December 10, 2005
Weekend shorts.
In the first part of his interview with Syriana writer-director Stephen Gaghan for Cinematical, James Rocchi got him going on politics: "Chaos is good for the energy business. And that's the first thing they'll tell you... I'm absolutely certain that until it's really dire, nothing's going to change." In the second part, Rocchi steers him away from geopolitics for second, but Gaghan swerves back: "A guy in a cave in Afghanistan can bring down the World Trade Centers. Small. World. We're all connected in ways we just don't understand."
Related: Jim Tudor, writing at Twitch, finds the film "about as clear as the oil it's obsessed with." And, worried that Gaghan's getting overexposed (on top of the zillion interviews, e.g., NPR's, he's also blogging at the Huffington Post), The Reeler offers him a bit of advice: "[S]ave some vitriol for your Oscar speech."
At Slate, Michael Kinsley has an intriguing little piece that moves from the latest adaptation of Pride and Prejudice to HBO's shows about Hollywood and is actually about the way civilizations are remembered.
At sister site, BlueCine, Craig Phillips reviews The X List: Movies That Turn Us On, a collection with contributions by the likes of Carrie Rickey, Charles Taylor, Dave Kehr, Sheila Benson and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Craig: "I don't usually as a rule say this - not even on an adult-oriented site such as this one - but I'll say it now: the book could use more porn."
Siān Stott takes on the "Filmmakers on film" duties for the Telegraph this week: "[Festival director Annie] Griffin is an unusual woman. Her first choice of film for this page was Emmanuelle, the soft-porn flick from 1974.... 'I think it's a great film,' she says.... But before we meet, Griffin has changed her mind and gone to the opposite extreme, choosing instead to talk about the hit comedy Groundhog Day... 'Yes, the film is funny, but it's also so profound about depression.'"
Also, David Gritten talks with Ang Lee and, on the same page, Mark Monahan follows up with "Gay love stories to remember."
Reed Johnson: "From the sagebrush classics of John Ford and Howard Hawks to the blood-drenched sentimentality of Sam Peckinpah and the revisionist westerns of the Vietnam War era, many Hollywood versions of the Old (and New) West have probed men's most ambivalent and closely guarded feelings about each other: envy and hero worship; rivalry and comradeship; hate and, on occasion, love, or something close to it."
Also in the Los Angeles Times,Susan King chats with Judi Dench, profiles Joe Biggins and previews the series, A Century Ago: The Films of 1905.
Darren Hughes: "Five Films That Should Not Be Fast-Forwarded Through (No Matter How Badly You Might Want To)."
Chris Barsanti sorts through a "rough weekend at the movies."
Chris Rock is out as Oscar host, reports Sharon Waxman, who adds that among the candidates under consideration are Billy Crystal (a nightmare scenario), Whoopi Goldberg (zzzzz) and Steve Martin (if I were in charge, I would point the Academy to the second half of the show he hosted and then hire him up). Also: DreamWorks goes to Viacom (and its studio, Paramount) for maybe as much as $1.6 billion. More from Claudia Eller and Sallie Hofmeister in the Los Angeles Times.
Also in the New York Times:
The Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt on The Producers: "[Nathan] Lane and [Matthew] Broderick have played these roles 300-and-something times, and it shows.... Neither actor has rethought his performance for the screen."
More from Variety's Todd McCarthy, who also reviews Munich: "Beautifully made pic will spur newsy media coverage and possible consternation on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, but members of the general public will be glancing at their watches rather than having epiphanies about world peace."
More from Reverse Shot's robbiefreeling: "[W]hat's most remarkable is a symbiosis even stranger than the much-discussed, underappreciated Kubrick/Spielberg connection: Kushner/Spielberg.... Munich, as expected, is a force to be reckoned with... yet at this point I'm still reckoning."
Signandsight summarizes reactions in the German papers (in English) to Harold Pinter's Nobel speech.
Matthew Clayfield on what he's learned in film school: there's a real bias out there towards strictly narrative cinema.
Nick Rombes: "Filmmakers like Soderbergh - who openly speculate about new uses for new media - continue [a] tradition of creating popular works through experimental means."
Filmbrain: "Rare is the film that is either so imaginative, so surreal, or simply so bizarre that it defies easy description. Kankuro Kudo's twisted road flick, Yaji & Kita: The Midnight Pilgrimsis most definitely one of them."
King Kong roundup:
Celebs campaign to raise awareness of global warming-related issues. Via Treehugger.
Online browsing tip. Jim Gasperini's stereo photography, wiggled so that you don't need glasses to experience the 3D effect. Via Worship the Glitch by way of reBlog.
Online viewing tip #1. That Sofia Coppola must have some pretty fine playlists on her iPod. AOL is hosting the teaser for her Marie Antoinette.
Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Spike Lee's Inside Man. What a cast.
Online viewing tips, round 1. Jason Morehead picks out some of the best music videos Coudal Partners have been pointing to lately.
Online viewing tips, round 2. DVblog selects three "exhilarating chunks of early movie making from the Library of Congress online collection of variety stage motion pictures and posts impressions from the Bill Viola show at the James Cohen Gallery.
Posted by dwhudson at December 10, 2005 12:57 PM





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