Shorts, 3/2.

In Salon, Brian Libby listens to Danny Boyle talk about, well, Millions, of course, but also about what's become of Britain and about his next projects: a sci-fi story by Alex Garland and, in the distant future, a sequel to Trainspotting.

More on Millions from Time's Richard Corliss, who also recommends "six upcoming diva DVDs to glamorize your evenings - and to make every modern actress want to pour herself another vodka hemlock." More in this vein from Fay Weldon in the London Times and via the IFC Blog:

I would hesitate to call [Nicole] Kidman a film star. Where’s the mystery? We know too much.... The sorry fact is that film stars, screen goddesses and screen legends were a product of the mid-20th-century and we are now in the 21st.... Film stars were meant to behave badly, and live excessively, look great, despise everyone and perform well at the box office.

In Time Asia, Bryan Walsh on Seoul Raiders: "Thank God for Tony Leung Chiu-wai. The best actor working in Asian cinema today can redeem any scene and endow even the most artificial plot with a few degrees of soul."

Todd at Twitch:

A Tale of Two Sisters refuses to fit neatly into any genre, though it is most commonly referred to as a horror film, and it is all the stronger for that. Director Kim [Jee-woon] obviously values ambiguity as a tool to keep the audience guessing, by refusing to follow a neat pattern he forces you out of any sense of easy familiarity and keeps the world of the film tilting and roiling in unexpected directions. This is a film that rewards multiple viewings thanks to the range of possible interpretations and the wealth of small details, unnoticed on first viewing, that will push you in one direction or another as you slowly pick them up.

Also, an excellent entry from Mack.

At Koreanfilm.org, Paolo Berolin interviews Whang Cheol-mean, whose Frakchi (Spying Cam) won the Fipresci award in Rotterdam in February.

Deutsche Kinostars der 50er Jahre. Via Sean Spillane at Bitter Cinema: "The stars themselves were attractive enough, although they didn't seem to make much of a splash outside West Germany (or German speaking environs), unlike, say, Curd Jürgens, Hardy Kruger, Gert Frobe, or Karin Dor (although a lot of these aforementioned actors made their transatlantic bones on Bond films, oddly enough)."

Towards the bottom of that page is a link to Deutscher Tonfilm 1929 bis 1972. These are film programs - Illustrierte Film-Bühne, for example - one would buy at the theater for a few extra Pfennigs; my in-laws still have hundreds of them, and I've spent countless hours paging through them. Very gingerly. Choose a year, then a title; and then, at the bottom of the page for many of those titles you'll find one more photo galleries. Take your time.

The Cinecultist has seen Christina Ricci in Prozac Nation and assures you you can be glad you haven't yet.

Not all interviews are alike, and you'll find a string of them unlike most others at Scene Missing Magazine. Via Wiley Wiggins, one of the interviewees.

Bruce Feirstein tells the story of Oscar weekend. Short version: The Academy Awards, like a visit to a movie theater, may be playing a waning role in pop culture, but 4 Times Square (Vanity Fair HQ) is still Olympus, where the gods quietly tug at unseen strings.

Also in the New York Observer:

• Jake Brooks looks ahead to the film and DVD releases of spring, reports on what sounds like a pretty flimsy lawsuit against Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock and ties it all up with quite a quote from Manohla Dargis.

• Ben Profume invades Jamie Foxx's dreams.

• Simon Doonan's "Top 10 fave moments from the 77th Annual Academy Awards."

• Hilton Kramer admires the work of Robert De Niro, Sr: "Not only as a painter and a draftsman but as a writer, too, he displayed a profligate talent that was designed to sweep us off our feet - and sometimes even succeeded in doing so."

• Andrew Sarris on Be Cool: "As Bobby Clark once remarked at a particularly tangled moment in a freewheeling Broadway revival of Victor Herbert's Sweethearts, 'Never was a thin plot so complicated.'" In the Village Voice, Michael Atkinson finds it "decidedly uncool," but there are definitely bits he got a kick out of.

Also in the Voice:

• Laura Sinagra talks to Lucrecia Martel about The Holy Girl.

• Dennis Lim previews the Global Film Initiative's "Global Lens 2005" (at MoMA, March 3 through 18).

• Four writers look ahead to Film Forum's "Essential Westerns, 1924 - 1962" (March 4 through 31).

Susan Gerhard on Gunner Palace: "Unlike that of blustery war blockbusters, the film's awful suspense is earned." Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: Cheryl Eddy on Night of Henna and The Jacket.

It wasn't just Hollywood giving out awards this weekend. Sify reports on the 50th Filmfare awards presented in Mumbai over the weekend: "Veer Zaara the film exploring the theme of love across borders, was adjudged the best film of the year while Kunal Kohli was conferred upon the best director award for Hum Tum."

The Guardian reports on an upset at the Césars: L'Esquive (The Dodge) won best film, best director (Abdellatif Kechiche), best screenplay and best female newcomer (Sara Forestier). "By contrast, the two films deemed favourites to win, A Very Long Engagement, the first world war drama starring Amélie's Audrey Tautou, and The Chorus, the Oscar-nominated story of a boys' choir, went home almost empty-handed." Filmmaker's Steve Gallagher has much more on the winning film.

Also at the Guardian site: Chatting with Observer critic Jason Solomons and Alex Bellos on how and why Hollywood's discovering soccer.

At indieWIRE, Jason Guerrasio checks up on five indies in production and Eugene Hernandez looks ahead to the 8th Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (April 7 through 10, Durham, NC).

Sad news from another festival, by way of Amy King: As James Copnall reports for the BBC, two were killed in an opening night stampede at the Fespaco festival in Burkino Faso.

Sound & Cinema is a new speaker series launching tomorrow at the San Francisco Film Centre with Peter Golub, director of the Sundance Composer Lab, composer Mark de gli Antoni and director Michael Lehmann. April 7: Brad Bird; May 5: Mark Mothersbaugh. Via Steve Rhodes.

Via the cinetrix (who also has an online viewing tip for you), Celia Wren's piece in the Boston Globe on the history and impact of Variety-speak: "The Oxford English Dictionary cites Variety as its earliest source for about two dozen terms, including 'punch line' (1921), 'payola' (1938), 'strip-tease' (1936), 'shoot-'em-up' (1953) and 'show biz' (1945)."

Posted by dwhudson at March 2, 2005 2:54 PM