Shorts, 4/13.

Kevin Smith has been blogging about dealing with the addiction problems of his friend, Jason Mewes. A turning point in the story: When Mewes's counselor tells Smith, "[T]he way you've gone about it hasn't worked so far, and that's because you haven't hit him with the worst thing he can imagine: being cut out of your life altogether. You've gotta let him hit rock bottom." Via Ed Champion.

"Hollywood came to Boston last week," writes Brett Michel in the Phoenix. "A star-studded cast of Meryl Streep's admiring colleagues and fans converged on Brookline's Coolidge Corner Theatre to fete the actress who, with an unsurpassed 13 Oscar nominations and two wins, is among the most celebrated of all time." Sounds like a fun evening. Michel's got snippets of quips from Kevin Kline, John C Reilly, Robert Altman and, naturally one the funniest, Charlie Kaufman; Streep even "picked [Susan] Orlean up and spun her around, to excited cheers."

Also: Gerald Peary on the Devil Music Ensemble accompanying the 1922 silent feature Big Stakes.

Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly on Our Brand is Crisis: "Rachel Boynton's painfully timely film is actually a full-court tragedy - the sorry tale of a battle won and a war lost; of a country decimated by 500 years of colonialism and poverty; of globalization and America's losing battle to export market democracy to the developing world."

MS Smith isn't exactly just wild about Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche (White Nights): "On the other hand, I might be splitting hairs; as Wordsworth once wrote, we murder to dissect, and I wouldn't want my personal reservations about the film to detract from its achievements. After all, I know of few films that have so ably represented the power that loneliness has in driving people to acts of self-delusion."

Jim Ridley: "Classe Tous Risques is a study in loyalty, cast with a pair of cult idols in top form.... The movie's pleasure comes from watching [Jean-Paul] Belmondo's jaunty young hood earn the fatherly respect of [Lino] Ventura's heavy, tired family man, and from watching director [Claude] Sautet invest the standard genre theatrics with swift urgency and cold pragmatism." Also in the Nashville Scene, Noel Murray on Unknown White Male.

"What do kids know?" That question is more central to Magnolia than it first seems, argues John Adair.

"Time and space are part of the inviolable mystery of each person on his stage; but he gives more space and more time to certain kinds of women." Alistair Macaulay considers Harold Pinter. Also in the Times Literary Supplement, Katherine Duncan-Jones: "But for the stigma of the stage, it seems, Shakespeare might have been drawn yet deeper into the centre of the Court."

Dennis Cooper remembers Dutch novelist Gerard Reve, 1923 - 2006: "In the US, if his name rings a bell at all, it's likely because his novel De Vierde Man (The Fourth Man) was the basis for what is surely director Paul Verhoeven's most interesting film."

Besides briefly reviewing Nathalie, I Am a Sex Addict, Sisters in Law and 4, Salon's Andrew O'Hehir talks with director Mary Harron about The Notorious Bettie Page.

New reviews: Stephanie Zacharek; Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly ("the movie's most fruitful idea - that Page's bountiful sensuality was all of a piece with her simple-minded Christian belief, at least until the worthy Senator Kefauver (played by David Strathairn at his prissy dourest) set her straight in pornography hearings - is raised and then left to hang, untended, in midair"), where it's Mark Olsen who talks with Harron...

And Armond White: "Josef von Sternberg overshadows this week's sex comedies: The Notorious Bettie Page, Kinky Boots and I Am a Sex Addict. Three of Sternberg's vintage sex dramas - Morocco ('30), Blonde Venus ('32) and The Devil is a Woman ('35) - have at last just been made available on Universal DVD, and their still-provocative insights remain the greatest examples of erotic rapture and spiritual stress in American movie history. Their depth provides what you might call prophylactic protection from contemporary banalities."

Also in the New York Press, Matt Zoller Seitz, who reviews Sex Addict and Basic Instinct 2 as well: "Detractors cite [Days of Heaven] as an honorable example of Malick's talent and dismiss the The New World as devolution. But a close viewing confirms that The New World is in many ways an enlargement of Days of Heaven that revisits its situations, themes and filmmaking vocabulary from a fresh vantage point." And Jennifer Merin talks with Hard Candy director David Slade. Review: Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly: "[T]he more things drag on, the more monotonous they become."

Speaking of Kinky Boots, though, Susan King meets Chiwetel Ejiofor for the Los Angeles Times.

MaryAnn Johanson interviews On a Clear Day director Gaby Dellal for Film & Video.

So Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was actually hanging near Michael Corleone's hideaway all that while. Tim Dowling has a bit of fun with the Italian police. Related, Timothy Garton Ash: "If everyone in the world had bought a ticket for the pleasure and entertainment that Italy has given them over the past five years, the Italian economy would be booming."

Also in the Guardian: Michael Billington listens to Kevin Spacey defend his stewardship of the Old Vic and Kate Stables rounds up half a dozen online viewing tips.

"Calling distribution today, 'one of the biggest challenges facing independent filmmakers,' IFP executive director Michelle Byrd introduced a panel discussion Monday night entitled, "Distribution Now... Distribution How?"," reports indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez. "Filmmakers Caveh Zahedi (director, I Am a Sex Addict), Jay Duplass (director, The Puffy Chair), and Susan Leber (producer, Down to the Bone) chatted with Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macaulay about the topic and offered some filmmakers some reality checks."

The BBC: "One person has died in the Indian city of Bangalore after police opened fire on a violent mob mourning the death of actor Rajkumar." Also: "Leading Bollywood star Salman Khan has been freed on bail after three days in an Indian jail following his sentence for poaching rare antelope."

Online browsing tip. Alvin Lustig, via BibliOdyssey.

Online listening tip. Caveh Zahedi on the Leonard Lopate Show; an MP3 will be available soon after the show airs. For example, you can download yesterday's segments with documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto, photographer Howard Schatz, with Robert Klein and F Murray Abraham (promoting In Character, Actors Acting) and cultural phenom Tyler Perry right now.

Posted by dwhudson at April 13, 2006 8:43 AM