Weekend Shorts.

"David Cronenberg is a director who I've always wanted to work with, and I'd be very verbal about it. Like in a forum such as this, I would say his name, many times. And it got back to him."

Crash

Holly Hunter takes a load of questions from Sandra Hebron at the National Film Theatre in London and 15 more from the audience. In other words, it's a long interview, and you can be glad this is the weekend. There's more than enough reading material to fill the precious few hours left of it.

All 213 pages of the screenplay for The Reagans, for example, which Salon is now making available as an 8MB PDF file. It's there, too, that Sidney Blumenthal chides CBS once more for wimping out; but in the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley lays part of the blame over the flare-up at the feet of producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan. Not only is their mini-series "self-righteous" and "preachy," the two "were so intent on re-examining their subject's legacy that they missed the missile-defense shield surrounding Mr. Reagan.... He is not just a beloved former president; he is the Moses of the conservative movement." Michael Janofsky profiles one of the true believers and The Nation's David Corn faces off with the most famous of these, Ann Coulter.

This weekend, you've also got the new issue of the New York Times Magazine, wall-to-wall movies, about 28,000 words' worth, most of them devoted to the fall marketing season and how it's all about the Oscars (and for two current takes on how that race is going, see David Poland and Jeffrey Wells). But before settling down with this film issue of the NYT Magazine, which looks, at least at first glance, far more substantial than the paper's Holiday Movies special just last week, spend a moment with Joseph O'Neill's very fine piece on why it is that Hollywood has such a weak and shaky relationship with "the Three" on "the medal podium of living American novelists," Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and John Updike.

Another big package to sort through: The San Francisco Bay Guardian's "Noise" section this week addresses the "synergy" going on between "music, image, film and video." Good stuff, actually, a lot better than that sounds. Do dig in.

"Two recent Hollywood films, ostensibly about the nature of faith - M. Night Shyamalan's Signs (2002) and Bill Paxton's Frailty (2001) - attest to the insidious power of Gnostic doctrines to deflect ethico-religious dilemmas into fantasies of national idolatry." Another sort of reading you might want to bite into this weekend: Peter Yoonsuk Paik in Postmodern Culture on "Smart Bombs, Serial Killing, and the Rapture: The Vanishing Bodies of Imperial Apocalypticism." And if the Matrix series has aroused an interest in Jean Baudrillard, you might want to check out Leonard Wilcox's reaction to Bradley Butterfield's article, "The Baudrillardian Symbolic, 9/11, and the War of Good and Evil," and Butterfield's reply.

"How did something so good go so wrong?" Or: Why are the Matrix sequels disappointing fans of the original in droves? Matt Feeney offers a straight-forward and sensible argument that rings true enough in Slate: "The Wachowskis ditched the conceit of the Matrix.... That, in turn, removed virtually everything distinctive and meaningful about the original film - its hipster skepticism, its strangely compelling logic of human striving, and, perhaps most fundamentally, the storytelling discipline that imposed a gorgeous economy on almost every scene." Feeney gets some good lines in, too, but nothing approaching the manic brilliance of Metaphilm's take. But in their "Metaphlog," they're pointing to James Lileks's generally positive review (as well as to a preachy but viewable take-off, "The Meatrix"). While we're on the subject: Greg Allen has a little fun reading My Architect through Matrix-tinted glasses. He's not alone. The Nation allows us an all-too-rare online glimpse of Stuart Klawans, who also places both films on the same page, though that's as far as Klawans goes.

As for the other trilogy wrapping this year, Peter Jackson sends an email to Harry Knowles to clear up "a muddle of half-truths" floating around out there. Yes, Christopher Lee's scene has been cut from Return of the King, but: "It was a film maker decision - nothing to do with the studio." The problem: The scene belonged originally in The Two Towers and in early cuts was delaying the kick-off of Return's actual story. "Thank God for DVD," writes Jackson, "since it does mean that a version of the movie, which has different pacing requirements, can be released later." Also at AICN: A monstrous load of anime news from Scott Green.

"It's all about the money, honey." Persistence of Vision points us to the November issue of The Independent where, indeed, it is. Find out what gives producers headaches and get to know your specialty funders.

Tom Mes interviews Takeshi Kitano. Also in Midnight Eye: Jaspar Sharp files from the Yamagata Film Festival and reviews Tatsuya Mori's A while Nicholas Rucka reviews Sogo Ishii's Panic High School.

Eugene Hernandez lays out the nominations for the European Film Awards to be handed out on December 6 in Berlin by the European Film Academy. Good Bye, Lenin! leads in terms of sheer numbers. Also in indieWIRE:

Brian Brooks on how First Run Features aims to politicize its website - there's some good stuff there, but it's just a beginning at the moment.

Scenes from HBO's party for their Mike Nichols-directed Angels in America.

Steve Erickson talks to Marina de Van about In My Skin.

Brandon Judell discusses Girlhood with Liz Garbus.

Anthony Kaufman looks back on the 14th annual Festival of Films from Iran in Chicago. Abbas Kiarostami wasn't there and "not a single one of Kiarostami's films played at the event. But the presence of the master of Iranian cinema was eminently felt."

American cinephiles may be tiring of the 70s but Europeans are just getting into it. "New Hollywood 1967 - 1976. Trouble in Wonderland." is the title of the retrospective for next February's Berlin International Film Festival, reports Berlinale regular Eugene Hernandez.

There are a lot more foreign-language films in North American theaters than you might think, writes Leonard Klady in Movie City News.

Think twice before you break up with Margaret Cho.

Joshua Jabcuga talks to Dennis Widmyer who's made Postcards From the Future, a doc on Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. Also at Movie Poop Shoot: D.K. Holm reviews Ellis Amburn's The Sexiest Man Alive: A Biography of Warren Beatty and Josh Horowitz talks to Peter Sarsgaard.

Is Austin "busier than LA"? That's what Austin Studios head Suzanne Quinn kept hearing on the left coast recently, reports Marc Savlov, who also interviews Peter Hedges in this week's Austin Chronicle. Also: Joe Bob Briggs is heading for the capital of Texas to promote his new book, Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History! (an excerpt), so Jason Henderson got him to promote the promotional tour. And Belinda Acosta tests the EZ-D: "If I opened my favorite book to a passage I marked and found it 'unreadable,' I'm sure I would burst into tears."

"Jeff Bridges may have the only cool celebrity website," writes Wiley Wiggins.

Kill Bill: QT shows up for a press conference in Tokyo wearing a Lost in Translation T-shirt and, according to Mark Thompson in the Japan Times, wins 'em over. Fun read via indieWIRE. Meanwhile, more on the discrepancy between the way we handle movie vs real-life violence from Jamal Dajani via Alternet. Note: One of the reasons for that discrepancy is that we know the difference. And then there's Molly Haskell: "I happen to think Tarantino's kung-fu divas are a great deal more original, even 'womanly' than they have been given credit for, and certainly a lot more exciting than the usual babes-in-spandex action heroines."

Fresh news and reviews at Kung Fu Cult Cinema. Then, via Kung Fu Cinema sans the cult, a teaser for Silver Hawk, Michelle Yeoh's next one.

Halle Berry, interviewed at Moviehole.

"A good crossover film works as well for an Indo-Pakistani audience as it does for the Curzon Soho or the Odeon Piccadilly," director Vijay Singh tells Amelia Gentleman. He describes his film, One Dollar Curry, currently shooting in Paris, as "Bollywoodesque but without the slightly trite and jocular spoof-like elements of Bollywood." Also in the Guardian:

David Thomson disagrees with Martin Scorsese on Gaslight, but still values the underappreciated work of Thorold Dickinson.

Stuart Jeffries on an odd pair, Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf.

London Film Festival round-up.

"The music in a film must enter politely, very slowly." John L Walters meets Ennio Morricone.

Jessica Weetch delves into the world of "specialist extras" whose greatest threat at the moment is visual-effects software.

And Maggie O'Kane on the origins of Guardian Films, whose series of reports from Iraq by Salam Pax begin airing in the UK on Monday.

Charles Platt to the Politech list: "Any shortsighted policy that discourages consumers from watching broadcast TV or raises the price of equipment for receiving broadcast TV is a step in the right direction from my point of view." More seriously, the EFF's stand on the FCC's "broadcast flag" ruling: "Sadly, this represents a step in the wrong direction, a step that will undermine innovation, fair use, and competition."

Two sign-o-the-times press releases: T-Online is stepping up its VOD services; and the gist of InterVideo's announcement: Linux, Pioneer and TiVo, all in bed together.

Online fiddling around tip. Psycho Studio: "Edit your own version of the classic Shower Scene." A nice batch of Psycho-related links there, too.

Online viewing tips. The Guardian's Kate Stables picks seven.

Posted by dwhudson at November 8, 2003 2:17 PM