Shorts, 8/13.

"Memory mansion and enchanted forest, in which fragments of culture, history, politics, and imagined lives crossbreed, it is unlike anything else. (That includes the lavish 1982 M-G-M version, which, despite being among the best American movies of the time, was inevitably a reduction of something irreducible.)" More than a review of the six-part BBC series Pennies From Heaven, Devin McKinney's wonderful piece in the American Prospect follows the songlines back into Dennis Potter's own life and times.

"Before we shot the film I had to agree with the action director Siu-Tung Ching on the style and direction and feeling.... Most of the time the action director led groups to shoot the action sequences while I led another group to shoot leaves or water drops or a river flowing, something Siu-Tung Ching wouldn't understand." Zhang Yimou talks to Salon's Charles Taylor about Hero.

Malcolm McDowell has put together a one-man show, Lindsay Anderson: A Personal Remembrance. Sarah Jones has a long chat with him about it in the Independent. Also: Tiffany Rose interviews Kate Hudson.

"And then I looked at the anniversary date, and it was Saturday, and so I thought we should just throw a party and try to get a bunch of people to make movies." Tom Keefe tells Melena Z Ryzik the story behind the Blackout Film Festival. Also in the New York Times: Dave Kehr on "the ultimate LA noir," Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly.

In the Nation, Stuart Klawans describes how Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate has stuck with him and reviews Rosenstrasse, the latest film from Margarethe von Trotta, "and therefore by definition newsworthy."

Guillermo del Toro: "At the ripe age of 30-something, I found myself dreaming of becoming Hellboy when I grew up." The Guardian runs a brief extract from Hellboy: The Art of the Movie.

Also in the Guardian:

• John Patterson: "Applying his techniques to big-wave surfing, [Stacy] Peralta has reinterpreted, as he did with Dogtown, the quintessentially Californian narrative, mildly tweaked for surfing: Paradise Lost, Childhood's End, the Last Frontier, the gradual fencing-in of a once wide-open US."
• Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's media mogul-in-chief, wants to grant Robert De Niro an honorary Italian citizenship. As Sophie Arie reports, the Order of the Sons of Italy in America objects: "He has done nothing to promote Italian culture in the United States. Instead, the Osia and its members hold him and his movies responsible for considerably damaging the collective reputations of both Italians and Italian-Americans."
• Molly Haskell: "Movies are struggling to find a consensus on sexual 'role models.'"

Online viewing tip. Geweldenaren Van Ver. "Do not miss this," says Jim Coudal.

More online viewing tips via Newstoday. Videos documenting the goosebump-inducing ACCESS Project, the teaser for the all-girl snowboarding film Dropstitch and something about New York. Also: Just three more days to enter the Sky Captain Design-a-Theme Sweepstakes.

Posted by dwhudson at August 13, 2004 6:50 AM