Shorts, 1/29.

Bhoot

Manu Joseph in Outlook India on Ram Gopal Varma: "He is producing or planning about 10 films at the moment, most of them to be released this year in an open war against the old mafiosi of Hindi cinema and their way of telling a story through joint families and karva chauth."

And over at Planet Bollywood, Susan Ferguson writes: "If you combined Mel Gibson, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, a rockin' Fred Astaire, and an occasional pinch of the young Jerry Lewis - you might get somewhat close to describing Shahrukh Khan - or SRK as they call him in India."

Tom Tykwer directing Patrick Süskind's Perfume? Maybe it's a sure thing; maybe it isn't. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Michael Althen seems to think it is. We'll see.

Polia Alexandrova talks to Bulgarian director Ivan Nichev in Central Europe Review about his own films and promoting Bulgarian movies in general:

I have participated in many international festivals through the years. I'm always asked the same questions: "Did your secret service really kill [the exiled dissident] Georgi Markov with a poisoned umbrella in 1978?" or "Were you really involved in the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II?"... That is why, especially now, when everyone is talking about how Bulgaria will become a member of the European Union in 2007, there is a huge need for people around Europe to hear the truth about Bulgaria and get to know this country better. I decided to do something to speed up this process, since a film is a product that can easily enter anyone's home.

Via Movie City News, Johanna Schneller in the Globe and Mail on Mystic River, In the Cut, Thirteen, 21 Grams, House of Sand and Fog and Monster: "In all these movies, the American dream is glimpsed, then laid to waste by laziness, hard-headedness and myopic stupidity. According to the country's brightest filmmakers... that trilogy has now replaced life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in defining the American way."

"[T]he real reason why Nichols's Angels feels so different from the Broadway version has less to do with the difference between stage and screen than with the difference between 1993 and 2003." Daniel Mendelsohn in the New York Review of Books.

"And then one afternoon in 1956, while a freshman, all my interests came together as I watched Sergei Eisenstein's 1927 silent masterpiece October: Ten Days That Shook the World, about the Russian revolution. I knew instantly I could combine storytelling with the innovation and technology of cinema." Francis Ford Coppola for Time. Also: Amanda Ripley on online piracy.

Michael Atkinson's "semi-annual Stuart Byron Movie Trivia Quiz" in the Village Voice. Also: A series of remembrances of Uta Hagen.

Film prof Michael D Gose offers his "Thoughts on How to Decide if a Film is Any Good" at Metaphilm - check the "Metaphlog" on the right of the front page for loads o' good linkage, too.

Meryl Gordon profiles GreeneStreet Films partners Fisher Stevens and John Penotti for New York.

"There are few golden rules to be gleaned from the movies, but let me propose the following: Don't, under any circumstances, fuck with time." Michael Agger in Slate on The Butterfly Effect. Also: Michael Hastings on " the political odd couple of the campaign season," Wesley Clark and Michael Moore.

For the New Yorker, Hilton Als visits Charlize Theron: "She motioned to her assistant to write this down: 'Note to self. Do not become Halle Berry.'"

Nikki Finke remembers Ray Stark in the LA Weekly. Also: Steven Leigh Morris reviews Baz Luhrmann's La Bohème and David Mermelstein talks to the director.

Wayne Alan Brenner's daughter is looking forward to Ushicon, Austin's anime convention but, "I'm experiencing something more like trepidation."

"Even 10 years ago, mixing animation and documentary would have been both impractical and taboo," writes Jason Silverman in Wired News. Those days are gone.

In the Guardian and Observer:

"The film has a singular aim: a confrontation, in the best sense, between the courage and determination of those like Nath, who want to understand, and the jailers, whose catharsis is barely beginning." John Pilger's shudder-inducing piece on S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine.

Kirsty Scott on The Firebird's Nest, the screenplay Salman Rushdie is working on, based on his own short story; the film is to star his partner Padma Lakshmi.

Fightin' words from Richard Eyre: "Middle-Earth is a country inhabited by the people who voted Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" the best song of the millennium and Star Wars the best film of the decade. The faith of the Middle-Earthers is perpetual childhood; their currency is emotion on the cheap; their epiphany was Princess Diana's funeral. Middle-Earth is the Kingdom of Kitsch."

Kiku Day slams Lost in Translation for "anti-Japanese racism." Sigh.

Mark Kermode on the "endless nightmare" of the making of Exorcist: The Beginning.

Tim Adams meets and profiles Paul Bettany.

Alex Cox: "There is something deeply sexually ambivalent about the western, its heroes, and its villains. Its tales take place in the mental space of adolescent boys, where men are men and women have barely been invented." David Thomson has more thoughts on the western in the 21st century in the Independent.

John Plunkett on the boom British movie magazines are currently enjoying: "Empire, Total Film and [music mag] Uncut now boast combined sales of nearly 400,000 copies a month, up 25% on two years ago and 43% on 1998."

Stuart Jeffries on several good - and one bad - French film about the Resistence.

"And it all goes back to the day of my first commercial audition in Dallas. The product was Lactaid. And it was between me - and Renée." Molly Norton remembers in Salon. Also: "Mel Gibson played the pope like a cheap lute." Cintra Wilson introduces her interview with the Rev. Mark Stanger:

But very chillingly, in the interview after the showing, Mel Gibson said the reason that he had [his cast] speaking those original languages - and I didn't misinterpret him, because he told a long story to illustrate it - he said, "If I was doing a film about very fierce, horrible, nasty Vikings coming to invade a town, and had them on their ship with their awful weapons, and they came pouring off the ship ready to slaughter - to have them speak English wouldn't be menacing enough."

How did that hit you?

I almost puked.

In the New York Times:

Peter M Nichols on the role the Capturing the Friedmans DVD is playing in the ongoing judicial process surrounding the complex case and on The Spook Who Sat by the Door, buried, pulled or smothered when it was released in 1973.

Stephen Kinzer hears Turks tell him their memory of the fallout from Midnight Express taints their prohibitive reaction to Atom Egoyan's Ararat.

Matt Haber on the amazing Sid Laverents, who's being celebrated with a retrospective at the American Cinematheque in LA: " Following his own whims rather than any cultural movement, he turned himself from a one-man band into a one-man independent movie studio."

"In recent months, males ages 18 to 34 have watched the Adult Swim cartoons in numbers that consistently beat David Letterman and that either beat or tie Jay Leno." Rob Walker examines why.

Neil Genzlinger talks to Brooke Adams about Made-Up.

Anne Thompson profiles ILM special effects wiz Stefen Fangmeier.

Dave Kehr on Jafar Panahi, at home neither in New York nor in Tehran; and on trilogies.

Un Chien Andalou

Terrence Rafferty on The Rules of the Game, Frank Rich on The Fog of War and AO Scott on Luis Buñuel.

This entry's winner for Best Link in a Foreign Language: For L'espresso, Silvia Bizio talks to Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman about La giuria (The Runaway Jury), diretto da Gary Fleder.

Posted by dwhudson at January 29, 2004 11:26 AM