GreenCine Daily: Sunday shorts.

November 7, 2004

Sunday shorts.

Looks like there's going to be another bonus packed into the recent launch of Spiegel International: English translations of reviews that appear in the magazine. Often, that'll mean sneak peeks of European films that aren't quite due yet for US release. For example: Lars-Olav Beier reviews Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement. Todd at Twitch is, in the meantime, holding his full review until the week of its release, but nevertheless offers his first impression.

The film is currently the center of a raging debate over France's program of subsidizing domestic productions, as Jon Henley reports in the Guardian. Though it's "set in France, was filmed in France, is spoken in French and kept some 600 French technicians, 80 French actors and 1,500 French extras employed for more than two years," two associations of French producers are arguing that the film is, in fact, not French, and therefore, does not qualify for public funds.

Also in the Guardian:

Kevin Jackson: "[I]f you are lucky enough to have seen his work and to have fallen under its spell, you will understand why some perceptive viewers - including Lindsay Anderson and John Boorman, Mike Leigh and Lord Attenborough, Terence Davies and Gilbert Adair - have maintained that [Humphrey] Jennings is one of this country's most prodigiously gifted directors. Quite possibly the greatest we have ever had."
Gareth McLean: "It's time for a new game. It's called Five Degrees Of Shirley Henderson. The Scottish actor, who hasn't ventured to Hollywood and still lives in Fife when she's not working, makes [Kevin] Bacon look like a lazy billy-no-mates."
John Patterson: "It took Hollywood a long time to give the Vietnam war a second thought, and I wonder how long it'll be before the first Iraq vets start showing up on screen."
Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff.
James Verini on the IMDb dating game. For background, see Nikki Finke in August.

Anthony Kaufman: "Changing a culture that celebrates The Apprentice and Survivor - games of humiliation and materialism and Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest - a culture of diabetes-causing fast food chains and chemical-spewing corporations (all duly attacked this year, but apparently not enough to do anything about it). It all seems like a noble goal, but I expect American culture to be unconquerable and lost for good."

Doug Cummings has a different take and looks to what, in the wake of the election, might be learned from a mentor in the truest sense of the word: "[Andr�] Bazin's cultural engagement was more moral, progressive, spiritual - even Christian - than the conservative half of the American electorate could possibly dream."

Filmbrain finds that The Assassination of Richard Nixon "might just have a greater impact today than it would have a few weeks ago."

Koza Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece in PopMatters on Nuri Bilge Ceylan: "It is as though we are watching not film, but the director's very thoughts and experiences as they play out across the screen of his mind.... In his melancholic pessimism and everyday existentialism, Ceylan brings hope, at least, to cinema."

Nicole Kassell's The Woodsman and Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation (Caouette link via Brian Flemming, by the way) have taken the top awards at the London Film Festival. Louise Jury reports; Roger Clarke amplifies.

Also in the Independent, which is having off-n-on problems with its new site, so be patient, two interviews: Leslie Felperin with Nicole Kidman and Ryan Gilbey with Meryl Streep.

Unfortunately, only Atlantic subscribers can read all four of David O Russell's blurbs on books he recommends, but it does seem that two are available to the rest of us.

At Movie Poop Shoot, Alison Veneto presents an introduction to J-Horror (and posts some bad news regarding the domestic release of Steamboy as well), DK Holm wonders what Sherry Lansing's departure from Paramount might mean for William Friedkin's future and Chris Ryall reports from the Hamptons.

The new blog at indieWIRE: AFI Fest 2004. There, too: Matt Dentler and Leonard Klady.

In San Francisco, the 8th International Latino Film Festival opened on Friday and runs through November 21 and the 29th annual American Indian Film Festival opened yesterday and runs through next Saturday.

In the New York Times:

Ross Johnson spots a trend at the American Film Market, perhaps best summed up by Avi Lerner: "The days of buyers wanting to pay by the pound for movies with actors rented by the day are over."
Steve Martin tells the story of one of his better purchases: "The drawing was lush with Surrealist imagery that was woven together seamlessly. I am not a sucker for photorealistic skill, but the microscopic details were effortlessly done and expertly supported the drawing's content. I felt I was looking at an exceptional artwork."
Together with Paul Reubens, Dave Itzkoff looks back: "On the air from 1986 to 1991, Pee-wee's Playhouse was a vibrant and relentlessly inventive half-hour that was equal parts dollies and Dali, whose every frame was crammed with pop art, vintage toys and talking furniture."
Laura Holson on Michael Ovitz's version of Hollywood: "It is, as some noted, a world where the fictional Mafia family the Sopranos would be at home, and probably do well in."
Extracts from Cliffs Notes-style film study guides.

"�ber Teens" rule on TV, writes Heather Havrilesky in Salon.

In the Observer:

"The superman is a man of power, which means that from the first his mission was political."Peter Conrad traces the history of the superhero from Nietzsche to Mr Incredible.
Jason Burke take measure of the political climate in the Netherlands where the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh "has catalysed a steady erosion of the Dutch tradition of moderation and self-censorship on race and religion."
David Smith profiles Nathan Lane.

Via Movie City News: Scott Eyman interviews Peter Bogdanovich.

In the Telegraph:

Sheila Johnston asks Edgar Reitz about the influence of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil on his own films: "It's a polyphonic work, in which the pictures and text often seem completely independent of each other."
Marc Lee on his favorite Powell and Pressburger, I Know Where I'm Going!.
SF Said talks to Brad Bird and marks five key moments in the history of animation.
Pierce Brosnan tells John Hiscock what it felt like to say goodbye to James Bond.