Weekend shorts.

"[F]or three sweltering days, in a stuffy gymnasium and stifling heat, kids who live in and around a Nashville housing project had one of the hottest new directors in Hollywood all to themselves. And while he might have been the shot-caller on set, the words, the performances and the story were theirs." For the Nashville Scene, Jim Ridley watches Craig Brewer work them out.

"Portland director Gus Van Sant has almost everything he needs to make his next movie: a plot, a setting, a hip subculture," writes the Oregonian's Shawn Levy in a piece on Paranoid Park. "Now all he needs is the actors. And he's asking Portland to provide them."

Meanwhile, Mindsplinters Films is looking for zombies.

"[M]y story and my journey started like any other Ethiopian Jew. I started to walk from my village with my family to the capital city of Ethiopia. Our journey lasted one year." Michael Guillen has "one of the most engaging conversations I have had with anyone anywhere" with actor Sirak M Sabahat.

"[E]normous, derelict ships, whose twisted metal parts and oxidized colors feel like a sci-fi director's conception of life on another planet," are the setting of both the allegorical narrative Iron Island and a segment of Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death, notes Nathan Hogan at Facets Features.'

"Who would win: Ripley or Columbo?" asks Mark Fisher. "The question is not an idle one, since there is a perfect structural symmetry between the two characters: Ripley, the leisure elite fake, who outwits all the cops who suspect him but who can prove nothing; and Columbo, the implacable hunter/haunter of the wealthy and privileged, who uses the very arrogance of his prey to trap them."

"[T]hroughout his life, Hitchcock never tired of manipulating our ambivalent responses to violent death," writes Joe Leydon. "In doing so, he shamelessly pandered to our baser instincts, implicating us in the machinations of his characters by exploiting our voyeuristic impulses. "Still, diehard Hitchcockians (and I count myself among that number) will want to set aside several hours this weekend to watch the Encore Mystery cable network during its ongoing marathon of Hitchcock classics, timed to celebrate the master's Aug 13, 1899 birth date."

At the Whine Colored Sea, Ben previews Billy Ray's Breach: "If you've seen Ray's previous film, Shattered Glass, you have an idea of what you're in for: a competently shot, impeccably edited, precisely written, perfectly acted piece of entertainment." Also, a key to Mulholland Drive.

Kathy Fennessy talks with Brothers of the Head co-director Keith Fulton. Also at the Siffblog, David Jeffers isn't particularly impressed with Hollywoodland.

Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay found news some time back of Joe Swanberg's latest project: "In Hannah Takes the Stairs, he's cast folks like Mark Duplass, Andrew Bujalski, Todd Rohal, and Ry Russo-Young who are known for their own indie films (The Puffy Chair, Mutual Appreciation, The Guatemalan Handshake, and Orphans, respectively) as actors. The film has a MySpace site and on it's own website, Swanberg is running a production journal/photo blog." Where you'll see they've just wrapped today.

Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org: "For me, The Host will not displace Memories of Murder as my favorite Korean film of this decade. Every scene of the latter work is golden, and the more you watch it, the more it resonates as a haunting, brilliantly-shaped composition. The Host is more of a spectacle film, a sensual burst of inspiration that picks us up and carries us along on a harrowing ride (this must be seen in the theater if at all possible). It is perhaps unfair to expect Bong [Joon-ho] to come up aces two films in a row; what is surprising is that he came so close to doing just that." Also, Duncan Mitchel reviews Shin Sang-ok's 1964 film Red Muffler.

"Fresh off the massive success of the Infernal Affairs trilogy and his adaptation of popular anime Initial D director Andrew Lau was arguably one of the hottest properties in all of Asia and poised to make a major impact worldwide. His chosen vehicle to make that move was Daisy, an action romance with an all star Korean cast and set - somewhat inexplicably - in Amsterdam." And according to Todd at Twitch, it just doesn't work.

"Whereas a few years ago [Chinese filmmakers] might have compared censorship to a stone in a river and film to the water that finds its way around it, today they will say that much has changed within the censorship authority, and that the two sides have started to talk." For signandsight, Toby Axelrod translates Susanne Messmer's piece for die taz.

"Few Indian films have sparked more controversy than the recent Rang De Basanti, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra. As a cultural phenomenon, as well as a cautionary tale, the film deserves some critical attention." And so, Emanuele Saccarelli at the WSWS.

"Sam Peckinpah's love for hard liquor, especially vodka, gin and mescal, carried right into his movies and, more importantly, into his directorial philosophy," writes Rich English in Modern Drunkard, adding, "I wish I could travel back a few decades and tie one on with Sam." Via Coudal Partners, where Nathan Rabin reviews The Devil's Candy: "[Julie] Salamon's book is part of a peculiar literary sub-genre I like to call 'anatomies of a failure,' literary autopsies of notorious flops that include such notable tomes as Steven Bach's The Final Cut, (about Heaven's Gate), and Lillian Ross' Picture, (about Red Badge of Courage)."

"Seattle is more than just a backdrop to Police Beat," writes Steven Shaviro, "it's one of several superimposed layers whose juxtaposition drives the film."

Ed Gonzalez on Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher: "Epstein treats celluloid not unlike Usher's canvas - a delicate, fragile thing to draw on (slow or fast, sometimes twice, thrice, four times over) - and to look at the screen of this film is to witness a portal into a complex, heretofore unknown dimension of cinematic representation."

"In presenting the contradictions intrinsic in the perception of images," writes acquarello, Adynata diverges from the immediate theme of orientalism and alterity towards a broader examination on the nature of human imagination, where the very process itself becomes an engaged, interpretive act of complicity towards the perpetuation of the perception of otherness."

"Fabrice du Welz's debut feature Calvaire (The Ordeal) marks the high point so far of Eurohorror, the recent effort to adapt the most fundamentally American of movie genres to the peculiar circumstances of contemporary Europe," proposes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. More from Manohla Dargis in the NYT, Michael Atkinson in the Voice, Jeremiah Kipp in Slant and Ryan Stewart at Cinematical.

At indieWIRE, Jason Guerrasio checks in on five indies in production.

ST VanAirsdale, known to most of us as The Reeler, reports on "the growing cinema of the New York street kid. A far cry from the days when the director William Wyler plucked the famous Dead End Kids out of their Broadway-stage milieu, a wave of contemporary films - including Half Nelson, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and [Ramin] Bahrani's Iron Triangle... - frame unknown actors against the urban backdrop of their youth."

Also in the New York Times:

• The story of The Puffy Chair is "slight enough to make Raymond Carver read like Dostoyevsky," writes AO Scott, and "its fidelity to its characters' view of the world - although they are presumably college graduates, they seem never to have read a book or expressed an opinion - is more a liability than a virtue." Also: "Miami Vice is an action picture for people who dig experimental art films, and vice versa." Coupla weeks ago now, Scott Foundas profiled Michael Mann and reviewed Miami Vice for the LA Weekly: "In a career marked by an obsession with the intricacies of law enforcement and criminal activity, this may be Mann's most brutally efficient policier yet: The characters scarcely have personalities; they are nearly soulless nocturnal warriors. But watching them go about their deadly serious business nevertheless puts you in a state of high anxiety."

• Manohla Dargis: "In Scoop, his not especially funny yet oddly appealing new comedy, Woody Allen manages to act his age and prove there's life in those old jokes yet." More from Joanne Laurier at WSWS.

• Despite the "dead-on accuracy" of the dialogue, The Trouble With Men and Women is little more than "a comfortable armchair to come back to: too comfortable," writes Stephen Holden. Also: "Once you've accepted that Boynton Beach Club is a rose-colored fantasy of aging, you can relax and enjoy the bittersweet comic performances."

• Charles Lyons talks with Robin Hardy, director of the original Wicker Man, and Neil LaBute, who's directed a remake. Related: the original "is a strange film and it is heralded for precisely that reason," finds Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "Its success is that its subjective religion is displayed so believably that it transcends the campy stride of other horror films from the same era. Notice, incidentally, that the film is only labeled horror by default, when in truth it is less a horror film than it is a Sunday school lesson." And: For the Guardian, Will Hodgkinson assembles "a handful of Wicker Man-obsessed musicians" to discuss the original's influence with Hardy.

• "A successful Grey Gardens musical is jumping to Broadway. A movie based on the Beales starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange is in the works. And now Albert, the surviving Maysles brother, is contributing to (or perhaps capitalizing on) this resurgence with The Beales of Grey Gardens, a new assemblage of outtakes from their archive." Nathan Lee finds that "the film supplements but nowhere surpasses the funky charm and moldy glamour of the original."

• Ed Leibowitz rifles through a list of past, present and future biopics in an attempt to determine whether it's "better to mimic or transcend," that is, to note which filmmakers and actors have gone for replication and which for the gist of the character. "Mimics seemed to have carried the day, at least until this year," he decides.

• Robert Ito visits the set of Justin Lin's Finishing the Game and sees "50 Guys, All Trying to Look Like Bruce Lee."

• With The Illusionist coming up, Sarah Lyall profiles Rufus Sewell.

• Laura M Holson reports that the studios are counting on foreign box office now more than ever.

DVD reviews in the Voice: Michael Atkinson on Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, Dark Passage and the Prisoner megaset, Dennis Lim on Cavite and J Hoberman on L'Enfant.

A book review roundup from Stop Smiling: Patrick Sisson on Josh Horowitz's The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker: 20 Conversations with the New Generation of Filmmakers, José Teodoro on Taschen's Roman Polanski (more from Josef Braun in the Vue Weekly) and Michael Joshua Rowin on Colin McGinn's The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact.

For the Nation's Stuart Klawans, Little Miss Sunshine is "the best American comedy since Bad Santa." Also, the Pusher trilogy: "They involve drug deals gone bad in Copenhagen's underworld, where cameras are stylishly hand-held, the dialogue loquacious, the sex filthy and the violence extreme. The movies are all different: They introduce you to men from whom you'd flee in real life, then draw you deeply into their varying moral dilemmas."

Jeremiah Kipp talks with Jeff Winner about his film, Satellite (Kipp's review). More from Stephen Holden in the NYT: "Satellite could be described as a yuppie Bonnie and Clyde in which alienated corporate climbers break the rules, but instead of robbing banks, they commit petty crimes. If its stars didn't have combustible chemistry, the fantasy would evaporate."

Also in Slant:

• Ed Gonzalez on Hoot: "The most goodhearted children's film of 2006 barely made a blip at the box office, but you can save it now that it's on DVD." More DVDs: Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier, Brick, CSA: The Confederate States of America and Don't Come Knocking. Also, Step Up "has better dance moves—and a more valuable, clear-cut sensibility—than any video nominated for a VMA this year, including Madonna's 'Hung Up.'" More on that one from Jeannette Catsoulis in the NYT, Jette Kernion at Cinematical and the Chicago Tribune's Jessica Reaves; and Susan King profiles director Anne Fletcher.

• Nick Schager on Keeping Mum: "In the competition for cinema's worst genre, the Quirky British Comedy About Eccentric Countryfolk Learning Valuable Lessons In Outrageous Circumstances truly has no rival." Also, Accepted, 10th & Wolf, Princesas and Haven.

• "Hamilton understands the real struggles as well as the real heroism of working-class America," writes Paul Schrodt. Even so, director Matthew Porterfield "finds the rhythms of everyday life well enough, but he rarely grasps the key moments that make them art."

• Rob Humanick dooms Zoom.

• Fernando F Croce: " As with most [Frank] Tashlin films, The Girl Can't Help It functions as both an exultant example of American vulgarity and a leveling thrashing of it, with jokes that cut surprisingly deep." And Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? becomes one of Slant's "100 Essential Films." Croce does the honors. Related: Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader.

Charles Taylor in the New York Observer: "If part of Hollywood's appeal is the lure of the artificial - not the entirety of its appeal, but some - then Jayne Mansfield is irresistible. For everything unbelievable, garish, overdone, over-everything about her, there's also something beguiling, funny, even touching."

David Thomson on Bette Davis: "The National Film Theatre is running a season of her work, concentrating on the films from the 1930s, and it's dazzling to see her again. I said she was not beautiful, but she held her own when it came to being sexy, from Cabin in the Cotton where her Southern belle had the line, 'I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair,' to The Letter, where the film opens with her emptying a revolver into her faithless lover."

Also in the Independent, Thomson recalls the great drunks of Hollywood, Gill Pringle meets Winona Ryder, John Walsh revisits the Fatty Arbuckle scandal - because Johnny Depp's bought the rights to the story - and James Mottram on Kirby Dick's "incendiary exposé," This Film is Not Yet Rated. More from John Patterson in the Guardian: "The [ratings] system is rotten and corrupt to the core, and thanks to Kirby Dick, we can all now see it plain." In the New Statesman, Tom Teodorczuk talks with Dick and compares the ratings systems in the US and the UK.

"That was the one that did it, that made me aware of the power of movie-making." Ang Lee talks with the Telegraph's David Gritten about The Virgin Spring.

For Edward Copeland, "Quintet stands alone in the Altman filmography as something that simply defies description."

Steven Yates for Kamera on A Lion in the House: "[T]his is cinema at its most engaging." He then talks to directors Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar.

"In their new book, Disaster Movies, authors Glenn Kay and Michael Rose take a humorous gander at 'a genre in which a lack of subtlety and an exploitative nature are almost required elements.'" It is, writes Ray Young, "a volume perfect for light reading." Also at Flickhead, Nelhydrea Paupér finds Electric Edwardians: The Lost Films of Mitchell & Kenyon "indispensable to anyone who loves the great and simple revelations of early cinema."

David Ehrenstein talks with François Ozon for the LA CityBeat.

"[Gregg] Araki, to me, is one of the most misunderstood filmmakers of the 90s," writes Bradford Nordeen as he launches into a week-long consideration of Araki's films.

John Rogers picks his favorite movies of 2006 - so far, of course.

Matt Dentler: "It's rather early, and I'm sure the Toronto Film Festival will offer a few challenges to this, but my favorite film of the year so far is Babel."

Richard Hawley: "Zulu has become one of my favorites over the years, not only for the stunning cinematography (Stephen Dade), directing (Cy Endfield), screenplay (John Prebble, Cy Endfield), acting the cast, including Michael Caine, is awesome and soundtrack (John Barry) but for the warning it gives us about the dangers of colonialism."

Also in the Guardian:

• Stephen Applebaum meets Luis Mandoki, who "has become something of a Mexican Michael Moore in his country's presidential election, sticking his lens where it is not wanted."

• We may be entering a "golden age" of "grown-up animation," proposes Steve Rose. Somewhat related: Wagstaff at the House Next Door and Emru Townsend at fps.

• John Patterson chats with Gretchen Mol and Emine Saner meets Shah Rukh Khan.

• Dennis Barker remembers Patrick Allen, 1927 - 2006.

At Cinema Strikes Back, Jeff finds a copy of Ajooba, "a Bollywood movie filmed in the Soviet Union and starring the great Amitabh Bachchan as a masked superhero."

"Bollywood is set to take a big leap this week with the opening of a blockbuster set around marital tensions, a brave departure by an industry known more for showcasing marriage as the heart of Indian family values," writes Krittivas Mukherjee for Reuters. "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (Never Say Goodbye), an extra-marital potboiler which opens on Friday, is one of the most eagerly awaited releases of the year." Grady Hendrix notes that it'll be screening in Toronto.

At Cineuropa, Fabien Lemercier looks ahead to the fall season in France. Parts 1 and 2.

Quick takes from David Pratt-Robson, round 1: Gabrielle, 13 Tzameti and District 13. Round 2: A Scanner Darkly, Clerks II and Monster House.

In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, K Tighe talks with John Byrum about making The Razor's Edge, Bill Murray's early 80s dramatic debut.

Annie Frisbie at Zoom In Online on the recently announced adaptation of The Prisoner: "Imagine turning Lost into a movie. Now times that level of difficulty by twelve. That's what Christopher Nolan and screenwriters Janet and David Peoples are facing."

Production Weekly is reporting that Charlie Kaufman will make his directorial debut with Synecdoche, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michelle Williams. Via Erik Davis at Cinematical, where he also looks ahead to Hollywood's lineup for Summer 2007.

Wiley Wiggins discovers "a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis's classic B-horror film The Wizard of Gore, which offhand would just sound like another in a string of horror remakes, but check out the cast - Crispin Glover, Jeffrey Combs, Brad Dourif!"

Gwynne Watkins presents "The Hollywood Guide to Infidelity" at Nerve. Very fun.

The AV Club's list of the week: "11 Films That Responded Well To National Crises."

Peter Nellhaus considers the themes and influences running through three films by Daniel Burman.

That Little Round-Headed Boy catches "a deeply humanistic, fully realized performance by... I bet you were expecting Sean Penn. No, the great performance in this movie is by Michael J Fox. How did I miss it when Casualties of War was first released?"

"From a marketing standpoint, the film's appeal is clear: If you want to scare teenagers, you gotta hit them where they live. That no longer means summer camps and baby-sitting gigs but online chat rooms and video Web sites." But Rafer Guzman is underwhelmed by Pulse, the American remake of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo; more from the Stranger's Andrew Wright and Slant's Nick Schager. Also in the LAT, Mark Olsen on The LA Riot Spectacular, "a lifeless series of sketch-comedy ideas that presumably would make even the Wayans brothers blanch at their broadness."

Above and beyond the standard "official site," some movies are promoted with online games, faux company or organization sites, etc., etc. Ahead of the release of The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, RES and imeem have set up a community, asking, "How Do You Dream?"

Referencing Warhol, Network and Videodrome, Adario Strange considers in a New York Press cover story what impact online video might be having on, well, everything.

Paul Boutin at Slate: "In theory, TVs and PCs were supposed to converge and spawn one hybrid media device. In practice, they touch on the couch without breeding."

David McCourt in the Financial Times: "While most US companies are undergoing a revolution in innovation, Hollywood still largely operates on the guild system and centralised decision-making established by the big studios in the 1930s. Technology and a global market for entertainment have made that model obsolete."

Volume 4 of the Journal of Short Film is out and about.

Richard Gibson and If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger... are celebrating what would have been Sam Fuller's 94th birthday.

Zoom In Online's Annie Frisbie talks with our own Jonathan Marlow.

Online browsing tip #1. A Clockwork Orange bubblegum cards at Bubblegumfink. Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Online browsing tip #2. Not exactly film-related, but this is one of the greatest entries in some time at one of the greatest blogs out there, period, BibliOdyssey. Earlier: Peacay can write as well.

Online listening tip #1. Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor and Bent Hamer talk about Factotum on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Online listening tip #2. A 1989 edition of Fresh Air featuring Alan Arkin.

Online listening tip #3. A panel on men in Australian film on Australia Talks Movies.

Online viewing tip. Chuck Jones's classic What's Opera, Doc? at no fat clips!!!.

Online viewing tips round 1. Todd at Twitch has a trailer for It's Hard To Be A Rock'n Roller, another for the indie Norwegian film Sønner and another for Ole Christian Madsen's Prag, with Mads Mikkelsen.

Online viewing tips, round 2. SF360's Susan Gerhard passes along ten from Eva "Deadbeat" Sollberger.

Posted by dwhudson at August 12, 2006 4:02 PM