Shorts, 12/15.

Opening in a handful of cities on January 9 and then in San Francisco in February, The Battle of Algiers is once again noted for its relevance to the current quagmire in Iraq, Saddam or no Saddam. This time the comparisons are lined up by Philip Gourevitch in the New Yorker: "The movie... is surely the most harrowing, and realistic, political epic ever filmed.... The ugly truth that [Gillo] Pontecorvo lays vividly bare, as his camera tacks back and forth between the Algerian guerrillas and the French paratroopers, is that terrorism works." Found out, too, via filmjourney.org, that you can watch the trailer and click on to more related articles at the Film Forum site. Also in the New Yorker:

Jeffrey Toobin on the Winnie the Pooh lawsuit: "Now, twelve years into the litigation, the case is said to be the oldest one on file in Los Angeles Superior Court, and it has recently earned another dubious distinction, as a kind of postscript to the OJ Simpson case." More troubles for Disney, by the way: Laura M. Holson reports in the New York Times that Roy E. Disney has launched an online grass-roots campaign to oust Michael Eisner, SaveDisney.com.

Alex Ross: "JRR Tolkien's fans have long maintained a certain conspiracy of silence concerning Wagner, but there is no point in denying his influence, not when characters deliver lines like 'Ride to ruin and the world's ending!' - Brünnhilde condensed to seven words."

David Denby reviews Cold Mountain, Something's Gotta Give and Mona Lisa Smile.

Never one to withhold a harsh word, Dale Peck explains in Slate what he doesn't like about Mike Nichols's direction of Angels in America.

Newsweek's new site looks better; too bad it doesn't work. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, though, you can actually find an article here and there, such as Brian Braiker's interview with David Byrne, Robert Hilferty's article on composer Olga Neuwirth's "stunning musical theater piece" based on David Lynch's Lost Highway and Sean Smith's lively talk with House of Sand and Fog director Vadim Perelman: "So I go to [Harvey Weinstein's] suite at the Peninsula [hotel], and he's sitting there like Jabba the f--king Hutt with his Diet Cokes and his Marlboro Reds..." An "Iranian perspective" on the film, by the way, via Movie City News. And Laura M. Holson - again - explains why DreamWorks needs the film to be a hit.

Chris Gore will be hosting the Independent Film Channel's contest show, Ultimate Film Fanatic.

IndieWIRE has festival lineup news: Rotterdam, Sundance, Miami and Slamdance.

Infernal Affairs swept the Golden Horse Awards this weekend.

Over at Ain't It Cool News, two reviews of If Not Now, Richard Linklater's sequel, nine years on, to Before Sunrise. The second one's labeled spoilerific, so I didn't read it myself, but from the first: "Where School of Rock was the perfect commercial comedy, this is the perfect art house drama.... Kudos to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for being able to fall right back into those roles."

Recent interviews at Moviehole: Uma Thurman, John Woo, Jennifer Connelly (briefly) and Steve Martin makes the best of a situation he so recently parodied.

Mindjack's founder and editor, Donald Melanson dreams up ways to link up Your Movie Database (recently a "victim of its own success"), DVD Profiler and communities like DVD Talk's. More thoughts on "taste tribes" from me last year and Jim Griffin in 2000.

In the Guardian and Observer:

John Carlin files a disturbing story on Leidy Tabares, the lead in the 1998 film The Rose Seller, "about a young girl who lives in glue-sniffing squalor in the savage streets of Medellín, the murder capital of the world." Now, Tabares is fighting off a 26-year jail sentence.

Zoe Williams interviews Renée Zellweger.

Jonathan Franklin reports from Santiago: "A retired military intelligence officer has been arrested in Chile for his role in the execution of the American film-maker Charles Horman, whose death during the 1973 military coup became the focus of the film Missing."

Matt Wolf talks with Jude Law.

Andrew Anthony meets Ricky Gervais: "No one ever seriously thought John Cleese was actually Basil Fawlty or Arthur Lowe Captain Mainwaring, but Gervais's depiction of Brent, the deluded middle manager in BBC2's sitcom-cum-spoof-docusoap The Office was so unvarnished and so realistic in style that people continue to wonder whether the two men are not in fact one and the same."

John Patterson on Jamie Lee Curtis, briefly.

Janeane Garofalo responds to Damien Cave's piece in Salon on the Tell Us The Truth Tour. Also: Amy Reiter interviews Michael Caine.

In the New York Times:

Fred Kaplan, whose "War Stories" at Slate are damn well worth reading, is also, turns out, a film critic for The Perfect Vision. For the NYT, he explains why there remain huge gaps in the global DVD library and chases down a few studio execs to find out when, if ever, they might be filled. Over at Universal, for example, they're claiming to be hard at work on Duck Soup which, Lord knows, we could sure use now.

Samantha Power, author of A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, has interviewed Robert S. McNamara herself; now, she takes a good, long look at The Fog of War.

Frank Rich picks up a theme David Ansen riffed on last week, the sheer volume of the battle cries on movie screens this holiday season. But really, has Master and Commander done half the business of Elf "because of an American audience's changing view of war"?

Jesse McKinley asks Peter Jackson whatever happened to Tom Bombadil.

Nancy Griffin takes on the paper's Diane Keaton piece.

Michael Agger on a remake of Can't Buy Me Love. You read that right: a remake of Can't Buy Me Love.

Dave Kehr: "Daffy, who had been Bugs's predecessor as a force of mad, blind destructiveness, had by 1950 become the most moving of Jones's eternally frustrated second-bananas, a 'we-try-harder' No. 2 star whose attempts to supplant the reigning bunny rabbit... met with certain humiliation."

AO Scott on blurring reality and fantasy as "a kind of homeopathic antidote to the contagion of celebrity."

Adam Sternbergh notices that studio execs and stars are leaping to admit it when they've got a flop on their hands.

And oh, look, it's low culture's Matt Haber, and what a subject he's tackling: that huge 8-disc package from the "Godfathers of Mondo," Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi.

Posted by dwhudson at December 15, 2003 8:53 AM