Shorts, 8/9.

"As he arrives, it is too late. Mass has already begun. The taxi driver does not appear as a comic figure in this moment, instead he radiates the dignity of a man who has sold his soul out of pure love. This may be standard in French or Polish films, but for a German film, it is a tremendous feat." Andreas Kilb on Hans-Christian Schmid's Lichter (Distant Lights). Also in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Frank Pergande writes, "East Germany has been in fashion at least since the film Good Bye, Lenin! became a sensation throughout the country," which is true, but especially that "at least" part. Other films, such as Sonnenallee and Heroes Like Us helped get the "Ostalgie" ball rolling years ago.

Meanwhile, Netaji: The Last Hero, based on the last five years in the life of Indian independence fighter Subhash Chandra Bose, is shooting in Berlin.

The Guardian's John Patterson has a bone to pick:

Every time Tony Blair shows up in Washington to exult in his role as top sprig in the Figleaf of the Willing and to enjoy confabs and photo-ops with Gee Dubya, I have to wonder once again what we, the Brits, actually get out of this long-treasured, murkily defined "special relationship" between former imperial oppressor and former colonial upstart....

Meanwhile, in Hollywood and London, the movie version of the special relationship has long played itself out in like manner. Our cut-price actors come over and do their dirty work, as villains and baddies and psychopaths, even American ones, while the cream of their prohibitively expensive acting talent Concordes it over the pond to steal the lion's share of our heroic roles. Either way, we lose.

Well, not always. In the same edition, there's a report on how the UK film industry is doing nicely - not robustly, but nicely - "as suppliers of an offbeat, low-budget antidote to Hollywood."

Also in the Guardian: There are uncomfortable lessons to be learned watching Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy and Funny Bones, writes Paul MacInnes. And, with Freddy Vs Jason out soon, Kim Newman looks back at other monster and/or mastermind face-offs: "Part of the appeal of this is the idea that, on the other side of the page or the screen, there exists a world where all our beloved or feared favourites know each other."

This summer, docs are hot, hot, hot! writes Wendy Mitchell in indieWIRE.

Sneaky. NBC has already shot 10 out of a series of short shorts - one, for example, is four minutes - to be broken up into 30-second segments and buried here and there in prime-time commercial blocks. The idea is to keep people (and TiVos) from zapping ads out of their viewing, reports Josh Grossberg for E! Online. Via the SXSW NewsReel.

In the LA Weekly, Steven Kotler counts down the top five surf movies and Nikki Finke profiles the right-wing gadfly of Hollywood, Joe Scarborough.

And in the LA Times, David Weddle's dressing down of film theory has sparked a lively letters page.

The upcoming release of Chicago in DVD gives Jennifer Dunning ample opportunity to write about dance in the movies in the New York Times. And, for the NYT Book Review, Terrence Rafferty reviews Ball of Fire, Stefan Kanfer's biography of Lucille Ball:

The question of why Ball was so much more effective as "a 16-inch TV image" should, I think, have generated at least a bit of reflection on the peculiar nature of early television comedy, an amazing number of whose stars were performers who, like Ball, worked in an extremely broad style: Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar and (most egregiously) Milton Berle. The notable exceptions - Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen - were essentially doing televised radio programs, an approach that conforms more closely to our current idea of TV as an intimate medium. But intimacy was not necessarily what the television audiences of the early 50's were looking for; and the screen was so small, and the black-and-white reception so erratic, that any attempt at subtlety was likely to be lost in transmission. The most popular comedians were those who, ignoring what we have come to think of as the special properties of the medium, went for huge, playing-to-the-cheap-seats effects.

Here's a stat from Mike Snider in USA Today that might serve as an update to this: "So far this year, studios have released nearly 700 direct-to-DVD films, more than double the number of new theatrical disc releases and nearly as many as older 'catalog' films." Via Movie City News.

Another update to an earlier entry. About two weeks ago, Ian Whitney offered an excellent summary of the severe problems with Miramax's dubbed version of Shaolin Soccer. Then, on Monday, Kung Fu Cinema announced with great fanfare that Miramax had decided to dump that version and release, albeit not all that wide, a subtitled version. Alas, the very next day, Miramax flip-flopped. The subtitled version will still see limited release, but there'll be a test screening on September 15th in Ohio of the dubbed version. If you catch it, let the testers know which version you'd have preferred to see.

Two recent and related reviews in Film-Philosophy: "Selling Space: King and Krzywinska's Science Fiction Cinema," by Anna Powell, and "Other Bother: The Alien in Science Fiction Cinema; Sardar and Cubitt's Aliens R Us," by Jon Baldwin.

Arghnold is laughing at you.

Online viewing tip. David Hlynsky's Communist Store Windows, via ArtKrush.

Posted by dwhudson at August 9, 2003 5:28 AM