Shorts, 3/23.

Let's point you immediately to a great swift read from Hannah McGill in the April issue of Sight & Sound on the Makhmalbaf family, focusing naturally enough on Mohsen and Samira, and yet with all five, there's also something of "a Makhmalbaf house style":

[T]he conscious politicisation of personal narratives; a poetic symbolism that privileges fleeting moments and physical details almost to the point of surreal fetishisation; moral, political and narrative ambiguities that demand the spectator's active interpretation; the deployment of non-professional performers. Yet Samira's personal poise and confidence bespeak a powerful intellectual independence and her age and gender as well as her artistic idiosyncrasies set her films apart from her father's (in a manner that might stand further comparison with Coppola père and fille).

Also in this issue: J Hoberman on the "almost ridiculously relevant" The Fog of War.

Steven Johnson, a damn fine blogger and author both, whose most recent book is Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, has a fascinating piece in Slate on what's scientifically feasible (and what's not) about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Also, the two Mafia experts, Jerry Capeci and Jeffrey Goldberg, continue discussion The Sopranos.

Via Movie City News: Biskind Blows. A quick check reveals it was set up by... a Star Wars fan?

The cinetrix has fallen hard for Anna May Wong.

Richard Corliss profiles Zhao Wei (So Close, Shaolin Soccer) for Time Asia.

In the Guardian, an update on the expensive saga that is Exorcist: The Beginning. From Paul Schrader, Xan Brooks hears that his version might at least come out on DVD. Also: John Patterson on Patricia Clarkson and zombies, albeit not in the same breath, of course.

In indieWIRE:

• Karl Beck looks back on the NY Underground Film Fest...
• While Brian Brooks looks forward to the Gen Art Film Festival (April 14 - 20)...
• And Eugene Hernandez reports that the Tribeca Film Festival, like the universe, is expanding. To a full nine days, May 1 through 9.

• Andrea Meyer talks to Dagur Kári and Tómas Lemarquis, the director and star of Nói.
• Tony Phillips chats with Lesli Klainberg and Gini Riticker about... well, about a lot actually, "about the playing field for women filmmakers, her subject and pal Paul Monette, New York versus LA, heroin, the state of indie film and, of course, Jodie Foster." But also about In the Company of Women.
• Brandon Judell interviews John Crowley. The film at hand: Intermission.
• And then, Rania Richardson on the evolution of indie distribution.

Over at the main site, anime fans are giggling over the "Good Times With Weapons" episode of South Park - and one points to Wild Willie Westwood's spoilerific key.

DVD Talk's Jeremy Kleinman attends the St Patrick's Day "Re-release Party" for the Special Edition DVD of The Commitments.

For Matt Zoller Seitz, Kill Bill is " zombie of a movie. Dawn [of the Dead] is a zombie movie, but it's alive." And from Armond White, two thumbs up, one each but intertwined for HBO's Deadwood and Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau.

In the Village Voice, a preview of the new directors / new films series there in NYC (March 24 through April 4), Guy Maddin's third set of diary entries and J Hoberman's review of Dogville.

At Offoffoff.com, where there's quite a string of reader comments following Joshua Tanzer's review of Lars Von Trier's parable, Leslie Blake looks back on the recently wrapped Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series.

And Serge Raffy and Enki Bilal actually speak French in Le Nouvel Observateur. The topic: Immortel. Via Perlentaucher.

Posted by dwhudson at March 23, 2004 12:54 PM