Shorts, 12/19.

At first glance, KA Dilday's piece over at openDemocracy is going to seem like warmed over servings of yesterdecade's political correctness, but even for someone like myself, who's admired and enjoyed Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy so far, they're served up well enough to give healthy pause. One more time:

We are living in times when the public rhetoric is medieval. Politicians and pundits invoke the words good and evil casually, as if the age of reason never happened.... Can one judge a film with the morals of politics? Is Lord of the Rings seen differently in the United States than it is in Europe where the majority of people were against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? A fable is "a narration intended to enforce a useful truth." When I look at the Lord of the Rings as the fable its author, JRR Tolkien, intended it to be, I see a world clearly divided into races and regions of leader and followers, I see Calvinist pre-determinism and I see the vindication and veneration of empire unfolding in frame after frame. And I feel the quick burn of shame that I always feel when realising that as a child I was taken in by a "useful truth" that now seems odious.

Meanwhile, the Guardian rounds up reviews; the paper's own Peter Bradshaw writes, "No flabber has been left ungasted by Mr Jackson's mighty battle sequences, nor no gob unsmacked."

And Ed Champion is back, not only with another pointer - Rob Salkowitz: LOTR3 is either "the best rotten movie ever made, or the worst great movie ever made" - but also blogging again. Among his thoughts on all the hoopla:

"It's okay to announce your love for Lords around the water cooler, and to tell everybody that you're going to see the first show at the stroke of midnight. This wasn't the case with Star Wars or even the Matrices. With Lords, the fanboy has suddenly acquired a mainstream legitimacy. The marketing has been so good, so eerily transcendental and cross-demographic, that I almost expect a war room somewhere on the New Line lot containing a wall-sized blackboard, a space to project Powerpoint presentations on demand, and envelopes marked TOP SECRET revealing every known opinion on the film.

And not even GreenCine is safe. We posted our interview with Ian McKellen today, and yes, there will be more. One suspects Chuck Wilson wouldn't mind:

...I sank down in my seat, pulled my jacket up under my chin and let myself be 12 years old again. Blessedly, I wasn't there as a movie critic.... Tonight, I was just a guy who sat down in the fifth row with one of his best pals (I'm lucky to have more than one) at his side, stared hopefully up at the screen and was granted the one thing he needed most in the world - a sense of wonder. And right after that, wonder's adjunct - joy. Tears too, for balance, and because Frodo and Sam broke my heart...

That's part of the LA Weekly's huge Winter Film cover package this week, where Scott Foundas turns in the formal review, and which also includes:

Dave Shulman's very fun talk with Tim Burton: "'Okay. Pee-wee's Big Adventure was the beginning of the best date - and one of the best days - of my life.' 'Really?' Burton feigns interest. I feign humility. 'You betcha. First love and everything.'"

Ella Taylor on Monster; Judith Lewis interviews the film's director, Patty Jenkins.

Foundas again, on What Alice Found.

John Patterson on Peter Pan: PJ Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) has finally done justice to the story’s every unsettling nuance, with nary a false note or a misstep."

Marc Cooper: "[Errol] Morris is a more talented filmmaker than he is an interviewer." Foundas interviews the filmmaker.

"Bringing inner lives to the screen is tricky enough for the most seasoned filmmaker, and director Vadim Perelman is just starting out." Ella Taylor on The House of Sand and Fog.

Oh, look, it's Scott Foundas again. Mona Lisa Smile and Calendar Girls.

Shorts: The Hebrew Hammer, Love Don't Cost a Thing and Werner Herzog's Wheel of Time.

Kodwo Eshun in Frieze on the re-release of Sun Ra's Space is the Place: "What gives the film its uneven, disconcerting pace is director John Coney's decision to fuse at least three distinct production aesthetics: Catwomen of Outer Space-style cheesy sci-fi, Black Caesar-style blaxploitation and the carefree porn of contemporaneous flicks such as Behind the Green Door."

Landmark Theatres has scored the exclusive rights to sell the DVD version of Denys Arcand's 1986 The Decline of the American Empire, which they'll be doing at theaters showing The Barbarian Invasions.

There's an alternative cinema boom going on in Los Angeles, writes Steven Rosen in indieWIRE.

Jake Brooks crowns producer Ted Hope as "The Man Who Beat Valenti" in the New York Observer.

In the Guardian:

Paul Laverty has one helluva story to tell about helping to bring a film festival to a refugee camp in the Western Sahara: "Many attendees had never seen a film on the big screen in their lives."

Christopher Frayling on the poster - yes, the poster - for Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond.

Fiachra Gibbons has a nice title for her piece: "If I went there I'd be found hanging from a bridge." That's Peter Mullan on Hollywood.

Kate Stables hosts "Cyber cinema's festive fandango."

And then a rather moving commentary from Jonathan Freedland on why, at least as of Wednesday, he was "still stuck on the pictures.... Taken together - the bearded Saddam and his underground living grave - they are almost mythic, redolent of legends and fables that are hard-wired into the human mind. With this twist, the Saddam story has become a blend of Bible parable, folk tale, Greek and Shakespearean tragedy - and it is unexpectedly powerful."

Kate Drake profiles Eric Tsang, "actor, director, producer and scriptwriter, the Hong Kong native [who] has left a permanent imprint on the territory's films," for Time Asia. Also: Bryan Walsh reviews Infernal Affairs III.

In the New York Press:

Armond White explains why - in his opinion, of course - Bad Santa "can't touch [the] superior bad taste" of Stuck on You.

Fun quick piece from Mickey Z. on two bathroom books, 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know and The Official Movie Plot Generator.

Adam Bulger reviews Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist.

DVD reviews.

More DVD choices: The Village Voice hand-picks the year's "most essential, best, all-time super-duper boxed DVD sets" and Josh Goldfein prices the year's best single discs. Also: Ed Halter on Joseph Cornell.

In the Independent:

Geoffrey Macnab interviews William Friedkin on the occasion of a retrospective in Turin.

Fiona Morrow meets Colin Firth.

And John Walsh on Peter Pan: "One could blame all this shameless eroticising on the writer-director PJ Hogan, were it not that Peter Pan was always a pretty rum creation and the titular figure a nasty piece of work."

David Thomson on the young Jack Nicholson.

Cyndi Greening is doing some serious prepping for Sundance. Via Persistence of Vision (don't stay away too long).

After a month of near-silence, two new pieces at metaphilm, both of them readings of Fight Club. For Chris Landis, the film is a retelling of the tale of Oedipus, while Nathan Elmore takes The Cider House Rules and 13 Conversations About One Thing into consideration as well: "The intersection where Mr. Rose, Troy, and Jack meet is indeed an unthinkable place: all have symbolically and physically decided that salvation must be something you ceremonially inflict upon yourself."

"The story of Kurt Gerron has haunted me for years." Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic on Prisoner of Paradise: "When we pick up any German or Austrian artwork that was made in the decade before Hitler's rule, we almost always pick up at least one tragedy with it. The Blue Angel has more than one, but Gerron's strikes hardest."

The National Film Registry is now 25 films richer.

Adaptation vinyl figurines. Via Tagline.

Posted by dwhudson at December 19, 2003 12:41 PM