Shorts, 9/18.

Wiley Wiggins on Camille Paglia's entry in the BFI Film Classic series, The Birds: "Paglia completely sidesteps the academic circle-jerking of most film theory and bites right into the meat of the film, getting her hands dirty in it without ever compromising or hiding her formidable intellect."

Michael Guillén talks with Renaissance director Christian Volckman about, among other things, Hinduism. At Twitch, Opus admires the film's look but wishes it were cloaking a better story.

Also at Twitch, where reviews of films screened in Toronto keep pouring in, Mathew Kumar talks with Shane Meadows about This is England.

Cinematical's Martha Fischer: "The problem with [Kim Ki-duk's] Time is that every character in the film is so fundamentally repulsive it's impossible to care about any of them."

Anne Thompson profiles Todd Field for the Hollywood Reporter.

Josef Adalian in Variety: "Producer Tony Krantz (24) is teaming with scribes Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers) to turn Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation into a weekly series for ABC." Also, Michael Fleming reports that Nicholas Jarecki will adapt the Bret Easton Ellis story collection, The Informers. Jarecki and Ellis are writing the screenplay.

"Infamous is funnier and gayer than Capote, and it also shows a lot more of the author's New York life amid his society-lady 'swans,'" writes John Seabrook, who talks with Douglas McGrath. Also in the New Yorker, Judith Thurman: "No other queen, except perhaps Cleopatra, was more intent than Marie Antoinette on dressing for history." Don't miss the gruesome snapshot of Versailles. And Anthony Lane reviews The Science of Sleep and Renaissance.

More on Science from David Edelstein: "[Michel] Gondry has devised a loopy and original language for portraying a soul in ferment.... But in the great madcap love stories (among them Eternal Sunshine), the magic carpet flies over the abyss: You get a great view, but you don't take the plunge. Gondry loses faith in his carpet—which is to say, his own artistry. He drops you like a stone." Also in New York, Logan Hill has a few questions for Alfonso Cuarón.

Lynn Hirschberg has a long profile of Gondry in the New York Times Magazine. And, via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker, a series of Photobooth self-portraits that Gondry's done for Jamie Stuart.

"If you thought Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant touched the bottom of the long dark well of corrupt cop movies then [Kinji] Fukasaku's two police flicks will show you that you merely reached the top of the layer of scum on the bottom of that particular pond." Grady Hendrix on Cops vs Thugs and Yakuza Graveyard. Also, "a typical week in the life of Kaiju Shakedown so you can see that it contains all the thrills and drama that you, the American people, want to see on TV." Funny because it's... well, you know.

"Even on the attack, you make me want to see more of Nicole." David Thomson and Shane Danielsen debate the merits of Nicole Kidman in the Independent, where, of course, Thomson has his own column to see to, and this week he suggests that Peter O'Toole and Vanessa Redgrave may score Oscar nominations for their performances in Venus. Movie City News has come across a trailer.

Also, Liz Hoggard maps the slow-burning success of Withnail and I and gets a few words with director Bruce Robinson, Richard E Grant, Paul McGann and Ralph Brown.

The cinetrix takes in two films set in New Orleans, By Invitation Only, "a sort of bayou Born Rich," and Happy Here and Now: "[Michael] Almereyda gets the locations and the local legends in various roles just right, but even though the action is unfolding in the city that care forgot, the film feels a little too langorous and elliptical."

Richard Corliss in Time on Shut Up & Sing and The Ground Truth: "I wouldn't for a second equate losing airplay for your new CD (which went platinum anyway) with losing a limb, your innocence, your mind or your life in a war. But both docs trace a similar journey: the awakening of political activism among young folks from the heartland who feel they must speak out against the war, come what may." Related online viewing. Ground Truth director Patricia Foulkrod discusses her film at Alternet.

At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow posts a rave for This Film is Not Yet Rated.

At the Siffblog, Kathy Fennessy talks with Lynn Shelton about We Go Way Back.

"Modern viewers are generally uneasy with Mae West," writes John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows. "She's harder to warm up to with each passing generation. There's an unearthly quality about her appearance and personality that belongs to an era and mindset our culture will never again embrace."

Bookends? Sujewa Ekanayake watches Cassavetes's Shadows and Andrew Bujalski's Funny Ha Ha.

"Much attention has been focused on the economics of selling digital versions of Hollywood movies (like in Amazon's new Unbox service) as an alternative to DVD sales and rentals and to stem piracy," notes Richard Siklos in the NYT. "But what has yet to be exploited - what Google, Yahoo and many other aggregators are vying for - are pieces of the $60 billion or so that will be spent on television advertising in the United States this year."

Online viewing tip #1. Three clips from Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration at the Risky Biz Blog.

Online viewing tip #2. The Race, an anime mashup. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing: "It's characters from over 100 cartoons participating in a rotoscoped 'Whacky Race,' while high-octane music jabbers in the background."

Online viewing tip #3. sMull's 1K Project II. Dazzling machinima via Greg Allen.

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2006 5:49 AM