October 17, 2004

More shorts, more fests.

Dali and Destino There isn't usually much shouting around here, but: "Destino" (click for clips) is coming to DVD! Probably. At least a doc about its making is, and one assumes six minutes will be found on the disc for the short itself. Whether it's brilliant or not (I've never seen it), as a cultural curiosity, the 1946 collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dali is hard to beat. The AP's story comes via logboy at Twitch: "[T]he two had great respect for each other, with Dali describing Disney as one of the three great American surrealists."

"Why is the silence so disconcerting?" Quick but great piece in Slate by Timothy Noah on Harry Shearer's exhibition "Face Time" at the Conner Contemporary Art gallery in Washington DC. You will definitely want to catch the slide show (links at the top and bottom of the page).

Also: When The Battle of Algiers was re-released theatrically, there was a slew of articles about the film's current relevancy, about the similarities and dissimilarities between the French in Algeria and the US in Iraq. Now that the DVD's out, complete with an interview with two high-profile counterterrorism experts, Fred Kaplan, always a thought-provoking writer, nabs the opportunity to take the proposed comparisons a few steps further. It's hardly a surprise that Kaplan concludes that there are fundamental mistakes being made, but he does offer a thin ray of hope and a few concrete suggestions about what can and should be done.

Meanwhile, David Edelstein responds to the hate mail he received in the wake of his review of Team America.

For Manohla Dargis, Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell is "more than a lapse; it is a brutal self-parody of a filmmaker who, having stripped down to the nitty-gritty once too often, may finally have nothing left to show."

Also in the New York Times:

Selling Democracy

  • Former Berlin bureau chief, and author of the excellent Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo, Roger Cohen considers the "Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan 1948 - 53" series shown at the NYFF: "By turns blunt and beguiling, menacing and mawkish, the films beg an overriding question: Why, with this experience behind it, has the United States failed so conspicuously since Sept. 11 to bolster its image in another region it seeks to transform, the Middle East?"
  • Frank Rich: "Like the Nixon administration before it, the Bush administration arrived at the White House already obsessed with news management and secrecy."
  • Sharon Waxman: "The last thing anybody in Hollywood wants is a rerun of last year's fiasco over Oscar DVD's.... But it looks as if a sequel may be just around the bend."
  • David Carr and Michael Joseph Gross report that NBC will let audiences decide to save or kill a running character on Law & Order, "a television first."
  • In an extraordinarily sweeping piece for the Book Review, Paul Theroux assesses what Norman Sherry has achieved in his three-volume biography of Graham Greene.
  • AO Scott considers the futures of Jared Hess, Jonathan Caouette and Shane Carruth and finds the career path of David Gordon Green "both exemplary and cautionary."
  • Sean Elder scans ScriptSales.com and parses 90 script deals closed in the last six weeks and spots a few trends.
  • And via Wiley Wiggins, Kirk Johnson's piece on "the nation's only film school dedicated to science and natural history.

More NYFF reviews:

  • Stephen Holden on Bergman's Saraband: "There has been no mellowing with age."
  • Scott on the "anguished epic of Palestinian history," The Gate of the Sun, on Café Lumière ("a faint, diminished echo" in relation to Tokyo Story; see also Filmbrain's take) and on Palindromes: "The real problem, it seems to me, is not that Mr. Solondz goes too far, but that he seems to have no particular direction in mind, no artistic interest beyond the limitless ugliness of humanity."On a related note, the New York Observer's Jake Brooks points out that, whatever you think of Palindromes, Wellspring, which has picked up the North American rights, is on a roll, and that's very good news for true indies.
  • Reviewing Sideways, which wraps the NYFF on Sunday, Manohla Dargis doesn't come right out and say it, but she'd clearly like to see Paul Giamatti score an Oscar nomination, maybe even a win. What's more, "the emergence of [Alexander] Payne into the front ranks of American filmmakers isn't just cause for celebration; it's a reason for hope." Although I've yet to see either film, from what I've read so far, I'm beginning to suspect that everyone who thinks they want to see I ♥ Huckabees actually wants to see Sideways.
  • Sort of a related piece, by the way: Hilary De Vries interviews Payne's wife, the extra-busy actress Sandra Oh.

More NYFF? Acquarello at Strictly Film School and Phyrephox at Milk Plus keep on filing.

Jonathan Rosenbaum: "Are festivals unconsciously duplicating the self-censorship of network and cable TV, which has made [muckraking] documentaries so necessary?"

Two festival previews at indieWIRE: Wendy Mitchell on the Viennale, through October 27 (plus a full day of reruns on the 28th) and Brian Brooks on the Deep Ellum Film Festival in Dallas, through October 21.

Amit Tyagi has wrapped his coverage of Africa Cine Week for Cinema Minima.

Filmmaker's Steve Gallagher notes that the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 26 - February 6) has been "revamped."

Peaches Christ's "Midnight Mass: Season of Horror" has begun in San Francisco.

Resfest has launched a blog.

Friday Review: Jude Law Fay Weldon writes a very fine cover story for the Guardian's Friday Review, tracing the changes men and women have gone through in the nearly 40 years between Alfie (Michael Caine) and Alfie (Jude Law). Distillation hardly does the piece justice, but in short: "Bad for art but good for people." Weldon and Mark Lawson can agree that "Caine's Alfie... still astonishes for its nastiness and amorality."

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

Because he used Final Cut Pro to cut Napoleon Dynamite, Bija Gutoff profiles Jeremy Coon for Apple.

Interviews in the Independent: Tiffany Rose with Susan Sarandon and Tim Cooper with Anne Hathaway.

The Telegraph's SF Said meets Pawel Pawlikowski; the man does have his opinions: "He talks with passion of Polish auteurs such as Munk, Wajda, Polanski, Kieslowski; but dismisses most of Ken Loach's work ('So didactic so often, and so bland; he always wants to teach you something!') and Mike Leigh's ('Cinematically, it's not interesting')." Also: Peaches Geldof's review of My Summer of Love ("it's just not risqué enough").

Online viewing tip #1. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America." Jon Stewart on Crossfire, a clip at Media Matters via... well, everywhere, but I happened to see it first at Mark Rabinowitz's blog, who found it via Ray Pride and so on.

Online viewing tip #2. Revolution: USA, a Coldcut and Nomlg. project. Lots to watch; but you can also download audio loops and video clips and roll your own.



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Posted by dwhudson at October 17, 2004 9:03 AM