Senses 29, plus shorts. Long shorts.

As if you didn't have enough reading to do, what with the new issue of Bright Lights out and all, along comes Issue 29 of Senses of Cinema, dated Nov-Dec 2003, which means it's not exactly late, though we were worried for a while there. And sure enough, there is a donations drive on, so if you've got the means and appreciate Senses as much as we bet you do, remember, 'tis the season.

As for the issue itself, it's another strong one. Three articles on Abbas Kiarostami, two on Australian cinema, an unusual and oddly fascinating "blow-by-blow account" of Hong Kong horror in the 90s, two interviews that definitely caught my eye, one with Jacques Rivette, the other with Juliane Lorenz. Now, I've read a few with Lorenz in German papers, but those tend to focus on the relationship she had with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, what his last days were like and so on; this one's actually about the films, Fassbinder's early years and his ongoing influence, so kudos to Maximilian Le Cain and Chris Neill.

Then, of course, it just goes on and on, more features, book reviews and so on, including ten new directors added to the "Great Directors" database, several new top tens, including one from Doug Cummings, (by the way, you will want to check out that Paris Diary Doug's running) and links galore.

Segueing into the shorts. It's always easy at the beginning of each week to slip into a New York state of mind, but this week, it seems easier than usual. If you're looking at the city through the eyes of the Web, you're looking at two slicks on any given Monday, the alternative weeklies on Tuesday, the New York Observer on Wednesday and, as it happens, this week there's also a new issue of the New York Review of Books. Which happens to include not just some tangentially film-related piece this time around, but two full-blown considerations of two American filmmakers on the occasion of their recent works:

Daniel Mendelsohn sums up the hand-wringing that's gone on so far over the violence that seems so essential to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and then blows it all off. That's not really the point, he argues. Consider instead "what it is, precisely, that his movies' endless reflections on, and references to, the culture of popular entertainment give you - apart from an appreciation for Tarantino's inexhaustible ability to quote from and allude to the thousands of movies that he has seen and seen again. The answer to that question is more troubling by far than the sight of a few heads lying on the floor."

Geoffrey O'Brien's long, admiring gaze at Clint Eastwood's Mystic River makes for a fascinating (accidental?) juxtaposition. The film, he writes, "elaborates a world where people find it impossible to change the channel on their reality, or navigate a way out of the streets and houses that bind them to one another in ways that come to seem dictated by fatality. To convey an impression of real bodies moving through real spaces, of lives impinging on one another within a clearly defined geography and system of kinship, doesn't seem like such a tall order for a filmmaker, but as movies, in the age of unlimited morphing and digitally created images, aspire more and more toward the condition of animated films, the effect becomes increasingly exotic."

In the New Yorker:

Steve Martin takes such a simple and obvious idea I'd wager more than half the people who've read the piece are pissed they didn't think of it first and - and this is the true beauty of its execution - keeps it simple and obvious: "Picasso Promoting 'Lady With a Fan'."

"Yeah, well, I wanted to be a screenwriter, and guess what. I am one. That's the other tragedy in life." Charles D'Ambrosio's short story is entitled "Screenwriter," but that's not really what it's about. Worth pointing to anyway.

"There is wide agreement, and no compelling counterargument, that Tony Kushner's Angels in America is the most important play of the last decade." That's how Nancy Franklin's review of Mike Nichols's version begins. It's not giving away anything to let on how it ends: "To get the most out of the film, watch it with friends; Angels in America calls for celebration."

And then David Denby reviews The Last Samurai (more from J. Hoberman and Matt Zoller Seitz) and The Missing (more from Michael Atkinson and Armond White).

In New York:

A double-barrelled package on the current state of our cheesy celebrity culture, another one of those pesky trivialities that was supposed to have gone away and left us alone after 9/11 but only ducked for a moment instead. Simon Dumenco: "We keep them on as temp workers - watching their TV shows and movies or not, buying their albums or not, depending on our whims." And of course, we also pay them handsomely.

Daphne Merkin on Michael Jackson's nosedive. (Sorry.)

Anne Thompson surveys the field of Academy Award contenders, sorts the "sure shots" from the "long shots" and wonders out loud, "Could this be the year that the studios take back the Oscars?"

In the Village Voice:

While we're slumming, Paris Hilton. Not once, but twice. Cynthia Cotts tracks press coverage. Back to Merkin for a moment. Here's her moment of justification for writing about Michael Jackson in the first place: "The cultural Zeitgeist of personal omnipotence - epitomized by Arnold Schwarzenegger's trajectory from a humble Austrian background to the governorship of California - makes it easy to forget that the delicate construction we call a 'self' is not an infinitely malleable object." Dash of philosophy, hint of political relevance. And here's Cotts: "For what is Paris Hilton if not a social construct?" Hm.

Ed Halter takes the historiographic approach: "The Hilton tape is only the latest example in a long-flourishing underground trade in celebrity pornography, whose scope has increased dramatically with each innovation in motion picture technology." (Halter's Bollywood notes, by the way.)

Dennis Lim reviews Alberto Fuguet's The Movies of My Life and the shorts compilations from Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze.

David Ng on Argentine director Pablo Trapero.

Jorge Morales previews the Spanish Cinema Now program at the Walter Reade.

In the New York Observer:

It's an odd moment for a Kevin Smith profile, what with Jersey Girl months away, but Jake Brooks files one.

John Heilpern urges you to watch Angels.

Now then. We leave New York but not entirely. The Long March to Park City has begun, and naturally, for indieWIRE, this is a very big deal. Much of the program for the Sundance Film Festival 2004 has been announced and Eugene Hernandez sifts through it, beginning with the opener, Stacy Peralta's surfing doc, Riding Giants, through the Toronto vets to the world premieres, and it's about here that Anthony Kaufman takes over to zoom in on the foreign selections. They are so excited over there. They've even set up their special Sundance section already.

In Variety, Todd McCarthy notes that 13 of the 16 films in the dramatic competition are debut features; and then quotes festival director Geoff Gilmore:

This is the first year when I feel we have films from a real post-9/11 world. Just as we did after the 1950s, we've lost a degree of insularity and comfort that we had in the 1990s. The films are not broad or about the big picture, but about the disruption of everyday life, with a search for knowledge and meaning about what's going on in a specific world, often in an alternate reality.

On that political note, "The California primary is three months off, but the race for the hearts and minds and money of Hollywood is well underway." Tim Grieve in Salon (where you'll also find the intriguing notion from Steven Hart that if CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien hadn't argued one night, "It's possible that Tolkien's Middle-earth would have remained entirely a private obsession, and quite likely that Lewis would never have found the gateway to Narnia.")

Dave Tianen talks to historians and film critics about the image of the presidency in the movies for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In the Guardian, Polly Toynbee has a movie recommendation for Tony Blair. It's Love Actually, actually, or at least one scene in it: "In front of the press and the president, prime minister Grant makes a fine speech about standing up to the over-mighty, a small country still holding on to pride and principle. A roar went up from the audience and apparently every audience cheers as loudly at our PM telling the Americans to bog off."

It may be early to start sorting the top films of 2003, but The MCN 100, comprised of, yes, "100 film journalists from across the globe," admit as much right off with their first list, "Key Movies I Have Not Seen That I Should Have Before Voting." The evolution of these lists is going to be fun to watch.

In a special issue of Outlook India on the branding of the country, Sandipan Deb tackles the, well, the Bollywood angle: "Can we stop defining ourselves by an LA suburb? Can we stop calling our film industry Bollywood?"

And finally, one for those who can read French. Unfortunately, I cannot, so I'll be heading over to Google in a moment: For Le Nouvel Observateur, Pascal Mérigeau interviews Alain Resnais.

Posted by dwhudson at December 3, 2003 9:23 AM