Shorts, 10/18.

Nicolas Roeg is working on a new film, Adina, described by Burnt Danish Productions as a "philosophical horror film about a new race of immortals who depend on sex to maintain their youth." And yet, at the same time: "It explores the idea that there is no linear time - no yesterday, today or tomorrow. Everything that ever has happened or ever will happen is happening right now - simultaneously." Hm.

Stop Smiling is running a brief excerpt from Nile Southern's interview with Roeg, followed by Michael Joshua Rowin's review of Criterion's release of The Man Who Fell to Earth: "[T]he film is less unconventional and more muddled than its devoted following might admit – but the new release on DVD is nonetheless a revelation, answering many of the questions that have surrounded this exemplary entry in the psychedelic canon." Also: Four more reviews of four more DVDs.

"Let the sniping begin!" shouts John Scalzi, unveiling "The Canon: The 50 most notable science fiction films in the history of cinema" at Boing Boing.

"Sci-fi folks pride themselves on being willing to experiment, to 'go where no man has gone before,'" writes Jason Morehead. "Chances are, those folks will find very little that's enjoyable about The American Astronaut, even as it riffs on and subverts countless sci-fi types and cliches - and has one heck of a good time doing so."

At Five Branch Tree, Brian and MS Smith trade thoughts on Solaris and Soderbergh's remake.

Patrick Macias at Twitch: "I had dinner with Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura the other night. He was extremely gracious, he bought us chow and booze, and the conversation alternated between fascinating and laugh-out-loud hilarious... The first thing I told Kitamura is that foreigners actually seemed to get his latest film, Godzilla Final Wars... Kitamura had delivered the kaiju Kill Bill and only a humorless simpleton could fail to get the joke."

Dhandaulat.com's "Best of Bollywood 2005 survey involved 500 respondents from all over India, a majority of whom were in the 18 - 35 years age group." The Hindustan Times has the results; via Blake at Cinema Strikes Back, where he also points to an AFP story in which Abbas Kiarostami warns, "Asian film-makers now are forgetting their cultural identities and becoming too Americanised," and where David Austin reviews Zero Woman: Red Handcuffs, "a piece of prime-grade, gritty 70s exploitation, more on the same wavelength as Coffy and Female Convict Scorpion. Unfortunately, the film fails to live up to the promise of its fantastic opening."

Happy 15th to the Internet Movie Database: "As part of our 15th Anniversary (October 17) we asked our editorial staff (and a founder or two) to add their top 15 movies of the last fifteen years (1990 - 2005). As we are an international site with employees in Germany, Switzerland, the US and the UK, we were expecting extremely varied lists... and that's what we got."

Girish: "So, here's my pick for favorite American movie made in the last ten years: Safe (1995) by Todd Haynes. (David Lynch's Mulholland Drive runs a close second.)"

PopMatters launches a new column, "Surround Sound," which, as you might guess, rounds up, reviews and gives a numerical rating to recent soundtracks. For Adam Besenyodi, Danny Elfman's soundtrack for Corpse Bride is the best of the current bunch.

Christian Lorentzen, intrigued enough by The Squid and the Whale to seek out a collection of stories by "the elder Baumbach," has one of the better pieces you'll read on the film in n+1: "The Andersonian formula from Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums - whereby precocious children behave like adults and adults behave like naughty adolescents - seems to be in effect, but it soon enough collapses under pressure from each character's peculiar pathology."

Nina Siegel has a good long talk about politics with Viggo Mortensen in the Progressive. Via Alternet.

"I have been watching the emergence of Angelina Jolie as a historical figure with a deepening grumpiness," harrumphs Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic. "Not since the 1960s have so many entertainers believed that they can rescue the world." Also: Stanley Kauffmann on Capote and Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathèque.

The Kubrick links keep on coming at Coudal Partners.

Jason Kottke heads off in search of the first superhero.

David Thomson in the Independent on Good Night, and Good Luck: "In its quiet faith that there are grown-up minds somewhere out there, it is what a movie ought to be." Related: George Clooney is Terry Gross's guest on Fresh Air.

In the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein reflects on Good Night and Capote:

If Murrow comes off more as admirable than Capote, his righteousness trumping Truman's narcissism, it's because we see that while Capote's work took a huge emotional toll - he never finished another book after In Cold Blood - Murrow's courage was in support of a greater cause, our freedom of speech. Standing up to a bully always earns bigger applause than empathizing with a killer.

Still, it is Capote who turned out to have the larger influence on modern-day journalism

Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE: "Three films have been tapped to launch Truly Indie, a new distribution initiative formed by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment." Brian Flemming comments on the "potentially brilliant new distribution strategy."

Also: Steve Rosen on "a Saturday forum in Los Angeles called 'Sell Your Film Without Getting Screwed!'" and the Reverse Shot team on Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence.

At Slate, Edward Jay Epstein explains the economics behind the major studios' enslavement to unoriginal formulas.

J Hoberman: "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is a calling-card movie that invites you to enjoy, and even participate in, the comeback of writer-director Shane Black: To watch this frantic exercise in smartass violence is to watch a hyperactive slapstick comic perform emergency resuscitation on his own career." Also: Ushpizin.

Also in the Village Voice:

• Ed Halter on The Time We Killed: "[Jennifer] Reeves's remarkable skills for expressive cinematography grant this grim tale a stark beauty bereft of sentimentality."

• Shelly Kraicer on "A Centenary of Chinese Cinema" (October 21 through November 10): "Within the confines of a pretty conservative reading of what constitutes a canonical mainland Chinese film, the series offers a parade of masterpieces that should surprise and dazzle North American audiences who haven't yet had concentrated exposure to these works."

• Chuck Stephens on "Naruse: The Unknown Japanese Master" (October 21 through November 17): "Tempting though it might be to describe Film Forum's 31-film retrospective - flush with rubbed-raw riches from the silent 1933 boy-meets-geisha romance Apart From You to the Sirk-saturated colors of his 1967 career capper, Scattered Clouds - as tantamount to the miracle of resurrection, the reality is that Naruse has so long been locked in the 'ripe for rediscovery' position that it's come to seem an integral aspect of his historically sanctioned rigor state."

• Jessica Winter: "North Country spectacularly self-destructs in a climactic courtroom free-for-all."

Grady Hendrix: "Despite continual warnings that it's in a state of 'crisis,' the Thai film industry keeps popping up all over."

Elizabeth Schambelan files an entry in Artforum's diary: "It goes without saying that one must suffer for one's art, but some of us prefer to suffer for other people's art. And so it was that on Friday night a few hundred hardy, masochistic souls, myself among them, showed up in a downpour at Central Park's (roofless) Wollman Rink, where a sequence for Pierre Huyghe's film A Journey That Wasn't was being shot."

Richard Phillips at WSWS: "Two recent Australian films - Look Both Ways and Little Fish - have attracted some local critical acclaim and larger than usual audiences. Both movies, while not flawless, are humane and intelligent works. They constitute an improvement on the last few years of uninspiring commercial features produced in Australia."

Clint Eastwood was making a movie about the Battle of Iwo Jima when he decided to make two movies about the Battle of Iwo Jima. Richard Schickel explains in Time. Via Movie City News.

Logan Hill profiles Robert Downey, Jr for New York, where Ken Tucker writes, "[S]incerity is a tricky quality to put over in these snarky times, which makes the artistic failure of Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown all the more sad."

Encyclopedia Brown "has 'franchise' written all over it," notes Sharon Waxman. After trying for 25 years, producer Howard Deutsch, now in partnership with Ridley Scott, is still trying to make it happen. Also in the New York Times: Laura M Holson on making movies for tiny screens and Dave Kehr on the new DVDs of the Halloween season.

At Twitch, Canfield, too, gets caught up in the Halloween spirit (more, more and more).

Saudi Arabia will allow public screenings of films for the first time in about 20 years. Cartoons only. For women and children only. The AFP reports; via Movie City Indie.

At Flickhead, Ray Young reviews Live Fast, Die Young, the "lively new book about the creation and aftermath of [Nicholas] Ray and [James] Dean's Rebel Without a Cause... The seamless combination of objective reportage with gushing admiration for the film and a palpable fascination for the Dean/Ray mythos is absorbing, though [authors Lawrence] Frascella and [Al] Weisel hedge any dense critical examination of Nick Ray's method or James Dean's Method."

The cinetrix: "Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr throws down with some cinematic history and explains why we should care about the Brattle's continued existence."

Notable, even if just barely related to film:

• The results of Prospect and Foreign Policy's public intellectuals poll are in; Noam Chomsky tops the list, with Umberto Eco coming in a distant second.

• The American Society of Magazine Editors selects its top 40 magazine covers of the past 40 years. Related: Panopticist's tweaks. A favorite.

• All-Time 100 Novels, 1923 to the present.

• The Guardian's Adrian Searle on the four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2005.

"One day we'll all wake up and everything will be an ARG," declares things magazine. "The rise of the ARG, or Alternate Reality Game (as utilised by a certain TV show, which has built on the concept of related spoof websites with hidden messages first seen in the publicity associated with Spielberg's AI) characterises contemporary media's ability to worm itself into every aspect of life."

In German: Hanns-Georg Rodek visits the set of Tom Tykwer's adaptation of Patrick Süsskind's Perfume for Die Welt. Via filmz.de.

Online fiddling around tip. Cinema Minima: "Make your own Bombay talkie at Bombay TV: Choose a clip - compose subtitles - send to your friends!"

Online viewing tip #1. Lev's My Successful Friends. Via Andy Baio.

Online viewing tip #2. Panopticist is hosting "the first music video filmed entirely using cellphones," produced by Film Headquarters for the Presidents of the United States of America. Via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tip #3. Screenhead's found one very unusual little video.

Posted by dwhudson at October 18, 2005 2:34 PM