Red on green shorts.

The online neighborhood out here has just been notched upscale a tad. Rouge is a new online journal, beautifully designed and smartly edited by Adrian Martin, Helen Bandis and Grant McDonald. "Our emphasis is on developing a creative approach to cinema through texts that are as poetic as they are analytical," announces Martin before sketching out the first issue's contents:

Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo

"[A]n exclusive text by master Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien on new directions in Asian cinema; Yvette Biro on Tsai Ming-liang; fictocriticism by American director Mark Rappaport... Philippe Grandrieux in conversation with Nicole Brenez; and Arab film and video by Jayce Salloum. Also: tributes to Brakhage and Pialat; painter Gerard Fromanger on meetin' JLG; and a translation of Serge Daney on Philippe Garrel."

Hou Hsiao-hsien:

We watch all kinds of films, Hollywood and European films, and we may try different things. But local elements are the indispensable foundation on which each should try to find his ignition point. We saw Hollywood grab My Sassy Girl and Ring to make its own versions. It's an empire and will go after films with potential, as it did to Luc Besson's Nikita (1990). We shouldn't think that our own films are no good.

To the shorts:

Film-Philosophy is currently featuring three articles on cinema and history.

In Alternet, Rebecca Carroll recalls when independent film "seemed the perfect opportunity for cool, smart, creative filmmakers from all cultural backgrounds to join together and kick Hollywood's slick, mainstream, tired white ass. Since then, however, we have all watched the independent film industry go from what it could have been to what it is - a scrawnier, slick, mainstream, tired white ass." Well... there's always another cop movie.

"Now that the minstrel show has moved to television, gay filmmakers have been able to get down to the nitty-gritty." Ed Gonzalez previews the Minneapolis/St. Paul LGBT Film Festival for City Pages.

Matt Langdon is blurbing the films he's catching at the AFI Fest.

Leonard Klady in Movie City News on Raoul Walsh, Pursued and the limits of auteur theory.

Steve Rose talks to Dagur Kari about his festival hit, Noi Albinoi. Also in the Guardian: "For many Americans, Britain is a strange and exotic land glimpsed only through the work of Richard Curtis. While the picture he presents is, let us say, broadly accurate, first-time viewers may find some further explanation helpful." Tim Dowling and Mark Lawson on the director Brits aren't sure they're proud of; and Simon Hattenstone interviews Peter Mullan.

"It's the most insidery of insider cases imaginable, from the moguls talking about it, to the media reporting on it, to the threatened LA Times writer, Anita Busch, who started it all." Nikki Finke in the LA Weekly on "Follywood."

Geoffrey Kleinman interviews Geoffrey Rush for DVD Talk.

In the Independent:

Adam Sweeting talks to DA Pennebaker, which actually makes for a nice companion piece to our latest interview with Robert Drew.

"'I am very sensitive, a very reserved person and very shy, and this was my very first movie and Bernardo had this reputation for being...' she pauses, ;not Hitler, but quite tough with the actors.'" Eva Green talks to Geoffrey Macnab...

... who also talks to Yeslam Binladin, "older brother of Osama, [who] is fast establishing himself as a film producer. He is involved in three new films by the maverick Danish auteur Lars von Trier."

Ryan Gilbey on James Mason: "Frequently he sought out characters who would contrive emotional incarceration rather than face the daunting prospect of freedom."

David Thomson on Peter Jackson's salary.

Sam Green takes the San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie for Film; Susan Gerhard meets him as he cuts a TV version of The Weather Underground.

The Matrix: Resolutions. Via Cinecultist.

Laura Silverman recounts her venture into "Celeb Dating Hell" in LA Innuendo.

Online viewing tip. 1. Wim Wenders is showing his most recent photographs at the James Cohen Gallery; he'll also talk about them.

Online viewing tip. 2. Nine 15-second Nokia Shorts. Via Fimoculous.

Posted by dwhudson at November 13, 2003 5:40 AM