Shorts, 8/21.

"[O]nce film studies became a legitimate discipline, once it became institutionalized, the unruly tone of those working around its edges and fringes became lost amid the duty-bound obligations for authors to deploy the usual discursive formulas in making their arguments." Nick Rombes wonders if blogs might be able to liven things up again.

"It is an unfortunate side-effect of the benefit of free speech that people tend to think that, because things may be said, it does not matter if they are." In the Telegraph, Charles Moore scolds the Dean of Lincoln, the Very Reverend Alec Knight, for "his Anglican illusion that £100,000 is a lot of money to extract from Hollywood" and for allowing Ron Howard's crew to shoot scenes from The Da Vinci Code in the cathedral.

Nick Davis at Cinemarati: "Giant is a pretty subversive ride in and of itself. Starting with Mercedes McCambridge's salty, grimacing cameo in the first 45 minutes and stretching all the way to the rows over anti-Mexican racism and miscegenation in the final hour, Giant has some real curios in its cabinet and some major bones to pick with American and specifically Texan culture. Sirk it isn't, but the mind of the picture is still alive."

"Like an unrequited love, the surprisingly ungraspable dream of translating Fitzgerald's doomed romanticism to the big screen has gotten under moviedom's skin yet again," writes Steve Chagollan (related: more up-n-coming film news in Film Comment's "e-bulletin"). The other lit-on-film piece in the New York Times this weekend comes from Michael Joseph Gross, who reports on how Roman Polanski and Ben Kingsley have collaborated to reimagine Fagin in their version of Oliver Twist, avoiding the anti-Semetic slant of past characterizations.

Also: Charles Solomon reports that ADV, the largest distributor of anime in the US, has decided not to ignore or shun BitTorrent and instead actually use it to release promotional materials. Slashdotters comment.

"Far from just homage to anime, [Fragile Machine] is a well-styled piece of visual and audio cyberpunk, setting lessons learned from Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Metropolis to a beat." Brett D Rogers in fps Magazine, a nicely designed magazine you can download as a PDF file. There's plenty to discover online, too, though, such as Emru Townsend's interview with Mind Game director Masaaki Yuasa.

Jim Biancolo points to Luxo's remembrances of Joe Ranft, "Story and Voice 'Guru' at Pixar Animation Studios" (more), and to Ronnie Del Carmen's tribute at Tirade.

Great characters, great voices, great animation, great writing. So why is Hopeless Pictures leaving Dana Stevens at Slate "unaccountably, depressed? he only explanation I can offer: It's the subject matter. Quite simply, there's something sad about the fact that television has nothing left to laugh at but itself."

Lost-n-found:

• The Japan Times reports that Yûkoku, the only film Yukio Mishima directed, was thought to have been destroyed by his widow. But the negative's been found and the 30-minute film will likely be included in a 42-volume DVD set of Mishima's works. Via Martha Fischer at Cinematical.

• Dalya Alberge reports in the London Times on the recently rediscovered final screen test of Greta Garbo: "The extraordinary footage casts new light on her decision to spend the rest of her life in New York, craving only to be left alone." Via They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

• Tom Schiller's rarely seen Nothing Lasts Forever, with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Imogene Coca, Mort Sahl, screens at the Walter Reade in New York on September 6. Along with indieWIRE's Wendy Mitchell, Filmmaker's Matthew Ross explains why, if you can, you must see it. Meanwhile, on the front page, Jason Guerrasio has a long talk with John Pierson and Steve James about Reel Paradise.

"Jean Eustache is a great, underrated poet of the cinema," claims Jim Jarmusch, one of several contributors to a collection of shout-outs to undeservedly neglected works - films, books, works of art. And it spills over onto a second page. On a third, sacred cows are slaughtered.

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

• Geoffrey Macnab interviews Albert Maysles, still filming at 78. Related: David D'Arcy's interview with DA Pennebaker at the main site.

• Andrew Pulver's adaptation of the week: Vincente Minnelli's Gigi.

• Revive the musical, pleads John Patterson.

• Stop adapting TV shows, demands Joe Queenan.

Heather Havrilesky in Salon: "The characters on Six Feet Under feel sort of like family members to me, in that they're so often such a serious pain in the ass." Alan Ball: "I wouldn't have it any other way." The Los Angeles Times interviews the cast and Greg Braxton also talks to Ball.

Also in the LAT: John Clark talks to John Turturro about his film, Romance & Cigarettes, which everyone seems to like though few know what to do with it as yet; still what a cast: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Christopher Walken, Eddie Izzard, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro and Steve Buscemi. And Patricia Ward Biederman talks to Brian Flemming about The God Who Wasn't There.

Armond White in the New York Press: "Pretty Persuasion dares to itemize our moral chaos, and that's preferable to what has gone wrong in other recent topical youth films."

Dennis Cozzalio posts an appreciation of David Edelstein: "I don't think I've ever read a piece written by Edelstein that made me feel like he was trying to elevate himself above a piece of work... Yet he can also turn around and deal with more 'serious' work... without suddenly making himself sound like your least favorite film professor who has some cinematic spinach he insists on foisting upon you before you sit down to your Hollywood cheeseburger."

"Bob Iger suggested this week that the move to an even shorter Home Entertainment window would be a good thing. Why?" asks David Poland, to whom this simply does not make sense; theatrical and ancillary are "two distinct income streams. It is analogous to Costco vs the local Ralph's." It's a big issue at Movie City News at the moment. Bill Mechanic argues: "Take it down to a single market and the economics will collapse." Meanwhile, Gary Dretzka surveys the shake-up in movie marketing.

And via MCN:

• Jack Matthews's preview of the fall season in the New York Daily News. Let's add Sean Smith's in Newsweek.

• David Baddiel in the London Times: "What is it about Jane Austen and the screen?"

• Dan Zak in the Washington Post: "Five pals who met at the University of Central Florida disappeared after making the most profitable movie of all time. Six years later, they were found - alive and well, a little older, a little wiser and with plans to end one long sophomore slump."

• Emanuel Levy interviews Fernando Meirelles. Related: Anne-Marie O'Connor in the LAT.

• Hugh Hart talks to Terry Gilliam for the San Francisco Chronicle.

What are your "comfort movies" asks Girish.

The BBC: "More than 100,000 people are expected to attend the Sarajevo Film Festival, which started out as a cultural stand against the Bosnian war 11 years ago."

Brian picks out the highlights from the Pacific Film Archive calendar.

Online viewing tip #1. "Friend of DFG Pink Frankenstein, KALX DJ and host, since 1998, of the Bay Area-based 60s French pop dance party Bardot A Go Go, has been hard at work on a documentary about French pop music," writes Andrea. Watch the preview for Bardot A Go Go and consider helping him out.

Online viewing tip #2. Video tombstones. Via Slashdot.

Online viewing tip #3. Jason Koxvold's video for Citizens Here and Abroad's "You Drive and We'll Listen to Music." Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #4. Live webcam imagery projected on 3D models of the same locations. An installation by Markus Kison. Via Sarah Cook at Eyebeam's reBlog.

Posted by dwhudson at August 21, 2005 11:39 AM