Shorts, 1/20.

"Like the best of his still image work (the Disaster series and the big Marilyn and Elvis paintings), Warhol's silent films and some of his early 'talkies' exist in the tension between presence and absence, assertion and denial. Fetishistic in the extreme, they allow the receptive viewer access to the fundamentals of cinematic pleasure. Their surfaces open onto the depths of your psyche." That's Amy Taubin's take now; but she's actually in a few of these films: "I was fascinated by Warhol's work process - how he made himself a still point in the midst of a chaos that fed him even as he kept himself apart from it - but I found the Factory scene as clique-ridden and unpleasant as high school."

Also in the City Pages: Rob Nelson on The Last Waltz and Matthew Wilder on Match Point. More on that one from AO Scott in the New York Times: "You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment." But then, Jack Stoller: "The central flaw of this film is a theme reminiscent of Crimes and Misdemeanors, that people who do unjust things in a godless universe can get away with it. An important difference is that Crimes and Misdemeanors portrayed this as a bad thing." Update: NP Thompson simply despises Match Point.

Lists definitely worth waiting for: Brian Darr, Dennis Cozzalio and, at Twitch, Dave Canfield.

DK Holm has a massive all-Japanese column up at Movie Poop Shoot, reviewing five Kurosawa films, four samurai films, two "elder sister" exploitation films, the Pinky Violence Collection, a few films by Donald Richie as well as Richie's books A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Film and The Japan Journals: 1947 - 2004 - and Alain Silver's newly revised The Samurai Film. Heavens.

Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper: "Fond of barren landscapes, blackout gags and Sisyphean slopes, [Luc] Moullet is, like the Parisian rebels of May 1968, 'Marxiste, tendence Groucho,' a slapstick anarchist who expresses his hostility to the modern world by refusing to take it seriously."

Girish: "The Passenger is ultimately and clearly a director's movie but I have to say that Jack Nicholson's performance in it is a thing of wonder: it’s scrupulously minimal, completely instinctive, and you could write a small book about its profuse subtleties." Also: "Naruse's Repast (1951) moves me because of the insistent way in which he focuses on the petty details of 'balancing the domestic books' that each day demanded in a household like our own."

"He may have been one of the great auteurs, but many of his films still have the spontaneity of home movies," writes Geoffrey Macnab in a piece with a sidebar by Leslie Caron. "While critics and fellow film-makers have long revered Renoir and films like La Règle du Jeu and La Grande Illusion nestle high up in many top 10 lists, few of his 40 or so other features are in active circulation." Also in the Independent, Judy Meewezen praises Elizabeth McGovern's performance in the indie thriller, The Truth.

At the newly redesigned site for the LA Weekly, there's a box, top and center, labeled "Foundas vs Ebert." It is, in a way, a mini-blog, linking to all the stops necessary to follow Scott Foundas's response to Roger Ebert's defense of Crash in the wake of Foundas's attack on the film in the latest (last?) round of Slate's "Movie Club." For good measure, the LAW tosses in Foundas's appreciation of Ebert this summer when the Chicago-based critic got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So why would you follow all this? One of the points at hand is the question of how critics best serve their readers. In a sense, both could claim to be "right" since their readerships probably differ considerably; but that doesn't settle it entirely, either, of course.

Brian Brooks unveils the third edition of indieWIRE's "Guide to Acquisitions": "The list is designed, we hope, to give insight to indieWIRE readers, especially emerging filmmakers and producers, who may not be familiar with some of the people behind this fundamental aspect of the film business."

The New York Press film critics do their bit for the Brooklyn issue. Armond White looks back: "By putting Black Brooklyn on the big screen, [Spike] Lee followed the footsteps of preceding borough ambassadors who won prominence without instituting change."

"[W]hat's happening in Brooklyn is still very much under the radar. It's less a fullblown Renaissance than a percolating scene that has yet to erupt into national view," writes Matt Zoller Seitz. Also: Jennifer Merin interviews Richard Shepard, director of The Matador.

Charles Taylor: "Few recent movies offer the sense of being deeply engaged with the world, or the quiet, enveloping elation, that Mr Hou's Café Lumière does." More from Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader and Scott Tobias in the AV Club. Also in the New York Observer: Andrew Sarris on Fun with Dick and Jane.

Nick Davis resumes picking flicks.

For the Los Angeles Times, Reed Johnson visits the set of Nacho Libre, "a bruising comedy" directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and starring Jack Black, now scarred for life. Literally. Related in a roundabout sort of way: "There's more to Mexican superheroes than masked wrestlers," notes Sean Spillane at Bitter Cinema.

When the great production designer Ken Adam sits down to talk with the Telegraph's Mark Monahan about a favorite movie, he chooses Casablanca.

The Bafta nominations are in and, as the Guardian reports, The Constant Gardener is the front-runner, with Brokeback Mountain and Crash close behind.

"When we launched our competition for films shot and edited on home computers - what we termed "laptop movies" - we had very little idea of what we were going to find," writes Guardian film editor Andrew Pulver. Turns out, 140 DVDs came in and the "10-strong final shortlist included some powerful work... But the winner was absolutely clear; it won in a walk... One Night in Powder is the brainchild of Jason Attar and Phil Jones, and is a brilliantly realised film. It's genuinely funny - and if you've sat through as many comedies as I have, you know the real thing as soon as you see it."

Also in the Guardian:

• Peter Bradshaw on Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story: "[Michael] Winterbottom generates an almost delirious atmosphere by making us breathe two different sorts of heady fume: postmodernism and celebrity." Still, "The film might date quicker than the book." More from James Christopher in the Times of London, Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph and Anthony Quinn in the Independent, where John Walsh offers an A-to-Z of the book.

• Mark Lawson: "[I]t's my contention that Hidden is one of the first great movies of the 21st century." More from Kevin B Lee in the Chicago Reader. Related: James Mottram talks with Michael Haneke for the Independent.

• "What we need is more women writers, writing for older women," Kathleen Turner tells Sharon Krum.

• Dan Glaister talks with Paradise Now director Hany Abu-Assad, Will Hodgkinson with Joaquin Phoenix.

• Howard Guard remembers cinematographer Adrian Biddle and Christopher Reed remembers film historian Dave Holland.

• Guy Dammann on prostitution in film history. Onscreen, that is.

• Seven online viewing tips from Kate Stables.

Matt Zoller Seitz introduces a new feature, "offerings from the three dozen or so film and TV-related books that I never tire of reading." More than that, though, he comments throughout. First up is a clip from David Mamet's On Directing Film.

Dave Kehr reports on Showtime's cancelation of the broadcast of Takashi Miike's Imprint, which was to have been part of the Masters of Horror series; it does sound pretty gruesome, actually, and will probably do well on DVD.

Also in the New York Times:

• David Carr dips into the aftermath of the Globes and finds and odd mix of "What in the world was Drew thinking wearing that!" and celebs spending "an awful lot of time talking about gay-bashing, about the role of film in public discourse and whether the president should be impeached."

• Alpha Dog, its director, Nick Cassavetes, and its researcher are entangled in the legal fallout of the real-life events the film tackles. David M Halbfinger reports.

• Stephen Holden finds End of the Spear "inspiring enough to make you wish that the filmmakers had reined in their sentimental excesses." Also: Go for Zucker is "the rare German movie calling itself a comedy that is actually funny, even if only in bits and pieces." But: "Perception "is not funny; it's hardly anything at all." More on Zucker from Jürgen Fauth.

• Then: "In Le Pont des Arts, [Eugène] Green's propensity for throwing in academically heavyweight references and concepts may seem intimidating, but it is more than an exercise in name-dropping. The movie is an audacious, mythically slanted inquiry into the place of high art in today's chaotic culture and an assertion of its primacy."

• AO Scott: "The Fall of Fujimori offers, among other things, the latest proof that nonfiction filmmaking can be stranger than any make-believe."

• Manohla Dargis on 24 Hours on Craigslist, "primarily a stroll through human desire as manifested on the popular site."

• Nathan Lee: "Pizza is a thin slice of flavorless whimsy heavily garnished with contrivance."

• Caryn James on trailers for political satires: "How do you capture a movie's irreverence without alienating the audience in advance?"

• "[T]his the year of gender malcontent in the cinema," claims Joyce Wadler, who writes up a little spoof about Dracula as a cross-dresser: TransSylvania. The more rewarding read is Kaley Davis's piece in the Stranger on Transamerica: "My life story isn't much like Bree's, but [Felicity] Huffman's work reflected the essence of my experience so acutely I often felt like I was looking into a mirror."

Neil Jordan's on-again, off-again Borgia is on again. Hannah Eaves interviews the director for PopMatters. Also, Terry Sawyer: "Mind Over Matters: Meta-Bullshit: The Trouble with Sarah Silverman and the Fawning Cult of Meta-Bigotry."

Somewhat related: Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat on The Aristocrats on DVD and the two hours-worth of new stuff: "A perfect example of a bit that is hysterical but was omitted for good reason is Kevin Pollak telling the joke in the persona of Albert Brooks. It's just as funny as the scene in the film where Pollak does the joke as Christopher Walken; but it would have seemed redundant and structurally strange for [Paul] Provenza and [Penn] Jillette to have included two lengthy Pollak impersonation routines, no matter how great they are."

Daniel Robert Epstein's latest interviews at SuicideGirls: Wayne Wang and Melvin Van Peebles. Related: AO Scott in the NYT on How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It): "The story that emerges is a fascinating historical document."

Rick Curnutte: "With whip-smart writing, quirky characters (and actors) and a propulsive, addictingly playful aesthetic, The Land of College Prophets has the potential to be a sleeper cult film in the future. It's the greatest Alex Cox film that Alex Cox never made."

Steve Erickson: "As satire, Manderlay hits home in a way that Dancer in the Dark and Dogville never did."

Crashcam Films: Very, very busy, up to all sorts of mischief, reports Marc Savlov. Also in the Austin Chronicle: Spencer Parsons previews the Austin Jewish Film Festival, January 21 through 27, and Raoul Hernandez reviews The Bad Sleep Well.

"I think in every season we've based our A-story - which is the main terrorist story - on plausible scenarios. But just because it's plausible doesn't make it probable." 24 writer Michael Loceff talks to James Surowiecki in Slate.

Grady Hendrix on The Promise: "Chen [Kaige]'s focused on is how things look, and they look gooood."

"Who knew?" At the Culture Blog, Amy Moon passes along an observation from San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chuck Nevius as to who's watching Brokeback Mountain. Related: James Wolcott on conservatives' reactions so far; Mark Steyn, via Jason Morehead; via Gabriel Shanks, Nell Minow in the Chicago Tribune on last year's most homophobic onscreen moments; and Patrick Macias: "This just in: American girls are mining the missing link between gay cowboys and fruity J-pop from the Johnny's jimsho."

Trying to steer clear of the Oscars before they become unavoidable (all too soon now, I'm sure), but this is too good to pass up: David Kronke talks with Alonso Duralde, author of 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men, about, yes, the Oscars.

Adam Balz at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "The American Astronaut is an experiment in genre-bending. It's a western without any high-noon shootouts, a sci-fi work of art with musical numbers, a drama with exaggerated characters."

Peter Nellhaus: "[W]hile [Derek] Jarman made his film about his own country twenty years ago, The Last of England has resonance for contemporary American viewers."

Producer Ted Hope pitches 1000 Bloody Red Pieces of Sarah to Filmmaker.

Getting their kicks at Noir City: Natalija Vekic at Scene and Unseen and Sara Schieron at Filmshi.com.

Online browsing tip. Famous for 15mb. Via Screenhead.

Online listening tip. Harry Nilsson's soundtrack for Otto Preminger's Skidoo at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...

Online going-deep tip. The Tulse Luper Journey. Thanks, Ed.

Online viewing tip #1. Nathaniel Stern reworks Woody Allen at DVblog.

Online viewing tip #2. A teenaged Jodie Foster sings. Harmonizing with herself. In French. Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #3. That UK Honda Civic ad; links gathered at Boing Boing.

Online viewing tips. "Top 65 Music Videos of 2005," a different batch from m3 online via Waxy.org.

Posted by dwhudson at January 20, 2006 4:25 PM