Shorts, 10/22.

Film-Philosophy launches a series of upcoming essays on avant-garde film with the appropriately titled "Introducing Avant-Garde Film," William C Wees's review of Michael O'Pray's Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions, in which "coverage of eighty-odd years of avant-garde filmmaking is highly selective and, given its brevity, notable for the comparatively large number of British filmmakers it includes."

As it happens, the new issue of F.LM - Texte zum Film is devoted to "Filmphilosophie," a term editor Stefan Hölten explains was chosen to reflect on two aspects it suggests, "Philosophie des Films" and "Film der Philosophie." Hölten also writes (in German, so I'm translating):

Jacques Derrida is dead. When this issue of F.LM was being planned, even as the cover was being designed, he was still alive. As coincidence would have it, then, the theme of this issue becomes a sort of "eulogy" to perhaps the most important philosopher of our time.

If you read the comments here (and I hope you do, since clearing out the spam is pretty tedious), you'll have seen - besides David Lowery's interview with Jonathan Caouette; in English! - that Thomas Groh has pointed to a translation into German of an interview with Derrida that appeared in Cahiers du Cinema in 2001, "Jacques Derrida et les fantomes du cinema."

Before getting back to English, one more in German. In Die Zeit, Wim Wenders writes a lengthy and furious condemnation of Der Untergang (The Downfall), the film event of the year in Germany.

Ok, English. English English, too: In his cover story for the British Prospect, Mark Cousins hails the worldwide rediscovery of films from Asia; he runs down brief histories of various national cinemas, considers some of the best among the most recent films, and then:

Just as deep ideas about individual freedom have led to the bracingly driven aspirational cinema of Hollywood, so Buddhism and Taoism explain the distinctiveness of Asian cinema at its best. In Venice in 1951 and Cannes in 2004, audiences left the cinemas with heads full of dazzling images. But the greatness of Rashomon, Ugetsu, 2046 or House of Flying Daggers is, in the end, not to do with imagery at all. Yes, they are pictorially distinctive, but it is their different sense of what a person is, and what space and action are, which makes them new to western eyes.

Mike Hertenstein wraps his coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival at Flickerings with a five-out-five baseball feature review of Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow, part of the fest's "Flashback" series. After his insightful consideration of the film itself, Hertenstein notes that Mehrjui was unable to attend the screening because he couldn't get a visa:

The greater loss would seem to be that of America, which has now managed to deny entry and/or manhandle three major Iranian directors.... Superstition and xenophobia are truly universal, whether the Other is named "the Great Satan," "the Axis of Evil," or the Bolouris. The Cow's story of communal darkness and light, with its reminder of the good and bad that tragedy might inspire, was never more relevant.

Check out the 49 hopefuls for the Foreign Language Oscar at Movie City News.

The cinetrix: "Have you been reading Jonathan Kiefer's Maisonneuve column, 'Film Flâneur'? You should." Heavens, she's right. Again. Read that whole post of hers, too. And the comments.

Vital

Among the many, many vital links and newsbits at Twitch, there's Todd's discovery of subtitled trailers for Hiroki Yamaguchi's Gusher No Binds Me (plus a review by Mike Atherton) and for Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital.

A sneak peek at Birth from NP Thompson, who's surprised to find that it "turns out not only to be very good, but one of the finest, most indispensable movie-going experiences of the year."

Listening to Todd Solondz talk at the New York Film Festival has actually worsened Filmbrain's already negative reaction to Palindromes.

Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay discovers William Gibson's blog, which he'd abandoned for a while but has since picked up again. Film news: Peter Weir is set to direct an adaptation of Pattern Recognition; politics news: as Scott puts it, Gibson "feels an imaginary collective mental barrier may be working against John Kerry."

"Kukla, Fran and Oligarchy": The Advocate's Alonso Duralde finds that "what [Team America] occasionally lacks in laughs, it unfortunately makes up for with hypocritical politics."

Citizens United, the conservative group behind the anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 tract Celsius 41.11, has slapped a bit of the soundtrack for Powaqqatsi on two its trailers. Philip Glass is suing. Kate Zernike reports. As for the film, Manohla Dargis writes that the filmmakers want to make you "afraid - very, very afraid" and "apply their thesis with a trowel."

Salon's Eric Boehlert examines the records of David Smith, chairman and CEO of Sinclair, and Carlton Sherwood, producer of Stolen Honor.

"I have always thought of my writing On the Waterfront not as a conventional movie assignment, but as a mission." Budd Schulberg tells the story of the film's making, from the original newspaper articles, through a hand-off from one director to the next, to the Oscars and a commission "to impose some sense of law on what had become a lawless frontier."

Also in the Guardian:

• In an even-handed move, the paper asks Ruth Lea, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, to take a look at The Corporation: "This film is a missed opportunity. Companies are not all squeaky clean but, rather than target genuine corporate misdemeanours, it splatters bullets all over the wall and misses the miscreants."
• Arts Council chairman Christopher Frayling, briefly, on the linkage between painting, most of it "from northern Europe in the 19th century," and horror movie posters.
• David Mamet, not at all briefly.

Leslie Felperin gets Jim Jarmusch on a nostalgic roll: "New York in the late 70s.... Anything seemed possible.... the beginning of punk rock, the beginning of hip hop, the beginning of a new generation of underground film-makers and artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat... It was also disco, and excess, and that whole scene. Yeah, it was a lot of wow, a lot of weird things compared to today."

Also in the Independent:

• Claire Allfree on Shooting Shakespeare, a logical step following Silent Shakespeare.
• Alfie director Charles Shyer selects his "ten best cads on film."
• Louise Jury: "The artist Tracey Emin will challenge film censors after her movie debut, showing a teenage girl committing suicide by slitting her wrists, was given an adult-only certificate."

Matt Dentler spends a weekend with The Flaming Lips and SpongeBob Squarepants.

The Reel Roundtable's Elizabeth Carmody offers her thoughts on running a film series.

IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks listens to Bill Condon talk about Kinsey in the Hamptons.

Seattle Maggie has left the office - and celebrates with the best "anti-office, up-with-the-people" movies.

Vince Keenan believes there's still hope for Sandra Bullock.

Online browsing and viewing tip #1. Variety is offering free access to "Variety Vision," sort of a sketch of what Variety might look like on TV.

Online browsing and viewing tip #2. P2P Politics. Glen Otis Brown explains at Creative Commons: "The site enables anyone to select from a menu of video clips the ones that best express their view of the U.S. presidential elections, and then email links to those clips, along with a personalized message, to friends, family, and colleagues." Via Cinema Minima.

More? Wiley Wiggins has two more.

Posted by dwhudson at October 22, 2004 10:40 AM