September 14, 2003
Sunday Shorts.
Thanks to infuriating connection problems, these "Weekend Shorts" have a new name. There's a lot to catch up with, so fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy entry.
As Doug Cummings writes at filmjourney.org, "The latest issue of Film Comment has been released and thankfully it's better material than the magazine has generally offered the past year. Its article on Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) and his centennial celebrations is particularly of note, particularly since it's online."
There's also a piece on Olivier Assayas's demonlover: "[T]his elegant cyberthriller captures a certain state of the contemporary world with the acuity, sensitivity, and precision of a seismograph registering the planet's tectonic shifts."
But back to the Ozu article, where Richard Combs writes, "The remarkable imposition of the Ozu 'image' beginning in 1949 depends on a narrow range of subject and theme, worked through a comparably narrow range of stylistic choices-choices made from the common pool of classical or mainstream movie techniques," and reminds us that that is certainly not the complete picture. If for no other reason, the program for the retrospective, with film descriptions by Derek Lam, looks like a feast.
Like many of us, Matt Clayfield is eagerly awaiting the Criterion release of Tokyo Story. A footnote: Richard Corliss's overview of the relationship between Japanese film and Hollywood, part of a special issue on Japan in Time back in April 2001.
The films screening at the Global City exhibition in Tokyo look fascinating. Via Natsume Maya.
"The American firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945 is the defining imagery in the new documentary film by Errol Morris, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons of Robert S. McNamara to be released in December by (Catch the irony) Sony Pictures Classics." Larry Calloway's perceptive piece on the film and its historical context - "[McNamara] is not actually doing mea culpas... He does not follow the postmodern argument... that genocide is an absolute crime and that America throughout its history has failed even to recognize it" - comes by way of Matt Langdon's Rashomon. See also Matt's father's review of the film and our own conversation with Morris.
Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney have run into severe trouble with their show, set to premiere Sunday night on HBO, K Street - there's a clip there in which they and their star political consultants explain the concept of the show, a "fusion of reality and fiction," incorporating behind the scenes wheeling and dealing on Capital Hill (though, of course, those scenes wouldn't be behind anything at all anymore, would they?) and featuring cameos by some of the Senate's better known faces. But now, as Greg Allen and others are noting, Trent Lott and George Voinovich, the Republican chairmen of the Senate Rules Committee and Ethics Committee, have just thrown a hefty wrench in the works. They say the show flies in the face of a ban on filming in the Capital for "commercial or profit-making purpose." Now what? Greg offers a solution: "[G]et the crew - and the talent - some press passes and slap some CNN logos on those cameras."
The logos might not hack it, but the passes conceivably could. At any rate, Greg makes some interesting associations between who's appeared on camera so far and who's collected the most contributions from the cable industry. On top of that, the folks at Boycott-RIAA.com take note of who's on the guest list for the red carpet premiere. Worth a peak.
Festival round-up:
The 11th Cine Latino! fest kicks off on September 17 and runs through the 21st in San Francisco, where the World According to Shorts is already underway (wraps on the 17th) and RESFEST (9/18 - 21) events are also happening.
Jen Tracy and Anes Alic look back at the 9th Sarajevo Film Festival for Transitions Online.
Also in the Chronicle: Busy Marc Savlov has a long conversation with Robert Rodriguez's wife and producer, Elizabeth Avellán, about Once Upon a Time in Mexico. It must have been quite a shoot.
"[Boze] Hadleigh has written 15 books, mostly on the movies and Hollywood, and most famously on gays and lesbians in Hollywood." Hazel-Dawn Dumpert meets him and writes him up in the LA Weekly.
Question. Is it time to start worrying that Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is getting too much good press? Here's what's supposed to be a little movie, "a tiny movie," as Bradley Steinbacker puts it in the Stranger, and yet: "It is as close to a miracle as you're likely to get this year." And then along comes a massive cover package in the LA Weekly: Ella Taylor's profile of the director, Juan Morales's chat with Scarlett Johansson, Scott Foundas's review and assessment of Bill Murray's career and John Payne's appreciation of the soundtrack.
Then, in the New York Times, there's Elvis Mitchell's rave ("[O]ne of the purest and simplest examples ever of a director falling in love with her star's gifts. And never has a director found a figure more deserving of her admiration than Bill Murray") and AO Scott's laudatory profile of the star; and Slate's David Edelstein, who hasn't liked a lot of movies recently: "This is the Bill Murray performance we've been waiting for: Saturday Night Live meets Chekhov." And so on and so on. You want to yell out, "Don't peak too early, Sofia!", but it may be too late.
Speaking of Slate, by the way, it's there that Ed Finn tackles the question: "Can Wham-O Sue Over Dickie Roberts?"
Daniel Kraus, a filmmaker himself, has a rip-roaring conversation with Cabin Fever director Eli Roth. Also in Salon, Charles Taylor: "Next to the Hong Kong action picture So Close, nearly every Hollywood thriller of the summer looks like an elementary-school project thrown together the Sunday night before it was due. Director Corey Yuen's work here is fast, exciting and, above all, clean."
Quite an interview Todd R. Ramlow's conducted with Peter Friedman, director of Silverlake Life: The View from Here, for PopMatters. AIDS, science, activism... this is not typical press junket fare.
Top ten Bollywood bad guys? Planet Bollywood's Vijay Ramanan runs them down.
Michael Caine tells Moviehole's Paul Fischer what it was like salvaging The Quiet American: "I wouldn't do it again. It was too tough for me; nearly killed me that did; nearly killed me."
In the Guardian:
Microsoft aims to have Windows Media Series 9 supercede MPEG-2, "a compression standard that is the foundation of satellite, cable, video-editing systems and DVDs," reports Stefanie Olsen in CNET. Apple, in the meantime, is quite pleased Manito director Eric Eason uses Final Cut Pro - and that he's quite pleased to talk about it.
Angelina Jolie tells all. Via Movie City News, where we find:
Peter Campbell in the London Review of Books on what technological advances are doing to an art form that's been too often sidelined in the past: "Early video art was very often a way of recording performance art. Now more of it takes the form of pictures which move but which are not, in the ordinary sense, moving pictures."
Amanda's been watching The Conversation. And taking notes...
HIM: I can't stand it. I can't stand it anymore!HER: You're going to make me cry.
HIM: I know, honey, I know, me too.
HER: No, don't. - Pretend like I just told you a joke.
They both laugh.
Online viewing tip. Roommates. Via Avary's Domain, so you know it's not one for the kids.
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