Shorts, 2/26.

The BBC has the list of this year's César winners, leading with The Beat That My Heart Skipped, picking up best film, best director (Jacques Audiard) and six more awards. "Best actor was Michel Bouquet, for his part as late president Francois Mitterrand in Le Promeneur du Champs de Mars [yes!], while best actress was Nathalie Baye in Le Petit Lieutenant, a tale of a recovering alcoholic detective." Also noteworthy: Hubert Sauper won a best first film award for Darwin's Nightmare.

Cinematical's Martha Fischer has found an early review of the first 30 minutes of A Scanner Darkly by IGN's Chris Carle.

Gerald Clarke, whose biography of Truman Capote is the basis for, yes, Capote, traces the writer's love of films through to his writing for them and adds a note on his own take on the new film. Meanwhile, Simon Garfield interviews Philip Seymour Hoffman and Philip French reviews the film.

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

• David Rose, the first journalist to interview the Tipton Three when they returned to Britain from Guantánamo, finds Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantánamo "an object lesson in the way that film can clarify and magnify a story's impact... [I]t cannot but evoke a sense of outrage at the behavior of the world's most powerful nation and self-proclaimed custodian of legality and human rights." Also, a quote from a "senior US Defense Intelligence Agency official": "Maybe the guy who goes into Guantanamo was a farmer who got swept along and did very little. He's going to come out a fully fledged jihadist. And for every detainee, I'd guess you create another 10 terrorists or supporters of terrorism." Precisely what I was thinking while watching the film: The is camp is a terrorist factory, contributing to a policy that all but guarantees Orwellian perpetual war.

• "The campaign against Paradise Now is gathering pace," reports Emma Forrest. "The nomination [for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film] probably won't be rescinded, but with 70 being the median academy voter age, and Judaism the predominant religion, it is something of a surprise, even to insiders, that the film has been nominated at all, let alone that it is a strong prospect to win."

• Sharon Krum reports on the depressing stats behind the giant billboard erected in LA by MoviesByWomen.com and the Guerrilla Girls.

• Philip French: "If there was one thing worse about last Sunday's Bafta Awards ceremony than Stephen Fry's euphuistic speeches as master of ceremonies it was the whingeing that went on afterwards over Americans scooping the big prizes."

• Simon Callow on Brigitte Timmermann's The Third Man's Vienna: "In recounting the making of the film, she covers some familiar ground, but her personal passion invariably gives a new twist to a remarkable history."

• PD Smith on Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema, in which Christopher Frayling "argues that the way scientists are presented in films feeds our current anxiety about science."

• At Mystery Pier Books in West Hollywood, Zoe L Green discovers that celebrities do, in fact, read. Or at least buy.

• Jason Solomons profiles Danny Huston.

• Clooney for president? John Patterson tries his hand at political consulting.

• A collection of memories of Samuel Beckett.

Moviehole's Gossip Monkey hears that "UK actor writer Simon Pegg's eagerly awaited follow up to his Rom Zom Com hit Shaun of the Dead is titled Hot Fuzz and will begin shooting in a few week's time. The pic is a comedy that pretty much sends up the buddy buddy cop pics of the 80s and 90s."

That's via Blake at Cinema Strikes Back, also pointing to Stephen McGinty's talk with Neil Gaiman for the Scotsman and Robert Williamson's assessment of the year in Thai cinema (that'd be 2005, of course) for the Bangkok International Film Festival - naturally, Blake has the award-winners there. Winner of the Golden Kinnaree: Water, whose director, Deepa Mehta, as AFP reports (via Kim Voynar at Cinematical), claims Gandhi's pacifism is falling out of favor in India.

David Thomson in the Independent: "It may not mean too much to many at first sight, but Richard Bright was killed in New York a few days ago... Richard Bright was one of the great assassins from the movies. He was Al Neri in the Godfather pictures."

Micki Krimmel at WorldChanging: "I'm a few weeks behind on reporting this but I thought it was worth mentioning briefly anyway. Early this year, production wrapped on the first ever feature film to be shot entirely with cell phone cameras.... Check out [director Aryan] Kaganof's blog for updates." Thanks, Ed!

In the Los Angeles Times: Susan Carpenter on David Lehre's MySpace: The Movie and Kevin Crust on the Oscar-nominated documentary shorts.

DK Holm reviews eight Renoir films on DVD for Movie Poop Shoot.

Mike Russell caught Art School Confidential at the just-wrapped Portland International Film Festival.

"Blue Velvet looks as odd and as beautiful as ever, and it's still a shock," writes Terrence Rafferty. "What's tough to handle, particularly if you aren't used to it, is the volatility of the film's tone — the abrupt, unsignaled alternations between teen-movie sweetness and splatter-movie depravity, between brazenly sophomoric humor and abject horror, between innocence and the direst kind of experience."

Also in the New York Times:

• Charles Solomon talks with John Canemaker about his Oscar-nominated animated short, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation.

• Randal C Archibold reports that PBS's "plan to show a debate after its documentary in April on the Ottoman Turks' massacres of Armenians has infuriated Armenian-Americans."

• "[I]t's rare the film that gets four chances," writes Marc Weingarten in a piece on The Last American Hero.

• Sharon Waxman watches as Universal's chairwoman, Stacy Snider, decides whether to stay on or run DreamWorks.

• Anita Gates finds Madea's Family Reunion, well, let's say, a disappointment; same goes for Neil Genzlinger and Doogal.

In PopMatters, Shaun Huston explores the less obvious ways Brokeback Mountain redefines the Western. Related: Peter Bowen at Filmmaker.

Noy Thrupkaew reviews Caché for the American Prospect.

Over at Flickhead, something's turned Nelhydrea Paupér off Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies.

Jump Cut's Ekkehard Knörer is already in Austin, notes Thomas Groh.

Online browsing tip #1. Mimmo Rotella's movie poster décollages, via Sean at Bitter Cinema.

Online browsing tips #2 and #3. French film journal covers, via Flickhead. Related: Ciné-romans, via PCL LinkDump.

Online listening tip. NPR's Andy Trudeau discusses two more Oscar-nominated scores: Munich and Brokeback Mountain.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Dozens of them. Lukas at WFMU's Beware of the Blog sorts through quite a collection.

Online viewing tips, round 2. Shorts by Jerry Lentz.

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2006 1:44 PM