September 20, 2006

Shorts and fests, 9/20.

Blood Diamond "The diamond industry has begun a campaign to safeguard its lucrative Christmas trade from what it fears will be a blitz of negative publicity resulting from a forthcoming Hollywood film about the trade in African 'conflict diamonds'," reports Jeevan Vasagar in the Guardian. "De Beers, the world's biggest diamond company, plans to spend £8m on publicity this autumn, in advance of the release in December of Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which threatens to make diamonds as unfashionable as fur." A diamond industry FAQ follows. And via Movie City News, the film's trailer.

Also via MCN, Camille Paglia in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "The Marie Antoinette saga presents daunting problems to any adapter. Where should our sympathies lie: with the plucky, fun-loving 14-year-old girl torn from her home at the Habsburg court in Vienna to serve as a broodmare for French royalty - or with the impoverished French proletariat whose taxes underwrote the ostentatious luxuries of a parasitic aristocracy?"

Marie Antoinette Meanwhile, Jürgen Fauth finds Marie Antoinette "caught up within the bubble of decadence it describes. There's plenty of cake and champagne, but there is precious little news about aristocracy, wealth, history, celebrity, pleasure, revolution, or anything else."

But the "prissy disdain for the vintage of [Sofia] Coppola's films in some circles could be described as an act of sexual terrorism - the kind that has conveniently spared Wes Anderson, another maker of eccentrically hermetic cine-artifacts," suggests Ed Gonzalez, awarding the film three-n-a-half out of four stars: "Marie Antoinette compares favorably to The New World and, more so, to The Lost City - two tales of Edens stripped of their fruit." Also in Slant, Nick Schager on Feast and Gonzalez on Conversations With God.

Perfume In die taz, Dietmar Kammerer asks - and signandsight translates - director Tom Tykwer about the general perception that Perfume is primarily producer Bernd Eichinger's film. Tykwer: "This is about the hundredth time I've had to answer this question, because obviously everyone believes there's a conflict between us. To that I can only say, you've all seen the film. I can't imagine that Perfume looks like the result of compromises. It's a film that I identify with one hundred percent."

Charles Taylor previews the fall festival, theatrical and DVD season for the New York Observer.

Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny clear space at Not Coming to a Theater Near You for New York Film Festival Coverage. Also, Chiranjit Goswami: "In sketching an unreliable account of his personal past, Brand Upon the Brain! is yet another work within [Guy] Maddin's oeuvre which attempts to envision an imaginary history and clings to the prospect that these memories could be reliable enough to replace reality. However, what makes the experience a memorable, nearly unforgettable, event for the viewer is that each live performance of Maddin's silent film can hardly ever be created with such satisfying results in any other time, place, or medium."

Doug Cummings offers his takes on the docs he caught in Toronto: Manufactured Landscapes, Blindsight, Dong and Remembering Arthur.

"Politically - and, sadly, aesthetically - the 12-month American film distribution forecast calls for pain from some of the fest's highest-profile titles, whose social conscience is as admirable as the films themselves are regrettable." In the City Pages, Jim Ridley looks back to Toronto.

Jason Morehead recaps his Toronto experience; Cinematical's Kim Voynar recalls "Five Gorgeous Films and One Ugly One."

AFI Dallas: March 22 through April 1. Details from Peter Martin at Twitch and Eugene Hernandez at indieWIRE. Joe Leydon wonders how this'll effect SXSW, which wraps in Austin just days prior to this one's opening: "It's hard to believe there won't be some extremely intense power-playing and backroom-dealing when the two festivals start competing for world premieres of major inide and mainstream movies."

That Little Round-Headed Boy reviews Matt Zoller Seitz's Home, "the kind of movie that makes you wonder why more movies can't be like this. It's got that shimmering quality, and cool observational tone, of Matt's obvious inspiration, Robert Altman."

Up-n-coming:

Heavens, look at this. Nathaniel R isn't just tracking the many ways in which the Foreign Language Oscar may shape up; he's got easy-on-the-eye tables, links and news.

William Friedkin "is not a name commonly associated with opera. But since 1999, he has been quietly developing a second career, directing productions in Tel Aviv, Florence, Turin and Los Angeles." Geraldine Fabrikant talks with him.

Also in the New York Times:

  • AO Scott on Alfonso Cuarón's first feature: "Mr Cuarón never quite finds the tone that would allow him to fuse belly laughs with the horror of illness and death, but then perhaps Pedro Almodóvar is the only filmmaker able to mix darkness and light in that way... The promise [Cuarón] showed in Sólo Con Tu Pareja has already been realized and exceeded, but there is something gratifying about witnessing such talent in its fledgling state."

Home

"[David] Thomson has long assumed the role of critic/stalker, a perpetual outsider who imagines himself an insider, who fantasizes himself an intimate of the people he writes about and makes few distinctions between them as movie characters, public figures, or actual human beings." And this bugs Jim Emerson.

What's bugging Matt Zoller Seitz is Thompson's characterization of Brian De Palma. And the AV Club's Noel Murray takes you on "Brian De Palma's World Tour."

Nathan Hogan at Facets Features on Henning Carlsen's Hunger: "[Knut] Hamsun's landmark 1890 novel - about a starving writer who wanders the streets of Kristiania (Oslo) in a delirious, ravaged state - is a radically subjective work whose action occurs largely within the mind of its irrational hero. I... discovered that Carlsen does a serviceable job of tackling the book's first-person challenges, but it's the lead performances, set pieces, and photography that make the work exceptional."

PW: Screw Hollywood "Thanks to MySpace, YouTube and lots of lesser-known new media channels, anyone with an idea now has the ability to communicate it to millions of people around the globe," writes Cassidy Hartmann in a cover story for the Philadelphia Weekly. "Add to that the proliferation of technology like digital video and photography, recording equipment and computer editing software - all of which have made it possible to create a fully realized product for little cash - and you have all the makings of a revolution."

Also, Matt Prigge on the Viva Pedro series and Sean Burns on All the King's Men and The Black Dahlia.

Don't you know Jay A Fernandez is loving the hoopla? Also in the Los Angeles Times, Stuart Silverstein reports on the $175 million George Lucas is giving USC.

"[T]he Pioneer I encountered this year was a well oiled machine, easy to work with and very responsive," writes Sujewa Ekanayake. "The Voice should be celebrating the Pioneer instead of publishing sloppy articles that unfairly criticize a valuable member of the US indie film scene." More from The Reeler.

"Russell Metty (1906-78), one of America's outstanding cinematographers, was born 100 years ago today," notes Tim Lucas. "He's perhaps best known for executing the most celebrated sustained shot in movie history: the opening "bomb in the trunk" sequence of Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, but he has much, much more to his credit."

Online browsing tip. Celebrating Sophia Loren's 72nd, a Magnum Photo collection at Slate.

Online viewing tip #1. Borscht Belt Horror. A trailer at Heeb.

Online viewing tip #2. Back and Forth Films showreel.

Online viewing tips. TCM and Hermès present Behind the Camera: The Shorts Circuit, with homages to classics by Griffin Dunne, Peter Gilbert, E Elias Merhige, Mario Van Peebles, Mary Sweeney and Floria Sigismondi. Via Erik Davis at Cinematical.



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Posted by dwhudson at September 20, 2006 12:14 PM