Shorts, 1/17.

"The wondrously weird creatures who inhabit the films of French director Eugéne Green don't hail from earth as we know it," writes David Ng in the Village Voice. "They're the haloed offspring of two distinct but overlapping realms, the tangibly modern and the deliciously sublime. With three features and a short film, Green has staked out a small but fertile cinematic fiefdom where the spirits of Bresson and Ozu mingle with the eclectic likes of Monteverdi, the New Testament, and the Gap." A series runs at the Anthology Film Archives January 20 through 29.

Another filmmaker, another series (this one at the IFC Center, January 20 through 26), another assessment: Michael Atkinson on Lars von Trier. Also, Joshua Land on How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It), a doc on "a remarkable life": Melvin Van Peebles.

Larry Doyle's pitch:

It's about more than an alien invasion, or a big dance contest, although if you're a fan of invading aliens or professional choreography you won't be disappointed. It's also a love story, born of deep space and lived on a underwater dance floor; and it;s about the characters: the hero, the babe, the bad guy, the black guy, the guy who was funny when he was on SNL, and others. More than anything, though, it's about freedom - the idea of freedom, as opposed to any specific exercise of it - and liberty, which is a different word than 'liberal,' and about the special effects, which are more special than ever before, and Crest Whitestrips, which - SPOILER ALERT - save humanity.

Also in the New Yorker: David Denby on Go for Zucker and Why We Fight. More on Zucker from J Hoberman in the Village Voice: "[Director Dani] Levy's project to restore a Jewish dimension to German culture is extremely circumspect in addressing that culture."

More on Why We Fight: Rob Nelson interviews director Eugene Jarecki for the Voice. Good question: "The film argues that the forces now at play in Iraq aren't a few years old or 15, but 50 or 60. Why is that perspective so rare even among progressives in the US?" Hoberman: "Jarecki's film forcefully argues that the much abused word freedom cannot paper over the conflicts between capitalism and democracy." And more from the Reverse Shot team at indieWIRE and Nick Schager at Slant.

David Edelstein's first review in New York begins: "In Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Albert Brooks makes his alter ego ('Albert Brooks') the butt of every joke, which generates big laughs and progressively smaller returns." Related: "Woody Allen may bestride the world like a colossus, but - the brilliance of Real Life, Modern Romance, and Lost in America notwithstanding - not even the French have shown any interest in Albert Brooks." Why, wonders J Hoberman, before hazarding a guess. Meanwhile, Daniel Robert Epstein interviews Brooks for SuicideGirls.

"On a trip back to Senegal, Sembène was struck by or reminded of the high levels of illiteracy. This convinced him to turn to film rather than literature as a means of communicating with wide layers of the population." At WSWS, Joanne Laurier recounts Ousmane Sembène's story before turning to the 1963 short film, Borom Sarret and the 1966 feature, Black Girl.

Richard Linklater on the 20th anniversary of the Austin Film Society in indieWIRE: "Looking back over 20 years, I can say I now feel we were meant to be.... Like in so many areas of life, once you remove the profit motive and just want to make something cool happen because life would simply be better or more fun, it's amazing what you can do and who will jump in and help you do it." More (plus pix) from Blake at Cinema Strikes Back.

Cinematical's Kim Voynar interviews Favela Rising directors Matt Mochary and Jim Zimbalist.

Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated is set to premiere at Sundance and David M Halbfinger has quite a background story on the detective work behind the project, even as he writes, "Mr Dick's one-sided smackdown of a movie wallops the ratings board - the brainchild of Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Association - every which way but evenhandedly."

Also in the New York Times:

• Dave Kehr on new DVDs: "Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has released three black-themed films that provide an interesting counterpoint to the three titles released last week by Warner Home Video."

• John Clark on the clever ways marketers find to push "movies with an 'overcome'": "The overcome often involves difficult subject matter, unconventional storytelling, an unfamiliar cast or a combination of these things."

• Product Invasion: Doreen Carvajal reports.

• Lia Miller reports on Walden Media's acquisition of the rights to adapt Isabel Allende's children's trilogy: City of the Beasts will be directed by Taylor Hackford; the other two books are Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies.

"For decades, the Gray Lady eschewed celebrity and the movie biz (very different from film culture)." No more, reports Steven Zeitchik in Variety: "As circulation has begun to tilt toward a national readership, arts coverage also has shifted toward celebrity and pop-culture stories that play outside media power centers."

In Fanzine, a personal take on all three Kongs from Benjamin Strong; you may be surprised by which of the three means the most to him.

David Thomson has two new pieces in the Independent and one in the NYT. In the first, he revisits HUAC as a way to introduce a recommendation: "To see Force of Evil today is like a cold shower. You can hardly believe the perilous lucidity that is unfolding." In the second, he evaluates the current crop of young male actors. For the NYT Book Review, Thomson writes, "Marshall Fine's Accidental Genius is, really, the first full life of Cassavetes, who died in 1989 at 59 and who is easily offered as a kind of godfather to the independent film movement in America." After an evidently disappointing beginning, "as soon as we get to Shadows, this book jumps to life."

Stanley Kauffmann in the New Republic:

Whatever else can be said about it, Schindler's List is masterfully directed. Every scene, every shot has been conceived with an almost angry simplicity, with a passion for truth that discards both the trite and the clever. I know few other films - and I'm remembering Bergman and Bresson and Antonioni, among others - that more authentically elevate form to the level of content. The very making of Schindler's List incises its subject powerfully.

This is woefully untrue of Munich.

Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov, a reporter for Ha'aretz specializing in Israeli intelligence and the editor-in-chief of the Special Operations Report, respectively, have a different concern: "[W]hat we find disturbing is that it is substantially a fiction - which, given Hollywood's influence, may soon be regarded as a definitive account.... [Spielberg's] conduct in this case resembles that of a cub journalist who chooses to run a great story rather than confuse us with the facts."

Also in the Guardian, Jonathan Gibbs: "There must be a novel, somewhere, mustn't there, that is truly unfilmable?... I nominate as the ultimate unfilmable novel the final part of Beckett's Trilogy: The Unnamed." And Lisa Allardice interviews Sam West.

Jürgen Fauth: "Factotum is hilarious, sobering, and inspiring, often at the same time."

Richard Corliss in Time: "Bubble is, in a few ways, Soderbergh's most radical and invigorating experiment yet."

The cinetrix on Mutual Appreciation: "It continues to astonish me how Andrew manages to capture these moments as he lives them. I suspect it stems from his genuine affection for the friends he casts. That may be why there are no traditional villains in his films - Bujalski's eyes and ears are finely attuned to the ardor and self-destructive urges in everyone."

Acquarello reviews Judith Mayne's Claire Denis.

Grady Hendrix has news of the next feature from Gu Changwei, whose Peacock "was one of the oddest and best movies of 2005." Also: "Zinda [that Bollywood remake of Oldboy, you may remember] was sufficient punishment for any sins I may have committed in a previous life."

At Twitch, The Gomorrahizer has a bit on each of the three projects Takashi Miike's working on.

The Voice's brief reviews and "Tracking Shots": Matt Singer on Last Holiday and Glory Road; Pete L'Official on Tristan & Isolde; Mark Holcomb on End of the Spear; R Emmet Sweeney on 24 Hours on Craigslist; Ben Kenigsberg on Pizza and Drew Tillman on The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyyam.

At MCN, Gary Dretzka looks over the plethora of new ways to watch stuff.

In Slate, Edward Jay Epstein explains the economics behind "the starlet's dilemma in babeland."

Online listening tip #1. Pamela Yates, director of State of Fear, and Ellen Perry, director of Fall of Fujimori, on the Leonard Lopate Show. Reviews: Michael Atkinson in the Voice.

Online listening tip #2. Steve Coogan on Fresh Air.

Online connect-the-dots tip. Hitchcock, Zizek and Iran at Subject Barred. Via k-punk.

Online browsing tip. At Cinematical, Adam Finley collects links to four blogs run by DreamWorks animators.

Online browsing, listening and viewing tip. WFMU lists the latest additions to UbuWeb.

Online viewing tip. The trailer for Idlewild, the Outkast movie, via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tips. Video for the Heavy Ammunition Project. Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, where Mark Frauenfelder points to Cartoon Modern - because Amid Amidi is featuring the work of Victor Haboush all week long.

Posted by dwhudson at January 17, 2006 2:44 PM