September 16, 2006

Weekend shorts.

Bookforum: Shakespeare "Do you like Hollywood?" Kera Bolonik asks Michael Tolkin. He does. When he arrived, "I felt like I understood that Shakespeare didn't need to know anything more than show business to understand rivalry, envy, and feelings of failure." Also in the new Bookforum, James Shapiro on, as it happens, Shakespeare and on how the wars over how to interpret him have pretty much simmered down; and Alex Abramovich reviews Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.

"It's easy to be a fan; to really appreciate literature takes a stronger temperament. So I confess it was with some skepticism, too, that I turned my attention to a recent documentary, Shakespeare Behind Bars, directed by Hank Rogerson," writes Joseph Campana at the Kenyon Review's blog. Of course, he's won over: "The movie is a kind of gift to its audience, and the gift it gives us - in an age in which almost no one wants to make strong claims for the power of literature - is painful relevance."

"On the eve of its 10th anniversary, RES is shutting down. Is it a victim of its own success?" asks Anthony Kaufman.

Before he abandoned his film canon, Paul Schrader must have been aware that, by taking on Harold Bloom's model, he would also be taking on criticisms of the exclusionary elitism inherent in Bloom's approach to the very idea. Zach Campbell opens a few early rounds of fire. By the way, you've seen the cover of the new Film Comment, yes? Have you seen the ad on the back cover? Now, I love the magazine and the Coppolas as much as the next cinephile, but this does give one pause.

"[T]he announcement that [Fernando] Meirelles will direct a film adaptation of Blindness by José Saramago was big news [on Wednesday] in Brazil," writes Michael Gibbons, who translates a short interview with the director focusing on the project.

Grady Hendrix not only interviews Thai action choreographer Panna Rittikrai, he also reviews The Yakuza Papers: "It's a 634-minute movie, split into five parts, that teaches an alternate history of post-War Japan: one where honor died in one mushroom cloud and humanity died in the other."

Bruce Robinson in Time Out on Withnail and I: "A week later, we're in New York for a screening and they all come in, lots and lots of Americans, a harsh audience and it's, 'Does comedy travel?' I had no idea. We put the film up and they start laughing. Not immediately, but ten minutes in. There's that sense of, 'Oh this is a funny film.' 'Is it funny' 'Yeah.' There were two girls in front of me. By about 30 minutes in, they were standing up to laugh, hanging over the seats in front of them. I thought they were going to choke to death and it was the best noise I've ever heard."

Filmbrain: "Pan's Labyrinth is a perfect, wholly remarkable film - an uncompromising, emotionally moving adult fairytale that reminds us that the scariest monsters are the human kind. Be sure not to miss one of the great cinematic pleasures of 2006." More from Opus at Twitch. Related online viewing tip. Cinematical's James Rocchi talks with Guillermo Del Toro.

Rumsey Taylor at Not Coming to a Theater Near You on Playtime: "This film (due in accordance with its very failure) is a masterpiece of post-modern cinema."

"Reds, Warren Beatty's massive portrait of John Reed, the man who documented the Russian revolution with his book Ten Days That Shook the World, caused a stir at the time of its release and won Beatty the Best Director Oscar," Dan Callahan reminds us. "[T]hough it has been absurdly over-praised by some, there are a lot of enjoyable things in Reds aside from the use of the witnesses." It's "finally just an appealingly conventional epic movie-star romance with radical trimmings, but it contains several sharper elements that suggest the colorful period it seeks to recreate."

Also in Slant:

The Decay of Fiction

Jeffrey Wells: "Esquire has finally put up [John Ridley's] delicious making-of-Bobby piece on its website."

"Welcome home, Paul Verhoeven!" exclaims Peet Gelderblom. "Zwartboek, Verhoeven's first Dutch film in over twenty years (if you include 1985's Euro-pudding Flesh & Blood), is the work of a director doing exactly what he wants, and nothing else. So it's good, then? Oh yes. I'd go so far to say it's Verhoeven's best."

The New York Times. Let's start with the book reviews this weekend:

The Greatest Story Ever Sold
  • "Remember that White House aide, quoted by Rich in his introduction, who said that a 'judicious study of discernible reality' is 'not the way the world really works anymore'?" asks Ian Buruma in his review of Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth From 9/11 to Katrina. "For him, the 'reality-based community' of newspapers and broadcasters is old hat, out of touch, even contemptible in 'an empire' where 'we create our own reality.' This kind of official arrogance is not new, of course, although it is perhaps more common in dictatorships than in democracies."

Also in the NYT:

  • "An actor's task of course is to become what he is not, and [Adrien] Brody... does that better than most. But in playing a Spanish bullfighter, he may have found, on and off screen, his most complicated role yet," writes Geoff Pingree, reporting on Manolete: "Mr Brody's dedication earned him uncommon respect from the matadors who tutored him, and his willingness to immerse himself in the role, coupled with his startling resemblance to the actual Manolete, led to a warm reception by ordinary Spaniards."

  • "[I]t's fairly alarming news that [Jet] Li is calling his new picture, Fearless (set to open Friday), the 'conclusion to my life as a martial arts star,'" writes Terrence Rafferty. "Going to the movies seems a little less exciting already."

  • Regarding The Departed, "it is the Nicholson-Scorsese match-up that catches the eye, and reminds us how much the game has changed in the last decade," notes Dennis McDougal, who then wonders, "will it simply provoke nostalgia for an era when Nicholson and Scorsese together would have been a sure thing?"

  • Stephen Holden: "Amid the continuing deluge of documentaries about the war in Iraq, Patricia Foulkrod's film The Ground Truth stands out as an especially pointed indictment of the American military's treatment of its own people on and off the battlefield." (More from Dana Stevens in Slate.) Also, Keeping Mum.

  • Mark Olsen on the comeback of Jackie Earle Haley.

The LA Weekly's Ella Taylor on The Last Kiss: "[Screenwriter Paul] Haggis can write a good one-liner, but he has a bad habit of shouting at the audience, and what worked for the over-the-top hysteria that was Crash feels like too much information, too loudly offered in a putative chamber piece. As for [Zach] Braff, on whose performance the movie's drama and its comedy depend, he has schleppy charm to burn but no range whatsoever." (More from AO Scott in the NYT and Andrew O'Hehir in Salon). Also: "Despite its title, Confetti, a chaotic mockumentary in the finest tradition of English vulgarity, has nothing whatever to say about marriage."

Gimme Some Truth And John Payne: "[I]llustrating in vivid pictorial the remarkable detective work of Jon Wiener's book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files, The US vs John Lennon is a gripping and moving homage that brings in some new-old faces to flank the usual suspects in telling the story of Lennon and his badgering by the FBI: Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, John Dean, a comforting Walter Cronkite, a scarily unrepentant G Gordon Liddy and a surprisingly cogent Geraldo Rivera." More from AO Scott in the NYT, Andrew O'Hehir in Salon and Gary Dretzka at Movie City News. Related online listening tip: Fresh Air reruns a 2000 interview with Jon Weiner.

Johnny Ray Huston in the San Francisco Bay Guardian on This Film is Not Yet Rated: "Documentaries have begun reaching more viewers in recent years, but few take on the many-fangled foibles of the Bush era in an imaginative manner. Dick's new film does, in addition to providing a lesson about the intersection between film history and American history, a convergence that isn't as petty or easily dismissed as one might think." He's also got an extensive talk with Kirby Dick. Related online listening tip. Kirby Dick is a guest on Fresh Air.

Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones: "Disney was one of the great American visual artists, ranking with Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper. But where their art is local, his has conquered the world, apparently for all time, or as long as children watch moving images. Does this scare you? It honestly doesn't scare me."

Also:

The History Boys

"Why is a British film as good as The Queen such a depressing rarity?" asks Robert Hanks in the Independent. Also, Elaine Lipworth talks with Meryl Streep about The Devil Wears Prada and Gill Pringle talks with Armistead Maupin about The Night Listener.

More raves for The Queen: Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph and James Christopher in the London Times.

Oriana Fallaci "Oriana Fallaci, the veteran Italian journalist best known for her startling interviews with some of the most famous politicians of the twentieth century, has died," observes the London Times. "She published her first book, an examination of Hollywood's ills, in 1958." More and more. See also Judy Harris at Direland, Ian Fisher in the NYT, John Hooper in the Guardian, Brendan Bernhard in the LA Weekly in March and Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker in June:

For two decades, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, Fallaci was one of the sharpest political interviewers in the world. Her subjects were among the world's most powerful figures: Yasir Arafat, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Haile Selassie, Deng Xiaoping. Henry Kissinger, who later wrote that his 1972 interview with her was "the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press," said that he had been flattered into granting it by the company he'd be keeping as part of Fallaci's "journalistic pantheon." It was more like a collection of pelts: Fallaci never left her subjects unskinned.

One more obit. Gabriel Shanks remembers Ann Richards.

We last heard word on the restoration of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz just over a year ago (from Franziska Prechtel in the Berliner Morgenpost); now Bavaria Film International has released an update with technical details and news that it "will be finished in early 2007" - but no mention of whether or not it'll be ready in time for the Berlinale, as was planned earlier.

Ray Young: "Directed by Michel Deville, with Dominique Sanda and Geraldine Chaplin at their prime and on screen for nearly all of the picture, Le Voyage en douce is a pastel reflection on memory, aging, sexuality, nostalgia, infidelity, dreams and dashed hopes, all in the guise of a summery, erotic confection."

Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org: "Kim Ki-duk has been known to occasionally drive home an obvious point - The Coast Guard perhaps being the best example - but in Time his film remains balanced enough to undermine easy conclusions."

NP Thompson in the Northwest Asian Weekly: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles "functions as a comedy of errors, yet the movie cuts much deeper than that subgenre typically allows, because the things that go wrong are so tied up in the emotional pain of the characters."

Film & Video's Debra Kaufman gets "Five Minutes With Werner Herzog," just after he'd returned to the US from Germany: "Briefly detained by Homeland Security, Herzog has a new classification to enter the country: 'alien with extraordinary abilities.'" Via filmtagebuch.

In the Austin Chronicle, Marc Savlov talks with Ron Mann about Tales of the Rat Fink and Joe O'Connell profiles "Austin's busiest and happiest movie extra," Odell Grant.

A "red meat crime cycle"? There's no such thing, argues Gerald Peary in the Boston Phoenix.

"Transvestite Filipinos sing and dance in Tel Aviv!" Eric Kohn reviews Paper Dolls. Also in the New York Press:

Kamera runs an extract from Don Shiach's Great British Movies and Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc's review of The Films of Tod Browning.

IndieWIRE interviews Sherrybaby director Laurie Collyer and Man Push Cart director Ramin Bahrani.

Is lonelygirl15 this month's Snakes on a Plane? Ryan Wu thinks not.

"The Wire, which has just begun its fourth season on HBO, is surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America," declares Slate editor Jacob Weisberg. "This claim isn't based on my having seen all the possible rivals for the title, but on the premise that no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature." More from Shaun Huston at PopMatters.

"Will iTV rock your world?" asks Paul Boutin in Slate. "Not in the form I saw on Tuesday." Related online listening tip. A Macworld roundtable.

Meanwhile, IDG's Dan Nystedt reports that BitTorrent will be opening an online movie store for foreign films.

Online browsing, listening and viewing tip. The San Francisco Film Festival turns 50 next year, and they've just unveiled a History Site. Though it's still growing, it's already quite a browse.

Just a sample from the Great Moments section. Miguel Pendás sets the stage: "The Sixth Festival was unique in that the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening simultaneously." Would the films invited from the USSR and the Soviet bloc be allowed into the country? Surprisingly, just days after the crisis unwound, yes. "At a press conference, a man sitting at the end of the table, his chin resting on his hand, looked pensively at the floor. He was an unknown filmmaker whose first feature was about to be screened: Andrei Tarkovsky... The Soviets started by announcing that a film about the Cuban Revolution was being shot at that very moment in Moscow. 'It's not anti-American,' Soviet delegate Mikhail Romm rushed to say. Instead, it was being made because, 'There is a deep feeling for the Cuban Revolution.' We now know that the film was I Am Cuba."

And there's video and audio in the Close Ups section.

Online listening tip. Elvis Mitchell and Scott Simon wonder what's become of the musical.

Firelight Online viewing tip #1. Matthew Clayfield's disturbing Firelight, an "essay film about images, the people who make them, the people who collect them, and their potential uses and limitations in a world that's been inundated with them."

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for We Go Way Back (it's at the site). The Slamdance Grand Jury prizewinner sees its theatrical premier in Seattle this weekend; Kathy Fennessy wrote about it at the Siffblog in June.

Online viewing tip #3. "Currie Ballard, a historian in Oklahoma, has just made what he calls 'the find of a lifetime' - 33 cans of motion picture film dating from the 1920s that reveal the daily lives of some remarkably successful black communities." Carla Davidson introduces a series of clips at American Heritage. Via Ed Champion.

Online browsing and viewing tip. The Shark is Still Working: The Impact and Legacy of Jaws. Roll over a face, click and watch an interview clip. Great fun.



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Posted by dwhudson at September 16, 2006 5:46 PM