Books and shorts.

Metallica: The Monster Lives is a new book by Joe Berlinger, written with Greg Milner, documenting the making of the doc, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, shot with his frequent partner, Bruce Sinofsky. It'll be out tomorrow, but Filmmaker is already offering a sample chapter as a downloadable PDF file. Also: Jeremiah Kipp interviews Jim Van Bebber, writer and director of The Manson Family.

"Each of the twenty short stories in Seconds of Pleasure, [Neil] LaBute's prose fiction debut, revisits the discomforting territory of his dramatic work, and its formal concern to show, rather than tell." Andrew van der Vlies reviews the collection for the Times Literary Supplement, but you'll find the piece at Powell's.

Doug Cummings: "Art by Film Directors is definitely an interesting and at times relevatory book that sheds light on an important and neglected subject, even if it's easy to wish it had been more."

If you're going to read Who the Hell's In It?, Andrew Anthony writes between the lines, the grain of salt you'll need is the brush-up on Peter Bogdanovich's own biography he offers in the Observer.

Also:

• The headline over a piece by Ken Loach cuts straight to the chase: "All film students should see this woman's work." To be fair, the recommendation was more or less dictated to Liz Hoggard, but: Icíar Bollaín is the Spanish actor, writer and director Loach is so enthusiastic about.

• Hugh Grant has had a severe falling out with the press, his fans and his profession in general. The feeling is mutual, surmises Mark Honigsbaum, an old school friend: "No one wants to hear that 'acting is so tedious but the money's nice, darling' routine any more, least of all from a multi-million-pound movie star whose face is plastered on every billboard and bus stop in Britain."

• Polly Vernon profiles Kelly Brook.

• "In a recent survey, 1,000 travellers were asked to name their ideal travelling companion. Michael Palin came first, pipping Jesus Christ and Elvis." Joanne O'Conner reviews Palin's Himalaya and Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Round.

• There's a biography of Uma Thurman out. Entitled, sensibly, Uma Thurman: The Biography. Written by Bryony Sutherland and Lucy Ellis and reviewed by Anna Lynskey.

"It's a sign of the times. My friend and sometime 'boss' Mark Kitchell, an Oscar-nominee for Best Documentary film for Berkeley in the 60s, is looking for work." Fellow GreenCine editor Craig Phillips has launched a blog, and already, he's putting it admirable use. But most of all: "This blog will primarily be used for film and writing related posts.... Okay, I'll admit it - this blog will primarily be used as a tool for procrastination."

We've noted it before, but it bears repeating. If it weren't for Blue Underground, British television director Alan Clarke, who featured Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Ray Winstone early in their careers, might have slipped completely into obscurity. Nicolas Rapold reviews the set of four films for Stop Smiling:

The typical Alan Clarke film is distinguished by superb naturalistic performances and by political interests as doggedly revelatory as other TV fare is determinedly escapist. Philosophically, his camera is no organizing authority; it aims instead at following the free will of characters, most notoriously via Steadicam but also through 360° lighting and long takes. His crisp economy leads to comparisons with Bresson, though his moral reserve and interest in marginal figures must also contribute.

But the surest mark of Clarke is a vigilant ear against the false note, in both performance and narrative arc - surely the only possible way anyone could ably render skinheads, hooligans, and, for pete’s sake, prison rapists, without exploitation or melodrama.

Filmbrain recalls film endings punctuated with just the right bit of music - and others chime in with more.

The cinetrix points out that the question of what is or is not punk cinema has been brought up on a list; there must be a lot of cross-posting going on. But besides the cinetrix's thoughts on the matter, David Tetzlaff's entry in the discussion is a handy bit of orientation.

Oh, that Variety! "FX is mixing church and slate, teaming with Section Eight principals George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh on a 10 Commandments-themed event miniseries." Denise Martin reports; via Twitch.

In the New York Times:

• AO Scott on the restored version of Sam Fuller's The Big Red One: "This 'fictional life based on factual death' is as honest as war movies come, but it attains this status by acknowledging that it has been, with visible effort and palpable inspiration, shaped, interpreted and embellished. It is a true story in which the emphasis falls equally on both words."

• Very nifty graphics accompany Bob Baker's piece on historical accuracy in the staging of the battles in Oliver Stone's Alexander.

• Denzel Washington turned in one of the better performances in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing over ten years ago; now, as Jesse McKinley reports, he's headed to Broadway to take on the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar.

• Brett Ratner tells Lola Ogunnaike what went wrong, more or less, with After the Sunset.

• Stephan Paternot, one of the rise-n-fall dotcommers of the late 90s, believes he's found the next gold rush: indie film. Robert Johnson reports.

• An editorial points to several ABC affiliates declining to air Saving Private Ryan on Veterans Day out of fear of the FCC as a sign of "the government's growing willingness to intrude excessively into American culture."

• Thomas Vinciguerra samples a few of the papers delivered at the University of Kansas at Lawrence symposium, "In Godzilla's Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage."

• In some ways, a complementary read: JD Considine on Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi, "a made-in-the-USA cartoon intended to turn average American kids into fans of a Japanese pop group."
• Andrea Elliott: "[F]or thousands of Muslims... the American premiere of the animated feature Muhammad: The Last Prophet, was unquestionably a landmark cultural event."

• To the surprise of very few, The Incredibles trounced Polar Express at the box office this weekend. Sharon Waxman reports that Warner Bros will go on playing its high stakes game anyway while Laura M Holson notes that Pixar is sitting pretty - and is in no hurry to choose a distribution partner.

Lillian Ross listens in as Randy Quaid asks Sam Shepard about the play the latter's written and the former's performing in. Also in the New Yorker, Anthony Lane on JM Barrie; and David Denby: "Complex and devious beyond easy recounting, Bad Education is about the fallout from the ending of a 'pure' love between boys, consecrated in an Almodóvaran temple - a movie theatre."

The Guardian runs a piece from its archives - August 29, 1919 - on DW Griffith's Broken Blossoms.

Also:

• Simon Hattenstone spends some time with Jim Jarmusch.
• Then there's Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week, Being There.
• Though it's completely unrelated to film, novelist Richard Ford elegiacally captures what it's like now to be among the 49%.

Newsweek's Devin Gordon reports that Tom Hanks will likely play Harvard scholar Robert Langdon in Ron Howard's adaptation of The Da Vinci Code.

Who was Theo van Gogh?

AFI Fest: winners.

Greg Allen: "Movie Theaters I've Been To That Have Closed."

Online viewing tip #1. A little something from vkn. Via a brand new blog, SF Indie Blog.

Online viewing #2. "Get Your Videoblogs on TV." Via Cinema Minima.

Posted by dwhudson at November 15, 2004 6:33 AM