Shorts, 4/23.

Now here's a way to spend a day in San Francisco. The Chronicle's Ruthe Stein tours locations that have appeared in classic noir films with French directors Emmanuel Carrere and Patrick Bossard and actress Elsa Zylberstein; their hosts are novelist Thomas Sanchez, SFIFF creative director Miguel Pendas and Eddie Muller, author of a couple of novels himself as well as books on noir and our own noir primer.

Vince Keenan's been reading his Dark City Dames, I'll note in passing, albeit primarily as a way to spotlight his site.

In the May issue of Sight & Sound:

• Jonathan Romney revises an opinion: "I thought at first that the film might have been one of those Cannes-premiered disasters that plague French directors - Carax, Kassovitz, Dumont - of whom great revelations are expected. Now I'd argue - and I hope this doesn't read like sophistry - that, rather than being a catastrophe, Demonlover is a film made in the catastrophic mode, with the conviction that a cinema truly attuned to our times can make sense only if it partakes of catastrophe, of a collapse of meaning."

• David Thompson follows up with five questions for Oliver Assayas.

• James Bell not only argues that DV has done wonder for shorts, he's also got several points of advice for anyone setting out to make one. Or more.

• Reviews: Ryan Gilbey on Mike Hodges's I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Ginette Vincendeau on Alain Resnais's Pas sur la Bouche and Kim Newman on Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead.

Sean Spillane has a series of entries on Kill Bill you'll want to take a look at: An initial reaction, a game, thoughts on what the DVD might end up looking like and gory screencaps from the Japanese version of 1.

Over at Filmmaker, Scott Macaulay points to a petition urging MGM and Eon Productions to accept Tarantino's offer to direct the 21st Bond film, base it on Casino Royale and get Pierce Brosnan to do the character one last time; and Steve Gallagher passes along news that a director's cut of Donnie Darko with 21 minutes restored will premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Doug Cummings on Prisoner of Paradise and the Russian Nights fest in LA (heading to NY in October).

Evan Mather says he'll definitely be taking part in Stockstock, joining what must be around 400 other entrants. You can, too, you know. Deadline's June 15. And what is it, exactly? Katie Dean explains in Wired News.

Rania Richardson:

The current crop of self-distributing filmmakers is zeroing in on target niche markets to develop audiences for their films. Charming and articulate, the filmmakers of Robot Stories, Maestro, The Gatekeeper and Superstar in a Housedress are presenting their works to their own specialized communities and reeling in additional viewers using extraordinary marketing efforts. But would they do it again?

Also in indieWIRE:

• Quite a bit on Cannes already, for starters. Brian Brooks's round-up of film folks' reactions to the lineup is probably the most fun; Eugene Hernandez notes a trend in the competition: first-timers; and Brooks reports on the Critics' Week lineup.
• Nathan Friedkin scores the last slot in a hot workshop: "The Art of the Documentary Pitch: How to Turn an Idea Into a Reality." IW runs his diary.
• The headline over Christopher Read's says it all: "Regional Report: Bay Area Filmmakers Thrive on Passion, Even When Funding's Low."

Studios, record labels and tech companies are teaming in the battle against pirates swarming university campus networks, reports CNET's Stefanie Olsen. Owen Thomas spins another Olsen story nicely at Ditherati, plucking a quote from Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and jesting that it betrays her "plans to digitize all of Hollywood's studios, at which point we can outsource it all to Bombay."

Another fun list at low culture: Cringe-worthy names for fake magazines edited by female movie characters.

"Not since the advent of the videocassette in the mid-1980's has the movie industry enjoyed such a windfall from a new product. And just as video caused a seismic shift two decades ago, the success of the DVD is altering priorities and the balance of power in the making of popular culture," reports Sharon Waxman.

Also in the New York Times:

• An editorial - an editorial! - on our love of the DVD. Via the SXSW News Reel, a bit more, an update from the AP on the format wars that'll determine the future of the DVD.
• Charles McGrath reports on the acquisition of around 2000 pages of F Scott Fitzgerald's "treatments, sketches, drafts, polishes, rewrites" that piled up during his miserable days in Hollywood by the University of South Carolina. Footnote to that one, via Metaphilm: Kelly Ann Torrance, arguing in Brainwash that writerly types are typing screenplays rather than writing fiction. Frankly, it's an unconvincing piece, but who knows, you may be interested.
• David Gonzalez on Jonathan Demme's The Agronomist.
• Alan Riding: "Protesting French actors and technicians, who prompted the cancellation of most summer arts festivals last year and forced the resignation of the French culture minister this spring, are now threatening to disrupt the Cannes film festival next month."
• Nick Madigan reports that the LA County Department of Health Services is gathering the legal names of actors in the adult movie industry who've had sexual contact with the two actors who've contracted the HIV virus.

Gawker, by the way, hears that Elvis Mitchell may be leaving the New York Times. Via Out of Focus, where Aaron does not want to see this happen.

Chris Orr's "Home Movies" column at the New Republic is shaping up nicely; this week, two DVD reviews (Master and Commander and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and a list ("wisely unfaithful adaptations").

Reuters reports that, following Sony's bid for MGM, Time Warner may now be interested in nabbing the studio.

Cintra Wilson traces the life of Klaus Kinski: "If ego is what makes men miserable, then he was surely one of the most miserable men of all time." She leans quite a bit on his book, too, but for good reason: "Uncut is, for all its smut and overindulgence, one of the most compelling autobiographies ever written, and it should be required reading for anyone considering being an actor." Also in Salon: Scott Lamb talks to Seymore Butts, aka Adam Glasser, about the porn industry's HIV scare.

Two via Movie City News: Harvey Weinstein: Commander of the Order of the British Empire. And aren't these faux Web sites a little last decade? RegardlessDavid Ewing Duncan reports on another in the San Francisco Chronicle: Godsend: The site. The movie.

David Thomson: "There's no doubt about the fondness that existed between Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock - or between the novelist and short-story writer and the movies as a whole. They were good to each other, and du Maurier's books inspired several more films than those made by Hitchcock."

Also in the Independent:

• Jonathan Romney on the remarkable Makhmalbafs.
• Severin Carrell and Andrew Johnson report that Beyond the Rocks, made in 1922 and starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, once thought lost, has been found.
• Leslie Felperin talks to Daryl Hannah about the QT experience: "[H]e would work me until I was so exhausted I would fall asleep between takes, when they were setting up another shot. Then he would take pictures of me with the Polaroid, with disgusting things next to my face, while I was sleeping, and then print them up and wear them as a T-shirt the next day. Which he found really funny [laughs], even though it wasn't [laughs]. But he's also fun." Uh-huh.
• Anthony Quinn: "[T]he dark-hued fatalism of Chinatown remains, 30 years on, among the peaks of noir cinema and probably the best movie of the 1970s."
• And Andrew Jarecki picks his "Ten Best Auteur Films." You wonder if that's his headline.

Rachel Proctor May profiles a pretty nifty project in the Austin Chronicle, the multi-culti soap, Shades of Life. Also: Diana Welch previews a sort of LadyFest Texas preview; and Marc Savlov talks to John Pierson about Spike Mike Reloaded; he also notes that Pedazo Chunk, the video outlet run by Harry Knowles's sister and bro-in-law, may soon be expanding. Speaking of AICN, Mark O'Connell sends word that Tarantino plans to show both parts of Kill Bill, edited back together again, in Cannes on the last day of the fest.

Joshuah Bearman attends a release party for the Freaks and Geeks DVD package and reports back to the LA Weekly.

In the Village Voice, Michael Almereyda talks with Sam Shepard but not about This So-Called Disaster; instead, the subjects at hand are Terrence Malick and Bob Dylan. It's J Hoberman, then, who reviews the movie. Also: Michael Atkinson on William Friedkin's little-seen The People vs Paul Crump and Laura Sinagra on a series of South African films marking the tenth anniversary of Mandela's election.

Alternet's Emily Polk interviews Lisa Hepner regarding her directorial debut, Peace by Peace: Women on the Frontlines. Also: Todd Lillethun on Broken Wings and Stuart Klawans on The Blondes (a piece that hasn't appeared at The Nation's site).

Two more pieces pose the question, "Why zombies, why now?": Matthew Wilder's in City Pages and Aaron Hendren's in Film Threat with its amusing theory that it's all about Republicans.

Lia Haberman parses the nominations for the MTV Movie Awards for E!.

Kevin Spacey is the guest editor of the Guardian's Friday Review this week. As most movie gossip addicts have heard by now, he's in London anyway these days serving as artistic director of the Old Vic. So as you read his introduction to this issue, you realize he hasn't reached too far for material; but then, when you're in London, you don't have to.

Also in the Guardian: Dan Glaister reports that George Butler will be directing a doc based on Douglas Brinkley's book about John Kerry, Tour of Duty. As Glaister points out, the campaign season is shaping up as a tough one for George Bush, at least at the movies. First, the summer sees the release of Roland Emmerich's global warming disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow. Then, in September, Tour of Duty and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, followed soon after by John Sayles's Silver City.

In Slate Seth Stevenson spells out the logic behind American Express's "Webisode."

Posted by dwhudson at April 23, 2004 9:16 AM