October 20, 2004

Shorts, 10/20.

Mughal-e-Azam "Sixty-four years after Mughal-e-Azam went on the floors and 44 years after it first exploded on screen, Mughal-e-Azam is ready for a grand revival." Roshmila Bhattacharya tells the unlikely story of its making, its initial reception, its gradual acceptance and its restoration - a risky endeavor - for the Indian Express.

Matt Clayfield: "Idiot Box and Mullet - these two profoundly interesting and infuriating pictures - ultimately represent what I consider to be some of the best filmmaking that [Australia] at present (or not-so-distant past, at least) has to offer, and David Caesar - this profoundly interesting and infuriating director - is in my eyes one of this country's most unique, angry and distinctly enigmatic voices."

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Garry Maddox traces what happens when Australian stories are told by foreigners. Via IFCine & Heard.

Doug Cummings compares and contrasts Visconti's White Nights and Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer, both adaptations of a story by Dostoevsky.

Robert Davis picks up on one of Girish Shambu's post and notes: "The universe of movies is staggering." Comments ensue.

At Twitch:

As the presidential campaign races towards its close, so does another sideshow: What will Sinclair broadcast and to whom?

  • Kate Zernike reports on Monday's developments for the New York Times: A vet is suing the producer of Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, "saying it libels him by deceptively editing his statements." Zernike and Jim Rutenberg: "The film is rife with out-of-context and incomplete quotations from Mr. Kerry and other antiwar veterans."
  • Sinclair's Washington bureau chief has been fired for opening his mouth. The AP's Kasey Jones has more.
  • On Tuesday morning, David Lieberman and James Cox reported in USA Today that shares in Sinclair had fallen 12 percent since the company's plans to air the anti-Kerry doc were made known.
  • By Tuesday evening, Sinclair announced it'd only be showing parts of the film and on fewer of its stations. Burger King's pulled all its ads anyway. In this morning's NYT, Bill Carter reports that Sinclair "has had its stock price fall by almost 17 percent and its market capitalization drop by $140 million in the last week and a half."
  • Those are the fleeting details. For excellent all-round analysis, including an interview with Jon Leiberman, that fired bureau chief, see Paul Schmelzer's piece at Alternet.
  • One more: "As you may have gleaned, this sort of transparent politicking makes the cinetrix cranky." And when she's cranky, she's doubly good, which, of course, is very, very good indeed.

On a related note, "David Van Taylor, director of two of the films cited by the National Review last week as evidence of the Sundance Channel's liberal bent, takes issue with this characterization." Cinemocracy runs his response.

Back to the NYT:

  • Edgier times call for edgier family fare. Or so Disney hopes. Neal Koch reports.
  • But former economic advisor to Bush 41, Todd G Buchholz argues on the Op-Ed page, forget edge: the way to secure jobs in Hollywood is to make cleaner movies.
  • And The Incredibles? John M Broder: "The buzz out of early screenings is that [the film] carries a considerably more middle-American sensibility than the usual fare from Hollywood, where liberal shibboleths often become the stuff of mainstream movies."
  • Alessandra Stanley on why Jon Stewart's "surprise attack on the hosts of CNN's Crossfire was so satisfying last Friday." Rex has his reservations about that but also loads o' links at Fimoculous.
  • America, 1962. A black man is shot because his son didn't say "sir" to a white man. The son, Carl Ray, now 60, is the subject of a documentary, A Killing in Choctaw: The Power of Forgiveness. Carol Pogash tells the story.
  • Polly Shulman meets Primer director Shane Carruth.
  • Dave Kehr on this week's new DVDs. More from Ray Pride at MCN.

Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, the "most sexually explicit film in UK cinema history," according to the Guardian, "has been passed uncut and granted an 18 certificate by the British board of film classification." Comments Jeremy Harrison at his blog, Artistic Delusions: "Personally, I think this film is going to be awesome. Come on, sex to the sounds of the Dandy Warhols and Franz Ferdinand! Can you go wrong?" Well...

Back to the Guardian:

  • Try making a film that clocks in at 15 seconds. And can be played on a mobile phone. Pascal Wyse and his partner, Jo Berger, did. See the results and more: Nokia Shorts 2004.

Apocalypse Now

Reenactments of historical events are nothing new. But "computer wizardry" is making it possible to present such sequences as archival footage. James Rampton examines the implications. Also in the Independent: There's talk that Finding Neverland is Johnny Depp's clear shot at an Oscar; David Thomson doubts it'll happen. And Jonathan Romney lists his London Film Festival picks.

Via Movie City News:

"'Your ass is your ass,' she says. This is [Catherine] Breillat's expression of a view that, as it happens, I have long held about explicit sex scenes, though I have never stated it so succinctly." A fine pair of reviews in the New Republic from Stanley Kauffmann: Sex is Comedy and I ♥ Huckabees: David O Russell "seems so busy bragging about his nerve that it smothers the comedy."

No stand-out motif in the Village Voice this week; just lots o' reviews and a few extras:

  • J Hoberman on Team America, "the perfect date flick for a drunken frat boy trying to impress right-wing skank Ann Coulter," Sideways ("much of the comedy here is beyond poignant - it's painful"; but, you know, in a good way) and Undertow: "However cloying, the movie creates a powerful vortex."
Hearts and Minds

In the Moment: My Life as an Actor Scott Eyman reviews Ben Gazzara's In the Moment: My Life as an Actor for the New York Observer: "John Cassavetes - with whom he made Husbands, Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - is rendered with much of the precision, and all the immediacy and affection, of first love."

"Welles told Bogdanovich that while an expertly directed film 'certainly ranked among the fine arts... the average director, even some of the most successful, with long distinguished careers, did not make the difference that really good performances do.'" Matt Zoller Seitz's review of the latter's Who the Hell's In It picks up there and then samples the book's darker observations about what Arthur Miller called "the 'culture of contempt' that drives Hollywood" to draw out the tragedy at the heart of many of Bogdanovich's portraits.

Also in the New York Press:

  • A perhaps unintentionally related cover story. For $250, Scott Powers Studios, Inc., will give actors a brief shot at auditioning for a casting director and the chance to listen to a half-hour panel discussion. Is it a scam? Gregory Gilderman and Andrew Lorin investigate.
  • Seitz on Team America, "possibly the only halfway significant slapstick movie of recent times that was not directed by the Farrelly brothers," and The Machinist: "[Christian] Bale... has learned a lesson that eludes most of his rivals: The actor who listens and thinks is more interesting than the actor who won't stop talking." (Did he say "rivals"?)
  • Armond White on Undertow, "so misguided, so uninspired, it feels embarrassingly derivative," and: "I scoff at those reviewers who dismiss Around the Bend as cliché-ridden because they don't appreciate that the three lead actors... are so visually and emotionally spellbinding." It really is about the actors this week in the NYP.
  • JR Taylor listens to a few movies.

Lars von Trier is editing Manderlay but says, according this wire story, that the third installment of his USA Trilogy is years away, "because in the meantime, I need to earn some money." He plans to raise it with a horror film aimed at a wider audience. Producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen: "It is kind of an Antichrist with international distribution, based on the theory that it was not God but Satan who created the world." Related: Vince Keenan on The Five Obstructions.

"Why science-fiction and fantasy? Because the lines are blurrier than you might think. Many think of Star Wars as sci-fi, but its complete lack of hard science also lands it in fantasy camp." And at the top of filmcritic.com's "Top 50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films" list. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle's Dan Fost reports on George Lucas's new magazine, Edutopia.

Chazz Palminteri's Noel opens in up to ten cities on November 12 - and on the same day, you can buy the DVD at Amazon for $4.99. The catch? You have 48 hours to watch the DVD before it self-destructs. Reuters reports on an experimental distribution model.

Wrapping up the New York Film Festival:

Palindromes

The Chicago International Film Festival officially closes tomorrow, but it's not too early for Anthony Kaufman to look back at the best of the fest. Also at iW: Eugene Hernandez on the so far limited yet potentially wider release of The World According to Bush by the Silver Lake Film Festival.

Peter Kubelka, Ernie Gehr and Nina Fonoroff figure prominently in Acquarello's notes on last weekend's "Views from the Avant-Garde" series.

Matt Dentler hangs with the screenwriters at the Austin Film Festival.

The Viennale is Wendy Mitchell's favorite festival. And she attends a lot of festivals.

Max Goldberg previews the retrospective of cinematographer James Wong Howe's work at the Castro in San Francisco, October 22 - 28: "Despite the consistent distinction of Howe's work, what one marvels at most is his adaptability - that is, the myriad ways in which the cinematographer varies his aesthetic in the service of a story." Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Dennis Harvey: "Testosterone misses the mark by so far, it almost - alas, only almost - lands in so-bad-it's-good territory."

Looking ahead to November:

"A short film is like..." Greg Allen Googles it.

Online browsing tip #1. The Political Dr. Seuss.

Online browsing tip #2. Hitchcock mosaics at the Leytonstone tube station. Wow. Via Metaphilm.

Online viewing tip. Nicola Dulion's "Stupid Worm." Via Roger Avary.



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Posted by dwhudson at October 20, 2004 12:08 PM