Long weekend shorts.

"Meeting Tony Kushner at Starbucks is a little like running into Walter Benjamin at Disney World," writes Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice. But would that really be so surprising? Benjamin's ghost has surely haunted the place out of morbid curiosity if for no other reason.

At any rate, Darren Hughes, a judge you should trust when it comes to Kushner, also credits Goldstein with "the best one-paragraph synapsis of Angels in America that you'll ever read."

Also in the Voice: David Ng meets Sylvain Chomet, writer and director of The Triplets of Belleville and J. Hoberman reviews the film - and then blurbs three books. I want them all.

Otherwise, with the exception of the screener's debate moving into the courtroom, it hasn't been a terribly eventful week. The holiday movies have been previewed - and in case you missed it all, Slate's Ben Williams reviews reviewers' reviews - and now it's a matter of gearing up for the December onslaught, itself, in a way, a mere prelude to all those year-end top tens.

Jonathan Rosenbaum actually got the jump on discussing "this year's independent and mainstream hits and flops" on Working Assets Radio on Wednesday, but rats, I didn't catch it and, doubling the frustration, it looks like the show's archives haven't been updated since June...? Meanwhile, the LA Weekly's Ella Taylor is previewing her list as well: "This year, for the first time that I can recall, I'll have two animated features on my 10-best list."

Update: Thanks to Robert Davis for pointing us to the Working Assets program with Jonathan Rosenbaum.

IndieWIRE's taken an innovative approach to a week like this one with a look back at the "Sundance Class of 2003: Where Are They Now?" and "Cannes 2003 Six Months Later: Not So Bad After All." Is it just me, or do those headlines sound like they come from McSweeney's?

DVD news isn't quite as seasonal yet, and what's more, interest seems to be rising in those who produce them. Doug Cummings, for example, has talked with Kate Elmore, producer of Criterion's DVD for Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest; at filmjourney.org, he writes, "The biggest scoop? The disc will include 11-minutes of deleted scenes!" Unfortunately, as Darren Hughes points out, it "also feature one of Criterion's uglier works of cover art."

Some unbylined individual at DVD File has had a nice long talk with Charlie de Lauzirika about his overseeing the "Alien Quadrilogy" project.

And in City Pages, Jeremy O'Kasick reports on a Minneapolis DVD rental outlet that aims to become "a hub for local filmmakers."

Then there are the New York Press DVD reviews, picking up in volume as holiday shopping begins in earnest. They come in batches from Jim Knipfel, Matt Zoller Seitz and Armond White.

I can also throw in a pointer to a piece about the recordable DVD standards wars with the hopeful subheading, "Sony spells the end of the format wars," though I'm not sure I really understand it. See, it's written by Emru Townsend, who also happens to have written the sort of piece I was looking for when I read that Hugh Kenner had died. I'd read Kenner on Ezra Pound; I didn't know he'd also written about Chuck Jones. Townsend, as it happens, edits fps: The Magazine of Animation, and wrote just the sort of review of Kenner's Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings I was hoping to find.

Alec Baldwin explains the "vast right-wing sandlot game" to Frank DiGiacomo. Also in the New York Observer: William H. Macy drinks with yet another writer, Anna Jane Grossman, who also reports on the short-lived 12-inch Christopher Walken action figure. I went looking for one at eBay, but found only bronze masks and this ghostly bust.

Via AICN, a teensy sneak peak at Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic from Michael Fox in SF Weekly.

Robert Rodriguez may be contributing to the score of Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2, reports the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov. By the way, don't confuse Ed "Speedo" Jager with Speed Levitch.

Erin Thompson in the Stranger: "Everybody and their grandmother wants me to see The Station Agent with them. Like Peter Dinklage, the star of the film, I am a dwarf."

"Bollywood has taken to brands and vice versa," writes Revathy Menon in the Times of India. Via Beware of the Blog.

We'll wrap with - what else? - Margaret Cho on Thanksgiving. Not that we agree with every word, mind you. Just for, you know, balance.

Posted by dwhudson at November 27, 2003 1:37 PM