Shorts, 8/16.

Funny Ha Ha is out on DVD today and many are wondering about the prospects of Andrew Bujalski's just-as-extraordinary second feature, Mutual Appreciation. So the cinetrix has asked Bujalski himself: "Well. I guess you can announce to the world that we are trying to seduce all the small distributors & having a predictably hard time of it..."

Distributors: Entertainment Weekly may be looking forward to Panic Room in the sky, but more modest outfits like this one - thing is, see, we're legion - would urge our readers to be rattled by Bujalski ("dangerously observant," as the cinetrix nails it) any day of the week instead.

At Cinema Strikes Back, Blake is very excited about a bit of news he picked up in Kevin Filipski's interview at Static Mulimedia with KimStim co-founder Ian Stimler:

We've got some titles coming up from director Seijun Suzuki. He had a falling-out with the major Japanese studios some years ago, and we picked up several of his films that we're planning to put out in a boxed set. He made three films from 1980-1991 which came to be known as the Taisho trilogy. Zigeunerweisen is considered his masterpiece, and it's a visually stunning film.

A few years ago, I translated two books on net.art by Tilman Baumgärtel. A few years before that, Tilman wrote his doctoral dissertation on Harun Farocki, and I've often wondered if at least parts of it - the interviews, for example - ought to appear in English in some form or other. Seeing acquarello's entry at Cinemarati today has me wondering all over again.

Flickhead's been blasted to the past recently as well. Browse covers for his mid-70s to mid-80s publication, The Magic Theater, editions of which are now much sought after and worth bunches.

"In total, there are at least six models of anti-heroes," asserts Nick Birren at Creative Screenwriting.

"So, I decided to make everyone on the crew do their version of an orgasm, and told them to take it over the top..." Pretty Persuasion director Marcos Siega talks to Nerve's Bilge Ebiri about breaking the ice with his teenage cast.

But "nudity is a decided liability when it comes to the commercial success of the movie," argues Edward Jay Epstein at Slate.

Doug Cummings enjoys Li Hanxiang's "undeniably charming" Love Eterne, "one of the most popular Hong Kong films of all time."

In the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein describes Bob Berney's latest challenge: Selling The Chumscrubber now that so many critics have panned it.

Jason Scott, director of the BBS: The Documentary, has announced at Slashdot that he's partnered with the Internet Archive to present "what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online": The BBS Documentary Video Collection.

"You see the music labels and movie studios toss around the words unauthorized and illegal indiscriminately, as if they're the same thing," observes JD Lasica. "They're not." Jon Lebkowsky is hosting the conversation with the author of Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation at the WELL.

Vítezslav Jandák, who's appeared in over 30 films, is about to become the Czech Republic's new culture minister. The BBC reports. Also, today's recovered rock icon footage: Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock.

Online viewing tip #1. "Debbie." The B-52s. Via James Seo's excellent new blog, Split Screen.

Online viewing tip #2. Japanese anti-piracy ad at TechJapan. Via Screenhead.

Posted by dwhudson at August 16, 2005 7:49 AM