Shorts, 2/24.

"[Richard] Linklater began to fear that his vision of the film might never get translated into animation. He knew how to capture the story with a camera, but with a digital pen it was infinitely harder." How hard? At one point in Robert La Franco's piece on A Scanner Darkly, "A security guard was posted at the door, the locks were changed, and their workstations were seized." Yikes. But as we know now, the trailer's looking good and the release date seems definitely set this time: July 7.

Also in Wired, Matt Brady's "How Digital Animation Conquered Hollywood." Thanks to Blake at Cinema Strikes Back for spotting the new issue. He's also pointing to Tadanobu Asano's snapshots taken at the Berlinale (scroll down a tad) and Neil Smith's BBC report on what Terry Gilliam may be up to next.

Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the charity Reprieve who has represented forty Guantánamo prisoners, has a blow-by-blow account in the New Statesman of actor Rizwan Ahmed's detainment at Luton Airport when he and others involved in The Road to Guantánamo returned to Britain from the Berlinale: "The very foundations of our justice system are under threat as legal safeguards and even the notion of the protection of the law are ignored or mocked." Related: David Ehrenstein on Morrissey being questioned by the FBI and British intelligence after expressing an opinion.

"The existing audience for foreign films has helped to kill its potential audience." What does Grady Hendrix mean by that? He explains what he means quite clearly in an entry sparked by David Ansen and Ramin Setoodeh's piece in Newsweek.

Eugene Hernandez takes a long look at indieWIRE at the ramifications of the shut down of Wellspring. As an example of how reactions have varied, compare Amy Taubin's comment ("This... is another example of the pernicious Weinstein approach to competition: just don't let those pesky great art films (the kind that the Weinsteins would never distribute unless their directors allowed them to be mutilated, and these days, probably not even then) get released in any theaters whatsoever") with that of ThinkFilm's Mark Urman ("One company comes, another goes. This is the way it is and has always been. Logos change; Renoir, Bergman, Godard and the like are eternal!"). More commentary: The Reeler.

Scott Roxborough for Reuters: "German multiplex giant CinemaxX has pulled the Turkish action blockbuster Valley of the Wolves: Iraq from theaters after accusations that the film, which stars Billy Zane and Gary Busey, is anti-Semitic and anti-American."

There's a marvelous piece in Slate from Stanley Crouch on what Fred Astaire and Louis Armstrong share and what they don't. These comparisons come later, but what an opening paragraph:

Black people are usually smug about their supposed superiority to white people in all things physical, from the boudoir to the dance floor, but Fred Astaire seems to transcend all stereotypical discussion, with no carping or resentment. Given the racial history of American entertainment, that is quite rare. Astaire looms not because he seems more masculine than anybody else or more handsome or less corny. He remains more pure than all categories because of his ability, in motion, to transform all things through grace, which is the fundamental dream beneath the gaudy exterior of American civilization.

"Twenty years ago Dave Kehr aptly noted in this paper that Late Chrysanthemums 'is a masterpiece of narrative construction,' yet paradoxically many of the things that register most indelibly aren't essential to the story," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader in a piece noting that Mikio Naruse's "utter lack of sentimentality has stylistic consequences." Also: Andrea Gronvall on Forgiving Dr Mengele.

"The problem explored in Our Brand Is Crisis - vividly, though far from completely - does not lie in individuals but in the accepted definition of 'democracy,' whether peddled in Bolivia by [political consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum], in Iraq by Paul Bremer and the Lincoln Group or in (you supply the name) by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund," writes Stuart Klawans in the Nation.

Girish finds The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach "simultaneously both documentary-like and self-consciously artificial. By embracing these two (seemingly) diametrically opposed natures, the film finds one nature in the other: documenting involves artifice, and vice versa."

Ray Pride posts seven quick and to-the-point reviews at Movie City Indie.

"No woman has ever won an Oscar for best director," Anne Thompson reminds us in the Hollywood Reporter. "On the foreign-language side, however, German director Caroline Link directed two nominated films, including the 2003 Oscar winner Nowhere in Africa. It followed the 1996 win by Antonia's Line, directed by Marleen Gorris of the Netherlands. This year, the sole female director among all the Oscar-nominated feature films is Cristina Comencini, the Italian writer-director of Don't Tell." And Thompson meets her.

Today's up-n-coming items from Cinematical's Martha Fischer, who's got more details: Zoe Cassavetes is to direct Gena Rowlands, Parker Posey and Jeanne Moreau in Broken English. And: Michael Winterbottom will adapt former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray's memoir, Murder in Samarkand.

Harry Knowles found out today who'll be playing him in the Weinstein Company's production of Fanboys - and heard, too, that Philip Seymour Hoffman will be playing Roger Ebert in a Russ Meyer biopic. Update: See comments below and Roger Ebert's note at Cinematical.

Caryn James in the New York Times on Elaine May: "The films themselves deserve to be seen again with the extraneous details and the dust of received opinion brushed away." And they will be this weekend at the Walter Reade.

Reviews:

• Manohla Dargis on Running Scared ("meta-movie to the max"; more from Stephanie Zacharek in Salon), Tsotsi ("[director Gavin Hood] wrings tears with sincerity, not cynicism"; more from Christopher Campbell at Cinematical and Jürgen Fauth) and Unknown White Male: "Is Mr Bruce a bored rich guy whose interest in art resulted in a devilishly clever conceptual prank? Maybe it doesn't matter." More from Anthony Kaufman and, in the LA CityBeat, Andy Klein.

• Stephen Holden on Little Fish, a "dry-eyed assessment of heroin and its stranglehold on people who stay in its vicinity, even after they've stopped using," Workingman's Death, with its "structure and tone of an epic historical poem," and Dirty, "a nasty little genre film... a facile exercise in nihilism posing as an indie Training Day with street cred. Don't believe it." More from Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

• Jeannette Catsoulis on Trudell, "a fascinating account of its subject's most turbulent crusades."

• Neil Genzlinger on the live-action and animated Oscar-nominated shorts: "There are throwaways in each batch, but all in all it's a package that makes you wonder, in this age of reduced attention spans, why these little gems aren't more widely circulated."

• Nathan Lee, briefly but satisfyingly, on Casino.

Bradford Nordeen inaugurates Flukiest's film coverage.

Focusing on clarinettist Selim Sesler, Fiachra Gibbons gets the background story on Fatih Akin's Crossing the Bridge, "a Buena Vista Social Club of the Bosphorus." More from Andrew Pulver.

Also in the Guardian:

• Dorian Lynskey meets Nick Cave to talk about The Proposition: "'It wasn't my film, it was John [Hillcoat]'s film. I still feel like that actually. Although I have to come and do the fucking interviews.' He flashes an only-kidding grin."

• Gary Younge on Manderlay (more from Charles Mudede in the Stranger) and Peter Bradshaw on Capote, Lucky Number Slevin and Derailroaded.

• John Patterson on the "Gayest Oscars Ever."

Steve Erickson reviews Sophie Scholl: The Final Days for Gay City News. See also John Esther's interview with director Marc Rothemund and Julia Jentsch.

For SuicideGirls, Daniel Robert Epstein interviews Michel Gondry.

In the Independent, James Mottram meets Catherine Keener.

Jonathan Kiefer in Maisonneuve: "Great Movie Theatres I Have Known."

Matt Zoller Seitz's current "5 for the day": "[M]ovies or TV shows that contained scenes or images that branded themselves onto your imagination, disturbing or moving you and profoundly altering your view of entertainment and/or life. Interpret that however you wish." And so far, many, many have.

"An Astronomer in Hollywood is a quite extraordinary, dreamy, and reflective blog, written with such patience and a tactile sense of the fragility of nature and of imagination," writes Jennifer MacMillan at Invisible Cinema.

Online viewing tip #1. Screenhead points to the trailer for Project 15, a silly yet... well, silly feature due in April.

Online viewing tip #2. Joseph Beuys "sings" at DVblog.

Online viewing tip #3. Corey Boutilier talks with Street Fight director Marshall Curry at independentfilm.com.

Online viewing tips. Trailers at/via Twitch: Bastards, a Russian film "that looks to be the love child of The Dirty Dozen and Battle Royale" (Todd); Takashi Miike's Waru; and Goro Miyazaki's Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea).

Posted by dwhudson at February 24, 2006 3:57 PM