Housekeeping.

After yesterday's onslaught of "shorts" and a refreshing reshuffling of all those links over there on the right, there's plenty to catch up with, so we'll keep today's pointers brief.

Der Golem

Today's find is the (relatively) new issue of Kinoeye, devoted, appropriately enough, given the season, to Mitteleuropean horror. Well, mostly. Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Are Among Us (1946) isn't exactly straight-up horror, but it is an exorcism of sorts: "Amongst the rubble and squalor that was the Soviet sector of Berlin in 1945, a new kind of cinema was being born, namely the anti-fascist film," writes Angela Palmer.

Cathy Gelbin takes a deep bite into the real thing, tracing the roots of Jewish mysticism underneath Paul Wegener's Der Golem (1920). James Kendrick takes a look at that Danish "compelling oddity," Benjamin Christensen's Häxen, and Marcus Stiglegger scoots up a couple of decades to review a "Gothic horror fairy tale," Robert Sigl's Laurin (1987).

It took three viewings, but Matt has come to a verdict on Kill Bill.

In the Austin Chronicle: Louis Black explains why he's sticking to his guns, even as his "friends who know and love movies [have begun] to bemusedly question my championing of Tarantino," and previews Lemora. Marc Savlov tells the story of Don Coscarelli's adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale's novella, Bubba Ho-Tep and spins the Austin angle on Harry Knowles's new career. Shawn Badgley gets Kier-La Janisse, founder of the CineMuerte International Fantastic Film Festival to give her own take on eight films showing in the "The Best of CineMuerte" series next week at the Alamo Drafthouse.

In the LA Weekly: Kudos to Ella Taylor. In the second story of the "Considerable Town" column, she tells the story of the screener-ban-prompted LA Critics' revolt: "We put the word out, assuming there would be a flurry of interest in the trades, followed by a thunderous silence. Instead we were besieged with calls from CNN, The New York Times, Fox News and others, while an Associated Press report guaranteed significant overseas interest. Things must be awfully quiet in Iraq." Brendan Bernhard: "Nothing you see on television this week will provoke as many contradictory thoughts and emotions as Terror in Moscow (HBO, Thursday)."

In the Guardian: Giles Tremlett on "the most controversial thing to hit Spanish cinemas for years," Julio Medem's Basque Ball: the Skin Against the Stone.

"Perhaps it is too early to speak of a full-fledged renaissance; Russian films have yet to acquire the collective regional cachet of, say, Iranian films. But Russian cinema is turning away from mimicry of Hollywood and sensationalist treatments of previously taboo subjects." Boris Fishman in the New York Times.

Hollywood is currently experiencing the "early tremors of a graphic oral-sexual revolution," writes Rebecca Traister in Salon: "The results may be titillating, but the cumulative impact speaks less to shock value than to the way the film industry's portrayal of realistic sexuality is beginning to evolve."

"For dyed-in-the-wool cinephiles, it is not up for debate - every new Rivette film has to be seen, at least once, preferably more - and The Story of Marie and Julien is no exception," establishes Dan Fainaru in Screen Daily. But: "Rivette's decision to return to his darker register of the past, after the sunny disposition of Va Savoir, may also dissuade newer converts. It is all unlikely to bother his fans."

Posted by dwhudson at October 23, 2003 9:02 AM