Weekend shorts.

Reverse Shot's robbiefreeling: "Most surprising about The New World is that it's first and foremost a character piece; all of Malick's usual philosophical concerns... are implicit and intact, yet unlike Malick's other protagonists, Pocahontas becomes less of an abstraction, even as she is dealt with, by John Smith and Malick simultaneously, as Other." The Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson outlines the challenges New Line Cinema will face marketing the film.

Jonathan Rosenbaum on Marilyn Monroe in the Chicago Reader: "The difficulty some people have discerning Monroe's intelligence as an actress seems rooted in the ideology of a repressive era, when superfeminine women weren't supposed to be smart. They often fail to see past the sexist cliches she used as armor, satirically and otherwise, fail to notice that she was also positing a utopian view of sex, one that was relatively guilt free and blissfully pleasure oriented - something entirely new for that period."

Who says movies have no impact on the real world? In an eyebrow-raising piece for the New Republic, James Forsyth argues that US moviegoers are responsible for the return, after decades on the back benches, of the "posh" British political leader.

Recently, Armond White has been giving in to a "tendency to attack a film based on its critical and audience reception, rather than the film itself," writes Filmbrain at Cinemarati, and pleads: "Armond - stop getting all verklempt about the reaction of your peers, and go back to doing what you do best - comparing War of the Worlds to Weekend, explaining why Torque is a better film than Cowards Bend the Knee, etc."

"Together with Michelangelo Antonioni, Francesco Rosi is arguably the greatest living Italian director," writes Positif editor Michel Ciment in the Guardian. It's a terrific assessment, describing how "his filmography tells the history of his country in the 20th century," relating the biography and touching on the influence of Visconti and Rossellini, and of course, his own influence on countless filmmakers since.

Also:

• Alison Lurie lists the ways CS Lewis has upset many readers, despite enthralling many others, with his Chronicles of Narnia - as well as the ways he might be excused. "[S]ometimes anachronism can be magical, if only temporarily."

• Richard Eyre: "John Carey argued in his scorching polemic What Good Are the Arts? that all claims of the "value" of art are implausible, unprovable, childish and self-deceiving claptrap. Against his argument - much of it irrefutable - I would hold up as evidence Hamlet in Bucharest."

• John Patterson: "For all their hatred of Hollywood as Sodom-by-the-sea, religious weirdoes can't keep their hands off the movies they affect to despise. And it only gets worse when they find one they love."

Michael Martin interviews John Malkovich for Nerve: "I'm not sure what addicted to sex means. I would think that's pretty normal." Also: "I would say probably the sexiest film I ever did was Dangerous Liaisons. There's very little nudity in it, and no real explicit sex, but people tell me that it's quite an erotic film."

Eugene Hernandez introduces indieWIRE's list of "companies and people involved in selling movies to distributors," complete with track records and contact info for each. Also: Brandon Judell listens to producer-turned-festival director Despina Mouzaki talk about her first year with the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Joe Dante is "the first horror director to take the bits of media flotsam and jetsam that have been drifting around - the flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, the talking-head cable shows, the internment camps, the Ohio and Florida recounts, the 'Mission Accomplished' banners - and make something electrifying out of them," writes Grady Hendrix in a review of Homecoming for Slate.

David Greven considers the work of Guillermo Del Toro at 24 Lies a Second: "Examined individually, each of his films seems deeply flawed and even failed. Yet when taken together - arranged and assembled as a vast quilt of images - they achieve a nightmarish splendor that demands recognition."

In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Markus Jacob, "introduces a film by Argentine director David Mauras, Who Killed Walter Benjamin?, which investigates the question of Walter Benjamin's suicide," notes signandsight; Jacob's article is in German, but that summary's in English and laced with a couple of links you might want to follow.

Nick Davis at Film Experience: "If Julianne Moore Is God, and today is Julianne Moore's 45th birthday, then, by the transitive property, today is God's birthday. December is nothing if not replete with holy births."

Noy Thrupkaew in the American Prospect: "Pulse is a nasty thing - incomprehensible, dated, elliptical, and repetitive in the extreme. It’s also terrifying, for the same reasons."

Adam Hartzell reviews Cho Chang-ho's The Peter Pan Formula, one of the films in the World Competition at Sundance 06. Also at Koreanfilm.org, Darcy Paquet on a low-budget martial arts film that works - and works well - without special effects: Geochilmaru: The Showdown.

Wendell Jamieson on the NYC of The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death and Where the Sidewalk Ends: "It is a proto-New York, a heightened New York, a super-New Yorky New York, a city of supreme alienation, overcrowded sidewalks, pitch-black menace, thick accents, way too many cigarettes, packed bars that always have one empty table, exaggerated street noise, and skyscrapers that exist solely to have characters pushed off them."

Also in the New York Times, reviews:

• AO Scott on Transamerica: "That the film succeeds without slipping too far into sentimentality or didacticism is in no small measure the result of [Felicity] Huffman's wit and grace." More from Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, Armond White in the New York Press and Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times. And by the way, Aeon Flux "doesn't make a whole lot of sense." At Slate, though, David Edelstein finds it "not that terrible." Put that on a poster. But Twitch's Kurt seems to agree. More from Ryan Stewart at Cinematical.

• Manohla Dargis on the "alternately rewarding and frustrating drama," Far Side of the Moon and: I Love Your Work, "an attempt to say something interesting about modern celebrity."

• Stephen Holden on Be Here to Love Me: "[Townes] Van Zandt comes across as an appealing but incorrigible problem child." More from Christopher Campbell at Cinematical. Also: "A chore to watch, The Kid and I is self-congratulatory, excruciatingly sentimental and sloppily written and directed."

Also in the LAT: Carina Chocano is unmoved by Breakfast on Pluto, Robert W Welkos hears Fun With Dick & Jane might actually be pretty good, Book Review reviewers pick the best of 2005 and Richard Cromelin: "[Bill] Hicks was one of the rare links to the time when comedy was a weapon and the comedian the scourge of the status quo."

And also in the NYP: Matt Zoller Seitz on the The Ice Harvest: "[I]t's hard to recall a recent Christmas-themed Hollywood film that pulls such a surprising, defiantly non-mainstream bait and switch."

Anthony Kaufman: "'Altoids in the Tin: Celebrating Anthology Film Archives' 35th Anniversary.' What could be a surer [sign] of the utter collapse of the East Village's soul?"

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofoli tells the story behind Ironweed Film Club, the first politically progressive DVD-of-the-month club (full disclosure: GreenCine is a partner).

Jeffrey Overstreet add his list of "Top Five Spiritually Significant Films" to Darren Hughes and David Lowery's.

André Soares remembers Keith Andes, 1920 - 2005.

At WSWS, Stefan Steinberg reviews a few features screened at the recent festivals in Cottbus and Neubrandenburg.

Scott Macaulay posts an intro to Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict that ran in a special edition of Filmmaker handed out at the Gotham Awards. Scott also points to Ryan Katz's "must-read" Think Secret piece on Apple's VOD plans - short version: they're moving fast - and Scott's got an online viewing tip, too: "Only [Spike] Jonze could make a Gap ad that, until the last shot, might just as well be a piece of anti-globalization agit-prop."

Online viewing tip #2. Romain Segaud and Christel Pougeoise's Tim Tom. Via Screenhead, also pointing to Midnight Matinee's production of Jerry Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried.

Online viewing tip #3. Ian Inaba's True Lies. Via Eugene Hernandez.

Online viewing tip #4. Mark Lewis introduces Cane Toads: An Unnatural History. Via the cinetrix.

Online viewing tips #5 through #14 and #15 through #19, all one page. With "Holidazed," AtomFilms collects ten seasonal shorts and tosses in JibJab's "Dismail," five furious greetings.

Posted by dwhudson at December 3, 2005 3:12 PM