Shorts, 7/29.

"'CUT/Film as Found Object in Contemporary Video' at the Milwaukee Art Museum is the first exhibition in an American museum to focus on film appropriation in contemporary art, or more precisely, contemporary video," writes Roberta Smith in the New York Times. "[W]ith a spacious, well-choreographed installation that moves from lighter to darker galleries, it covers quite a bit of ground in terms of the ways, means and end results of film appropriation. It also includes some recent standouts of the genre, including Douglas Gordon's 1993 24-Hour Psycho (which is just that) and Christian Marclay's 2002 Video Quartet, a rousing homage to the silver screen."

At the Museum's site, you can grab a PDF file of Ruth Lopez's review of the show for Time Out Chicago. Definitely a recommended read, it's a quick and breezy tour and at least one or two of the pieces described are likely to launch a train of thought you'll be more than happy to ride.

"Andy never met one of those people before I cast them. They were not his coterie, and they were not hanging out at his gallery. These were selections of mine! I've had this all my life! The horror of it! His celebrityhood, which is an invention of the media, dominating my films!" Paul Morrissey unloads on Kevin Mahler in the Times of London.

Noy Thrupkaew for the American Prospect on The World: "The park would be too perfect a metaphor - E-Z Symbolism for the toll of globalization, China's lurch into the market economy, fueled on a generation’s shattered dreams - were it not for the rigor of Jia [Zhang-ke]'s storytelling technique."

And then, putting his praise for the "masterpiece" in print, that is, in the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum: "Jia, with his choreographed wide-screen long takes in long shot, may be the best cinematic composer of figures in landscapes since Michelangelo Antonioni. And as with Antonioni, the disconnections count more than the connections."

Speaking of Antonioni, the cinetrix has a question. And in return: "This interview with Walter Murch may not be new, but it sure is good."

"The most thrilling insight in Chabrol's pictures is that killers are the least thrilling of people," writes Christopher Bray in the New Statesman, and later, "Thirty years ago, during the high tide of New Left orthodoxy, it was fashionable to criticise Chabrol for not criticising the bourgeoisie. But could there be a more damning indictment of middle-class repression than Juste avant la nuit?"

Matt Clayfield at the Brisbane International Film Festival: "Of everything I saw yesterday (five features, a short feature and two shorts) Caveh Zahedi's I am a Sex Addict (2005) and Dominique Dubosc's Palestine Remembered (2004) were far and away the most interesting and affecting.... As far as I'm concerned, Palestine Remembered is, in actual fact, a series of loosely connected videoblog entries, tied together with suitable elegance by a series of visual motifs, musical cues and an overwhelming sense of place." More and more.

"Do students need to have professors demystify media for them when everything ranging from DVDs to blogs to the internet itself conspire to dethrone the very logic of master narratives?" asks Nick Rombes.

Reviews in the NYT:

• AO Scott: "The Aristocrats is - how shall I put it? - an essay film, a work of painstaking and penetrating scholarship, and, as such, one of the most original and rigorous pieces of criticism in any medium I have encountered in quite some time." For Slate's David Edelstein, it's "practically a classical symphony, with a theme, variations, variations that turn the theme inside out, and a coda" (while 9 Songs is "stupefyingly dull"). Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "I know art when I smell it, and The Aristocrats is it." But for Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times, it "gets annoying after a while." Meanwhile, Scott: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.

• Manohla Dargis on Tony Takitani, a "delicate wisp of a film with a surprisingly sharp sting," Edgar G Ulmer: The Man Off-Screen and Stealth.

• Stephen Holden on Sky High, "a clever hybrid of Harry Potter... and The Incredibles," and Must Love Dogs

• Laura Kern on Oyster Farmer, "uneven but ultimately endearing film."

"Through his years in the wilderness, [Michael] Powell never lost faith in his vision," writes Abigail Sanderson. Also in the Independent: Elaine Lipworth interviews Andy Garcia.

"Sometimes people will say something like, 'When are you going to grow up?' I feel like I'm running a million-dollar company and you're working at 7-Eleven, and you're asking me when I'm going to grow up?" Rob Zombie has a point there, and he makes it to Steve Appleford. Also in the LA CityBeat, Andy Klein on The Aristocrats: "If you’re not in the 'uncomfortable with this stuff' group – and maybe even if you are but can somehow go with the flow – the movie is painfully, soda-out-your-nose, hyperventilatingly hysterical."

For Moviefone, Aaron Hillis talks to Errol Morris "about his unorthodox introduction to documentary film, his thoughts on DVD and the frequent iconoclasms and ambiguities that are part of his directorial trademark."

Christie's will be staging an auction of vintage movie posters in September in London. More than a few are expected to fetch tens of thousands of pounds, and Steve Rose knows at least one reason why: "Those were the days - before downloadable trailers, 30-second TV spots, magazine spreads, fast-food promotional tie-ins, sticker slams and stealth marketing campaigns when the only marketing tools available to the movie promoter were an eye-catching poster and a carefully cultivated celebrity scandal." Also in the Guardian: Duncan Campbell on Sally Potter's Yes.

Nicole Kidman is going on holiday. Stop the presses, you say? Well, she may be gone a while. Like, a year or two, as she explains to John Hiscock in the Telegraph.

Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post: "So now, once again, he's in a big hit. If you watch a lot of movies you get hooked on some of these real people. The trajectory of their careers is just as interesting as the stories they're in on-screen. So it's a happy time for [Christopher] Walken and us." Also: Jonathan Yardley on Alec Guinness: "Like millions of others, I was captivated by his range, his sympathy, his wit and - this above all - his ability to lose himself so completely in the characters he played that they became utterly real and discrete."

Ryan Stewart at Cinematical on The Constant Gardener: "What [Fernando] Meirelles can't get away from is the essential novelness of this film, which would announce itself to any blank-slate viewer who meandered into the theater. There are back-stories we don't care about, character arcs that don't go anywhere, and, most lethally, a series of Big Ideas that don't stand up to scrutiny."

"By all appearances, enterprising discussions and efforts aimed at reinventing business models to reflect dramatic changes in technology and consumer habits are not occurring fast enough, in enough of the right places to avoid a potential economic quagmire in media and entertainment sectors; a quagmire caused by the failure to cultivate new revenue streams fast enough to offset deteriorating old revenue streams." Diane Mermigas lines up the numbers in the Hollywood Reporter.

Dennis Cozzalio crams half a summer of viewing into a single week.

At Out of Focus, Aaron previews the weekend.

Online listening tip. NPR's Laura Sidell talks to Chuck Olsen among others about Current.tv.

Online viewing tip. Bill Murray on David Letterman, as long as that clip lasts. He's in love, you know.

Posted by dwhudson at July 29, 2005 9:23 AM