Shorts, 6/4.

As this entry goes up, yesterday's online viewing tip, a discussion between Todd Haynes and Richard Dyer on Edward Hopper's influence on cinema is a couple of hours away - if you miss it, it'll be available for viewing again in about a week.

Only bring this up again because Robert Davis is actually there in London, has visited the exhibition at the Tate and posts an insightful and marvelously illustrated entry:

Although I can't draw any direct lines of influence between Hopper and current Taiwanese filmmakers like Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, I couldn't help thinking of them as I walked through the exhibit, Hou with his pools of light as thick and graspable as his characters, his frames within frames, and Tsai with his use of space, even a nearly empty movie theater in which his characters roam and try unsuccessfully to connect. Both filmmakers hold their cameras very still which makes their work easier to compare to paintings than the more kinetic films of some of their peers.

Onto the shorts. "Due to overwhelming demand, the Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer will be down temporarily. Please check back later." Rats. On the other hand, good. Definitely a sign that there's a huge and eager audience out there.

Meantime, Eugene Hernandez has heard Michael Eisner defend his decision to stay away from the film. One wonders how much sympathy he's won by coming right out and saying that the decision was all about Disney's shareholders. Also in indieWIRE:

• Wendy Mitchell's biz bits - and there are a lot of them.
• Brian Brooks adds another: IFC's acquired the rights to Dana Brown's next doc, Dust to Glory.
• Eugene Hernandez: "Magnolia Pictures has nabbed Prachya Pinkaew's Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior."
• Via the indieWIRE Insider: The slate's set for Outfest (July 8 - 19).
• "You'd be forgiven for thinking that a documentary about a camel in the Gobi Desert who rejects her colt would be better suited to a 3 am time slot on the Discovery Channel than a nomination for Best Foreign Language Oscar. But Luigi Falorni and Byambasuren Davaa, two students at Munich's film school, decided, long before they shot a single frame, not to make 'the normal, standard reportage on the idyllic nomadic life.'" Claiborne Smith asks them about The Story of the Weeping Camel.

For DVD File, Peter M Bracke asks Disney animator Dave Bossert about restoring and releasing the studio's wartime propaganda: "The reason I think I was able to get this project done was because I focused on making sure all of this material was presented in the context of which it was made. If you just swept these cartoons on a DVD with no introductions, it would have been a disaster."

Doug Cummings: "The official website for the Masters of Cinema Series from Eureka Video in the UK is now online, featuring our first release, Arnold Fanck's The Holy Mountain (1926)."

Fiona Morrow does not connect at all with Woody Allen, but then, she doesn't particularly want to. Nonetheless, she does get him to reveal just how much he's feeling his years these days:

"The films we used to get excited about were a new Truffaut film, or a Bergman, or an Antonioni, or De Sica. But kids now - even intelligent kids - they don't know Renoir, they don't know Kurosawa: they're illiterate." He pauses before adding crossly: "It's like being young itself is the only thing they have going for them."

Oh, dear. Well, also in the Independent: Asia Argento is pretty pissed about the reception of her film, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. Geoffrey Macnab hears her out. And Rankin (more) picks ten top sex scenes.

"You never know what Bill Murray might do." Jim Jarmusch tells Wendy Mitchell about making Coffee and Cigarettes; but it's a little too early for him to say anything about his next two projects other than that they're in color. And of course, we know that at least one of them will feature Bill Murray.

Bill Clinton is on the cover of the Guardian's Friday Review. Watching a movie. Julian Borger wanders from a few observations on the possible impact movies might have on this year's election (more on this from Gary Strauss in USA Today, via Movie City News) to the relationship between the movies and the American presidency to the theater in the White House, where he scans the logs of which president watched which films. Also:

• "[T]he Marx Brothers might well be the most influential screen comedians of all time," claims Stephen Merchant, a co-writer for The Office. No argument here.
• Ian Traynor: "Home to the world's first nationalised film industry and first journal of film, Hungary is now setting its sights on becoming the Hollywood of the new Europe." (Reminder: The current issue of Kinoeye is devoted to Hungarian film.)
• It took a while for Hari Kunzru (more) to catch up with popular Indian cinema, but recently, he's done so with gusto. The novelist even offers a pleasantly readable history.
• You want fun, skip the movies, advises Molly Haskell. You'll have a far better time watching TV.
• Hilary Mackendrick presents sketches and designs her husband, Alexander Mackendrick, drew up for a film about Mary Queen of Scots he didn't live to realize.
• Matthew Cunningham remembers seven great cameos.
• Shekhar Kapur and Cate Blanchett will be teaming up on a sequel to Elizabeth. Reports have it that the film will focus on the middle years of the queen's reign (and drew says this one may finally nab Cate an Oscar).
• These quizzes must be popular. Today's: "Young Hollywood." Match the names and faces.

Stuart Klawans previews Human Rights Watch International Film Festival for the Nation and focuses in particular on Persons of Interest; as for The Day After Tomorrow, it's "a Connecticut investment banker's apocalypse." No, it's worse than that, writes Jonathan Rosenbaum; it's "an exceptionally stupid movie."

Neil Gaiman offers five tips on collaborating with another writer.

Sergio Castellito is one of the best things going in Italian cinema these days, writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

Online viewing tip for a Friday (i.e., it's silly). "Hansel and Gretel." Via Cinema Minima.

Posted by dwhudson at June 4, 2004 9:27 AM