Shorts, 7/18.

Second entry of note. Wiley Wiggins points to a Pitchfork piece by Ed Howard who summarizes the final days of My Bloody Valentine only revive hopes that we will be hearing some of the tunes that previously seemed indefinitely lost - at the very least on the soundtrack of Sofia Coppola's next movie, Lost in Translation. Track listing, the works, over there at Pitchfork.

Ella Taylor, one of my favorites at LA Weekly:

Short of the Renaissance, though, there is probably no period, place or sensibility more glamorously made for cinema (indeed, cinema was first made during it) than fin-de-siècle Paris and Vienna, whose heady innovations in politics, culture, ball gowns and all-around decadence are the subject of "La Belle Époque on Film," a selection of mostly French films (from Max Ophüls by way of René Clair, Truffaut, Tavernier, all the way through Olivier Assayas's most recent film) that recapture the era from a more chastened vantage point, two world wars later.

Also: Scott Foundas on Alex Proyas's Garage Days and Jordan Susman's The Anarchist Cookbook.

In a distantly related vein, Dave Kehr reviews two docs showing at the Anthology Film Archives, Be Seeing You and An Injury to One. Again, interesting, brief reading even if you're not in NYC. Also in the New York Times: Stephen Kinzer on Broncho Billy and Alessandra Stanley on the Sundance Channel's Anatomy of a Scene, highlighting on Sunday the making of Alan Rudolph's The Secret Lives of Dentists, and HBO's Project Greenlight, "essentially Real World Hollywood, a shameless rip-off of the MTV franchise by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Miramax."

Hadley Freeman sounds like he's off to a cruel start in a piece on Elizabeth Taylor: "How - or more precisely, why - did that raven-haired, lilac-eyed beauty of National Velvet and Suddenly Last Summer become the Henry VIII of the cinematic world, more famous for her bizarre appearance and over-weighted wedding finger than for any of her accomplishments?" But I'm glad he lands where he does: "Perhaps the statement that sums up Taylor best is said by Big Daddy at the end of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: 'This woman's got life in her.'"

Also in the Guardian: Xan Brooks on the Kill Bill split, Geoffrey Macnab on British filmmakers getting mightily disgruntled with UK Film Council chairman Alan Parker and Molly Haskell makes the Nantucket film festival sound so delicious it's now on my to-do-before-I-die list. A highlight this year: "A roster of first class actors reading the adaptation-in-progress of John Kennedy Toole's cult novel, A Confederacy of Dunces."

So I've watched the trailer for Mel Gibson's The Passion and, while it's always insane to make predictions, I think it's going to be very, very large. Maybe not so much on the media landscape, but it will definitely, if quietly, make a solid return on the investment. I see whole congregations attending en masse.

Tagliner Stephen Reid is firing off one entry after another from Comic-Con in San Diego.

Word from Moviehole: Richard Linklater has teamed up again with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for an untitled sequel Before Sunrise. "According to Variety, the sequel's set nine years later and Jesse is on the French leg of the book tour for his novel when he finds Celine once more. Awww... Now if only he'd consider Dazed and Confused worth seconds." Here, here. I think. Sequels to favorites are always risky business.

Kei Kumai talks to Lorenza Muñoz in the Los Angeles Times about directing a screenplay written by Akira Kurosawa.

So soon: Another Shelf Life appears after yesterday's late one.

Ray Pride on Bad Boys II: "If anyone wants a colorful illustration of the psychosis of big-budget movies that fully explore the sensibilities of its runamok auteurs, hooboy, I don't want to see anything nuttier or more nihilist than this for a long time to come." But the column moves on to better things, such as Claire Denis's Friday Night, Liz Phair's album - no one, it seems, is without an opinion, but I do like this line: "It's strange when critics assume a work isn't on purpose." - Garage Days and Stone Reader.

Also in Movie City News, David Poland's very fun "Premature Wrap-Up Column," about the summer season, of course.

Online viewing tip. Icon's Story.



Posted by dwhudson at July 18, 2003 9:34 AM