Shorts, 8/23.

"This is how they do you in Hollywood." The most entertaining (and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny) new film-related blog I, at least, have come across in a long, long time (via the ever sharp-eyed Vince Keenan) is Josh Friedman's I find your lack of faith disturbing. Friedman collaborated with David Koepp on the screenplay for War of the Worlds, and he'll tell you all about that, his own backstory and more. And since he knows you're wondering, Tom Cruise: "All you need to know is this: the man is a fucking movie star and even if he didn't travel with two hundred flashbulbs surrounding him he would still glow."

Acquarello at Strictly Film School: "Rather than validating Kim [Ki-duk]'s entry into a subtler, more artistically mature phase that had been reflected in his recent films since Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...and Spring, The Bow instead regurgitates like a bloated self-parody of his earlier work." Also: A quick note of praise for Hong Sang-soo's Tale of Cinema.

Todd at Twitch: "Wild Life - an early [Shinji] Aoyama offering being brought to the western world for the first time thanks to Artsmagic's DVD release - is a sly, deadpan crime comedy.... Beautifully shot, smartly written and slyly funny, Wild Life shows that Aoyama has learned [Kiyoshi] Kurosawa's lessons well. Like most of Kurosawa's work, Wild Life is a genre film that both subverts and transcends genre." Oh, and The Bow? Todd would disagree with Acquarello: "Highly recommended."

All David Lowery has to say about it for now is this: "After seeing Bad Guy with Yen last night, I decided that my brief love affair with the films of Kim Ki-Duk had come to an end."

A teen comedy. And another one - with vampires. Park Chan-wook tells MTV's Carl Davis what'll follow the revenge trilogy. Via AICN.

Tsui Hark and Stephen Chow will be collaborating on an adaptation of the "cartoon," Warm-Blooded Society, reports CRI's Shen Min. Via Adam Finley at Cinematical. At Kaiju Shakedown, Grady Hendrix has news of three more eyebrow-raising team-ups.

Three mixed reviews for Three Dancing Slaves. At indieWIRE, courtesy of the Reverse Shot team. more from Dennis Lim in the Voice: "Unfocused and vaguely arty, Three Dancing Slaves is a Bruce Weber shoot come to life.

Also in the Voice:

• Ed Park is charmed by The Baxter, throws kudos at everyone in the cast, but notes that Justin Theroux "steals every scene he's in"; and Lim interviews him - we get a few good peeks at what it's been like on the set of David Lynch's Inland Empire.

• Michael Atkinson: "Terry Gilliam's new windup toy The Brothers Grimm is a daffy, genre-hash gambol, descendant of the Hammer Film school (if those B sides had ever been made with money and talent) and just as fabulously cartoon-Gothic as Sleepy Hollow."

• Leslie Camhi on Simone Bitton's "disturbing and compelling documentary Wall charts the progress of the immense, meandering, and still-unfinished barrier that the state of Israel is erecting along its border with the West Bank's occupied territories."

• "The zippy mini-movie oeuvre of experimental animator Jeff Scher, who has been warming up audiences at the IFC Center with pre-show shorts," writes Ed Halter. The occasion: "Short Attention Span Cinema: An Evening With Jeff Scher," August 25.

• Howard Hampton on Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell's Fan-Tan, a novel "as defiantly anachronistic as it is diverting."

• "Tracking Shots": Mikael Wood on We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (more); Camhi on The Memory of a Killer; Matt Singer on Supercross: The Movie

Sometimes, indie filmmakers are "unwilling to simply ride out the fest circuit wave and move on to a new project, or even pursue a different career altogether." Eugene Hernandez delves into the case of Susan Buice and Arin Crumley, who've briefly entertained such thoughts but have forged ahead in their pursuit of a distributor for Four Eyed Monsters.

"I really think most of what we call cinema is not cinema. It's really film theatre or, even worse, illustrated literature... Real cinema is much closer to music," Carlos Reygadas tells Charlotte Higgins.

Also in the Guardian:

• John Robinson: "[I]f Jeff Feuerzeig's film The Devil And Daniel Johnston... makes one thing abundantly plain, it's that when you're dealing with an artist who has fought a longtime battle with mental illness, it's a vain hope to think that anything can ever be particularly straightforward."

• Geoffrey Macnab talks to Imre Kertesz about Lajos Koltai's adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel, Fateless.

• Paul Moreley: "The rock biopic loves the shapely early death, the clean, dirty moment when rock'n'roll fun and games open up on the resonating edge of eternity and immortality."

Turtles Can Fly has arrived in Australia, so Philippa Hawker interviews Bahman Ghobadi for the Age.

For New York, Logan Hill profiles Rosario Dawson and interviews Terry Gilliam.

In the New York Times:

• As Allan Kozinn reports, Robert Moog has died at the age of 71. Jon Pareles reminds us his impact. More: Fresh Air.

• Dave Kehr on new DVDs.

• Joel Topcik reports on studios, large and small, using Web ad campaigns "to identify and reach niche audiences online."

• The headline over Lorne Manly's piece says is self-explanatory: "Extinction Long Seen, Video Stores Hang On."

"If punk is dead, as has been said, it appears to be kicking and digging its way out of the grave." Shana Ting Lipton reports on a startling (and welcome) number of punk-related docs and narrative features on the way. Also in the Los Angeles Times: Elaine Dutka on the making of all those making-of's on all those DVDs.

Designboom explains why you don't see hand-painted posters anymore. Not even in Russia. Via things magazine.

Aaron Hillis launches "The Last Picture Game Show."

Set your timers: Sunday night, September 18, AMC airs Kahane Corn's Making Dazed, reuniting the cast and crew of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Via Erik Davis at Cinematical. Wiley Wiggins, who, of course, gives a wonderful performance in the film, has more.

Scott Kirsner has a bone or two to pick with Lisa DiCarlo's Forbes story, "What's Wrong With Digital Cinema?"

Online browsing (and viewing) tip. Science Cinémathèque, from the Museum of the Moving Image.

Online viewing tip #1. Five top voice-over artists in a limo. Via Coudal Partners, also pointing to the work of Alessandro Bavari (a rerun here, but worth it) and - back to text - Ed DiGiulo on making lenses for Kubrick.

Online viewing tip #2. The video for the Mountain Goats' "This Year." Via Michaela at depravedfangirls.

Online viewing tip #3. This time, Mutiny City News has a penguin interviewing Luc Jacquet; and again, back to text: Ray Pride interviews Alex Wurman, "whose intelligent, impressive score is an important component of the American version" of March of the Penguins.

Online viewing tip #4. At Twitch, the trailer for Sha Po Lang.

Posted by dwhudson at August 23, 2005 3:47 PM