Cronenberg and shorts.

"Ok, so is this the Bush administration's foreign policy, based on a western? Well, it's hard to avoid the obvious." That's David Cronenberg talking with Salon's Andrew O'Hehir about A History of Violence. And the interview is only about half of the new "Beyond the Multiplex" column; the rest addresses Dear Wendy, "a bizarre admixture of realistic wounded-teen drama and inflated tragic allegory," and Forty Shades of Blue, which "combines high production values, terrific acting and a distinctively American lyricism in a combination you hardly ever see these days."

The Village Voice presents quite a Cronenberg package this week. "Indeed, he may be the best-reviewed filmmaker in this paper's history," notes Dennis Lim, who also talks with the director about A History of Violence in a rather long piece for the Voice these days. J Hoberman explains how Violence can be both "deeply involving" and "as coolly distanced as its title would suggest."

Michael Atkinson addresses a question at the center of a few critical brouhahas in the past year or so (think back to the flurry over Oldboy, for example): In what ways do we justify onscreen violence? Which of these arguments hold water? "Cronenberg," he writes, "to his credit, withholds judgment," and so, in the end, does Atkinson.

Chiranjit Goswami at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "Cronenberg's success is that reactions to his latest work are so decidedly diverse, since his film is so skillfully adept at presenting the ambiguous nature of violence."

At Movie City Indie, Ray Pride points out the string of annotated behind-the-scenes clips at the History of Violence Blog.

Johnny Ray Huston in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "From the Lynch-like diner small talk about coffee and pie to the foreboding, shiny black car slowly creeping into sun-bathed golden settings, Americana fits the Canadian auteur like a surgical glove. The result is his best movie since Dead Ringers." Also: Rachel Odes on Dear Wendy. More from Steve Erickson at Gay City News.

Another interview? The Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns has a short but fun one: "When it comes time for our protagonist to descend into a dark netherworld of mayhem and depravity, Cronenberg sends him to... Philadelphia? 'No offense,' he laughs."

Peter Keough fits both the interview and the review on one page in the Boston Phoenix.

But wait, there's more. In the New York Press. Jennifer Merin conducts the interview, Matt Zoller Seitz, the review: "I had trouble taking it seriously, and there are times when Cronenberg seems to tip his hand and let you know that he's not taking it all that seriously, either." While we're here: Armond White smirks off Good Night, and Good Luck (Tom Hall offers a dissenting opinion) and Jim Knipfel asks, "Who could've imagined that sweet little curly-headed, tap-dancing Shirley Temple would turn out to be such a silent but powerful manipulator of the wickeder, weirder side of our collective unconscious?"

Back to the Voice:

• Anthony Kaufman offers a brief history of Killer Films: "No other film company has consistently tackled such once taboo topics as gay romance, transgender identity, and fetish-crazy sex addicts and survived to tell the tales again and again." The occasion is the MoMA series, "Swoon: Ten Years of Killer Films," and it's also prompted Aaron Dobbs and Lily Oei's big, juicy interview with Christine Vachon for the Gothamist. Related: "What's it like to be a New York producer in 2005?" As part of the Hollywood Reporter's "Spotlight: New York" package, Randee Dawn moderates a roundtable of some of the finest (Vachon, Bob Berney, etc) to talk nuts and bolts.

• Joshua Land on Occupation: Dreamland, "a fair-minded (but hardly apolitical) grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that trusts the audience to draw its own conclusions."

• "Tracking Shots": Jessica Winter on Oliver Twist and Dear Wendy; Mark Holcomb on Dirty Love; Laura Sinagra on Roll Bounce; Pete L'Official on Into the Fire; and Danial Adkison on Dorian Blues.

"When I saw the images of torture at Abu Ghraib, I understood that Pasolini had foreseen everything." That's photographer (and occasional actor) Fabian Cevallos in an amazing ANSA story Martha Fischer at Cinematical has found on the first public display of photos Cevallos shot of scenes eventually cut from Salo.

Acquarello: "It comes as no surprise that the three filmmakers mentioned near the end of Shuji Terayama's patently offbeat, garish, unclassifiable, and audacious youth culture film, Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets are Roman Polanski, Nagisa Oshima, and Michelangelo Antonioni."

MTV's Larry Carroll gets Quentin Tarantino talking about Grindhouse, Inglorious Bastards and Vega Brothers. Brief comments: Quint at AICN, Blake at Cinema Strikes Back and Erik Davis at Cinematical.

Flickhead reviews a new magazine, Cinema Retro: "Distinctly Baby Boomer material all the way, the publication holds an unwavering reverence for 60s and 70s popcorn cinema, but, perhaps more significantly, revels in its unique brand of enthusiasm."

Sample the October issue of Interview at just jared. Via Martha Fischer at Cinematical.

Five years ago, Hong Kong directors and actors were heading for Los Angeles. "But," writes Winnie Chung in the Hollywood Reporter, "as opportunities and conditions open up in China, there has been a trend of reverse exodus as Hong Kong talent."

Charles Taylor in the New York Observer:

There is no classic Hollywood star who is harder to get a fix on than Garbo, which is why writers have been content to evoke her "mystery" and "remoteness." Louise Brooks, who revered Garbo, quoted Proust to express her irritation with that laziness: "The degree of mediocrity produced by contact with mystery is incredible." James Harvey, as astute a critic of classic Hollywood movies as we now have, quoted the critic Stark Young to explain Garbo's deceptive detachment as "the distance that style in art assures."

Garbo only seems familiar to us until we see her again.

Taylor also has a piece in Slate lauding Beautiful Boxer and, along the way, defending Driving Miss Daisy.

At Koreanfilm.org, Adam Hartzell reviews Jeong Jae-eun's followup to Take Care of My Cat, The Aggressives.

"My impression is that 'style over substance' is less the skeptic's phrase than it is the cynic's." Peter Gelderblom on Brian De Palma at 24 Lies a Second. Via Dennis Cozzalio.

More Kamera, more sound in cinema. Peter Cowie talks to Walter Salles this time. Also: Colin Odell and Michelle le Blanc review Chris Desjardins's Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film and Edith Bukovics talks to the producers of the low budget indie Unknown.

Among the new DVDs Dave Kehr reviews this week is Cowards Bend the Knee. One of the highlights of this Zeitgeist release is Guy Maddin's commentary track: "He proves to be a wonderfully unreliable narrator, annotating what he insists is his 'autobiography, reflected in a broken mirror' with pungent, personal details, many of which seem to be complete fabrications." At Stop Smiling, Travis Miles offers a different sort of DVD roundup while, in the NYO, Jake Brooks looks ahead to the season's upcoming releases.

Back in the New York Times:

• Hollywood's added a new twist to an age-old formula, notes Caryn James: "[L]atch on to Africa... [T]he common strategy... is to take a hot-button African issue and spin it into easy-to-swallow entertainment. Fleeing from the truly political and divisive ground of Fahrenheit 9/11, these movies begin with safe opinions, then sugar-coat them."

• "Bubble will seem like a stretch only to those who have not followed [Steven Soderbergh's career for the past decade and a half," writes Manohla Dargis. For Filmbrain, it's "one of the most interesting films of the year."

• Stephen Holden on Novo: "Sweet, attractive and ultimately vapid." More from James Crawford in the Voice.

• Dana Stevens on Loudmouth Soup, "a claustrophobic Hollywood satire that's short on kinesis and long on conversation." More from Akiva Gottlieb in the Voice.

Documentary filmmaker Edet Belzberg's just won a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation. The Reeler has details.

MS Smith on Masculin/Feminin: "This film might be described as Cubist cinema, or the visual equivalent of jazz improvisation; you have to make the shapes cohere, you have to follow the melody and see how it develops."

"When did this become a story you had to tell?" Robert Faires asks Ed Begley Jr, who served as a pallbearer at civil rights activist Cesar Chavez's funeral, about his play, Cesar and Ruben. Also in the Austin Chronicle: Spencer Parsons talks with Mike Johnson, co-director of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, checks in on The Cassidy Kids and reviews The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.

Before spreading out the fall calendar, Brian looks back on a year at San Francisco's Castro Theatre without Anita Monga.

Godfrey Cheshire on DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation in the Independent Weekly: "This has got to be a first: A grand cinematic celebration of the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, presented in the very bosom of Southern liberalism, UNC's newly reopened Memorial Hall, and backed, no less, by a hip-hop soundtrack."

BRAINTRUSTdv asks Carlos Atanes about his new film: "FAQ describes a very plausible geopolitical future: Southern Europe is turned into a desert, and the decisions are still made from the usual places. I could have chosen Berlin, too, but Paris offered several advantages."

"[B]y having this one important period in Truman Capote's history to really hone in on, it manages actually to paint a pretty accurate composite of the man's entire life." Craig Phillips on Capote.

"Lars is at the airport waiting for Vibeke, the producer. He hasn't been filming, he's devastated about the aggression and conflict, he's smashed up a TV set. Björk called him a coward and a tyrant." The Guardian's running clips from Catherine Deneuve's Close Up and Personal. Antonio Pasolini saw Deneuve being interviewed onstage at the National Film Theatre: "When asked the classical NFT question, 'Any regrets for dedicating your life to cinema,' Deneuve hastened to correct Andrew that she never dedicated her life to cinema; it's always been just a job and she appeared really sincere when she said that."

Also in the Guardian:

• Paul Alexander on "a romance that has not been reported until now," that between James Dean and Geraldine Page.

• Xan Brooks asks Joseph Fiennes why he's returned to the stage.

• Constance Moore, 1920 - 2005.

• Austin Mutti-Mewse remembers Mary Dees, 1911 - 2005.

"Who is going to step into old man [Harrison] Ford's boots when he's gone?" asks Glenn McDonald at PopMatters.

The latest stops Daniel Robert Epstein's SuicideGirls interview train: Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter.

"So will images be the 21st century's piped music?" asks things.

PC Magazine's John C Dvorak: "There are two important institutions that are about to be decimated by technology: newspapers and movies. It won't be pretty." MaryAnn Johanson comments.

Next up in reality TV, the Money Makeover Show.

Prospect and Foreign Policy have come up with a list of the world's top 100 intellectuals. No filmmakers, but you might want to cast your votes for a top five anyway.

Online browsing tip. Bento box anime art at Rico & Coco. Via Patrick Macias.

Online viewing (and listening) tip. UBUWEB has returned. Via filmtagebuch.

Online viewing tip #2. Henry Hills's Kino Da! and more. Via DVblog.

Online viewing tip #3. James Seo posts the first of three clips from Multiple Sidosis, "the first (and only? [nope; see comments]) amateur film to be inducted into the US National Film Registry of the Library of Congress."

Posted by dwhudson at September 22, 2005 3:30 PM