Shorts, 10/29.

Halloween and politics meld in a few current alternative weeklies. For larger versions of the paintings by Richard Serra and Elizabeth Peyton on the two covers of this week's LA Weekly, head to Artforum and, for the sheer fun of it, see the Stranger's "Scariest Halloween Costumes."

Beyond the LA Weekly's covers:

• Nikki Finke on Michael Ovitz: "Okay, I'll just say it: He's nuts. Just nuts. And endlessly amusing as a result."
• Ella Taylor on Enduring Love, "a horror movie covering for a worried meditation on the fragility of the modern couple."
• Kim Morgan on Ray, which "flips through its cinematic pages with a breathless and-then-this-happened urgency, offering up little in the way of personality (or truth) beyond Jamie Foxx's strong performance in the title role and the brilliant music that spikes the celluloid."

Michael Chabon is writing a kung fu version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for Disney with Yuen Wo Ping set to direct, reports Borys Kit in the Hollywood Reporter. Via Todd at Twitch, who asks, "How strange is this?" Also via Twitch: The trailer for Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle and news of Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated version of Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Timothy Garton Ash:

Contrast the drama of democracy in Washington and Brussels. On the right-hand side of your split screen you have the world's biggest western... This is a big-budget Hollywood production... It features the most powerful man in the world, as well as war, sex, God and lies. It's a drama that affects us all. "I'm feeling quite nervous about Tuesday," a Pakistani student told me, "even though it's not my country." What film director could ask for more?

On the left-hand side of your split screen, you have the postmodern Euro-drama, taken from the Franco-German arts channel Arte, with subtitles.

Also in the Guardian:

• So there's a remake of The Women in the pipeline. Jeanette Winterson still loves the original, even though: "The only women you are likely to meet nowadays who look or act like this are men."
• Jonathan Jones on Peter Cowie's John Ford and the American West, which "demonstrates how Ford's films are steeped in precise visual quotations from the 19th-century artists who first invented the image of the west."
• David Mamet names his favorite movie moments.
• Emma Brockes talks to Sam Taylor-Wood about her video work.
• John Patterson interviews Billy Bob Thornton.
• Keith Richards will play Johnny Depp's father in Pirates of the Caribbean: Treasures of the Lost Abyss.
• Depp goes head-to-head with Jude Law on the covers of the November issues of the UK's film magazines. Sandra Smith browses.
• "The American president was awarded the dubious honour of Movie Villain of the Year for his part in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 by 10,000 film fans polled by Total Film magazine."
• Sony, Warner Bros and Disney "are said to be hatching plans for a joint enterprise to oversee the digital conversion of US cinemas."
• London Film Festival news.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on 10 on Ten: "[T]here's something suspect about Kiarostami's cookbook-style lucidity - he may be sincere, but he seems to be overestimating the role rationality plays in his decisions."

Oh, my. A spirited exchange between Roger Ebert and Conrad Black. Also via Movie City News: The Washington Post's William Booth meets Paul Giamatti and, for Film Stew, Richard Horgan looks back over the long and sordid history of fake celebrity blogs - to wind up wondering how real ones might be employed in the future.

In the Austin Chronicle:

• Anne S Lewis talks to Liz Mermin about the unlikely subject she's chosen to make a doc about, The Beauty Academy of Kabul.
• Spencer Parsons reviews Who the Hell's In It, "shot through with Bogdanovich's customary nostalgia for Hollywood's classic studio era and more intensely haunted than usual by death and decay."
• "Catch it if you can," says Marc Savlov of The Loss of Nameless Things.

Brace yourself for a wave of post-election escapist studio fare, warns Neal Koch in the New York Times. The headline for Sharon Waxman's piece speaks for itself: "Where, Oh Where, Are the Oscar Contenders?"

What are Academy members supposed to do with screeners they don't want to keep? As Roger Avary points out, it's a stickier question than it might seem at first.

Wendy Mitchell does love that Viennale; her report for indieWIRE.

At Engadget, JD Lassica asks TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay about the future of Internet television. Via Cinema Minima.

Cinemocracy and I respectfully exchange differing points of view.

"Two Vonnegut-based films that have for many years resided on Filmbrain's want-to-see-somehow-someday list are the 1972 TV film Between Time and Timbuktu and 1971's Happy Birthday, Wanda June. Filmbrain recently tracked down the latter, and it was even better than he had expected."

At low culture, jp breaks the first two rules of Fight Club: The Game.

Drew's back; is there hope for Bitter Cinema after all?

The Official B-Movie Hall of Fame. Via, in a roundabout sort of way, Vince Keenan.

Anthony Kaufman and Alternet's Davina Baum assess Eminem's "Mosh."

At Filmmaker, Steve Gallagher will point you to a sneak peek at John Cameron Mitchell's video for the Sister Scissors.

Greg Allen marvels at the Bush-Cheney campaign's choice of editors.

Trekkies for Kerry.

Online fiddling around tip. Make your own news at the Control Room site.

And finally, a silly little online viewing tip to bring us back to the Halloween-Election Mosh: "Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue."

Posted by dwhudson at October 29, 2004 10:16 AM