Lars von Trier's Dogville, which won't open until March, "is a lot more German than American," argues John Rockwell in the NYT: "What Mr. von Trier has really done in Dogville is to update his German influences from Wagner to the overtly unsentimental, anti-Wagnerian 1920's of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill." A discomfortingly appropriate segue: John Varoli's story on Der Untergang, a film depicting the fall of Berlin and shot in St. Petersburg: "One city posing as another is not unusual in the film industry. What startled in this case was that the capital of the Third Reich was set in this city, which lost perhaps one million people during a German siege lasting almost 900 days from Sept. 8, 1941, to Jan. 27, 1944. The word 'irony' was on everyone's lips."

Festival round-up:

Also in the Guardian:

The Stranger has unveiled its first annual Genius Awards and chosen stop-motion animator Web Crowell for the film category, even while suggesting the names of four other Seattle-area filmmakers to keep an eye on.

Screeners update: indieWIRE runs the text of a fax studio specialty division heads sent to Jack Valenti, but reports that the MPAA is sticking with ban; David Poland insists that everyone stop whining, while Roger Ebert rails against the "Valenti Decree."

In Midnight Eye, Tom Mes reviews Nasu: Summer in Andulusia and interviews director Kitaro Kosaka.

"The dangers in tackling biopics are evident. There is always some relative or colleague on hand to impugn the motives of the filmmaker." Geoffrey Macnab in the Independent.

Book news, oddly enough:

Bollywood is "turning to smarter scripts, shorter shooting schedules and stricter budgets in an attempt to fight big losses and lure bored viewers," reports the AP's Neelesh Misra. Via indieWIRE's Focus, also currently pointing to Giovanni Fazio's ferociously furious review of Larry Clark's Ken Park in the Japan Times - still a hot topic at d/blog.

Thomas W. Hazlett looks over to Berlin, the city that "ditched analog television, cold turkey," this summer. As a resident of Germany's capital (albeit one in a building that serves up cable as part of the overall rent package, whether you want it or not, so we were hardly effected), I can confirm Hazlett's description of the switch: a lot of hands were wrung at first, but once it happened, it was surprisingly painless and, as Hazlett writes, the "benefits were immediate." Hazlett argues its time for the US to get its digital ball rolling as well. Also in Slate: Timothy Noah: "Arnold Outpolls T3."

Sandip Roy joins a slew of pundits who've suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger might learn a thing or two from Bollywood stars who've gone political. Roy points specifically to the up, down, then up again career of Amitabh Bachchan. Meanwhile, Canada worries Schwarzenegger may yank some runaway production back to his home state.

The NYT's Alessandra Stanley praises The Office, the "postreality show" from the BBC, itself the subject of a cover package in the European edition of Time.

And finally for the weekend, reviews from Screen Daily of movies it may be difficult to catch. Why? One, you might make a mental note; who knows, they may come around one way or another. Two, it's tough enough as it is to widen the angle of view out on over the cinematic landscape; we're still just scratching the surface of what all's going on out there. Denis Seguin is impressed by Aaron Woodley's directorial debut, Rhinoceros Eyes, winner of the Discovery prize in Toronto. Noemi Lvovsky stumbles with Les Sentiments, sighs Lee Marshall, but Dan Fainaru celebrates a box office smash in Korea, E J-Yong's Untold Scandal.

Posted by dwhudson at October 11, 2003 5:28 AM