Critics, fests, shorts.

In the San Diego Reader, Duncan Shepherd recalls meeting Manny Farber and eventually becoming his teaching assistant:

Manny's film classes - I can speak first-hand of only three years of them, though they would continue for another thirteen until his retirement in 1987 to devote himself full-time to painting - were the stuff of legend, and it seems feeble and formulaic to call him a brilliant, an illuminating, a stimulating, an inspiring teacher. It wasn't necessarily what he had to say (he was prone to shrug off his most searching analysis as "gobbledegook") so much as it was the whole way he went about things, famously showing films in pieces, switching back and forth from one film to another, ranging from Griffith to Godard, Bugs Bunny to Yasujiro Ozu, talking over them with or without sound, running them backwards through the projector, mixing in slides of paintings, sketching out compositions on the blackboard, the better to assist students in seeing what was in front of their faces, to wean them from Plot, Story, What Happens Next, and to disabuse them of the absurd notion that a film is all of a piece, all on a level, quantifiable, rankable, fileable. He could seldom be bothered with movie trivia, inside information, behind-the-scenes piffle, technical shoptalk, was often offhand about the basic facts of names and dates, was unconcerned with Classics, Masterpieces, Seminal Works, Historical Landmarks. It was always about looking and seeing.

Shepherd also mentions that a "new book of his previously uncollected criticism, tentatively titled Roads and Tracks, is in the offing."

Girish's main beef with Manny Farber "centers on white elephant art. I don't think ambition or a grand vision or an impulse to fastidiously and thoughtfully 'design' each frame in an 'all-over pattern' is necessarily a bad thing (at all)."

David Pratt-Robson counts off the many ways he disagrees with Clive James. Likewise, Jim Emerson: "What's really puzzling about this drivel is that James not only doesn't know what the auteur theory is, he doesn't know what movie criticism is - and he hasn't a clue what movies are, either. I find it difficult to believe he's ever seen one. Or, at least, a whole one. And no matter what projected images may have passed before his eyes, it's mighty obvious he hasn't seen anything at all."

In the Scotsman on Sunday, Brian Pendreigh has the lowdown on Ken Loach's next film, which "will tackle the topical subjects of gangmasters and the international exploitation of untrained workers." Via Richard Gibson.

"X-Men: The Last Stand can only be understood as an experimental film - it just doesn't work on any other level." Nick Rombes is being neither flippant nor dismissive. There's a "radical, incoherent beauty" in films like this one, he argues.

Anthony Kaufman presents a "Foreign Summer Movie Preview," his "picks for this summer's must-see counter-programming from abroad - and with distributors fleeing world cinema in droves, it's a very short list."

Tim R considers William Wyler, "one of the most genuinely reliable directors of Hollywood's golden age, if by reliability we mean a versatile craftsmanship in, out and between genres, a habit of doing intelligent justice to his given material, and a sturdy interest in recurring themes without the instantly recognisable authorial stamp of his more canonised peers," and The Best Years of Our Lives, "almost the summary statement of Wyler's career: shrewd, humanistic and powerfully layered, an honourable and unpretentious achievement which stands its ground, neither giving in to maudlin awards-bait theatrics nor pretending to solve all its characters' problems in one go."

John Lahr has a long profile of Sean Penn in the Observer. Also: Neal Ascherson meets Tom Stoppard to talk about his new play, Rock 'n' Roll. And what's with all the hardcore all of a sudden, wonders Mark Kermode.

David Thomson on The Passenger: "No, it's not in my top 10, but sometimes I think it's the one I like the best, by which I fear I mean it's the film I'd most like to be in, instead of just watching." Also in the Independent: Jonathan Romney meets Daniel Auteuil.

Ed Gonzalez in Slant: "Everything you ever wanted to know about sexual perversity but were afraid to ask is on anemic display in Bret Wood's new film, which adapts case studies from Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis for the screen without profound connective tissue."

Matt Dentler: "Make no mistake: Southland Tales shows the utter brilliance of Richard Kelly. That's precisely what makes it such a frustrating experience." Like Anne Thompson, who looks back on a few things Kelly said in Cannes, he's hoping the film will take shape on the editing table. Hm.

Matt Zoller Seitz: "In celebration of the third and regrettably final season of David Milch's HBO series Deadwood, The House Next Door will spend this entire week, June 4-11, publishing essays on various aspects of the series."

"Four Sided Triangle invites a couple of different readings," suggests Peter Nellhaus, and one of them is seeing it as "a symbolic retelling of the life of star Barbara Payton."

That Little Round-Headed Boy: "If David Lynch were making musicals in Hollywood's golden era, he might auteur a movie as delightful and demented as Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935."

Fests:

• Cinematical's Kim Voynar points to various bloggish coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival and reviews The Puffy Chair, " a fun, quirky ride through the turmoil a road trip puts on an already shaky relationship."

• Matt Riviera previews the Sydney Film Festival (June 9 through 25). So, too, does Michael Collins at Hollywood Bitchslap.

• Michael Guillen interviews Midnites for Maniacs programmer Jesse Hawthorne Ficks. So, too, does Max Goldberg for SF360.

• Invisible Cinema alerts New Yorkers to Folding Hearts / Broken Mirror, a "night to explore relationships idea and execution nature and technology audio and visual stimuli." That night is June 11.

Wholphin, and for that matter, the very idea of "a literal movie magazine" is a terrific idea, writes Jonathan Kiefer in Maisonneuve: "What's more, good batches of good short films are harder to come by than you might think, if you ever think about such things (which you probably don't, which is part of the reason why they're hard to come by)."

NP Thompson: "A light wisp of a documentary that's gone into thin air before you know it, Sketches of Frank Gehry alternates between banal and stirring."

The BBC: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has opened a film studio in the country aimed at curbing the cultural influence of the US in Latin America."

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has a creepy, creepy story in the New York Times Magazine about a school for rich kids hoping to get richer by landing roles in movies and TV shows. The parents, of course, say it's not about the money. Creepy pictures, creepy kids, creepy parents.

Online listening tip. The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #7 at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger....

Posted by dwhudson at June 5, 2006 5:15 AM