Shorts, 4/18.

The Stanley Kubrick exhibition may be packed up now, but there is now a permanent record of all the careful collecting, collating and curating his widow, Christiane, and her brother, Jan Harlan put into it in the form of a mini-monument designed by Taschen: The Stanley Kubrick Archives is "a physical marvel," writes Malcolm Jones in Newsweek:

It comes with a little CD-ROM with an interview with the director, and a piece of 70mm film from 2001 is tucked into a sleeve on the first page.... But there's lot of text, with original essays by Kubrick experts like Gene D. Phillips, memoirs by Kubrick friends like the writer Michael Herr and lots of reprinted interviews with Kubrick himself, who was so articulate that he could almost talk you into thinking that you like a film that you didn't like.

To celebrate, promote or inquire, take your pick, Sean O'Hagan drives out to the big house in Hertfordshire and talks to Christiane Kubrick.

Also in the Observer:

• David Smith reports on Francis Ford Coppola's displeasure with the video game based on The Godfather.

• Miranda Sawyer meets Martin Freeman, who plays Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

• Jason Solomons on the long search for the new Bond.

• Laura Cumming on "Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses," an exhibition at the White Cube through May 21.

Garth Pearce is mightily impressed by Kingdom of Heaven: "Most of the doubts about this film, set in 1186, from the controversial subject matter to the casting of [Orlando] Bloom, are nailed in its first half-hour... [the film] has the power to make an audience feel it is living and breathing history." There's one for the poster. At any rate, for the London Times, he talks to Ridley Scott, whom he finds "in a pugnacious mood." Via Movie City News.

In the New Yorker:

• Michael Shapiro calls up Shin Sang Ok in Inchon and finds him "happy to talk about his time in North Korea and his collaborations with the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, a legendary movie buff."

• David Blum makes it quite clear that putting a stop to Frederick Wiseman's The Garden is far more harmful to Madison Square Garden than the film could possibly be.

• Ellen Barkin takes Lillian Ross on a tour of her great big house. More from Ariel Levy in New York.

• Anthony Lane on The Interpreter, which evidently has its pluses and minuses, and The Best of Youth, which "takes its chance - almost unheard of, these days - to bloom and unfurl like a novel."

Over the course of a single page, Edward Levine asks Albert Maysles a wide range of questions.

Tom Hall: "The thrill of criticism is, to me, not found in the actual pronouncements of judgment by writers I admire, but in the curious thrill of having my own feelings go toe to toe with another critical mind.... For me, talking about movies is almost as important to understanding them as watching the films themselves."

Will Knight in the New Scientist: "A computer interface inspired by the futuristic system portrayed in the movie Minority Report , starring Tom Cruise, could soon help real military personnel deal with information overload." Via Wiley Wiggins.

Ruthe Stein reports on how Chris Columbus turned a few streets of San Francisco into 80s-era New York for his adaptation of Rent. Also in the San Francisco Chronicle and via Movie City News, Stein's profile of Peter Sarsgaard.

David Thomson in the Independent: "[O]ne of the great historical virtues of The Big Red One is simply the notion of a long, destructive, just war in which everything might have to be sacrificed except resolve."

More from the Philadelphia Film Festival from Todd at Twitch: Off Beat, Oldboy, Stratosphere Girl, Quiet as a Mouse and Evilenko.

Hollywood Bitchslap's Peter Sobczynski previews the 7th Annual Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival, April 20 through 24.

At Cinema Minima, Andre Soares examines a collection of series running at the Filmarchiv Austria through May 1, "propaganda films disguised as escapist comedies, dramas, and musicals, much like what was being done in Hollywood [in the 30s and early 40s]. Except, of course, that the heroes of those films were the Nazis and/or assorted members of the Aryan race."

In India, there's a wavelet of professionals giving up corporate life for screenwriting, reports Manju Sara Rajan in the Indian Express. Via Movie City Indie.

Matt Clayfield's revised his top ten.

Online browsing tips. Marx-Out-of-Print, via Eye of the Goof; Walking the Shark, via M Valdemar; both in a roundabout way via Bitter Cinema.

Online listening tip. Cyndi Greening talks with Mike Luciano about his "transition from digital filmmaking student to industry professional."

Online viewing tip #1. The trailer for Gus Van Sant's Last Days. Via Greg Allen.

Online viewing tip #2. David Lynch's weather report. Via Cinematical.

Online viewing tip #3. As Brian Flemming puts it, yes, "This is an Apple promotional video, but worth watching for [Walter] Murch."

Posted by dwhudson at April 18, 2005 9:29 AM