Jumpstart-the-week shorts.

20 best music videos ever? A British phone company put together a panel that is not to be sneezed at and they came up with a list. At #1, as David Smith reports (quoting a few panelists, too), is Mark Romanek's video for Johnny Cash's "Hurt." Dare you to watch it, but above all, listen to it without going a little misty.

Also in the Observer:

• Notice how so many are worried about the state of French cinema all of a sudden? Of the current crop, Liz Hoggard finds François Ozon's 5 x 2 "the best film of the year" (which year?) but notes that it's Les Choristes that's scored the Oscar nomination: "These two films represent the polarization of modern French cinema." Good line: "In many ways Jeunet is the French Richard Curtis."

• "I write with more than the evangelism of the convert: Japanese novels are everywhere; led by the master, Haruki Murakami." Kate Kellaway recommends five.

• Online poll: "Did The Aviator deserve to be nominated for 11 Oscars?"

How cruel is this? Will someone kindly inform Newsweek that Paul Giamatti is, in fact, not nominated?

Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo's "7:35 in the Morning" has been nominated for an Oscar. Of course, four other shorts are as well, but Vigalondo's blogging. Right here.

By the time he began covering "the movie beat" for the New York Times, Bernard Weinraub had already covered Vietnam and Northern Ireland, had reported from Washington and India. But only in Hollywood "did I come face to face with some of the more startling, and not always pleasant, truths about human behavior, my own included." The piece is drenched in anecdote, many of them related to his marriage to Amy Pascal, now Chairman of Sony Pictures, rattling from one to the next before slowing to a melancholic reminder that, if you haven't, you simply must read Julia Phillips's You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.

Also in the NYT:

• Alan Cowell reports from Davos: "At the World Economic Forum here, which has been called a 'temple of capitalist narcissism,' there is, it turns out, a force beyond money and might. Its name is celebrity - and on Friday, Sharon Stone showed why." A follow-up from Timothy L O'Brien.

• Of course, some celebrities compete for attention in ways they'd probably rather not. Charlie LeDuff describes the sad sight of Robert Blake as he "shuffles around the courthouse in Van Nuys these days, alone... Mr. Blake's moment in the sun has been eclipsed by the supernova that is Michael Jackson."

• Bruce Bawer reviews Linn Ullmann's third novel, Grace: "Since Ullmann is the daughter of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, it's hardly surprising that this book is bleak and quintessentially Scandinavian, at once an austere portrait of mature couplehood that recalls Scenes From a Marriage and a meditation on mortality, replete with echoes of Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. Ullmann's work is not, however, just a knockoff."

• Marcel Theroux reviews Peter Carey's Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with his Son: "One of the running jokes here is the contrast between Carey's egghead interest in the subtexts of manga - met with polite bafflement by everyone they speak to - and his son's desire simply to meet his heroes, the artists and directors behind the images."

• Terrence Rafferty meets Hirokazu Kore-eda: "Near the end of my conversation with Mr. Kore-eda I begin to understand that his fascination with immutable-seeming in-between states is more than just a matter of temperament: that it reflects his most deeply held ideas about the society he grew up in."

• Larry Rohter profiles Marcelo Birmajer, who co-wrote Lost Embrace with director Daniel Burman.

• Lorne Manly and John Markoff report on the rapid proliferation of what basically amounts to variations of the Napster-meets-TiVo idea - and on how the phenomenon is terrifying industry and advertising execs. Steve Rosenbaum offers commentary and links.

• Choire Sicha previews the "Girls on Film" exhibition at the Anthology (scroll down to "Friday 4 February"), "portraits of 60 female film stars you've never seen."

• Charles Taylor wonders to what degree the filmmakers and marketers behind Constantine would like to remind you of The Matrix.

Salon's Heather Havrilesky has a long heart-to-heart with Noah Baumbach, who says of The Squid and the Whale that it's "the first time I really felt like I was able to put what was inside my head out there."

In Despite the System: Orson Welles vs the Hollywood Studios, Clinton Heylin argues that industry types cut the director down because they perceived him as a threat; Sunday Times reviewer Christopher Bray isn't having any of that.

The Ozu retrospective is making its way to the northwest; NP Thompson presents a preview.

Weirdly, the Guardian devotes a short lead editorial to decry the plague of Hollywood remakes.

But seriously:

• The title for David Thomson's The Whole Equation comes from The Last Tycoon; in the Review, Thomson considers the lessons F Scott Fitzgerald learned in Hollywood and the tragedy of his dying before he could decide "whether or not he really approved of movies."

• Jacques Peretti recalls the sex comedies of the early 70s, the "most tragic episode in British cinema, but also, weirdly, the most memorable."

• Aida Edemariam listens to Ronald Harwood and Tom Stoppard talk about writing for the screen.

• Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: John Boorman's Point Blank.

• John Patterson considers Steven Soderbergh.

"I've been to a few festivals, and Rotterdam is definitely the best," writes Ben Slater. "Annoyingly (because I'm not there), this year's Rotterdam is thick with friends of mine."

The Berlinale will unveil its full program and schedule on Tuesday, but much of it is already in place: The International Jury and the International Short Film Jury, the Berlinale Special (with films by Timor Bekmambetov, Kay Pollak, Jorge Ramirez Suárez and Florian Gallenberger, tributes to, among others, Shochiku Studios, Helene Schwarz and a lifetime achievement award for Fernando Fernán Gómez) and the complete Panorama program.

Meanwhile, Austinites are starting to register that certain tingle: Wiley Wiggins, for example, and Matt Dentler, certainly.

Time's Richard Corliss:

Action-movie stars have become geriatric lately. Arnold is Governor, Sly is about to become a reality-show host, Jean-Claude Van Damme toils in direct-to-video. Jackie Chan is almost a creaky 50, and Jet Li doesn't work much anymore. The genre needs another hero, and [Tony] Jaa (Thai name: Phanom Yeerum) is the fellow to fill the void. He's young - 28 - and good-looking, with a quiet élan to match his athletic skill. He's also a throwback to kung-fu film's early days, when stars and stunt men alike took a licking and kept on kicking. Ong-Bak has no crouching, no hiding, no wires, no pixel-perfected stunts. Like Chan's early epics, it convinces you that the mayhem is real, that the star is enduring the pain for your pleasure.

"With all the well deserved hype around Tony Jaa claiming the international martial arts star throne there's a pretty major risk of overlooking some significant talent a little closer to home." writes Todd at Twitch. "[Cyril] Rafaelli and [David] Belle are two of the originators of a new form of martial arts that fuses traditional fight styles with gymnastics."

Then Mack at Twitch summarizes a bizarre story rocking the Korean entertainment industry at the moment and concludes, "Define Irony: This file is leaked and it will likely ruin some amazing entertainers' careers in Korea. A talentless hack like Paris Hilton becomes even more popular in America after her sex video is released online."

And our online browsing tip comes via Twitch as well: eiga.com; writes Todd: "[C]lick around and let us know what you find... I gotta stop before my head explodes..."

Online viewing tip. This batch opened with a music video; let's wrap with another one. Elvis Costello's "Monkey to Man," via Vince Keenan.

Posted by dwhudson at January 30, 2005 4:50 PM