Shorts, 11/12.

While They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? carries on tweaking its "1000 Greatest Films," a poll of lists that, statistically speaking, is probably the most accurate snapshot of the current state of the canon around, the site has introduced another list that, critically speaking, skews in the opposite direction. "Ain't Nobody's Blues But My Own" gathers "very personal favourites or undervalued gems that obviously hold a very special place in at least one individual's heart and/or mind, but not in most" - films that have appeared on some critic's or filmmaker's top-ten but on no one else's.

100 in all, and the list is fascinating. The choosers are identified and the chosen are linked to reviews. Stan Brakhage, who himself chooses an Oskar Fischinger film, pops up three other times; yes, of course, Fred Camper will make sure there's a Brakhage on his list - but Joe Dante? A pleasant surprise.

Oliver Burkeman heads to California to discover the secret of "Pixar, movie for movie, the most successful studio of any kind in the history of cinema." Of course, it's hardly a secret. As Randy Nelson, one exec, puts it, "No amount of good technology can turn a bad story into a good story, and we just set out to tell a good story as well as we can."

Also in the Guardian:

• Suzanne Goldenberg: "More than 20 American TV stations last night boycotted a Veterans Day screening of war picture Saving Private Ryan because of fears that they would be censured by a newly aggressive television regulator over the movie's violence and graphic language." More from CNN via Weblogsky.

• Will Hodgkinson meets film composer Zbigniew Preisner, "a beacon of European civilisation in the face of an American cultural avalanche. Having established himself after writing the music for almost all of fellow Pole Krzystzof Kieslowski's films including the Three Colours series, Preisner has since been flooded with work offers from Hollywood. He has chosen to stay loyal to European cinema."

• Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith believes he's found what's wrong with Hollywood and what's right with Bush in The Manchurian Candidate.

• Patrick Barkham meets Zach Braff, who's still blogging.

• Alex Cox argues that a certain alchemy took place when John Wayne acted alongside George Hayes: Hayes made Wayne better.

• Finally, a fresh approach to promoting a movie. In this case, Coffee and Cigarettes. Get two stars to email each other: Jack White and Steve Coogan.

• Henk Spaan: "As I write this in Amsterdam, yet another press conference is being held on the crisis triggered by the killing of the film-maker Theo van Gogh." In case you haven't seen this elsewhere, "Submission," the eleven-minute short that angered Van Gogh's probable murderers, can be viewed at IFILM.

"Can Almodóvar be considered a political filmmaker?" asks Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "If so, what difference does it make?" Like Klawans, the LA Weekly's Ella Taylor can't help but watch the movies she sets out to review - Kinsey and Finding Neverland - in the light (or rather, the shadow) of the election.

Speaking of that last one, NP Thompson adds "a few more sketches" to those he laid out in his intro to his interview for us with Marc Forster.

"Everybody thinks that actors sit around and talk about what's going on and motivation and they don't. Actors talk about restaurants, girls and movies." Christopher Walken lets ChicagoFilm.com's Richard Sharp in on a few secrets of the trade.

Hats off to Aaron Dobbs and Lily Oei: Just a great string of interviews for Gothamist, all week long.

Blind items. Usually, you skim right over them. But not when they come by way of the cinetrix.

Kung Fu Cinema passes along news that DreamWorks specialty division Go Fish will be distributing Casshern in the US.

In the Independent:

• Tiffany Rose interviews Annette Bening. So does the Telegraph's John Hiscock.

• Matthew Sweet meets Amma Asante. See also: Robert Chesshyre's backgrounder on A Way of Life.

• Jackie Hunter celebrates The Women.

Vanity Fair has launched a new site. The offerings are somewhat limited, though there is a modest movies page alongside columns by a few of the magazine's higher-profile writers and, currently, a portfolio of photographs by Helmut Newton.

Brian Brooks sorts through the nominations for the European Film Awards. Ahead with five each are Almodóvar's Bad Education, Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside and Fatih Akin's Head On. Also at indieWIRE: Brandon Judell interviews Brother to Brother director Rodney Evans.

CNET's Paul Festa reports on innovations TiVo hackers keep coming up with which the company won't condone (for fear of angering Hollywood) but won't condemn, either (since, for one thing, the ideas hackers come up with may well have future potential for the company).

For Apple, Bija Gutoff finds probably its multiest-cultiest profile of a Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro user yet: Indian-born director Debdoot Das has made his mark with The Quick and Dirty Guide to Salsa.

AFI Fest: indieWIRE's blog is hopping with blurbs and pix; Matt Langdon's been sharply and concisely reviewing the highlights he's caught; Matt Dentler's still at it, too.

Doug Cummings is running reviews and impressions by Russell Lucas from the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh.

Jonathan Rosenbaum previews the series "Toward a Political Modernism? Critical Japanese Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s" at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, with screenings tonight and tomorrow.

Underskatement, a traveling fest of shorts made by skateboarders, rolls into San Francisco on Tuesday. For second opinions on a few of the Bay Area events Jonathan Marlow wrote up yesterday, see David Kim on the Film Arts Festival and Summi Kaipa on the South Asian Film Festival, both in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Online viewing tip #1. Again, it'd be a shame to pluck any one pointer from the constant flow of online viewing goodness to be found at Twitch.

Online viewing tip #2. Chuck Olsen has video'd a bit of a Q&A session with Jonathan Caouette. Nice silhouette effect there.

Online viewing tip #3. Amazon Theater. Via Greg Allen, whose comments make for a very entertaining preview.

By the way, following Greg's link to Stephen Mansfield's piece in Metropolis Tokyo on Donald Richie's The Japan Journals: 1947 - 1999 (although the version currently available runs up to 2004), I spotted this along the way: "Watercolors," an excerpt from Koji Suzuki's Dark Water.

Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2004 2:02 PM