Shorts, 10/21.

"We try not to take too much too seriously here at The Stranger - but our Genius Awards are different," writes Christopher Frizzelle. "For the second year in a row, we're awarding $5,000 each to a filmmaker, a theater artist, a writer, a visual artist, and an arts organization that we think are doing terrific and original work." And the filmmaker this year is David Russo. Bradley Steinbacher:

Russo creates short films that are fits of live action and animation, rapid in their editing, and beautifully designed. In Pan with Us (2003), he brings a Robert Frost poem to life with a large metal bird and a giant ream of paper, telling the story of the ancient Greek woodland god Pan, whose name has given us the word "panic." Populi (2002) [click to watch], which is on permanent display at the newly monikered Qwest Field, is an ambush set to Holst's "Mars: Bringer of War," involving a carved wooden human shape, a steel sphere, and travels not just around the globe but possibly into other dimensions.

Short profiles of four more "Ones to Watch" follow.

Also in the Stranger:

• Nate Lippens looks back on the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (October 15 - 21) and finds it "represents a far-flung idea of being gay."
• Steinbacher on Team America: "[I]t's the glee with which Parker and Stone bravely molest both sides of every argument that makes the show necessary viewing."
• Charles Mudede on Shall We Dance?: "I hate this movie for several reasons..."
• Sandeep Kaushik: "I recall, with hyper-clarity, the exact moment I comprehended the genius of Michael Moore."
• More reviews, shorts and goings on.

Raoul Hernandez traces the search for an iconic image to grace the flyer for the Austin Film Society series, "Talk of the Town: The Films of Jean Arthur."

Also in the Austin Chronicle:

• Marc Savlov interviews Jonathan Caouette - "I had a feeling that Austinites would really get [Tarnation] more than anybody, just because of the whole Texas connection and the whole Texas sensibility" - and Shane Carruth: "I think 2001 is the best film ever made, science fiction or otherwise."

• Joe Leydon is in Austin tonight to introduce a screening of The 400 Blows in conjunction with the release of his new Guide to Essential Movies You Must See which, as he explains to Spencer Parsons, is "not a list of the greatest movies ever made." Instead, as Parsons puts it, it's "an informed and opinionated beginner's phrase book for the lingua franca of cinema."

• Briefs: Savlov's "Short Cuts," Belinda Acosta on The Political Dr. Seuss and Courtney Fitzgerald on Films to See Before You Vote.

Hats off at indieWIRE today for two women who've done oodles for independent film. "Marcie Bloom's more than twenty-five years working in New York's film community will be celebrated during an intimate dinner party in The Hamptons this evening," writes Eugene Hernandez, who talks with her by phone. And SXSW 2005 will present a retrospective of producer Christine Vachon's films, and yes, she'll be there, reports Brian Brooks.

At long last, I get a good solid reason to link to the wonderful Margaret Wertheim. Her LA Weekly column this week previews the "Soft Science" program at the LA Filmforum on Sunday evening. "[Programmer Rachel] Mayeri is right to suggest that beneath the veneer of Reason, scientific labs have (unconciously) become the sites for a vast array of highly innovative aesthetic experiments."

Also in the LA Weekly:

• Steven Mikulan catches the USC stop of Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour."
• John Powers on Jon Stewart's Crossfire blaze and how comedy is suddenly being taken very, very seriously.
• A Sideways combo: Joe Donnelly meets Thomas Haden Church, "sure to be the revelation of the highbrow-movie season," and Kim Morgan takes on the review: Positive.
• Ella Taylor on Vera Drake: "I’m still trying to understand why I came out unpersuaded and unmoved by a movie as capably acted, gorgeously mounted and expertly directed as this one is."

The "distortions" of events portrayed in Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal "are intended to hurt Mr. Kerry at the polls," writes Alessandra Stanley. "Instead, they mainly distract viewers from the real subject of the film: the veterans' unheeded feelings of betrayal and neglect." Meanwhile, Sinclair's stock seems to be recovering, reports Bill Carter.

Also in the New York Times:

• Stanley also reviews The Office Special, "as wickedly, painfully funny as the first two seasons and, in tiny, fleeting doses, as delicately tender."
• Sharon Waxman examines what's at stake in HBO's "huge gamble," Rome.
• Janet Maslin reviews two memoirs, one of which happens to be written by Tatum O'Neal and "devoted to celebrity, shock value and adroitly pious spite." The other, by Tara Bray Smith, not a film star, does sound like the better read.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir on David O Russell's Soldier's Pay, "a profoundly revealing document. Not so much because it offers a low-key indictment of the confused, chaotic and mismanaged Iraq conflict... Rather, this film feels like a confession of sorts, an insistence that when the chips are down content trumps form and the medium is not - at least not entirely - the message."

"Stolen Honor is the kind of show you might come across at 2am as a paid infomercial on a local-access channel and leave on for a few minutes out of sheer fascinated disgust," writes Dana Stevens at Slate, where Drew Clark addresses the question, "Can a broadcaster air a partisan film in the final weeks of an election campaign without granting equal time to the other side?"

Also: David Edelstein's appreciation of Annette Bening.

In PopMatters, Michael Abernethy runs through the history of the relationship between Hollywood and Washington and argues that it'll keep on keeping on - as it should.

The first post-9/11 episode of South Park was also the worst, argues Spencer Ackerman in the New Republic: "That could be forgiven - after all, Parker and Stone were no different than millions of Americans in their confusion about what to make of September 11. But three years later, Team America shows they're still bewildered."

London's specialty theater, the Other Cinema is in serious trouble, reports Paul Arendt in the Guardian. Also: Sony's bringing restored Harold Lloyd silents to theaters and, topping today's newsbits: Jake Gyllenhaal joins Sam Mendes's Jarhead.

And the last item for today, but most certainly not the least, major congrats to Chuck Olsen whose Blogumentary premieres at the 4th annual City Pages GET REAL Documentary Film Festival on November 4 in Minneapolis. Writes Chuck: "Blogs, and the entire mediascape, have changed quite a bit since I started making this film two years ago. Blogumentary takes you on a tour through the history of blogs and media, all the way up to blogs’ role in the downfall of Trent Lott, the rise of Howard Dean, and Dan Rather’s forged memo debacle." Online viewing tip: Selected scenes posted at Chuck's blog. Scroll down a bit and look - where else? - left.

Posted by dwhudson at October 21, 2004 9:04 AM