Shorts, 11/4.

Since when has New York Times film and DVD critic Dave Kehr had a blog? Since the New York Film Festival, evidently. Wish I'd discovered it earlier. Few blogs, for one thing, have an "About Me" page that makes for as terrific a read as Kehr's. A quick look back at the early 70s, for example:

These were days when you could provoke a passionate argument at a party over whether a so-called hack like Hitchcock was worthy of even being mentioned in the same breath with an obvious, transcendent genius of the form like Fred Zinnemann or George Stevens (though I have come back to respect Stevens’s early films since then) - or, much less, vaunted European masters like Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, both of whom in my adolescent hubris I found to be bloated and basically worthless (an opinion I will stand by today, with a few carefully chosen exceptions).

Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter Anne Thompson launches the Risky Biz Blog.

And who says worthy bloggers without a long record in print get no respect? Just look at Darren Hughes.

It's a good day to get to know your critics, evidently. "There is accounting for taste - there has to be - and so I begin this review of Breakfast on Pluto by acknowledging my career as a cross-dressing musical artiste of the 1970s." But the Nation's Stuart Klawans seems to like the film for its own merits. And as for Shopgirl, "Watching [Claire Danes], you think other actresses look half-alive at best. You even forget for a while that other actresses exist."

Rebekah Sanders catches DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation: "Seeing the haunting images over and over again - of white-hooded Klansmen, eerie as phantoms, or rolling-eyed blacks stalking their sexual prey - chills the bones more deeply than a once-through viewing." Also in the LA Weekly: "What could, and should, Bush learn from West Wing?" asks Nikki Finke.

Rory McCarthy meets "Lokman Slim, a Lebanese writer and publisher, and his German wife Monika Borgmann, a journalist; they have turned the ground floor into a centre for research into the history of Lebanon's brutal civil war." Their documentary, Massacre, is unique in that, "While others have focused on the victims of the years of killing, the couple hunted down the killers."

Also in the Guardian:

• Mark Lawson: "Separate Lies is, in short, an attempt to create a tragedy about a middle-class marriage that captures the texture of the lives of the skiing-trip and school-fee generation without satirising them. If this is a new battlefield of the class war for Julian Fellowes, then it is not one to which British and American directors in general have committed many troops."

• Ryan Gilbey: "This domestic dourness was once the abiding impression of Leigh's work, and he thinks it's what people mean when they refer to something being 'like a scene from a Mike Leigh film.' He appreciates being part of the language in this way, but believes that he stopped making that kind of movie after Life Is Sweet in 1990."

• "For the next couple of weeks the 'plucky Brits' at Punk [Cinema] will be telling us how they get on as they take their debut film The Gigolos to Hollywood."

What's cinematographer Chris Doyle up to? Grady Hendrix knows.

He also knows a bit about the agreement between Image Entertainment and Celestial Pictures to release 30 Shaw Brothers titles in North America, but Blake at Cinema Strikes Back has more details and quick takes on three of those films.

Also at CSB: Charlie's transcription of the Park Chan-wook Q&A during the New York Film Festival; Sympathy for Lady Vengeance spoilers galore.

Adam Hartzell at Koreanfilm.org: "The follow-up to his critically successful debut This Charming Girl, I don't find myself talking as lovingly about Love Talk as I do about Lee [Yoon-ki]'s debut."

Andrew O'Hehir introduces his current "Beyond the Multiplex" column at Salon:

Beyond the question of that polo shirt you bought for $3.79, for which some Indonesian teenager who gets two days off a year got paid 4 cents, it's a massive week for cultural history. We've got a documentary reminding us that for gay men, the 1970s weren't about poppers and coke and Fire Island parties and mind-blowing amounts of sex - well, OK, yes they were - but also about a culture and a community discovering itself, right before being hit with a veritable holocaust. We also witness the unlikely reunion of the New York Dolls from an even unlikelier perspective, and learn the impossible, delightful story of how ballet traveled from the 19th century Russian aristocracy to American popular culture. We've only got one fictional feature this time out, but it's a doozy for those so inclined, a creepy, slow-moving existential ghost story from the enigmatic Japanese master, Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Vince Keenan on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: "Go see this one. Trust me. It's a blast."

"The Dying Gaul is a boldly expressionistic, proudly theatrical film," writes Stephen Holden in the NYT. "It revels in extreme close-ups that feel like psychological X-rays, dramatic silhouettes shown against fiery orange backgrounds and eerie shots of Jeffrey's white Malibu mansion, which resembles a cavernous airline terminal perched on a precipice. Here, cocktails flow like glistening cups of hemlock." More from Steve Erickson in Gay City News.

Joe O'Connell has a short but splendid talk with Anand Tucker and Jason Schwartzman about Shopgirl.

Also in the Austin Chronicle:

• Anne S Lewis talks with Paul Devlin about Power Trip (more).

• Raoul Hernandez on Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï.

• O'Connell's news items.

There must be a dozen reasons the list of the top 50 horror movies compiled by retailer HMV gets it all wrong; Geoffrey Macnab counters with a list of his own. Also in the Independent: Stephen Applebaum interviews Kirsten Dunst.

Speaking of lists, Peter Howell in the Toronto Star: "The Total Film people are, quite frankly, lunatics." Via Movie City News.

It's "Peter Sarsgaard Meditation Day" at Hollywood Elsewhere.

Cuba Gooding, Jr is "a comic genius with the innocence, pluck and vulnerability of Buster Keaton," argues Steven Boone.

At Alternet, Maggie Brock gets five minutes with Janeane Garofalo.

Interviews in the Telegraph: SF Said with Paul Schrader and David Gritten with Fernando Meireilles.

Dennis Cozzalio: "Hardly a week goes by in which Turner Classic Movies doesn't offer up at least three or four must-see titles to keep both the experienced cinephile and the enthusiastic neophyte clapping happy. But November seems especially full of good stuff, especially if you, like me, worship at the shrine of Carole Lombard."

The Alternative Film Guide notes that the Academy will be honoring Olivia de Havilland with a Tribute on June 15 of next year.

Facing a paucity of real men at home, Hollywood resorts to importing them, claims Boyd Farrow in the New Statesman.

At PopMatters, Adrien Begrand praises the second round in the Directors Label series.

Online browsing tip. Monsters photoshopped into classic paintings at Worth1000.com. Via MCN.

Online viewing tips. A roundup of musical interludes via Screenhead. Café Bouillu, Wamono, Nothing But Green Lights.

Posted by dwhudson at November 4, 2005 12:29 PM