Shorts, 8/28.

Brian Flemming has written Fair & Balanced, a one-act play blurbed as "a scathing satirical attack on Fox News Channel and its claim of ownership to the words 'fair and balanced.'" So what, you might be thinking. Whoever this Brian Flemming is, he must have written it pretty quickly, how good can it be? Myself, I'll know the answer that last one soon enough when I get a chance to read it (it was just released on Tuesday and I didn't hear about it until this morning). But my hopes are high. Because I've seen Nothing So Strange, the film he wrote and directed last year. Even wrote what would definitely count as a "thumbs up" review. Brian Flemming is also a co-writer behind Bat Boy: The Musical, which has won all sorts of awards and is even now, still, being staged across the country. And now, at his blog, he's describing Fair & Balanced as "vicious, profane, and written in the spirit of commedia dell'arte, which often mixes the scatological, the violent, the broadly comedic and the political." Now aren't you, too, intrigued?

So Venice has opened, Telluride is opens tomorrow and Toronto is just around the corner. It's going to be a fun couple of weeks, even if you, like me, will have to be soaking up second-hand stories from afar. Which leads us to today's Elvis Mitchell link, a talk with Stephen Sondheim about his role as guest director at Telluride this year. Also in the New York Times: Neil Strauss on Matt and Mike Chapman's Homestar Runner.

The warm reception Woody Allen enjoyed yesterday in Venice all we know of how things are going so far, but in indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman hits the highlights - and there are many - of what's to come.

Also in indieWIRE: Eugene Hernandez on Palm Pictures' plans to remake Jimmy Wang Yu's Master of the Flying Guillotine - which gives me another opportunity to mention yet another new primer, this one on Hong Kong Action, written by Patrick Macias, author of TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion.

The Smoking Gun has done California - and perhaps, America and the world as well - a favor by rummaging in somebody's garbage and salvaging a copy of the August 1977 issue of Oui, wherein there's quite an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sample quote: "Bodybuilders party a lot, and once, in Gold's - the gym in Venice, California, where all the top guys train - there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together." (I chose that one because it's about the only one with language suitable for a family-friendly blog like this one.) Sample quote from the campaign trail the other day: "I believe in prayer in school." To be fair, we all change and a lot of water can flow under the bridge in a quarter of a century. But hopefully, he'll be asked about this. His handling of the question could be quite telling.

Fightin' words: "New rule: DVDs are for losers... DVDs, you see, are evil because they now account for over half the money Hollywood makes, and they're all bought by the young, dumb, car-crash-loving male demographic, the same one that's given us MAXIM magazine, attention deficit disorder and George Bush." Since the slam comes from Bill Maher, I can take it with a smile, even though, except for the male part (and maybe the dumb part), I just really don't match the description.

For the Guardian, Jo Tuckman visits the set of Zapata, where writer, director and producer Alfonso Arau is kicking up a brouhaha with the liberties he's taking with the biography of the Mexican revolutionary.

Ashley MacQuarrie had a blast watching The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch. Then she startled Eric Idle with a her first question.

A Considerable Town. The LA Weekly column is triple fun this week: Chuck Wilson attends the 30th-anniversary screening of Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon; Christopher Jolly spots Al Gore in Starbucks; and Michael Simmons takes in the Hollywood parade celebrating the 25th anniversary of Animal House, all the while thinking, "Here's a film that not only condones but revels in drugs, booze, screwing, anti-militarism, pro-slacking, pro-vandalism, and a profound lack of respect for what is referred to as common decency. Yet it's earned the love of successive generations of Americans..."

Most of us have read at least one story about the supposed death of hand-drawn, 2-D animation. They flooded the press in the wake of Finding Nemo's success and Sinbad's floppage. My thinking has been: This, too, shall pass. Nemo worked because it had a great story; Sinbad didn't (plus, as someone said, David Poland, I think it was, no one pays to listen to Brad Pitt). Well, the situation appears to be a lot more serious than I'd thought, as David Koenig outlines in this sad piece at Mouse Planet. Via BoingBoing.

Online viewing tip. Oculart. Via THREE.OH.

Posted by dwhudson at August 28, 2003 8:30 AM