June 24, 2006

Weekend shorts.

Broken Trail Sean Axmaker noted late last year that many critics will argue that Walter Hill is one of the "most underrated American directors working today." As Robert Abele writes in the LA Weekly, the movies' loss is television's gain. He talks to Hill about his new two-part, four-hour Western for AMC, Broken Trail. More from Robert Lloyd and Paul Lieberman in the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Wallenstein on NPR and, via the House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz in the Star-Ledger.

There is, by the way, a lot going on at the House Next Door. Kenji Fujishima, for example, writes, "If Happy Together represented a stepping stone, an emotional deepening of Wong [Kar-Wai]'s usual themes of love, loss and desire, Fallen Angels represents both a look back and a look forward for one of cinema's most important current directors." And NP Thompson argues that, with Heading South, Laurent Cantet has "made the kind of film that's meant to be inferred, not watched - in short, a natural for 'analysis' by practitioners of what I call the Village Voice school of arts criticism, which turns out reviewers who are so hyperaware politically that you don't have to be, and neither does the moviemaker." Meanwhile, the Odienator picks five summer movies.

Robert Cashill looks forward to the indies of summer; Gary Dretzka proposes a bit of alternative programming for home viewing instead.

Jim Emerson is going all out with his Open Shots Project at scanners; there's a quiz and a slightly easier followup exercise.

Tim Lucas takes the subject of his column in the current issue of Sight & Sound, Writer of O, "Pola Rapaport's extraordinary docudrama about Pauline Réàge, the pseudonymous author of the novel The Story of O," and writes his way to childhood and back. Wonderful stuff.

Back to the LAW:

El Doctor

Edgar Rice Burroughs "was essential to the popularization of the idea that technology could be terrible and that man was the inevitable target of increasingly restrictive and ominous inventions," writes Stanley Crouch in Slate. "One cannot hope to comprehend the curving path of American popular culture unless the visions of paradise lost and paradise regained are assessed."

Michael Feingold: "With only a smattering of television credits and an even sparser list of film appearances, [Alvin] Epstein represents what it means in America to devote your life to the theater. Barely a blip on the mass audience's radar, he's one of our culture's hidden treasures, a leading figure among the working professionals who believe in and live for their art."

Also in the Village Voice:

The Hidden Blade

What are "cinephiliac moments"? Girish explains the idea put forward by Christian Keathley in Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees: "[T]hese are small, marginal moments that detonate an unforgettable little frisson in the viewer. The important thing to remember is that these are not moments carefully designed to exert great dramatic effect - not that there's anything wrong with those - but instead they are fleeting "privileged" moments writ small that we find ourselves strongly attracted to, perhaps even disproportionately so given their scale and possible (lack of) intention."

"For those determined to sift through the whole package, it's a significant commitment...but a genuine pleasure; a film archive in a box." Doug Cummings has been spending a few weeks with Criterion's Mr Arkadin package. "The best feature of the set, however, is the commentary by Welles experts James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum, who breezily exchange observations about the film and its relation to Welles' career while tossing in comments on the French New Wave, Cold War paranoia, the grotesque in art, and a wide array of themes and topics. It's the best DVD commentary I've heard in a while; highly informed yet conversational and multi-faceted."

Meanwhile, in the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum explains why "Three Times, one of the peaks of [Hou Hsiao-hsien's] career, may be your last chance to see his work inside a movie theater." As for the film itself, its "achievement lies mostly in the beautifully articulated similarities and differences among the three [episodes] - in their compositions and themes, in the way space is defined and camera pans connect characters, in their use of music and other means of personal expression (snooker, pop tunes, and letters in 1966; poetry, singing, and letters in 1911; photographs, singing, and e-mails in 2005), and in the performances of the two stars." More from Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Devil Wears Prada Dan Callahan in Slant on The Devil Wears Prada: "This is a predictable movie, not particularly funny, like Funny Face with no musical numbers, but it's a fairly well made and very well acted piece of sadistic bad-job porn." (More from David Poland, who finds it "so very frustrating.") Also: Ed Gonzalez on The Science of Sleep and three DVDs, Caché, Protocols of Zion and Yi Yi.

In the LAT, Susan King reviews the Clark Gable: The Signature Collection.

That Little Round-Headed Boy on 3:10 to Yuma: "[H]iding inside this classic morality oater is a scorching-hot, sensual romantic interlude that might be one of the sexiest exchanges I've ever seen on screen." Also: "[I]f [Tony] Scott has truly captured our anomie visually, he's also sadly extended the storytelling ennui of most of today's Hollywood blockbusters. And it's a shame, and sort of ironic, because the really interesting thing about Domino isn't how its visual rococo overwhelms everything else, but how its actors cut through the craziness."

"To filmgoers for whom the names of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan evoke the glory days of Warner Brothers' 'women's pictures' of the 1940s and early 1950s, the director Vincent Sherman, who has died aged 99, was something of a hero." Ronald Bergan explains his "way of dealing with difficult leading ladies." Related: Greenbriar Picture Shows.

Also in the Guardian:

Pierluigi. On Cinema.

  • "Looking at Pierluigi Praturlon's photos and reflecting upon them is to relive a glorious, but irretrievably lost, era on which I cannot but look back with a touch of pride and regret." That's Claudia Cardinale, quoted in a piece by John Hooper on the exhibition Pierluigi. On Cinema at the Galleria Photology in Milan through September 8.

  • Will Hodgkinson on Finisterre, "a homage to London by Paul Kelly and Kieran Evans that was intended originally as an accompaniment to Saint Etienne's album of the same name.... The chief inspiration for Finisterre is The London Nobody Knows, a book by the historian Geoffrey Fletcher."

  • Oliver Burkeman reports that Paramount is suing Chris Moukarbel, the artist forced to take his 12-minute version of World Trade Center down from his site. More from Eric M Weiss in the Washington Post, Ray Pride at Movie City Indie and Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

  • Producer Guy de Beaujeu got burnt in LA by Limelight Films Inc, which, it turns out, "was a front for laundering drugs money." But his problems run deeper, he argues. His film, Living in Hope, stands little chance because it's British, and "British film has been disastrously mistreated - by the British."

  • Howard Feinstein on The Bridge: "Those who see this film will never forget it, for as well as learning about the lives and problems of the six dead people, they also see them jumping."

  • John Sutherland talks with cognitive philosopher Steve Quartz about how to market a movie.

  • "Do films really have to be so long?" asks Peter Bradshaw, introducing the "long list." Andrew Dickson calls for comments.

  • Duncan Campbell on Tao Ruspoli's "unique approach to film finance...: invest as little as $1 and you will not only become a credited associate producer but also have a vote to decide the next film the company makes."

Travel(s) in Utopia, Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006, In Search of a Lost Theorem

Nathan Lee reports from Paris on the Godard retrospective and exhibition at the Georges Pompidou Center: "For the Godard cult, the retrospective is epochal; the mother ship of mise-en-scène has landed. But the movies are only foreplay to the main seduction. Travel(s) in Utopia, Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006, In Search of a Lost Theorem is the unwieldy title of an unruly installation that sprawls throughout the large south gallery of the museum. Designed and executed by Mr Godard, the show opened amid much controversy on May 11 and continues until Aug 14."

Also in the New York Times:

  • Sharon Waxman surely has the strangest story of the week. "Last year an admiring doctoral student and evident computer whiz, David Hanson, built a life-size facsimile of [Philip K] Dick, using the latest artificial intelligence technology, robotics and a skinlike substance he calls 'frubber.'" But: the head's gone missing.

  • As the opening day for Clerks II approaches, Caryn James profiles Kevin Smith. Cool detail: "In an ingenious new ploy, he has recorded a commentary for Clerks II that will be available for free download on iTunes, encouraging viewers to take their iPods to the theater for a second viewing."

  • "Are the Chan films racist? Not, I think, by the standards of their time," argues Dave Kehr. Jeff Chang begs to differ.

  • Crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz answers readers' questions about Wordplay. Reviews: Kevin Crust in the LAT, Michelle Devereaux in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer and Chuck Tryon.

  • AO Scott on Waist Deep, "unapologetically a B movie, its narrative premise whittled down to a mean little nub and placed carefully on the borderline between the wildly implausible and the completely absurd." More from Gene Seymour in the LAT.

  • Manohla Dargis: "Some films offer up their mysteries openly; others, like the quietly affecting Sri Lankan film The Forsaken Land, keep their secrets close, revealing them gradually shot by shot, scene by scene.... Like [Michelangelo] Antonioni, who once dyed grass in one of his films to underscore "the sense of desolation, of death," [Vimukthi] Jayasundara uses color both to create an enveloping mood and to underscore the medium's plasticity. Given that Sri Lanka's horrific history could easily overwhelm even the boldest aesthetic voice, this expressionistic gambit seems as smart as it may be necessary." More from J Hoberman in the Village Voice and Steve Erickson in Gay City News.

  • Sarah Lyall reports that the British government is taking up the case for the family of filmmaker James Miller who was killed in Gaza three years ago: "The killer was identified as the commander of an armored personnel carrier in the Israeli Army who had admitted firing his gun that night, but no one in Israel has been charged, and many of the questions raised in the hours after the shooting have never been resolved."

The Mod Squad

The SFBG's Cheryl Eddy talks with Park Chan-wook and reviews Lady Vengeance, "the glorious female-revenge film Quentin Tarantino wished he could make, ending up with two so-so Kill Bills instead." More from G Allen Johnson in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Almost nobody, it seems, is interested in arguing over whether [The Wind That Shakes the Barley] is artistically compelling - bluntly, it isn't - but in its political implications and historical accuracy. How does it hold up on that front?" Stephen Howe, who teaches history at Bristol University, takes on the question in openDemocracy. More from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian, Anthony Quinn in the Independent, Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph, James Christopher in the London Times and Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. It's also the current film focus at Cineuropa.

"Some police-blotter columnists look for comedy. [Charles] Mudede looks for poetry," writes Mike Russell in a glowing review of Police Beat.

Yvonne Rainer's Journeys from Berlin "can be seen as a curiously prescient, incisive, unabashedly cerebral and relevant film on the nature and psychology of violence, isolation, trauma and repression," writes acquarello. Also: "Channeling the understated and incisive relational observations of Eric Rohmer, refracted through the magical realist convergences of Raul Ruiz's voluptuous living memories, and bifurcated through Hong Sang-soo's situational parallelisms, All the Fine Promises is a gorgeously rendered, lyrical encapsulation of Jean-Paul Civeyrac's aesthetic modulations between physicality and sensuality, dreams and reality, memory and desire."

The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress Chuck Tryon: "Mark Binbaum and Jim Scherbeck's The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress plays like an agitprop border-state film noir, with witnesses often shrouded in heavy shadow describing in detail how a once unknown Congressman in Texas conspired to transform the Republican Party into what DeLay himself described as a 'permanent majority.'" Also, more thoughts on Can Mr Smith Get to Washington Anymore?.

"Just about everything you've heard about An Inconvenient Truth is true," writes Joe Leydon in the Tennessean. The doc is "consistently fascinating, intelligently compelling and even, wonder of wonders, unexpectedly entertaining."

"Is she or isn't she the anti-Garrison Keillor?" For PoetryFoundation.org, Ange Mlinko traces her disappointment as she follows Lola, the suicidal poet played by Lindsay Lohan in A Prairie Home Companion, into the spotlight. Somewhat related: Phil Morehart at Facets Features.

"Are Cars and A Prairie Home Companion basically the same movie?" asks Jonathan Kiefer in Maisonneuve.

Harnessing the energy sparked when comedy meets suspense, Only Human works and works well, according to Eric Kohn. Also in the New York Press, Jennifer Merin on Lower City and Loverboy.

Who knows what's made it such a huge hit in Korea, but for Filmbrain, what ultimately matters is that "King and the Clown is first and foremost a brilliant piece of entertainment."

Brian Clark talks with Caveh Zahedi about I Am a Sex Addict. Also in the Austin Chronicle, Toddy Burton on Harlan County, USA; after the first frame, "it's immediately apparent how the beauty of film buries the DV of today's docs."

"Momma Don't Allow is a short film which appeared in the first program to be shown at London's National Film Theatre (NFT) under the rubric 'Free Cinema,'" writes Richard Armstrong at Flickhead. "On the 50th anniversary of the first Free Cinema program, and the release of the bfi DVD box set Free Cinema, I am struck by certain moments in Momma Don't Allow." Also: "The life and death and cult iconography of Donald Cammell exists somewhere between the lines of avant-garde cinema and 1960s pop nostalgia, with a cursory nod to Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges." Ray Young reviews Rebecca and Sam Umland's Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side.

The AV Club's list this week: "Classic Movies It's Okay to Hate." This is a good one. The reputation of each film is summed up, then debunked, followed by dissent from a defender.

Via Anthony Kaufman, Variety's "10 Screenwriters to Watch."

Takashi Miike At Twitch, logboy has decided he's found the director "who embodies so much about my interests outside film, my secret desires for what films could be like, that it's like a dream come true," and presents a "Takashi Miike List of Lists."

Chrys Wu in the LAT: "This weekend, Erotica LA will once again, uh, come to the Los Angeles Convention Center.... So in honor of the 10th anniversary of the gathering, we present 10 movies that spiced up mainstream cinema."

Dan Buskirk talks with Gael García Bernal for the Philadelphia Weekly, where he reviews The King. More from Cindy Fuchs in the Philadelphia City Paper, where Sam Adams reviews the early work of Michael Haneke.

Brothers of the Head Matt Dentler: "Just a couple of days ago, a journalist called me for a few comments on Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's mock-rock-doc Brothers of the Head. I think I caught the writer off-guard by being so fanatical about the film."

Jerry Lentz: "I admit I have a nervous fear [that] my little revolutionary idea for an acting class that results in a feature-length improvised movie available on DVD, using non-professional actors, will grow, expand and explode into something uncontrollable."

Up-n-coming:

In the Vue Weekly: Carolyn Nikodym on Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy and Stranger in My Own Skin and Steve Lillebuen on En Route to Baghdad.

In the Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine meets Bill Nighy and Sheila Johnston talks with Byambasuren Davaa about The Cave of the Yellow Dog.

Interviews at Boyd van Hoeij's newly redesigned europeanfilms.net: Michael Glawogger (Workingman's Death), Roger Crittenden (Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing) and Grégoire Colin (Beau Travail and Inquiétudes).

Time Out's Dave Calhoun talks with Charlotte Rampling.

Signandsight translates Martin Meyer and Andreas Breitenstein's interview with Peter Handke for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Ken Silverstein talks with Robert Baer for Harper's.

The Man Who Heard Voices Interviews via Movie City News: Peter Howell in the Toronto Star with Johnny Depp, Claudia Eller in the Los Angeles Times with M Night Shyamalan (commentary: Ray Pride, Anne Thompson and Jeffrey Wells) and Jason Silverman in Wired News with Dennis Muren (Equinox).

In the Independent, Lesley O'Toole talks with Milla Jovovich.

"[T]he race to be the Next Meryl Streep is heating up," proposes Richard Rushfield who, in the LAT lays out the odds for Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley and Kirsten Dunst. Related: "More List Mania" at Film Experience

Josh R at Edward Copeland on Film: "Michael Douglas has been involved with some of the most blatant exercises in anti-woman propaganda that the modern cinema has produced."

Dave Heaton reviews a slew of new soundtrack releases at PopMatters. Also, Violet Glaze on Edith Head.

Speaking of soundtracks, MS Smith listens to a tune featured on the soundtrack for "one of the cinematic gems of 2005," The Beat That My Heart Skipped.

John Landis's Into the Night doesn't deserve the neglect it reaps, argues Vince Keenan; neither do a lot of 80s-era music videos.

At AICN, Scott Green revisits all things Patlabor. Meanwhile, Emru Townsend has been writing up the top five animated car chases.

Craig Phillips takes Plotbot for a test drive; basically, it "allows writers to use their web browser to write a screenplay, and then invite others (one other, several, or as many as you want) to work on it with them." That's basically. Craig has far more on the specifics and writes, "As the site is in beta mode, I hope my comments here will be kind and fair if also honest enough to help this work in progress."

Online listening tip. Amy Reiter talks with Amy Sedaris for Salon.

Online browsing tip. Russian movie posters via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip. "Trailers for Historically Significant Films." I've pointed in that direction before, but the collection just keeps on growing.



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Posted by dwhudson at June 24, 2006 5:50 PM