Shorts, 5/13.

Tom Hall opens a terrific interview at indieWIRE with a bang: "There is not a more important filmmaker working today than Arnaud Desplechin." But that's not all. "There is a lot that I did get to ask Arnaud that didn't run in the interview, as space and brevity are an issue for indieWIRE. But not for me." So Tom posts twice as much or more from their conversation at his blog.

"For me, filmmaking is not about business. It's about militancy," Ousmane Sembene tells Alexander Carnwath. Also in the Independent: David Michael meets Scarlett Johansson and John Walsh presents an "Alternative Top 50" British films - alternative to a poll of HMV customers, that is, who've decided that Bridget Jones's Diary is the third-greatest Brit flick of all time. You'll like Walsh's list.

Reverse Shot's got a blog going, reverseblog, with over a dozen contributors - great fun so far.

So far, critical response to Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession has been quite good; Darren Hughes offers a well-considered dissenting opinion.

Up and coming:

• In the Hollywood Reporter, Gregg Kilday gets just enough info in for non-subscribers on David Cronenberg's next one.

• Cinematical's Karina Longworth finds David Lynch explaining why he's going with DV for his next one - and from here on out, to hear him tell it.

• Brad Anderson is very, very busy. At Twitch, Kurt'll fill you in.

• John Cleese will be writing a feature for Aardman Animations, the house behind Wallace and Gromit, reports the BBC's Caroline Briggs. Related: Kenneth Turan talks to Nick Park for the Los Angeles Times.

• Variety: Javier Bardem and Natalie Portman might star in Goya's Ghosts, written by Jean-Claude Carrière, directed by Milos Forman and produced by Saul Zaentz.

• Andy Serkis will direct an adaptation of Stephen Smith's autobiography Addict, reports Alan McEwen in the Scotsman.

• Two bits by way of Dark Horizons: Antonia Bird is directing Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth in The Meat Trade, a "gothic horror comedy"; Irvine Welsh wrote the original screenplay; and Julie Taymor's working on a 60s-era musical to star Evan Rachel Wood.

• Via the IFC Blog, Lee Yong-sung's report in the Korea Times on the American remake (set along the US-Mexican border) of Park Chan-wook's JSA and a BBC item on a British drama starring Aishwarya Rai.

• Oodles of adaptation news bits at the Book Standard. Via Ed Champion.

• Eugene Hernandez, who's been scanning the festival dailies at Cannes, has more.

"The four months of summer are intense and expensive," writes David Poland at Movie City News. "So, fully aware that I am going to eat dirt before this is over, I'm going to do a ranking of the studios by expected success (expected by me) and then, at the end of the season, we will revisit."

Peter Keough offers another alt.weekly-style annotated schedule of summer releases in the Boston Phoenix, where Gerald Peary previews the "Classic Westerns" series at the Brattle, tonight through May 19.

Dennis Cozzalio tops off an ongoing conversation with his readers with a viewing of Los Angeles Plays Itself. Related: "Visualizing the City," a symposium at the University of Manchester, June 26 through 28.

Related, too, in a way: "[Fritz] Lang had once studied architecture, and like nearly all of his earlier films, Fury offers a striking portrait of the structure of society; its assorted classes, organizations and technologies, and methods of law and order are mapped out with fine dramatic precision." Doug Cummings.

"As a reviewer, I'm obliged to give movies star ratings, but they're simply a summary of my personal response, not a declaration of some objective value and certainly not of any sort of consensus," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader. "In my reviews I try to describe the paths that lead to my subjective response so that readers can decide whether some part of my path might be theirs too. In the case of Crash I may blanch at [Paul] Haggis's narrative contrivances and think two stars, though I did enjoy them (three stars). But the vision of Los Angeles that they're designed to express strikes me as just and vital (four stars). So I wind up with an average of three."

More on Crash from Matt Dentler.

There's Crash, and now, Crash; Kicking and Screaming, and now, Kicking & Screaming. How does this happen? asks Jill Hunter Pellettieri in Slate and finds that the question's more serious than it might seem at first glance. Also: David Edelstein on Monster-in-Law, Mysterious Skin and Kings and Queen; more on that one from Steve Erickson in Gay City News.

Oliver Burkeman talks to Helen Hunt about her return. Also in the Guardian: Peter Bradshaw gives one star out of a possible five to Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and John Patterson much prefers Killer of Sheep to Crash. Related: Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay has found disturbing news about Charles Burnett's current project.

From the "White House wrecker" to the "Crotch laser," Darren Zenko salutes the "Great Beams of Film" in the Vue Weekly.

Nietzsche had quite a lot to say about screenwriting, notes Craig Mazin at the Artful Writer.

In the LA Weekly:

• Scott Foundas: "As with La Cienaga, the story of The Holy Girl is one told through askance glances, fleeting reflections, actions relegated to odd corners of the frame, and faces filmed in such tight close-up that the screen seems to buckle under their weight. It's a style at once ravishing and mysterious, austere and intimate, carrying with it the suggestion that even cinema may be powerless to invade the most clandestine antechambers of human behavior." Also: Layer Cake.

• Ella Taylor: "Monster-in-Law may be warmed-over camp, but... it does have one thing going for it. Though hardly flattering, it's the most affectionate and forgiving celluloid portrait of a mom I've seen since Albert Brooks's far superior Mother."

• Nikki Finke slams The Huffington Post.

Sean Spillane has a marvelous entry on cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa at Bitter Cinema.

Filmbrain's got something you just gotta see.

The "SRK Curse"? Ron Ahluwalia explains at Planet Bollywood: With the exception of Preity Zinta, any actress who makes her debut as Shah Rukh Khan's love interest is doomed to subsequent obscurity.

Setting out to "challenge portrayals of Shiri as something that 'came out of nowhere,'" Adam Hartzell takes in Kang Je-gyu's debut feature, The Ginko Bed, for Koreanfilm.org.

Mike Atherton at Cinema Minima: "It’s tricky to throw equal light on both sides of a conflict and especially difficult when that conflict is still unfolding. Private, by Saverio Costanzo, then, is a brave attempt to do just that, and it probably benefits from having the eye of an outsider looking in, as it’s an Italian film covering just one corner of the Palestinian–Israeli struggle."

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Jacob Adelman has the background on one of the films screening at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, The Loss of Nameless Things.

Do look back: PopMatters, Ellise Fuchs on last month's Torino Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Brandon Judell at indieWIRE on the San Francisco International Film Festival and Marjorie Baumgarten in the Austin Chronicle on the Tribeca Film Festival.

David Lowery calls up Todd Solondz.

Brandon Bird paints and writes. He also helps his students write letters to Christopher Walken. Via the SXSW News Reel.

Ever yearn for an ounce of Jack Black? From the Department of Eeewww, Celebrity Skin and Bodily Fluids.

Online viewing tips, round #1. Around 30 Kewpie commercials. Via The Crime in Your Coffee.

Online viewing tips, round #2. The latest batch of trailers dug up by the relentlessly resourceful team at Twitch.

Posted by dwhudson at May 13, 2005 3:48 PM