November 21, 2003

Early weekend shorts.

"Dancer In The Dark - I know it's obvious, but this remains the best movie in the last 5 years. Hands down. No question."

Dancer in the Dark

That's Paul Thomas Anderson, answering eleven and a half questions for the Cigarettes and Coffee site. Via Matt Clayfield, who posed question #7.

More Q&A: Manohla Dargis offers a patient and excellent defense of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's decision to call off its annual voting and awards ceremony, explains why film directors aren't "leaving the studio system en masse for the brave new world of video gaming," nods politely in Roger Ebert's direction and tackles the thorny issues of truth in documentaries and violence on the screen. If all this whets your appetite for more, the best map of where Manohla's coming from on a single page that I know of is Steve Erickson's interview with her in Senses of Cinema. Why did she leave New York for LA? It's all here.

"Appearing before more people than any politician in history, Nixon worked the living room like a sitcom paterfamilias. He showcased his wife (another first), discussed the family pet and became a national hero - or was it a star?" J. Hoberman reviews David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image in the Nation.

More books: Tulsa Kinney reviews Larry Clark's Punk Picasso and John Waters and Bruce Hainley's Art - A Sex Book. Also in the LA Weekly: Scott Foundas on the Independent Los Angeles film and video series and, a bit further down, Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams; and then, Ella Taylor on Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions.

Brace yourself: Andrew Sullivan deconstructs that radical spokesman of the "hard left," Frank Rich, in the New Republic. Update: Darren Hughes responds: "If Sullivan reads Angels in America as a Stalinist tract, then I pity his ideological blindness. He's missing a hell of a play."

From "Don't make me laugh" to "All 40 in the right places," the Guardian runs reactions to its list of the world's top 40 directors. Also, B Ruby Rich: "What's up with Sean Penn playing two characters in one season, both bent on revenge at all costs and intent on carrying out cowboy justice all on their own? The irony, of course, is that Sean Penn, off-screen, is the actor who journeyed all the way to Iraq 11 months ago to bear witness against US foreign policy." And Steve Rose on music video-turned-feature directors.

Todd Harbour, founder of the Mobius Home Video Forum, on two films released 13 years apart: "For all their narrative and thematic similarities - and there are more outside the scope of this essay - River's Edge and George Washington are night-and-day different in tone."

So the new issue of Sight & Sound is up. Geoffrey Macnab on Lone Scherfig's Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Mark Cousins on Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle and a few reviews.

What's Marc Savlov's cover story in the Austin Chronicle about? "[I]n declining order of specificity, Salvador Dalí's great, lost masterpiece; the implosion of Austin's dot-com bubble (and the resulting tsunami of free talent that -- even as this is being written -- has resulted in Austin being flooded with cheap geniuses); animated trivia games for interactive film geeks; and some of the most impressive animated music videos you're likely to ever see. And there are Kabuki snowmen. And kung-fu ninja robot-pimps, too. Possibly some foosball." Don't miss the sidebar. Also: a few questions for John Saxon: "From Brando to Argento and Battle Beyond the Stars? That's a hell of a career you've got." And as if that weren't enough, you'll definitely want to read Savlov's review of Cat in the Hat... out loud.

Excuse me, but who is this man on the left?

Nicholson and some guy

I mean, I recognize the guy on the right. That's Jack Nicholson in Something's Gotta Give. But that escapee from Dr. California's Wachsfigurenkabinett? No idea who that's supposed to be. Nicholson didn't look that young even when he was as young as that guy's supposed to look.

In indieWIRE: Anthony Kaufman on how things are looking up for the German and Austrian film industries and Nick Poppy on "Five Hot Documentaries." Over at Movie City News, where Leonard Klady interviews Denys Arcand, by the way, the dozen docs the Academy is considering are listed and annotated with links (scroll down).

Not everyone has an Amanda Filipacchi story. Greg Allen does, though.

I know we keep pointing to Margaret Cho's blog around here, but damn, she can engage a reader. In recent entries, she replies to bigots re: gay marriage and recalls snoozing next to Tupac.

"Converts talk about branding as if it were a religion - the only true way to approach the business." Angela Phipps Towle in the Hollywood Reporter on celebrity branding do's and don'ts.

Bookslut points to a backgrounder on, among other things, Philip K. Dick's paranoic reaction to Stanislaw Lem.

Online viewing tip. The Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection. Amazing stuff via Rashomon.



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Posted by dwhudson at November 21, 2003 9:00 AM

Comments

For what it's worth, I posted a long response to Andrew Sullivan's piece a few days ago.

http://www.longpauses.com/blog/2003_11_01_longpauses_archive.html#106930079335668559

Posted by: Darren at November 21, 2003 10:01 AM

Thanks for pointing that out, Darren. Sorry I missed it earlier.

I'm extraordinarily curious as to how Angels will play in a few weeks. Will it inspire, as you say it does for you, "a strange longing... for progress (whatever that means) and for something like collective action"? Certainly not on a broad scale, that can't be expected, of course. But it is a fascinating cultural event - this play, at this juncture.

Odd, isn't it, how, seemingly out of nowhere and during the Clinton administration, a form of collective action was beginning to take shape in the form of what was unfortunately misnamed the 'anti-globalization' movement and was just beginning to hammer out a coherent, feasible agenda when 9/11 happened. (I'm not for a moment suggesting a connection; all political shiftings, great and small, were radically redirected, of course.)

I think we see in the Dean phenomenon another expression of that longing; we'll soon learn whether Dean himself can be more than a catalyst, but that's not really the point at the moment. The point is that the numbers of people are growing who, one, realize that it's only been the right that's blatantly capitalized on 9/11, and two, are deciding that it's time to stop taking it lying down.

Posted by: David Hudson at November 21, 2003 12:10 PM

I'm guessing that many on the far right will react to Angels as they did ten years -- they'll puff out their chests and denounce it as pornography. (Speaking of which, I'm really curious to see how Nichols handles Prior's examination and the Central Park scene.) But they'll also have to face some uncomfortable facts, acknowledging, for instance, how much progress *has* been made since the plays first debuted. Recent events in Massachusetts testify to that.

I think a lot of HBO fans -- the folks who watch The Sopranos or Sex in the City but have little exposure to American drama -- are in for a real experience, though. You're right. It really could become something of a cultural event. I'm hoping that millions of viewers make it through to the end to hear Prior's final words. You can't experience Angels and *not* ask important questions -- of yourself and of our leaders.

History is about to crack wide open, eh? ;)

Posted by: Darren at November 21, 2003 12:58 PM