Shorts, 9/20.

Arthur Miller's new play Finishing the Picture premieres in Chicago on Tuesday with a helluva cast that includes Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach and Matthew Modine. As she meets the playwright, Deborah Solomon has a few questions in mind:

Why, you wonder, would Miller feel moved to exhume the ghost of Monroe after all these years? The making of The Misfits has already been well chronicled in a documentary film and a book of Magnum photographs. You might say that the goings-on surrounding the film have acquired their own stirring narrative, one that actually surpasses the movie in both dramatic interest and cultural importance. Yet that story was never quite complete, at least not in Miller's imagination. With his new play, he tries to "finish the picture."

Also in the New York Times:

• "Perhaps no director, from Italy or anywhere else, has dramatized revolution - the most violent and concentrated form of historical change - with as much vigor and intelligence as Gillo Pontecorvo, now 84, who is currently experiencing an unexpected and gratifying revival." AO Scott on Burn!, which "feels less like a prophecy of insurrections to come than an elegy for revolutionary hopes and illusions." Also: One last look at Toronto.
• Dave Kehr talks to the filmmakers behind Shaun of the Dead, "one of the most successful blends of terror and humor since John Landis's 1981 movie, American Werewolf in London."
• Lynn Hirschberg has a few questions for Walter Salles.
• Bernard Weinraub: "It was HBO night at the Emmys." For excellent commentary, you'll want to click over to Aaron at Out of Focus.
• Ken Belson on the battle over the next generation of DVDs: "The rivalry between the competing coalitions - Blu-ray, led by Sony and relying heavily on Sony technology, and the HD-DVD format group using technology from its leaders, Toshiba and NEC - is turning into a fight over whether the television or the computer will dominate the living room."

Arguing that theatrical distribution is now more a means to an end won't raise eyebrows anymore, but Daragh Sankey asserts that there's more at stake than most realize. In short, cinema-as-we-know-it. One could argue that cogs in the wheel such as the star system or the critical-industrial complex could (and should) adapt to the rapidly evolving new reality, but still, his is a provocative piece, and Parts Two and Three are definitely worth looking forward to.

In contrast, Doug Cummings's experience in Toronto "deepens my conviction that film criticism is a social act, and certainly cinephilia and festival going are as well."

Wrapping up Toronto at Twitch are Opus, with reviews of The Ninth Day, The World and Kontroll, and Todd on Steamboy, "a marvel on all levels."

Eugene Hernandez rounds up the awards winners at Toronto and Brian Brooks serves up more pix.

Mark Danner assesses the indelible imagery of Abu Ghraib in the New York Review of Books. Indelible everywhere around the world except, of course, on the American campaign trail.

The cinetrix goes surfing on waves of library music.

In Le Nouvel Observateur (and in French), Catherine David praises Alain Absire's telling of Jean Seberg's story. Via Perlentaucher's Magazinrundschau.

For Film-Philosophy, Paul Fox reviews Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua, "a collection of essays, covering several decades, by one of China's leading and most prolific film and cultural theorists."

The WELL is hosting a conversation with one of its hosts, Craig Seligman. The subject is his book, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me, and so far, it's led to a split into two conversations, one on Kael and movies with Andy Klein and one on Sontag and politics with Wagner James Au.

"[Th]e one thing I know is that adults simply aren't affected in a malign manner by material which is merely shocking. Personally, I think that Irreversible was actually highly moral, if a little sentimental. But if common sense tells us anything, it's that it's only a movie." Robin Duval, Britain's top censor, now retiring, surprises Mark Kermode. Also in the Observer: Gaby Wood interviews Ashley Judd and Frances Tillson on Modesty Blaise.

Shooting porn without "barrier equipment" has led to fines for two production companies in California. Dan Glaister reports in the Guardian.

"What may surprise many" about Team America: World Police, writes Sean Smith in Newsweek, is that Trey Parker and Matt Stone "pummel the left more than the right." Nope. No surprise here.

Wiley Wiggins: "Maybe one day in the distant future when (and if) Lucas' copyright on the work expires, different disparate fragments of the film can be sampled and mutated, becoming their own new films. The footage and ideas could be used just as THX-1138's hive society intended to use him, as spare parts." More Lucas stuff via Rashomon: Something Awful offers screen caps of the changes made to the Star Wars trilogy.

Via Movie City News, Leah McLaren asks Wim Wenders in the Globe and Mail why he thinks no distributor has yet picked up Land of Plenty for the North American market: "Apparently the Christian message and the liberal message are considered incompatible."

Plus: Chris Marlowe's Reuters piece on how Fine Line Features is sprinkling the Net with a blog and bits of online viewing from John Waters's A Dirty Shame. You can find one at Salon, for example, or go straight to Movie-List for the trailer and nine featurettes.

Online viewing tip, once again via greg.org: Daniel Libeskind: A True Believer.

Posted by dwhudson at September 20, 2004 7:29 AM