Shorts, 1/17.

So the Globes have been handed out and the cinetrix, Aaron, who blogged furiously throughout the evening, Filmbrain, Liz Penn and I - recently graced with "a cameo with heft" - will be wrapping up the CONVERSATION later on this evening. The comments will remain open for a while, of course, so do drop by.

And now, the Bafta noms have been announced. It just never stops, does it.

At the moment it looks like Tsui Hark's Seven Swords is set to open Cannes this year; Todd at Twitch is pretty sure about this. He's a little less sure about word that Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Christopher Doyle are teaming up again for a film called "Invisible Waves," but there you go.

Fresh reviews at Koreanfilm.org: Adam Hartzell on Ryu Jang-ha's Ryu Jang-ha's Springtime, actor Choi Min-sik's follow-up to Oldboy and a film that "allows us to see how versatile, thus exceptional, Choi's thespian skills truly are," and on Kim Hyung-tae's Pisces, a genre-bender that doesn't quite bend the right way, evidently; and Darcy Paquet on Chang Yoon-hyun's Some, "a thriller, a mystery, and a hesitant love story all in one, but apart from all these things, it's a snapshot of a populace stitched together by technology."

In the Independent Weekly, Godfrey Cheshire recalls a drive across Beijing with Zhang Yimou in 1992:

[O]ne remark I found so astonishing as to be instantly unforgettable. Asked his favorite movie, Zhang unhesitatingly named, of all things, Robert Wise's The Sound of Music. On the face of it, the choice was hilariously anomalous in various ways. Forget about the cultural distance separating Wise's Broadway-in-the-Alps sing-along and Zhang's Chinese peasant background and hardships growing up during the devastation of Mao's Cultural Revolution. More to the point, Zhang's own films were everything that most classic Hollywood musicals famously weren't: earthy, sensuous, conspicuously intelligent and politically charged. Yet, precisely because it represented the opposite pole of his own work, Zhang's love of this critically damned family favorite also had a certain logic. For filmmakers obliged by political exigency to practice a kind of nervy, hard-bitten realism, there's an inevitable appeal to the cozy rules of genre and the escapism of the purely picturesque.

In that other Independent:

• Jonathan Romney: "Given that it's an indisputably major film, The Weeping Meadow may nevertheless be minor [Theo] Angelopoulos. But the Trilogy as a whole might turn out to be far more impressive a farewell to the 20th century than we yet suspect."

• David Thomson on a season of biopics.

• Followed by "The Great Streisand Debate," Mark Bostridge considers her career on the screen - and what it might have been.

"The last film I'll review for the PSIFF is perhaps my favorite, and solidifies the strong Scandinavian presence at the festival this year." Doug Cummings on Hawaii, Oslo.

David Denby in the New Yorker: "[Ben] Stiller is the latest, and crudest, version of the urban Jewish male on the make.... What accounts for Stiller's enormous success? To put it mildly, he's not a high-style or a reflective performer. But, in many of his movies, he's a hetero swain, and that seems to have done it for him."

New York's Logan Hill meets Topher Grace; he's also got a few questions for John Leguizamo. Also: Franklin Foer on Susan Sontag.

DJ Kirkbride in McSweeney's: "Do not underestimate the dangers of living on the same planet as highly regarded actor James Caan."

Recently at Alternet:

• Peter Keough on Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst: "Not only had the SLA kidnapped the symbol of media domination, it had kidnapped the media. Future terrorist organizations would take note."

• More lessons from the 70s: Matthew Scott Kelemen on The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

• Zahed Amanullah on The Hamburg Cell: "As it plays out, the film exists not to demonstrate that these were nice people (as many in contact with them thought), but to depict how people perceived as nice guys by so many could find the inhumanity within themselves to carry out mass murder."

• Ed Rampell on Bernard Gordon's The Gordon File: A Screenwriter Recalls Twenty Years of FBI Surveillance.

Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney simply may not have the energy to carry on running their production company, Section Eight, once their contract with Warner Bros expires, reports Laura M Holson.

Also in the New York Times:

Fox Butterfield: "CD's and DVD's titled 'Stop Snitching' have surfaced, naming some people street gangs suspect of being witnesses against them and warning that those who cooperate with the police will be killed. To underscore its message, the Baltimore DVD shows what appears to be three dead bodies on its back cover above the words 'snitch prevention.'" Comments Filmmaker's Steve Gallagher: "Somehow, I don't think the folks at Apple promoting iMovie has this in mind."
• Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi is helping rebuild a village in India; where are the other stars, wonders Saritha Rai.

• Alessandra Stanley looks at celeb-led relief efforts in the US.

• Ross Johnson, briefly, on another production company whose fate is unknown: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Plan B.

"Why ALF? And why now?" Flak doesn't really have an answer to that, just a commentary you can download and play along with the pilot for the series.

James Wolcott nails the pathetic abuse of a quote from Pauline Kael.

Following the run-up to Sundance:

• Movie City Indie.
• Cyndi Greening.
• indieWIRE.

Steve Rosenbaum and family try out Akimbo.

Via Movie City News, Roger Ebert on Clint Eastwood's winning strategy.

Online viewing tip. The trailer for Monster Road. Via Wiley Wiggins.

Posted by dwhudson at January 17, 2005 7:24 AM