Weekend shorts.

This summer, a two-disc special edition DVD of Rebel Without a Cause will be released, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the iconic death of James Dean. "Rebel still seems to be James Dean's show, but, in fact, it was the movie's director, Nicholas Ray, who was the real rebel behind the film," writes Sam Kashner in his robust profile of the director for Vanity Fair. "His fourth wife and widow, Susan Schwartz Ray, 53, wrote in her introduction to his collected lectures, I Was Interrupted: 'What was all the fuss about Dean when Dean was so clearly - to me anyway - aping Nick?'"

More on Dean, though, from Sean Macaulay in the London Times.

"Something that is just as important to me as the film, which is 72 minutes long, is that I'm also doing a 60-minute slide show." Crispin Glover tells the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov what we can look forward to at SXSW. Also: Raoul Hernandez on Criterion's releases of two DVDs each for Jules Dassin and Jacques Becker.

Via a comment posted to Filmbrain's initial reaction to The Wayward Cloud, Andrew Huang's interview with Tsai Ming-liang for Taiwan News.

The Globe and Mail's Gayle MacDonald talks to Eva Ziemsen about her nearly completed short doc, A Conversation with Lars von Trier. Also, via the IFC Blog: John Adams interviews Agnès Varda.

With Alan Riding's mid-point review of the Berlinale on Wednesday focusing on Sophie Scholl and Fateless, AO Scott's review of Downfall and Julie Salamon's report on the controversy that film stirred up in Germany, the Second World War echoes all up and down the Movies section of the New York Times.

Also:

• Manohla Dargis selects a handful of films that have screened in the Berlinale's Forum section that definitely seem worth seeking out.

• Gunner Palace has sparked an interest in rap written and performed by US soldiers in Iraq; Monica Davey's piece is accompanied by audio samples.

• Get set for a new Lion King. Disney is revving up a massive merchandizing onslaught for The Chronicles of Narnia, reports Dave Kehr.

• The collapse of Fox Searchlight's Eucalyptus, which was to have united Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, suggests that star power and little artsy pictures are a volatile mix, writes Sharon Waxman.

One of the last magazines you'd expect to run an Oscar special might be the New Republic. But there it is. And on the other side of the Atlantic, even the New Statesman's Mark Kermode weighs in.

David Poland says what needs to be said about this whole Chris Rock thing. Bravo.

More awards, via the cinetrix: the Box Office Prophets' Calvins and Nerve's.

When Aleksandr Sokurov was making The Sun, Nick Holdsworth paid him a visit and learned, among other things, what that fourth film in his power tetralogy will be: "a multi-cultural, multi-lingual extravaganza set in Vienna based around Goethe's Faust and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus."

Also in the Telegraph:

• Tim Robey at the Berlinale.

• Mark Monahan talks to George Hickenlooper about Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.

• Interviews: David Gritten with Cate Blanchett and Adam Higginbotham with Anjelica Huston.

In the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum compares two films with plain messages to deliver about intolerance, Bob Shallcross's Uncle Nino and Wayne Wang's Because of Winn-Dixie.

With four films currently addressing the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Michela Wrong, author of I Didn't Do It For You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation, assesses the current political climate. Plus: Xan Brooks meets Don Cheadle.

Also in the Guardian:

• Considering The Hours of the Day and Memories of Murder, Gordon Burn explores what draws us to films about serial killers.

• John Patterson: "Film criticism as practised by [Michael] Medved - and his mainly Baptist and Catholic cohorts - has no time for engaging with movies on an artistic level. It's all about policing them and maintaining the fiction that Hollywood is a liberal town." More in this vein from James Wolcott.

• Patterson's mini-profile of John C Reilly.

• Richard Eyre remembers Arthur Miller. More from Darren Hughes.

• Tom Shone on The Whole Equation: "Like all the best film critics [David] Thomson is an unashamed rhapsodist, reminding us that the only real qualification for the job is the ability to get carried away, frequently to the cliff-edge of silliness."

• Suzie Mackenzie chats with Wes Anderson.

• Dan Davies meets Damon Dash.

• Brooks takes Russell Crowe's side in his clash with George Clooney over whether or not celebs ought to be making ads; and interviews Donnie Dunagan, the voice of Bambi.

• Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: Ken Loach's Kes.

• A few movie posters from abroad.

"Winter's always the best time for little movies." Looks like Andrew O'Hehir's "Beyond the Muliplex" column in Salon really has returned with regularity.

Among the many things going on at Twitch:

• The Sin City site's open for business.

• Mack has news that David Cronenberg's Painkillers is a go and points to Akiko Tetsuta's interviews with Michelle Yeoh and Rob Marshall; the topic at hand, of course, is Memoirs of a Geisha.

• Todd's found the program for the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film, March 11 through 23.

The Economist wonders how Bob Iger might run Disney; meanwhile, for Salon, Arianna Huffington reads DisneyWar.

In the Independent:

• Interviews: Tiffany Rose with Richard Gere and Elizabeth Shue, Ryan Gilbey with Vince Vaughn and Bob Flynn with Jeff Bridges.

• Kaleem Aftab appreciates the women of this year's Berlinale; and notes that obsessive compulsive disorder "has become a quick cinematic way for edgy characters to gain our sympathy."

• David Thomson writes up a terrific portrait of Sidney Lumet.

Godard's Masculine Feminine has Tom Hall wondering, "Where are the ideas in current cinema? Much like the public’s move to reality television programs, seemingly all critical thinking about social, political, and economic ideas has been shoved into the realm of non-fiction filmmaking."

Doug Cummings on Behrooz Afkhami's Gavkhouni (The River's End).

Matthew Ross at Filmmaker receives "an unexpected gift: On the Art of the Cinema, Kim [Jong-Il]'s absolutely bizarre treatise on good movies and revolution."

Baz Dreisinger in the Nation: "Set during Guyana's 1997 election, Thunder in Guyana is a deftly edited fusion of newssreel footage, photos and interviews with [former president of Guyana] Janet Jagan, her two children and her political allies."

Andy Klein takes measure of two rival Martin Scorsese DVD box sets for the LA CityBeat.

David Chute: "From the opening shots of Bahman Ghobadi's visionary Turtles Can Fly - his third dramatic feature, after A Time for Drunken Horses (2000) and Marooned in Iraq (2002) - it is apparent that we are in the hands of a master." (More from Michael Tully.) Also in the LA Weekly: Ella Taylor on Constantine.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Johnanna Adorján interviews Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick and Kristina Merkner looks over a few of the German films that screened at the festival. Don't worry, both pieces are in English.

Edward Champion is back.

"Building a motion picture soundtrack from the component parts of other popular motion picture soundtracks is a great way to reward your audience for their previously exhibited good taste." Matt at low culture is certain that the "Inside Deep Throat soundtrack will, no doubt, be available in stores soon."

Online browsing tip. Newspaper ads for drive-in movie theaters in Wisconsin. Really. Via Rashomon.

Online listening tip. Stylus Magazine's MP3 blog, the Stypod, offers clips from the soundtracks for Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plummage (Ennio Morricone), Lucio Fulci's Zombie (Fabio Frizzi) and Argento's Suspiria (Goblin). Via Bitter Cinema.

Online viewing tip #1. Estonian television commercials. Via the SF IndieBlog, which is chock full of great stuff: Michael Skurko takes Kumakiri Kazuyoshi around San Francisco, the IndieFest audience and staff awards and more.

Online viewing tip #2. The Daily Show's terrific segment on bloggers, via Fimoculous.

Posted by dwhudson at February 19, 2005 3:07 PM