Weekend shorts.

In the Guardian, novelist AS Byatt reviews both a film and a book about the film. Yuri Norstein's Tale of Tales, voted the greatest animated film of all time in a Los Angeles arts fest in 1984 (while another of his films, Hedgehog in the Fog, won the votes for that honor at the Laputa Animation Festival in Japan in 2003), is, for Byatt, "a film that immediately changes the memory - mine at least - of all other films. It is immediately apprehensible, and needs to be seen again and again, because it remains puzzling, both as to its form and as to its meaning."

One who has indeed seen it "at least 50" times is Clare Kitson, former Commissioning Editor for Animation at Channel 4 and author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey, to be released at the Animated Encounters festival in Bristol (April 21 through 24). For more on the book as well as a major exhibition and retrospective in Moscow, see Anna Malpas's profile of Norstein in the Moscow Times.

Back to the Guardian:

• Stuart Jeffries interviews Abbas Kiarostami. Well, more than that, actually. It's a profile, a summing up and an excellent introduction to the Kiarostami season at the National Film Theatre (April 28 through May 31) and the exhibition "Trees in Snow" at the Victoria & Albert Museum (through June 19) and the Zelda Cheatle Gallery (April 27 through May 20).

• Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: Mario Bava's The Mask of Satan, known stateside as Black Sunday and based on a story by Gogol also adapted by Konstantin Yershov.

• Gareth McLean: "Like many young boys, [Jonathan] Caouette loved horror: Halloween, The Exorcist and the original The Stepford Wives were among his favorite movies. But he was also interested in the mechanics of film - 'the reel changes and sound pops'."

• As the 70s gave way to the 80s, American horror lost its way, sighs John Patterson: "I don't wish to deprive Wes [Craven] or [Kevin] Williamson of their money and creature-comforts, but without them they might be making cleverer, nastier horror movies today."

• Joe Queenan poses a damn good question he never quite gets around to answering. Most of us can smell a bad movie weeks in advance: "Why then do we insist on seeing them?"

• A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who's who.

The Amityville Horror and Kung Fu Hustle prompt Slate's David Edelstein to consider the various kinds of onscreen violence and recalls a talk he once had with Stuart Gordon: "He appreciated the irony: If he put a fight onscreen in a way that made the audience hate violence (cartilage breaking, blood flowing copiously in close-up), he might get an X for his troubles; but if he made it Popeye-painless (scores of bloodless punches with no bruising), he'd get a PG and an audience of happy kids learning the lesson that violence is fun."

Todd's now filing reports from the Philadelphia Film Festival (through April 20) over at Twitch. His first is comprised of a few quick words on Robert Lepage's The Far Side of the Moon, "a remarkably confident film and frequently laugh out loud funny in an absurdist sort of way." His second: Héctor Carré's La Promesa, Izumi Takahashi's The Soup One Morning and Ryoo Seung-wan's Arahan.

In the New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann reviews Yvan Attal's Happily Ever After and Agnès Jaoui's Look at Me. This may seem trivial, but if you read this blog, you'll probably enjoy the fact that, of the first, he notes:

[Charlotte] Gainsbourg is not irresistibly appealing but is authentic enough. To indulge in the familial: she is the daughter of Jane Birkin, the Anglo-French actress who first came to attention in Antonioni's Blow-Up. More film-world twinings: Vincent's mother and father are played by Anouk Aimée, a goddess of the past who now does grandmothers, and Claude Berri, director of the superb duo derived from Marcel Pagnol, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. 

Meanwhile, at Movie City News, Leonard Klady spells out the good news and bad news for French cinema.

In the spirit of Monday night's gala tribute at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Manohla Dargis celebrates Dustin Hoffman's career, reminding us not only that it was he who "helped pave the way for similarly untraditional types like Al Pacino and [Gene] Hackman, who in the 1970s would strip the gloss from the role of the leading man and usher in a new era of authenticity," but also, in two very fine paragraphs, that Hoffman brought a new sort of intense eroticism to the movies during that same period.

Also in the New York Times:

• The team behind Hoop Dreams originally set out to beef up Criterion's DVD release, but once they'd "spent five days visiting with Arthur Agee and William Gates, whose lives they had chronicled in the celebrated high school basketball documentary 10 years before, writes Patrick Z McGavin, they realized they just had to make a new, second film.

• Anthony DeCurtis talks to Alex Gibney about the soundtrack to his excellent doc, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, featuring Tom Waits, Judy Garland, Marilyn Manson and, of course, Philip Glass: "I wanted it to be like a toe-tapping Greek chorus that would comment on what was going on, even as it exemplified the mood."

• Rachel Saltz on the series, "Amitabh Bachchan: The Biggest Film Star in the World!"

Project Greenlight finalist Scott Smith may not be shooting that feature, but he's still blogging. The best bits are the transcripts of his conversations with his kids.

Suddenly, a nice dollop from George Thomas on Indian film. As for the latest from Bollywood, check Wilfred Lobo's blog at Cinema Minima on a regular basis.

When in doubt, quote Pauline, notes Ray Pride.

Online presentation tip. By way of Chuck Olsen, Eli Chapman: "In general, filmmakers have been very slow to effectively use the web. The main problem is that we don't think of the web as an integral part of the filmmaking process. Today, a filmmaker might have a website, a Quicktime trailer of the film, some press clippings, a mailing list, and maybe even a blog. That needs to change." His presentation, available as a PDF file, is entitled "Models for Sustainable Cinema" and it makes you wish you could see and hear him deliver it.

Online viewing tip. Very funny. Peter Jackson poops out at the end of the King Kong shoot and calls in for help. Via Movie City News.

Posted by dwhudson at April 16, 2005 1:15 PM