Shorts, 1/14.

The traveling Yasujiro Ozu retrospective has been playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center (and will carry on through March 3) and, in the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum offers an unsurprisingly engaging and, at the same time, almost essential preview:

Ozu's films tend to be physical and physically expressive, and I would argue that in this respect his silent pictures are superior to his talkies. It's one reason he kept directing silents through 1935.... Ozu is commonly regarded as "the most Japanese of Japanese directors" - the usual reason given for why his films were slower to reach the West than those of Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi.... Yet the most critically illuminating study of his work I know, by Shigehiko Hasumi, provocatively maintains that calling Ozu "very Japanese" is "a huge mistake... based on a lack of understanding of his works." ... Ozu has been misperceived in many ways.... Hasumi writes, in what I think is the most important sentence in his book, "Ozu's talent lies in choosing an image that can function poetically at a particular moment by being assimilated into the film, not by affixing to the film the image of an object that is considered poetic in a domain outside the film."

Doug Cummings is filing succinct and insightful reviews from the Palm Springs International Film Festival again.

Todd at Twitch:

When word got out that the League [of Gentlemen] were working on a feature film I immediately began digging around to see if there was any chance of speaking to one of them about their new venture. Shockingly enough I got in contact with Mark [Gatiss], and, even more shockingly, he agreed to speak with me. We spent more than an hour not only talking about the film but the history of the League, Mark’s involvement with the newly rejuvenated Dr. Who, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, life on a Woody Allen set and a good bit more, besides.

The DVD boom is having dozens of long-term ramifications, and Tim de Lisle touches on several of them in his cover story for the Guardian's Friday Review. But this is the one most encouraging for most of us:

DVD has been good for several species of small fish: arthouse films, foreign films, ethnic-minority films, classics, and especially documentaries.... At the UK Film Council, there is a man whose job it is to maintain this sort of biodiversity: Pete Buckingham, once the founder of London's Ritzy cinema, now the council's head of distribution and exhibition. He feels DVD is helping. "One thing that can be said from the research I've seen is that it does seem to be encouraging a wider taste in movies."

Also: John Patterson has a long, often amusing chat with Paul Giamatti.

Your TV is exploding, notes Jeff Jarvis. Via Chuck Olsen.

"What I find so incredible about [Ritwik] Ghatak," Mira Nair tells Sukhdev Sandhu, "and especially The Cloud-Capped Star, is his use of beautiful flat landscapes that offer a remarkable encapsulation of Bengal. In his films, every frame is set and shot in a real place. It gives the sense that life is going on all around. That was still radical when I was shooting Salaam Bombay! in 1987: all the local filmmaker friends couldn't believe the trouble I was taking to shoot every frame in the street. They said that was what the studio was for."

Also in the Telegraph:

• Andrew O'Hagan: "Can a fictional hero still be heroic, without the inclusion of the post-traumatic stress disorder? The answer to this question is yes, so long as one is looking less for it in Hollywood than in China, where an infusion of post-Cultural Revolution zest has entered into the bloodstream of the national cinema, and where films are now being made in the manner of John Ford and David Lean."

• Sarah Crompton: "I can barely begin to describe in a column of this length how much I admire The Aviator.... But.... when actors pretend to be other actors it only exposes the limitations of the pretence they engage in to make their living."

• David Gritten interviews Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

And the Independent's interviews: Tiffany Rose with Jennifer Garner and Leslie Felperin with Lukas Moodysson: "This is my number one advice for aspiring directors: create a nice and friendly atmosphere. People should be kind on the set and take care of each other. Don't leave people alone. Have lots of fruit around."

Also: Patrick Marber on all he saw and learned as his play, Closer, became a film: "I didn't think there was any point in working with Mike Nichols and wanting it all my way. I wanted to support his vision. It wasn't until I saw the final cut that I realised what he was up to." And Geoffrey Macnab: "The story of why Million Dollar Baby has been overlooked [by the Baftas] offers an intriguing insight into the paranoia, politicking and frantic lobbying that go hand in hand with modern-day movie awards."

In the London Times, Jeff Dawson meets Dustin Hoffman: "God bless him. In the throes of his 68th winter, and happily married for the past 25 of them, Hoffman can not only sauce with the best, but do it with impunity." Also, Sean Macaulay dips into LA culture: "It’s Earthquake meets The Perfect Storm!” The pair I eavesdropped were deadly serious as they compared the tsunami to 9/11 and ticked off all the reasons why the tsunami won hands down as a movie premise." And they go on talking, too. Macaulay shares his notes.

"The Envelope," a special section of the Los Angeles Times "calendarlive.com" thing that gathers the paper's awards coverage, seems to be open to us non-subscribers. Just so you know.

Online browsing tip. Neil Gaiman points to new stills from MirrorMask.

Online viewing tip. Gossip is usually out of bounds around - wait... said that yesterday. Anyway, via Defamer, a teeny tiny movie.

Posted by dwhudson at January 14, 2005 7:03 AM