Shorts, 2/2.

"A pop-py kind of musique concrete, grounded in the French cabaret scene" is the way Marc Weidenbaum describes the tunes of the lively old ladies in Les Triplettes de Belleville as he introduces his wonderful interview in Disquiet with Benoît Charest, who scored the picture.

Jonathan Rosenbaum: "In more ways than one, Sunrise triumphs as a masterwork of thought and emotion rendered in terms of visual music, where light and darkness sing in relation to countless polarities: day and night, fire and water, sky and earth, city and country, man and woman, thought and deed, good and evil, nature and culture."

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

Though Michael Winterbottom "has recently had 'a worrying number of retrospectives' for someone who is still only 42," writes Geraldine Bedell, he is still "a director that people find hard to place - or, at least, that distributors assume people will find hard to place."

Ryan Gilbey claims that Groundhog Day "has emerged as one of the most influential films in modern cinema - and not only on other movies."

Jeremy Dyson explains why, when he was young, a "disproportionate number of the finest examples of the supernatural horror film were British productions."

Will Hodgkinson sorts through CDs, DVDs, prints and such with Mike Figgis.

B Ruby Rich: "The Oscars, you see, are the ritual that I love to hate." Matt Wolf, meanwhile, claims the best-pic noms this year are "consistently, tiresomely blokeish."

Speaking of which. Newsweek's David Ansen and Jeff Giles conduct a big roundtable Oscar discussion with Sofia Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson, Anthony Minghella and Gary Ross... before the Oscar nominations were announced. Also: Jennifer Barrett talks to Siddiq Barmak about Osama.

For indieWIRE, Erica Abeel talks to Andrey Zvyagintsev about his multi-award-winning film, The Return.

"Movies that delve into the Bible or that explicitly offer up interpretations of its teachings and stories can always expect, and can easily be accused of provoking, the most divisive and virulent kinds of controversy," writes AO Scott about you-know-which movie. And he reminds us, "It was not always as it is." Also in the New York Times:

"There is as yet no clear front-runner in the so-called Hollywood primary," report John M Broder and Bernard Weinraub.

"Viacom is nearing a decision to spin off its Blockbuster video-rental business," comes the word from Andrew Ross Sorkin and Geraldine Fabrikant.

By walking away from Disney, Pixar CEO Steve Jobs "is becoming the personification of the digital media mogul," writes John Markoff.

Robert Levine on Ice Cube.

And Terrence Rafferty on Bernardo Bertolucci: "What makes him so frustrating, so fascinating and finally so indispensable is a quality he shares with the radiant, randy, spoiled children of his films: he isn't afraid to wear his heart and his head (and occasionally other organs) on his sleeve."

Festival roundup:

Stephen Garrett for indieWIRE: "No other major festival is as conducive to moviegoing as the Rotterdam International Film Festival, where winter doldrums are cast away under a rainbow of cinephile's delights." The winners. (More soon.)

Losing Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries to Cannes clearly bugs Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick (though he's quite amusing on the subject). Still, as Scott Roxborough reports for Reuters, a last-minute admission helps make up for it.

Global Lens, "New Cinema from the Developing World," through February 14 at the the California Film Institute in San Rafael.

"If I confine myself to a couple of episodes per evening, I can get through the whole disgusting saga in less than a month, and so leave a decent interval before I start again." Clive James in the Times Literary Supplement on The Sopranos. In the Washington Post, John Maynard takes a look at the way "TV-on-DVD" is changing the way viewers watch and networks program.

"Défendre un rôle est essentiel pour un acteur." Jack Nicholson answers Denis Rossano's questions in L'Express. Via Perlentaucher.

Via Movie City News, the Sydney Morning Herald's Garry Maddox has several illustrious actors, set designers, writers and so on react to a recent self-deprecating comment on the role of the director from Wim Wenders; and the Super Bowl ads.

But here's another online viewing tip. Thanks for the Memories.

Posted by dwhudson at February 2, 2004 9:22 AM