Shorts, 1/22.

The Telegraph's Andrew Murray-Watson: "The board of Pixar Animation Studios, the digital animations company, is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company's $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney." Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, where he's also pointing to Penn Jillette's radio show.

Steve Rosenbaum is justifiably upset that John Kerry refuses to see his film: "I made Inside The Bubble for you. It's not a whitewashed public relations approved view of the 2004 Election. But it's honest. And it is truthful. And while it's not the last word on why the Democrats lost - I'd suggest that for people trying to figure that out, it's required viewing."

For the Northwest Asian Weekly, NP Thompson previews Weathering the Storm: The Enduring Cinema of Mikio Naruse, at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle through February 26:

The critic Susan Sontag phrased it like this: Naruse "creates an ardently materialist world where the social pressure for money acts like a vise to the head." And indeed, in works such as Late Chrysanthemums (1954) and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), both of which claustrophobically portray the (mis)fortunes of aging prostitutes and unhappily retired geisha, the endless emphasis on economics is almost overwhelming. Naruse's women, at least in these two films, seldom speak of anything except money, and the director is well attuned to the intricacies of social Darwinism, so much so that the movies have a disturbingly contemporary feel to them, despite the milieu of a defeated, post-World War II Japan in which they take place.

Charles McGrath observes that Michael Winterbottom "thrives on filming the unfilmable, and to make Tristram Shandy he simply dusted off that handiest of postmodern devices: his film is about a film crew making a film of Tristram Shandy.... For once, though, this ancient wheeze actually comes off - in part because this kind of self-reflexiveness really is in the Sterne spirit, and in part because nobody takes the meta-movie idea too seriously. This film is more in the spirit of Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, say, than 8½ or Day for Night."

Also in the New York Times:

• Americans are watching fewer and fewer foreign films and Anthony Kaufman has the numbers to prove it. Talking with distributors, he discovers that the competition coming from the studios' specialty houses, with their "mini-major pseudo-indie productions," the rise of docs and the fact that foreign-born directors switch to English-language productions with American stars the moment they get the chance is simply all too much to overcome.

• Christopher Cain is hard at work on September Dawn, "about one of the darkest moments in Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, in which 137 pioneers from Arkansas were killed in Utah by a raiding party whose ties to the Mormon church are still in dispute." John Anderson reports.

• Wyatt Mason reviews Colin McGinn's The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact: "His chapter 'The Metaphysics of the Movie Image' is as enlightening as the book's earlier pages are undistinguished."

• Jeannette Catsoulis pans Underworld: Evolution, "a monotonous barrage of computer-generated fur and fangs." More from Nick Schager in Slant.

For the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries talks with William Boyd about the differences between writing novels and writing screenplays - and about adaptations: "Boyd quotes approvingly Nabokov's dictum that films should be 'vivacious variants' of the original."

"In 1994, the San Francisco-based filmmaker and artist Dean Snider decided to end his own life, possibly in front of a camera." Rebecca Cleman reviews The Will of Dean Snider. Also at Flickhead: Ray Young on The End of August at the Hotel Ozone: "Now on DVD from Facets, this unpleasant but spellbinding gem may finally find the audience it deserves."

Acquarello on Bell Diamond: "Few filmmakers capture the complex landscape of rural America in all its strong-willed self-determination, insularity, and dispiriting sameness as pointedly and eloquently as Jon Jost."

Writing for the World Socialist Web Site, you can imagine the field day Joanne Laurier has with Fun With Dick and Jane.

Second-life news at Twitch: Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Mark Caro's Delicatessen is headed to DVD; Futurama will indeed return.

Rotterdam previews from The Gomorrahizer at Twitch: Hiromasa Hirosue's The Lost Hum, Simon Rumley's The Living and the Dead, Noriko Shibutani's Bambi♥Bone, Kazuyoshi Kumakiri's Green Mind, Metal Bats and Ryûichi Hiroki's It's Only Talk.

Nick Davis picks his 2005 top ten.

Is Sarah Silverman truly "anti-Asian"? Sujewa Ekanayake looks into it.

Daniel Robert Epstein SuicideGirls interview roundup: Steven Soderbergh (related: Chuck Tryon comments on Mark Cuban's defense of Bubble's unconventional release), Jeremy Kasten and Bryce Dallas Howard.

William Shatner will be hosting the Golden Groundhog Awards on February 2. Thanks, James!

André Soares remembers Anthony Franciosa, 1928 - 2006.

Posted by dwhudson at January 22, 2006 1:51 PM