Long weekend shorts.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is going to make you want to track down Jean Renoir, the Boss: The Direction of Actors: Dialogue. "Don't think you know what this documentary is doing if you've seen only clips from it, such as those included on the DVD of Boudu [Saved From Drowning] recently released by Criterion, which treats Rivette's film as raw material to be plundered," he writes in the Chicago Reader. "The full version - edited by the legendary Jean Eustache (The Mother and the Whore), a post-New Wave figure as uncompromising as Renoir and Rivette - is as radical in its own way as Boudu."

Well, I know what I'll be doing over the Christmas holidays: revisiting the Pinakotek der Moderne in Munich, this time to see the exhibition, PPP - Pier Paolo Pasolini and Death (through February 5). "Pasolini was a radical, then a poet, then a film-maker, and it is his radical moral sense that you see in his drawings," writes Jonathan Jones. "The oil lamps are as lyrical as the images of southern Italy in The Gospel According to St Matthew."

Also in the Guardian:

• Geoffrey Macnab visits the set of Paul Verhoeven's first film since returning home from Hollywood: "Blackbook exposes a particularly uncomfortable moment in recent Dutch history: a period at the end of the second world war when the brutal occupation of the Netherlands by the Nazis fanned treachery, collaboration and anti-semitism. Verhoeven has been planning the project for more than 30 years."

• Philip Hensher picks up where Caryn James left off in the New York Times: "The way Hollywood is rushing to reward heterosexual actors playing gay roles does not, really, reflect very well on its engagement." Meanwhile, Jamie Wilson rounds up some gay cowboys.

• Tom Shone on why so many of us want to see horror movies these days.

• John Patterson on musician biopics.

• Eric Shorter remembers Constance Cummings, 1910 - 2005.

Stuart Klawans in the Nation: "Syriana spreads before you a grand political vista, only to deny the possibility of political agency." Also, The Boys of Baraka: "[Heidi] Ewing and [Rachel] Grady are marathon-runner documentarians - the type who are committed to living with their subjects for months and years, and to discovering the film's content and shape along the way." And Punishment Park: "It took thirty-four years, but the near future of [Peter] Watkins's movie has now become our present."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir once again turns in a sort of "special edition" of his "Beyond the Multiplex" column. He talks with Eran Riklis not only about his film, The Syrian Bride, but also about what Riklis calls a "revolutionary year" for Israeli cinema. "These movies are made by both Jews and Arabs about both Jews and Arabs (and others)," writes O'Hehir. "While the political context of the Middle East is necessarily never absent, these filmmakers are committed to transcending, and even subverting, the ideological orthodoxies that have defined Israeli (and Palestinian) life since 1948." A few further examples: Paradise Now, Wall, Another Road Home and Ushpizin.

Jonny Leahan at indieWIRE: "[T]here is a crop of new documentaries that pose very different questions about the same election - questions like 'How could Kerry have lost?' and 'Did those computerized machines really count your vote?'"

The revival of Bertolucci's The Conformist has had its run on the east coast and now it heads west, where David Thomson is not nearly as willing as many New Yorkers to pronounce it a flawless masterpiece. Even so, after pointing out a few problems as he sees them, he does agree that it is "a great film, drunkenly beautiful and deeply disturbing."

Also in the LA Weekly:

• Nikki Finke is intrigued by the PR campaign for Spielberg's Munich, which will likely be extraordinarily minimal. Smart move; in a noisy season, silence may well conjure reverence.

• Ella Taylor on Syriana: "Seldom have form, content and cultural sensibility been so excitably aligned as in this fascinating, exasperating film about the unholy marriage of power politics and global business." More from David Edelstein at Slate.

• Scott Foundas has a talk with Syriana writer-director Stephen Gaghan - a good one.

• Foundas is as repulsed by Rent as most other critics. More from Cindy Fuchs in the Philadelphia City Paper and, in the NYT, Jesse McKinley, who goes off in search of the East Village of 1989 and 1990, "when crime was high, morale was low and even getting a quart of milk seemed like an adventure."

Also in the PCP: Sam Adams: "At once one of Michelangelo Antonioni's most mesmerizing and silliest movies, The Passenger glides forward on a cloud of anomie and movie-star charisma."

David Lowery on Lars von Trier's Manderlay: "This is not a film of liberal ideology, nor is it one in which liberal ideologies are unexpectedly subverted by conservatism. No, this is a film in which the political machine as a whole is subverted by the viciousness of human nature, and all the good and bad and mixed intentions that go along with it."

Alan Riding: "[A]rt, in the form of movies and rap music, has long been warning that French-born Arab and black youths felt increasingly alienated from French society and that their communities were ripe for explosion."

Also in the NYT:

• Manohla Dargis on The Libertine: "You can hear the play in this thing without even knowing it was based on a theatrical production." More from Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

• Stephen Holden on the "stiff-upper-lip weepie," Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

• Anita Gates on the "one-dimensional romantic comedy," In the Mix. More from Kevin Crust in the LAT.

• "100 Notable Books of the Year."

Also in the LAT:

• "Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck are as urgently up-to-date as breaking news bulletins," writes Julia Keller in a piece on journalism's current identity crisis.

• Hustle & Flow, where'd the money go? Rachel Abramowitz looks into rift between producer John Singleton and everyone else who worked on the film - and have not yet been paid.

• Richard Verrier checks out a school for animators where students log in for lessons from around the world.

Hollywood Detour: The Independent Mind of Edgar G Ulmer runs from November 29 through December 20 in Austin. Marjorie Baumgarten marvels at a most unusual career. Also in the Austin Chronicle: "If you imagine the annual convention of the international Association of Moving Image Archivists - taking place in Austin Nov 30 - Dec 1 - to be a gathering of fusty librarian types, think again." And Steve Uhler: "Brando's inventiveness makes The Missouri Breaks one of cinema's most compulsively watchable train wrecks."

Gerald Peary in the Boston Phoenix: "Critics are given license to unzip in The X List: The National Society of Film Critics' Guide to Movies That Turn Us On (Da Capo Press). I promise you a genuinely raunchy anthology."

"Leafing through the opening of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause - Us Magazine veterans Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel's book on the making of [Nicholas] Ray's greatest film - you'd be forgiven for thinking it tabloid gossip, full of sex and sorrow, embarrassment and embitterment," writes Gregopry McNamee in the Hollywood Reporter. But "their book is an eminently serious, revealing look behind the scenes at a film that seemed ill-fated long before it opened."

Cinematical's Martha Fischer remembers Pat Morita, 1932 - 2005.

Also: Robert Newton talks with Marc Levin about his Protocols of Zion.

Saul Symonds in Light Sleeper: "When you start taking apart a film that looks as simple, and turns out to be as intricate as The Bird People in China, is it surprising to have trouble finding a place to put all the pieces?" Also: Cisco Pike.

In the Independent, James Mottram interviews Laura Linney and offers a theory as to what's gone wrong with Bee Season and Where the Truth Lies. Also, in Charlotte Cripps's short piece on the Qatsi Trilogy, we learn that director Godfrey Reggio "is looking for funding for Savage Eden, 'a comedic cinematic opera' that will be his first film to feature actors."

"When I was young and arrogant and pugnacious, like a lot of young actors are, I wanted to do it all myself, and in those days I thought, 'Who needs directors?' It took me some years to mellow out and gather a respect for directors," Anthony Hopkins tells John Hiscock. Also in the Telegraph: Sukhdev Sandhu on the "winning musical drama," Mrs Henderson Presents, and Craig McLean's interview with Tilda Swinton.

Jason Gray attends one helluva party. Via Todd at Twitch, where Mack points to Sci Fi Wire's chat with Michelle Yeoh about working on Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Todd notes that there's probably going to be a Bubba Nosferatu.

Flipbook Printer and, for Macs, Movie Flipper. Via Drawn!.

Dave Kehr: "I still think it's hilarious that the studios believe film critics and Academy members to be significant sources of bootleg videos."

Online viewing tip. "Standoff," an ad for the XBox 360; Amanda Nanawa, a welcome new blogger at indieWIRE, has got a copy.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Screenhead gathers more amusing ads for more amusing products.

Online viewing tips, round 2. A trailer and clips for Abel Ferrara's Mary. Via Todd at Twitch, where he's also hosting two short works "directed by Velasco Broca with help from Nacho Vigalondo."

Online viewing tips, round 3. Pointing to Daniel Birnbaum's 2003 Artforum piece on Dieter Roth, DVblog also has two short films.

Online viewing and fiddling around tips. At Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin collects a batch of silly fast-food links for your cheap and immediate gratification.

Posted by dwhudson at November 25, 2005 3:15 PM