Shorts, 11/22.

"[P]erhaps the key to understanding [Yvonne] Rainer's work is that there isn't always a key," writes acquarello after reading Shelly Green's Radical Juxtaposition: The Films of Yvonne Rainer, though he does find one consistent element.

Jeremiah Kipp interviews Down to the Bone writer-director Debra Granik for Filmmaker.

Dave Kehr: "Never has the repressed returned as mightily as it did in Kong, a film that remains a riot of phallic symbolism in which the Empire State Building is only a supporting player." Also in the New York Times: Gina Bellafante on TCM's I'm King Kong! The Exploits of Merian C Cooper.

For the Los Angeles Times DVD column, Susan King chooses to highlight the Fritz Lang releases Kehr also writes about.

"Recognizing that the holidays aren't a holly, jolly time for everyone, filmmaker Harold Ramis teamed up with John Cusack to create a comedy so dark, it could make even the sourest of Grinches curl his toes." Heather Havrilesky talks to the director and star for Salon. Ramis is also a guest on Fresh Air.

"It's colder in Manhattan than it is in Iceland - and the Christmasy thing is a bit insane!" She's right, you know. Christmas is already stuffing the stores here in Berlin, too. Besides that, though, Björk tells New York's Luke Crisell about working on Drawing Restraint 9.

Winding up the year seems to grow more exhausting each time around. Maybe Rex has the right idea: start early. He's already got his "Lists: 2005" page up at Fimoculous. At the moment, there's only one film list, Metacritic's evolving "Best-Reviewed Movies of 2005," but with a slew prestige titles slated for a December deluge, it's probably best not to start too early.

"The absence of hypocrisy and the opportunity to get it all out, are not enough. Nor are self-reflexivity and meta-irony substitutes for vision," writes Noy Thrupkaew in the American Prospect. "Perhaps I'm asking too much of Sarah Silverman, her fans might say - she's a comic. But she is a superbly smart one, brilliant at what she does, and she can clearly do more."

Hard to beat Jasmina Tesanovic's title for her brief piece in Make (here, as a PDF): "How to Make a Film, With No Money, While Being Bombed." Via Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing.

Michael Berry has "written a book Speaking in Images that is the best book of interviews with Chinese directors that I've ever read," announces Grady Hendrix.

Takeshis'? Three out of five stars from Mark Schilling in the Japan Times. Via Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog.

Kyu Hyun Kim finds Lee Woo-chul's Cello "almost stupifyingly dull." Also at Koreanfilm.org, Adam Hartzell on Yeo Kyun-dong's Silk Shoes.

None of the Reverse Shot trio of reviewers thinks much of The Libertine.

In the Independent, David Thomson admires Jodie Foster.

Hannah Patterson looks back on last month's Lisbon International Documentary Film Festival. Also in Kamera: Calum Waddell chats with Bill Moseley.

For the Austin Business Journal, Chantal Outon reports on the first round of films to be produced by the Truly Indie initiative. Via Movie City Indie.

"Why do so many people insist that cinema is dead (or dying)?" asks Chuck Tryon. "And, a slightly different question, what are the desires involved in witnessing the death of cinema?" That's the more interesting one, isn't it.

The theatrical release of a big budget movie is just "a promotional thing," George Lucas tells Paula Parisi in an interview for the Hollywood Reporter's "ILM at 30" special section. "I mean, you could chop that off in a second, and it wouldn't even bother them." Nonetheless, "I don't think the theatrical exhibition business will go away because I think people will always want to go to the movies, just as they go to the opera, they go to the ballet, and they go to football games." But George, those are live events.

On a related note, Patrick Goldstein sums up this year's conventional wisdom in the LAT: "The era of moviegoing as a mass audience ritual is slowly but inexorably drawing to a close, eroded by many of the same forces that have eviscerated the music industry, decimated network TV and, yes, are clobbering the newspaper business. Put simply, an explosion of new technology - the Internet, DVDs, video games, downloading, cellphones and iPods - now offers more compelling diversion than 90% of the movies in theaters, the exceptions being Harry Potter-style must-see events or the occasional youth-oriented comedy or thriller."

For years, a German tax shelter "provided Hollywood with an El Dorado of easy cash for the past quarter-century and allowed studios to increase their earnings without any risk," writes Edward Jay Epstein at Slate. "Now it is dead."

The Trio network's going Net-only, notes Steve Monaco at Culture to Go.

Scott Ard writes a FAQ for CNET: "Behind TiVo's play for iPod, PSP."

Dave Heaton rates new soundtracks for PopMatters.

Sam and Jim Go To Hollywood. Via Ed Champion.

E.T. and Marlon Brando talk Harry Potter in Chris Shadoian's Popcorn Picnic at Flak.

Online viewing tip #1. At DVblog, "3 fascinating clips from a documentary film on the legendary underground photographer and filmmaker, from Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis.

Online viewing tip #2. Moving Fashion. Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

Online viewing tip #3. For a few days only, the first 26 minutes of This Divided State.

So. As of today, Germany has a new chancellor. Though I consider myself a social democrat, I am, oddly enough, not particularly bummed out. In the meantime, a September entry from Alex Ross.

Posted by dwhudson at November 22, 2005 8:55 AM