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."

Siân 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:

• Lorne Manly: "Yes, in an age of hundreds of cable channels, video games and other distractions, the domestic box office so far this year is down about 6 percent from the same time period in 2004, and off from 2003 and 2002 levels. But the money flowing into the coffers of movie studios is greater than ever." In a hurry? Head straight to the charts.

• AO Scott on The Power of Nightmares: "At times [Adam] Curtis seems to believe too literally in the notion that neoconservatism and radical Islam are mirror images of each other, creating odd impressions of equivalence and fudging over problems of definition."

• And: "[I]n casting about for new sources of fear, Marebito achieves its own level of mediocrity." More from Steve Erickson at Gay City News: "Both intriguing and goofy, Marebito suggests a potentially promising new direction for J-horror."

• Manohla Dargis: "[Rob] Marshall can't rescue the film from its embarrassing screenplay or its awkward Chinese-Japanese-Hollywood culture klatch, but Memoirs of a Geisha is one of those bad Hollywood films that by virtue of their production values nonetheless afford a few dividends, in this case, fabulous clothes and three eminently watchable female leads." Related: Stephanie Zacharek at Salon; Andy Klein in LA CityBeat; Jeffrey M Anderson; Slate's David Edelstein finds "it skips lightly over the surface of its rich material, more preoccupied with making pretty pictures than dipping below the surface."

• Also, Mrs Henderson Presents: "[T]his is principally the Bob and Judi show, complete with boisterous fights, silly pantomime... and a rich helping of sentimentalism that might make you gag if it were spooned up by less practiced con artists." More from Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, Jim Tudor at Twitch and Jette Kernion at Cinematical.

• Patricia E Bauer on The Ringer: "Peter Farrelly argues that America needs to understand the inherent humanity of people with intellectual disabilities, and that includes seeing them make jokes, engage in hijinks and dance close to Full Monty-style in the shower."

• Christian Moerk talks about The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada with Tommy Lee Jones: "Thank you for understanding that it's not 'political'... It's a study in social contrasts."

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:

• For John Lyttle in the New Statesman, Peter Jackson's Kong "includes the best action sequences of the year - indeed, perhaps of any year... the most giddily romantic moment of the past 12 months... [and] the most flagrantly racist scene of 2005."

• Tim Robey in the Telegraph: "Jackson's achievement is to fill his picture with cavernous soul." Also in the Telegraph: John Hiscock talks with Naomi Watts.

• Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian: "It certainly equals, and even exceeds, anything Jackson did in Lord of the Rings."

• John Walsh on the making of the original King Kong in the Independent.

• For the London Times, Joel Meadows asks a variety of folks what it is about Kong that keeps us reviving him over and over.

• Daniel Robert Epstein SuicideGirls interviews Peter Jackson and Jack Black.

Also in the Guardian: John Patterson: "Homecoming comes on like Roger Corman's Syriana. And as often happens with Cormanesque ventures, the cheesy, no-budget entry often kicks the well-funded studio equivalent's ass." More from Stephen Macy. And Oliver Burkeman interviews Will Ferrell.

Ben Dickenson outlines a brief history of politically progressive movies from Hollywood from, oh, Reagan or so on. Also in the Independent: Chris Sullivan gets a few great stories from cinematographer Jack Cardiff and Elaine Lipworth interviews Sarah Jessica Parker.

Thinking of going on tour with your film? Read Paul Harill's notes.

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