Shorts, 6/14.

Acquarello has been filing detailed and incisive notes on the films he's caught at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival at his outstanding site, Strictly Film School. Reading these reviews, you can't help but hope that the DVD, the possibilities eventually offered by video-on-demand and, in short, whatever means of distribution necessary will keep forging rivulets between films like these and wider audiences. Keep scrolling down to find Acquarello's review of a not-at-all unrelated book, James Monaco's Alain Resnais.

Upbeat reports on thriving Asian cinemas: Via the freshened up Alternet, Andrew Lam writes that Hollywood is finally facing some serious competition in Thailand from homegrown movies. That story comes from the Pacific News Service, which in turn, happens to be sporting a link to Aruna Lee's NCM Report on Korean Cinema. There's little news there, but it's a succinct primer if you need it, backing up its opening assertion: "Seoul is fast emerging as a center of filmmaking in East Asia." And there's a link in there to the Korean Times, where Kim Tae-jong writes up a nice little intro to the Seoul Studio Complex in Namyanju, Kyonggi Province.

For Outlook India, Namrata Joshi meets Farhan Akhtar, who's made what he calls "an atypical war movie," Lakshya.

Why would anyone rather direct plays than movies? Neil Labute's got ten solid reasons.

Also in the Guardian, Cherry Potter ponders The Stepford Wives, "a confused attempt to seduce and to satirise at the same time." Daphne Merkin's piece in the New York Times Magazine is more to the point: "When is 'retro' just another word for a phenomenon that never really went away so much as it took a long lunch break? Are men any more comfortable with female firebrands than they were before, say, Betty Friedan? Even more to the point: are women?" The piece reverberates oddly with another in the magazine, Guy Trebay's, placing Andrea Fraser's "Untitled" in the historical context of other "shock art."

Then Rob Walker reminds us that the phenom the Baffler editors have called commodification of dissent stretches back to Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment and is alive and well in what he calls the "alienation market" in which films like The Corporation, Super Size Me, The Yes Men, and of course, Fahrenheit 9/11 either already have or are destined to make bundles (relatively speaking, of course). That's not hampering them from carrying on, of course, as Steven Rosen outlines very well in indieWIRE, where, as it happens, Adam Hart has recently interviewed Corporation filmmakers Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbot and companion book author Joel Bakan.

One last glimpse at the NYT Magazine. Sandra Fish remembers lessons learned when it came time to sell some of the private correspondence between her father and his teenage sweetheart, Grace Kelly.

Ok, in the paper:

• John Rockwell speculates on what Lars von Trier might have had in mind as a staging concept for Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen before he pulled out of the project.
• Vicki Goldberg on photographer DoDo Jin Ming.
• Sam Roberts previews Ivy Meeropol's doc on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg airing on HBO, Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter's Story.
• Choire Sicha: "As with so many reality shows, part of the fun of watching The Simple Life 2 is wondering what lapse in judgment, what moment of weakness, what incriminating negatives the producers exploited to get thinking people to agree to 10 episodes of prime-time infamy."
• "The world wants television on demand but it doesn't want to pay transaction fees," Starz CEO John J Sie tells Saul Hansell. Sie's cable channel and RealNetworks are joining forces to launch a new VOD service.

Doug Cummings's found a copy of Jonas Mekas's Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959 - 1971 and posts an entry from 1961: "A Rendezvous With the FBI." Chilling.

In the Observer, Gill Pringle claims Hollywood needs Lindsay Lohan. But seriously, folks: Philip French reviews Babak Payami's Silence Between Two Thoughts, banned in Iran but revived in a sort of "makeshift version" that makes for a "slow" work of "considerable moral power."

In the Independent:

• When John Waters read Philip Hoare's book Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant several years ago, he got in touch. Smart move. Because a writer and friend like Hoare can turn in quite a rich and pleasurable profile.
• Louise Jury reports on the efforts of the Curatori Lucis Group to save Britain's film and television archives.
• David Thomson: "Whatever you think of The Cooler, I adore [William H] Macy."

Wendy Mitchell seems to be having a dangerously good time at CineVegas. Meanwhile, Morgan Spurlock's in the Alps, where he's met the CEO of McDonald's Switzerland. Looks like he didn't have time to catch the John Waters exhibit in Zug, though. And Eugene Hernandez? He's in Atlanta.

"The new chapter, which will hit theaters in June 2005, is called 'Batman Begins' - presumably because 'Batman Sucked the Last Time So We're Starting Over' was too clunky." Devin Gordon visits the set for Newsweek.

Via the blog dedicated to Fahrenheit 9/11, news that Michael Moore was just joking when he said his next film would take on Tony Blair. Meanwhile, Geraldine Sealey in Salon: "A group called Citizens United announced an ad campaign smearing Michael Moore - and George Soros - as 'America haters.' 'These liberal America-haters cannot undo President Bush's track record of success in the War on Terror,' said the group's president, David Bossie. Bossie may want to check out the recent news that terrorism has gone up under Bush, not down."

Online viewing tip. Commercials made on spec by filmmakers hoping to nab a paying gig: The Spec Spot. Via Cinema Minima by way of Lost Remote.

Posted by dwhudson at June 14, 2004 6:07 AM