Fests and shorts.

The Reeler: "The folks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center just kicked a note under the door naming Volver, Pan's Labyrinth and Reds as the Centerpiece, Closing Night and Retrospective selections of the 44th New York Film Festival starting Sept 29." That means we'll be seeing quite a lot of cogitation on these films and their makers this coming season (you might want to catch the recent updates to the "Viva Pedro" entry now), but why wait.

Volver is "not unlike Talk to Her" in that it's "an exceptionally well-crafted work that never threatens to fabulously and spontaneously combust before our eyes like his transgressive masterpiece Law of Desire," writes Ed Gonzalez. Still: "This is clearly the performance of [Penélope] Cruz's young career." Also, Black Gold is "a startling story of a continent excluded from world trade and wanting to wean itself off foreign aid." And Rocky Road to Dublin: "The sardonic eloquence of the film may be a kindred spirit of the French New Wave but it also shares roots with the electric humanism of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon's films, which similarly evinced the capacity of art to document life."

Also in Slant:

• "Dissecting the current film ratings system with amusing impertinence, Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated proves to be a Molotov cocktail leveled against the Jack Valenti-led Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their protocol of secretive, hypocritical, arbitrary, and moralizing censorship of 'mature' material," writes Nick Schager.

• Gonzelez on DVDs: Friends With Money, Silent Hill, Poseidon, Saving Shiloh, Methadonia, Do You Like Hitchcock?.

• Dan Callahan's most recent addition to Flesh and Desire: The Films of Frank Borzage.

Hal Hartley will be the Official Juror for the 2007 season of Independent Exposure.

Grady Hendrix has found news of one Berlinale 2007 entry already: E-J Young's Dasepo Naughty Girls.

"The relationship between noir and giallo has yet to be fully explored," submits Peter Nellhaus. "It would be facile to say that giallo is a less polite version of noir, a more obvious display of noir's sex and violence. Neither of the Preminger films that I saw could be defined as giallo, but some of the more lurid aspects to Whirlpool and especially Bunny Lake is Missing suggest these films could be viewed as transitional links."

Tim Robey presents "a recap of what's been particularly good (and awful) over the past six months or so. List time!"

And here's another one: at Edward Copeland's site, Josh R lists "the 20 most (to borrow a phrase from Dame Julie Andrews) egregiously overlooked performances in the history of the Academy Awards - the kind of omissions that just make you scratch your head, if not bang it against the wall out of sheer frustration." Generously annotated.

David Thomson tells the story of John Huston's wild life in the Independent. Also, after recounting her life story, Thomson has some advise for Charlize Theron: "Somehow or other, Theron has to do something similar to Nicole Kidman's achievement after the latter's marriage to Tom Cruise ended. She has to seize parts that say, I chose these, I found them, I told them I could do it, and look, it works."

"This is the story of how I spent 24 hours as a junket whore," writes Eric D Snider. And this is the story of how that story got him banned from all Paramount junkets and screenings. Via MaryAnn Johanson at Cinemarati.

Worth mentioning again: Julie Delpy has written and will direct 2 Days in Paris. Sheigh Crabtree has a few more details. Also in the Hollywood Reporter. Borys Kit notes that Darren Aronofsky is attached to an adaptation of Shannon Burke's novel Black Flies.

Cinematical's Martha Fischer finds news that Simon Pegg will star in an adaptation of Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

Ryan Gilbey meets Helen Mirren, star of The Queen, which'll be opening the NYFF, as she prepares to return "as the snappy, hard-as-nails, chain-smoking DCS (formerly DCI) Jane Tennison" in a "two-part, four-hour Prime Suspect 7." Also in the Guardian: Leo Benedictus notes that the British Board of Film Classification's little words of warning in movie ads have "become increasingly colourful."

Matthew Clayfield: "In its pure form - and this image [from Mary] comes very, very close to being just that - the Ferrarian image is an image that refuses to actualise any one possibility, any one meaning or function, but rather opens out onto the virtual, forcing the viewer to consider and deal with its manifold potential."

Nick Rombes conducts an experiment: "My theory is that we don't see the beauty and artistry of these CGI films because we have never really learned how to appreciate them. Watching them with random music frees us from the prison-house of narrative compulsion; we see them with new eyes. With open eyes."

"If Seijun Suzuki deserves mention as a truly major director rather than likable curio, I don't see much evidence of that in these, his free-for-all independent productions." For Stop Smiling, Nick Pinkerton reviews Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za and Yumeji.

Vince Keenan: "Army of Shadows is not just the best movie I've seen this year, it's the best I've seen in ages." Ted Cogswell offers another hearty recommendation.

Craig Phillips on Little Miss Sunshine: "[I]t ain't perfect but neither is the family depicted here. It has just enough of a subversive streak and an inherent screwiness to win me over."

For Rumsey Taylor, writing at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is "an absolute masterpiece of subversion," while 8½ is "a statement of acknowledged failure that is itself a unique success."

"Anthony Hope's 1893 tale of romance and swordplay, The Prisoner of Zenda has seen no less than eight adaptations produced for the big screen," and, writing for the Siffblog, David Jeffers recommends Rex Ingram's 1922 version.

At Flickhead, Christine Young enjoys The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, the film and the book.

Movie producers are generally cast by their own industry as philistines or cokeheads - usually both - but they are compensated by all that glamour and, well, all that money," writes David Carr in the New York Times. But: "For decades, journalists, whose pay is generally as low as the regard they are held in, have been largely depicted as moral and ethical eunuchs." Also: Neil Genzlinger on Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna ("only in Bollywood would the standard-issue marital-infidelity tale include disco-style musical numbers and clock in at almost three and a half hours"), Nathan Lee on Pulse and Jeannette Catsoulis on Zoom.

Twitch's Todd sees signs of a new horror wave - from Turkey.

Reuters: "China unveiled plans to make a movie about the 1937 Rape of Nanjing in an announcement on Monday, a day before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to visit a controversial shrine honoring war dead."

"Berlin is in Brecht fever." Today marks the 50th anniversary of his death, and Deutsche Welle gathers its coverage in one dossier. Further exploration: the International Brecht Society.

That Little Round-Headed Boy "remember[s] the most maligned part of the myth: Elvis Presley, movie star."

Film Threat's Chris Gore imagines a world without movie theaters - and asks for your thoughts.

Online viewing tip. Wiley Wiggins has found an interview of Philip K Dick (and others) talking about A Scanner Darkly.

Posted by dwhudson at August 14, 2006 4:26 PM