Shorts, 9/16.

The dead-tree version of the October issue of Paper looks like it'd be fun to flip through. Available online is Frank Owen's Party Monster package: profiles of Macaulay Culkin, Chloë Sevigny and producer-writer-directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. The film's based on Disco Bloodbath, a memoir by James St. James, who's profiled in the New York Times today.

While we wait for the new issue of Filmmaker, there is at least one new short piece up. Andre Salas talks with Passionada director Dan Ireland.

Heather Havrilesky watches K Street for Salon: "'Look how we get to play, play, play wherever we want with whomever we want!' is the smug message of this project... Instead of blurring lines between fiction and reality, K Street sharpens them, making us so aware of the manipulations and setups and improvised moments that we can't remotely get involved in the drama."

You've surely noticed that the lesbian kiss is the fashion statement of the season; Bollywood has, too. Via Beware of the Blog.

"The bittersweet realities of a post-Communist world are threatening to create a mini movie genre." Allan Hunter in Screen Daily on Vodka Lemon.

At Movie City News, Gary Dretzka goes chasing after the answer to the question: Whatever happened to Ripley's Game with John Malkovich, "exactly the kind of stimulating and intelligent motion picture that's now become an endangered species in Hollywood"? Turns out, no one seems to know, really. Also at MCN: Ray Pride on Lost in Translation and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Speaking of which. Ann Hornaday spends some quality time with husband-and-wife team Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán for the Washington Post: "It's a love story."

Doug Cummings announces a poll for the "DVD of the Year" hosted by the moderators at the amazing Masters of Cinema. There's no rush; this'll take months yet, of course, "but you may wish to start thinking about which disc you'll pick." Doug's also been reading Fritz Lang: Life and Work, Pictures and Documents, a book reviewed in the Winter 2001 issue of Bookforum by one of my own favorite writers on film, Geoffrey O'Brien.

Online viewing tip. Rob Walker on the new Converse ad:

Converse is the no-BS yin to Nike's all-style-and-image yang... The clever thing about the "First School" notion is that while it appears to push the idea of an "authentic" basketball shoe, it's really more about an "authentic" fashion statement. That sounds like an oxymoron, and strictly speaking it is. But in marketing, and maybe everywhere in pop culture at this point, "authentic" doesn't really mean authentic. It means "not so obviously phony."

Posted by dwhudson at September 16, 2003 7:43 AM