Weekend shorts.

Sure, his colors are alluring, and his exaggerations have a certain bleak humor. But ultimately Sirk wasn't in it for the laughs: he was a fatalist, someone who once said that "happiness exists, if only by virtue of the fact that it can be destroyed." This emigre, who lived most of his life in Germany, located his general despair in the American materialism of his day, in our reliance on objects to fill the voids where once there were souls.

In the New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann celebrates Rialto's reissuing of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 film, Army of Shadows, "a paradoxical beauty. Very many of the scenes are in sunlight - Melville avoided such facile stuff as shadows for suspense - yet they are chilly. The seasons vary, but the general effect is of a bright winter day that is freezing." Also: "Iran's recent growlings under its new president make such a film as Iron Island all the more remarkable."

Jasmila Zbanich, director of Grbavica, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in February, shows us, in the Los Angeles Times, a sample of the hate mail lead actress Mirjana Karanovic has been getting from anonymous Serbs, even though you'd think an "unofficial ban" would keep them from seeing the film. "Eleven years after the war, war criminals still direct our daily lives." Nonetheless, "A friend from Banja Luka sends me a text message: 'A pirated copy of Grbavica is being sold underground here. I hear it's selling like crazy. Good. I am losing financially, but it is important to break the isolation of the people in the Republika Srpska." Via Anthony Kaufman.

At Self-Reliant Filmmaking, Paul Harrill talks with Jake Mahaffy about his debut feature, War. Also via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker: news from Editor & Publisher and Alicia Morgan on a sudden and unexpected "Impeach the President" campaign from former Reagan-supporter Neil Young.

"Many people claim that Peckinpah did not understand what Sergio Leone was doing in languorous Westerns like Once Upon a Time in the West, but Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid proves that assessment wrong," argues Stanley Crouch in Slate.

Anthony Kaufman: "Recently, I stumbled onto the website of William Richert, the writer (The Happy Hooker), actor (My Own Private Idaho), and director (the 1979 paranoid cult classic Winter Kills). Either he's crazy or desperate or just plain passionate, but the site offers a wild ride through one Hollywood creative's career, travails, and lawsuits."

"It would be a crime to dismiss [Ken] Russell's cinema entirely," argues Bradford Nordeen.

Todd at Twitch: "The Hanging Garden is a quieter film, a subtler film, than what has come before and will likely have trouble connecting with many fans of the teen violence aspects of [Toshiaki] Toyoda's earlier work. Nevertheless it shows his unusual gift for character and his ability to create seemingly simple films that leave you stewing well after the final frame."

"[T]heater, painting, music and the novel. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that there could be a tradition of film-making in which it is fatuous to separate the work being studied from those other media," proposes David Thomson. "Are we prepared to tolerate this, without stooping to such crude insults as 'too literary, too stagey, too painterly, too operatic - too difficult'? Then, consider that this tradition embraces much of the work of Jean Renoir, Kenji Mizoguchi, Max Ophüls, Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, and the subject of this essay, a man who deserves to be considered among the greatest living and working film directors, no matter how he might shrink from the description. I am talking about Jacques Rivette."

Also in the Guardian, John Robinson on the "excellent documentary" My Name is Albert Ayler and Lanie Goodman talks with Danis Tanovic about directing Hell, based on a screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski, and about the three films to follow, all in English. More from SF Said in the Telegraph.

Part 2 of Jeremiah Kipp's conversation with Godfrey Cheshire is now up at the House Next Door, where you'll also find five great parting shots from the Odienator.

Patrick Neate profiles Zola, star of a TV soap opera in South Africa and also of Tsotsi.

"An intellectual journalist equally at leisure in the jaunty pages of Esquire (where he reviewed films) and the ascetic quarters of Partisan Review, [Dwight] Macdonald — born 100 years ago last month — was a generalist whose specialty was capsizing conventional wisdom, exposing highfalutin fraudulence and filing heretical dissents," James Wolcott who then goes on to quote from Macdonald's review of The Greatest Story Ever Told: "There was also that 'Woman of No Name' who pushes through the crowd as Jesus is healing the sick and, after he has grappled with her, cries out in purest Bronx, 'Oi'm cured! Oi'm cured!' and turns around to run toward the camera with arms waving in triumph - and damned if it isn't Shelley Winters."

Also in the New York Times:

• "Someday it may be possible to write an article about Roscoe Arbuckle without mentioning the scandal that destroyed his career," writes Dave Kehr. "If that day comes, it will be because of the work of Arbuckle buffs like William Hunt and Paul E Gierucki, who put together the indispensable four-DVD collection The Forgotten Films of Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, and to Ron Magliozzi, Steve Massa and Ben Model, who programmed the month-long series Rediscovering Roscoe: The Careers of 'Fatty' Arbuckle, which begins Thursday at the Museum of Modern Art."

• Edward Norton meets Sharon Waxman for lunch to complain about the studios' lack of interest in his indie, Down in the Valley.

• Charles Taylor talks with Olivier Assayas about Clean.

• Prep for the fall release of All the King's Men with the first chapter of Richard White's Kingfish.

Melinda Stone recalls her Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005 project at SF360.

Nathan Kosub in Stop Smiling on The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: "Lone Star, now ten years old, is simply a better movie about border politics, a true landmark with regards to race and community."

DK Holm at Movie Poop Shoot: "Rian Johnson's Brick is so far one of the best films of the year, but it treads a delicate line between being a potent tale or being ridiculous." Related online listening tip via Wiley Wiggins: The Austinist interviews Johnson.

Nick Davis wishes Emma Thompson a happy 47th.

Doug Ireland: "The firing of Washington columnist James Ridgeway by the new management of the Village Voice, and the resignation of the distinguished Pulitizer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg from the paper, represent a sad moment in the history of the New York weekly." What follows is a letter calling for the rehiring of Ridgeway signed by, among others, film critics J Hoberman, Dennis Lim and Ed Park.

Also just barely film-related, but: Owen Hatherley on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Online viewing tips. A gun fight from Spaced. Via Opus, also pointing to Ricky Gervais's appearance on the Daily Show. Which leads us to the Mother of All YouTube Link Dumps, Gpod's. Happy weekend.

Posted by dwhudson at April 15, 2006 4:56 AM