Shorts, 1/10.

"No photograph, or portfolio of photographs, can unfold, go further, and further still, as does The Ascent (1977), by the Ukrainian director Larisa Shepitko, the most affecting film about the horror of war I know," wrote Susan Sontag in the New Yorker in 2002.

The film screens today, tomorrow and Wednesday at the ICA, part of a Shepitko retrospective running over the next couple of weeks, but if, as is perfectly likely, you can't be in London, you can't miss Larushka Ivan-Zadeh's riveting piece on "one of cinema's greatest female directors" in today's Guardian.

Shepitko had evidently come very close to dying young before she was killed in a car crash in 1979; she was 39. "You have to approach each film as if it were your last," her tutor, Alexander Dovzhenko, told her. Ivan-Zadeh examines why Shepitko, who eventually married Elem Klimov, remains barely known, even to film buffs.

Also in the Guardian: The Syrian Bride "has now won more awards (15 worldwide) than any previous Israeli film, but is struggling with prejudice both in Israel and in neighbouring Arab countries," writes Sharif Hamadeh, who talks to director Eran Riklis and his co-writer, Suha Araf, about why.

At the New Yorker's site, Daniel Cappello and Margaret Talbot discuss the latter's piece in this week's issue on Hayao Miyazaki, who rarely gives interviews, evidently still works around 15 hours a day (though he used to work many more) and claims Chagall and Bosch as influences.

Harry Knowles has posted a few hi-res shots from Richard Linklater's next, A Scanner Darkly. One will remind you of Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth. That's via Wiley Wiggins, who also maintains the blog and who's been dipping into "the Roland Topor nexus of cool" lately.

Back to Linklater for a minute, though. Jon Lebkowsky has recently posted to interviews that go back a bit, the first conducted while Linklater was editing Dazed and Confused and the second right after its release. Two very leisurely, Austinesque talks; click when you've got more than a minute, actually, then relax and enjoy.

Eric Liu undergoes an extraordinary learning experience at the hands of Hollywood acting coach Ivana Chubbuck and tells you about it in Slate and on NPR.

Speaking of acting, Unscripted leaves Salon's Heather Havrilsky mysteriously curious about anyone but its subject: "See, Clooney and Soderbergh recognize that we're absolutely longing to see struggling actors... struggle." That said, as it probably needed to be, HBO, and many of the fine filmmakers it's been attracting over the past few years, are about to extend their reach - to PBS, as Bill Carter reports in the New York Times.

Angus Macqueen has spent 18 months trailing "stories about the iconic drug of my lifetime" to make Cocaine, a doc premiering on the UK's Channel 4 next week.

This journey has revolutionised my views. I now believe that the tragedy we witnessed in Latin America has little to do with the damage the drugs do to people's heads. The tragedy is a result of the drugs being illegal. People will do a lot for a £34,000-per-kilo profit.

Also in the Observer: How did Alexander turn out to be such a mess? "The answer, say industry insiders, is twofold: the combination of a destructive race between two rival directors to get the story of Alexander on the big screen and the worst kind of artistic hubris." Peter Beaumont tells the story. Plus: Peter Conrad on Nixon at the Movies: "Though [Mark] Feeney's book vacillates between psychobiography and cinematic history, he's a perceptive analyst and a vividly aphoristic writer." For more on the book, do see A Girl and a Gun.

"It doesn't happen often that a first time feature director gets to have an established director as a producer. I went over to London with an earlier cut of the film, and I loaded it up on the Harry Potter 3 editing system and I got my notes from my producer that way." The Cinecultist interviews Niels Mueller, director of The Assassination of Richard Nixon, at Gothamist.

Via Cinemocracy, Matthew Yglesias at the American Prospect's Tapped counters Max Boot's anti-Hollywood "diatribe" in the Los Angeles Times.

You'll have heard by now that the National Society of Film Critics has announced its awards; Movie City News has the list as well as the winners of the Online Film Critics Society's awards and indieWIRE has a round-up of the weekend's awards events. Is awards fatigue setting in yet?

Come on, Academy, pleads Newsweek's Sean Smith, after a quarter of a century of solid work, you can, at the very least, nod politely in Kevin Bacon's direction. Also: Nicki Gostin interviews Javier Bardem.

In New York, Jacob Bernstein passes along rumors that Harvey Weinstein may go indie.

In the Independent:

• Aaron Hicklin: "It may be mere coincidence, but at the very moment when the myth of the good American is in sore need of rehabilitation, a Harold Lloyd renaissance is in full bud after decades during which his reputation has teetered on the brink of oblivion."

• "For the first time Germans can laugh together with Jews - it succeeds remarkably well." That's Paul Siegel, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, as quoted in a piece by Tony Paterson on Alles auf Zucker!, Dani Levy's new comedy about a very unorthodox Jewish couple about to receive a visit from very orthodox relatives.

• "[A]t long last someone has said, 'Look, this is how you do it,' and made a film that hits you like one of Hilary Swank's punches." Yes, David Thomson has been moved by Million Dollar Baby, but before getting into that, he describes what's wrong with the way most movies roll out these days.

Jumana Farouky in Time Europe on Bahman Ghobadi's Turtles Can Fly, set in Iraqi Kurdistan: "It's his funniest film yet, which is surprising, given that it is populated by children who have lost limbs to the land mines that plague the region."

Reading recent pieces by Anthony Kaufman and AO Scott, festival programmer Tom Hall finds reasons to be cautiously optimistic about a sustainable future for foreign film in the US, but there is much to worry about as well. For example:

While independent filmmakers long ago learned the value of the festival circuit as a launching pad in the quest for distribution, a place where they can find an audience for their films and try to gather momentum, attention, and press coverage for their films with the ultimate goal of securing a distribution deal, many foreign film companies seem to be focused exclusively on markets. This means that many great films are withheld from smaller, non-market festivals that may generate interest and buzz, instead playing only at markets (and thus primarily for buyers) and hoping for a sale.

For the New Straits Times, KT DaSilva talks to a few Malaysian filmmakers who'll have their work screened at the Bangkok Film Festival (January 13 through 24): "Everyone wants to be the next Tsai Ming-liang or Wong Kar-wai. Do you know there are hundreds of indie Chinese films circulating in festivals worldwide?" Via Movie City Indie.

The International Buddhist Film Festival unveils its lineup any moment now. January 28 through February 13 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Rafael.

Matt Dentler's feeling terrific about the way SXSW is shaping up, not to mention the entire year for the festival circuit.

And how's Sundance coming along? Check in with Cyndi Greening.

When Almodóvar met Marston, as chronicled by Eugene Hernandez.

"Maybe I expected too much." Joey Fernandez sends a review of Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow's latest, into Twitch, where a fine batch of trailers has been collecting lately.

Quick reviews from Doug Cummings of four films he's caught at the Palm Springs International Film Festival (through January 17). Emanuel Levy's there, too.

Filmbrain: "While The Best Man may have come off as a bit extreme in 1964, it seems tame when compared to the ploys used in recent elections."

Vince Keenan wraps his favorable impressions of The Aviator with a very nifty personal aside about TWA.

Tagline returns.

The future of TV? Steve Rosenbaum's been collecting some of the more interesting speculations.

Chuck Olsen is wading into vlogging deep and fast; I won't choose a specific entry since there are too many good ones. Just go and scroll.

Cinema Minima presents a directory of movie-related podcasts.

Online browsing tip. Annie Leibovitz's "Ultimate Star Wars Picture Album" for Vanity Fair.

Online viewing tip #1. "The Grey Video." Via that cinetrix.

Online viewing tip #2. Well, you can't sum it up any more tightly than Steve Gallagher has at Filmmaker: "23-year-old wunderkind Cam Archer has created a series of surreal mini-films, 'The Johnny Spots,' to promote his latest film, American Fame Pt. 2: Forgetting Jonathan Brandis, which premieres at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival."

Ambient viewing tip. Wirecrossing, a 24-hour project by the Desperate Optimists. Via Ben Slater.

Posted by dwhudson at January 10, 2005 12:51 PM