: "The problem, as always, is money. There isn't enough";
  • A fun compare-n-contrast exercise from Sam Delaney who selects damning passages to show that books purporting to reveal the behind-the-scenes true stories of the makings-of are rarely any more reliable than the movies themselves;
  • Portraying God in the movies;
  • Molly Haskell: "A couple of queasy-making documentaries on people in psychological meltdown ratchet up the voyeurism factor until we begin to wonder if it isn't time to avert our eyes and say, enough";
  • and Andrew Osborn on the Pokemon card scam that's resulted in prices varying as much as 243%.

    The Moscow International Film Festival (June 20 - 29, and someone should really update the site) turns 25. Tom Birchenough reports in the Moscow Times.

    I never noticed that Harrison Ford leans so heavily on one gesture. Via Fimoculous.

    Hellsing Figure Natsume Maya translates some fascinating figures from an article in Newsweek Japan on the worldwide growth of Japanese anime and manga. For example, the market for anime in the US has quintupled to $500 million since 1999.

    Anime News Network's Bamboo Dong deems only two titles "Shelf Worthy" this week - Crest of the Stars and vol. 3 of RahXephon - but opens with a pretty amusing story. Meantime, yes, I do find these figures fascinating, which is why they keep popping up here. ICv2 passes along an announcement from Toycom regarding its Hellsing figures, to be released in time for Halloween.

    Carol Strickland in the Christian Science Monitor: "Making art from cartoon figures today 'is like painting a Madonna in the Renaissance,' says [Lawrence] Rinder [curator of contemporary art at the Whitney]. With cultural literacy at a low ebb, a riff on Superman communicates more universally than Bible stories, mythology, or fairy tales. Archie and Veronica have become our Aries and Venus." Animation inspires not only great art but great food as well (via Weblogsky). Happy weekend.

    Oh, yes, the online viewing tip. Vintage Flash: www.BADCOP.de.

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    Posted by dwhudson at June 21, 2003 1:14 PM