Oscars and shorts.

"[A]lthough it has been years since I've watched the Oscar broadcast, these two categories do reveal unexpected pleasures." Doug Cummings reviews a batch of nominated shorts, both live and animated: Gopher Broke, Birthday Boy, Ryan, Two cars, one night, Little Terrorist, 7:35 in the morning and Wasp.

Jim Walsh has been looking for an epiphany at the movies. Follow the quest in the City Pages. Also: Rob Nelson's "sequel to a remake," a chat with himself about the Oscars, and Matthew Wilder on Sidney Lumet: "What took him so long to walk down the Oscar aisle? Answer: He made too many movies."

Another excerpt from that Vanity Fair coffee table book, Oscar Night, this time from Dominick Dunne, who recalls the parties all the way back to his first in 1955.

Cheryl Eddy and Kimberly Chun present a "curmudgeon's guide to the Academy Award nominees" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Also:

• Dennis Harvey on Days of Being Wild: "Wong [Kar-wai] and [Christopher] Doyle have made eight features together; I don't think I want to know how the former would do without the latter."

• On the eve of the series "Every Little Thing: The Films of Nicolas Philibert," Max Goldberg not only previews the documentaries but also their maker, who "seems more like a descendent of Renoir and the Italian neorealists than of Robert Flaherty, the Maysles brothers and other stalwarts of the documentary tradition."

• Jeremy Russell recommends Imaginary Heroes.

Even indieWIRE's got Oscar commentary going on. Anthony Kaufman surveys the foreign entries and surmises: "Internationalism will be scarce in 2005: this Sunday's Oscar show will be as American as apple pie and Million Dollar Baby. That last-minute over-rated Hollywood entry in the contest not only sabotaged an easy sweep for The Aviator, but also killed off the best chances for a number of smaller flicks that should have garnered accolades."

Also: Brian Brooks reports that the Berlinale competitor many assumed would be the least likely to find a distributor for North America and the UK, Hany Abu-Assad's Paradise Now, has done just that.

In the New York Observer, Sheelah Kolhatkar writes up a quick profile of David Halbfinger, the reporter replacing Bernard Weinraub on the Hollywood beat ("ground zero in terms of writing about America," says Halbfinger) for the New York Times, a beat he'll share with Sharon Waxman. Exhibit A: Waxman and Halbfinger file a piece together today on how, before the Weinsteins leave Disney for good, they'll likely be flushing 22 movies out of their system and onto screens.

The end of Miramax as we know it is evidently a story it takes two to tackle. For the NYO, Jake Brooks and Anna Schneider-Mayerson present a piece far richer in detail, though exactly what'll happen to the films in the works, not to mention the dwindling number of current employees, remains a mystery.

Aaron Dobbs: "For day three of film programmer week at the Gothamist Interview we head across the East River to Astoria, Queens where those brave enough to leave the isle of Manhattan have the ability to visit the Museum of the Moving Image, formerly known as the American Museum of the Moving Image." Mr. David Schwartz.

Ray Pride at Movie City News: "In this catch-all February column, a lot on childhood and childishness, including Born Into Brothels, Nobody Knows, Constantine, Imaginary Heroes, Sky Blue, Son of the Mask, In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger, Bride and Prejudice, Vodka Lemon, Bad Guy and Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior. Plus: an elegy for A Love Song for Bobby Long and a few notes on Diego Lerman's tasty Argentinean road movie, Suddenly, out on DVD."

George Fasel:

The revivals at the Film Comment Selects film series have been as spotty as the new films: Sam Fuller's two war films, Fixed Bayonets (1951) and The Steel Helmet (1950) are interesting in their fashion but not up to his best work; Le Pont du nord (my reactions here had its moments but not enough of them; Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) is an acknowledged work of satirical genius; and I couldn't squeeze in Barbet Schroeder's Mistress (1973) so can't offer an opinion.  But in the middle of all this is Alain Tanner's La Salamandre (1971), a joyous Swiss comedy (brought you up short, that bit, didn't it?).

Even after its restoration, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate still can't get a clean break, writes Geoffrey Macnab in the Guardian. Not only was its DVD release botched, but a doc about its original unmaking, Michael Epstein's Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate, is being held to the festival circuit because "MGM is also charging Epstein such exorbitant rates for using Heaven's Gate clips that he can't afford to license them." Click the title, then "Download Katalog" for a four-page PDF file on the doc.

Lisa Lutz spent a decade of her life writing and rewriting a comedy that eventually premiered on September 11, 2001. And of course, disappeared immediately. "It is, however, available in Bulgaria and Vietnam." She tells her story in Salon.

Sean Spillane at Bitter Cinema: "Lost among the obituaries of the past week was the passing of 85 year old Irish actor Dan O'Herlihy."

"Why Save TiVo?" asks Steve Rosenbaum.

"Tags + Video = Bliss (Anarchy)." Chuck Olsen explains.

Don't click here unless you want to know every single little thing that happens in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. "Happens," of course, being a term used in its broadest sense. Via Jason Kottke, who's making a very brave move we should all support if we can.

Online viewing tip. "The Virile Man." Via Wiley Wiggins.

Posted by dwhudson at February 23, 2005 11:36 AM