Shorts, 9/27.

"Martin Scorsese's The Departed, from a screenplay by William Monahan, based on Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs, provides an electrifying entertainment for this fall moviegoing season in its police-mobster machinations and deep undercover penetration by both sides of the law," trumpets Andrew Sarris. "In this respect, The Departed strikes unexpectedly deep chords of tragic poignancy with the emotional fallout from an atmosphere of perpetual paranoia so characteristic of our post-9/11 world. No one can completely trust anyone else." Also reviewed: Le Petit Lieutenant and Marie Antoinette. As for The Departed, Tim Robey gives it a "C+."

But also in the New York Observer: "It is very important that we as a free country don't become what we despise in an age of such palpable threats," Ken Burns tells Rebecca Dana. "There's always a tendency that in trying to eradicate evil in the world, we sometimes come to resemble the thing we're trying to eradicate." The issue at hand: out of fear of the FCC, PBS is preemptively censoring itself. Update: Dick Kreck reports in the Denver Post that Rocky Mountain PBS has cancelled the documentary Marie Antoinette. RMPBS prez James Morgese says the questionable scenes, 200-year-old drawings of nekkid people, are "nothing worse than what you see on TV elsewhere, but in this era of heightened sensitivity by the FCC, fines are pretty stiff."

Rachid Bouchareb's Indigènes "opens in Paris [today] amid a furious row over France's racist treatment of colonial troops and a political battle over pensions worth millions of euros that surviving veterans are still owed," reports Angelique Chrisafis. Related: Cineuropa's "film focus" features interviews with Bouchareb, producer Jean Bréhat and the cast.

Also in the Guardian:

• Natasha Walter: "Of all the statistics that show that the world is still weighted towards the boys, there are few quite as telling as the percentage of major feature films that are directed by women - we're still talking just 7 percent."

• Mark Lawson traces the various permutations of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood from 1697 to the present day.

• Ronald Bergan remembers Miklos 'Mickey' Hargitay, 1926 - 2006: "It was appropriate that Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the television movie The Jayne Mansfield Story (1980), with Loni Anderson as Mansfield."

• Laura Smith on Borat vs Kazakhstan.

• Geoffrey Macnab talks with Emilio Estevez about Bobby.

• Lindesay Irvine has a backgrounder on Quinceañera, known in the UK as Echo Park LA.

"[P]erhaps no film sums up the spirit of the Czech New Wave as Ivan Passer's light and breezy masterpiece, Intimate Lighting," writes Ian Johnston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

Michael Gibbons at indieWIRE: "The survival of Brazilian filmmaking largely depends on government incentives, and politics inevitably enter into an already complicated debate about how to consolidate a market that is vulnerable yet full of potential." Plus, an interview with American Hardcore director Paul Rachman.

Speaking of which, Rob Harvilla: "The flick succeeds in lending 80s hardcore punk some gravity and importance but not, by any means, aesthetic beauty or mass appeal. You would most likely have not enjoyed this in person."

Also in the Voice, Michael Musto talks with John Cameron Mitchell about Shortbus (more from Ed Gonzalez in Slant) and Ella Taylor finds Little Children an "verly long movie, made sluggish by a superfluously novelistic narrator, [which] feels divided against itself, driven by opposed impulses of tragedy and dark humor that make it impossible for us to identify with these lost souls' break for freedom or wait for them to grow up."

"In the course of covering Fantastic Fest, I've seen 25 features so far, with more to come," writes Peter Martin at Twitch. "My mind feels like it's reaching capacity with blood, body parts, savage killers, and psychic traumas doing battle within my cranium. Yet I keep coming back to Head Trauma as one of this year's touchstones."

Grady Hendrix on Dragon Tiger Gate: "Stupid and shallow but really, really hot and crammed with hard bodied action." Makes for a good drinking game, too, evidently.

"The Black Dahlia doesn't seem like work for hire - I don't think De Palma is capable of hack work," writes Dennis Cozzalio in a long, considered entry. "It does feel like the work of a man who hasn't quite figured out how to realize those desires to take his filmmaking in a different direction."

"Fascinated disgust and aghast amusement are two feelings I don't experience often enough," writes the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Cheryl Eddy. "Jesus Camp elicits both in spades." she interviews directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who, along with the now-(in)famous Pastor Becky Fisher, are also guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Back in the SFBG, Johnny Ray Huston talks with video and audio manipulating artists Bryan Boyce (full interview), Derrick Beckles, Animal Charm (full interview) and Gregg Gillis, while Cheryl Eddy meets documentary filmmaker Aron Ranen - and Andrew Bujalski.

Jason Clark in Slant on Copying Beethoven: "Will there ever be a decent movie made about any part of Ludwig van Beethoven's life?"

That Little Round-Headed Boy indulges in Cecil B DeMille's 1934 Cleopatra, "which quickly reminds you how the word "lavish" has disappeared from Hollywood's dictionary. This film is a calling card for the pleasures of the old studio system and its irrepressible craftsmanship. To paraphrase Norma Desmond, 'They had sets then!'"

What, Frankenstein and Dracula again? Yes, and as Dave Kehr writes, "For collectors it's a good news/bad news moment. The new transfers are the best yet, with grain and contrast much improved, but you'll have to shell out for them one more time, $26.98 each." Also in the New York Times, Caryn James on bad buzz.

"The fact that audio in motion pictures is often overlooked can be largely explained by its abstract nature," argues Peet Gelderblom. "You can point out the lipstick on a husband's collar, or spot the bad guy holding a gun in the crowd, you can freeze a frame and enlarge it, but it's hard to put a finger on the disturbing effect of a faintly detectable bass drone accompanying a sequence of seemingly ordinary shots."

Michael Fox at SF360: "While the cinema is recognized - nay, embraced - as a catalyst for discussion of political and social issues in France, England, Israel, and throughout the developing world, any American movie that exposes the rotten parts of our system is considered in bad taste. These days the subject of politics has been relegated to documentary makers, with mixed results."

Matthew Clayfield addresses "the ongoing noise (can it really be called a discussion?) surrounding the unnecessarily prickly question of what a videoblog actually is, a question with a very straightforward answer that shouldn't be nearly as controversial as it continues to be."

"Memories of some movies are inseparable from where you first see them," writes Ray Pride at Movie City News. "My prime Chicago example: Oak Street's 70-year-old deco dowager, the Esquire." It "closed last Thursday: as the developer who's bringing the wrecking ball phrased it to the Sun-Times, the up-up-upscale environs of Prada-era Oak Street are missing 'a restaurant component.'"

In the Los Angeles Times, Jay A Fernandez profiles screenwriter Allan Loeb; and Dennis McLellan: "Edward Albert, the actor-son of the late screen veteran Eddie Albert who first gained fame co-starring with Goldie Hawn in the 1970s film Butterflies Are Free and later became an outspoken environmental activist, has died. He was 55."

Always great fun: another trailer roundup from Gwynne Watkins at ScreenGrab.

And my, just look at some of the DVDs coming out over the next several weeks, hand-picked by Joe Bowman.

"On principle, The AV Club hereby refuses to do a fall movie preview. Oh, all right, fine, we'll do one. But we aren't going to try very hard."

Kamera.co.uk has redesigned and has fresh reviews of theatrical and DVD releases.

It has next-to-nothing to do with film, but I can't help but chime in on Andreas Tzortzis's piece in the NYT on Berlin's retiring building director, Hans Stimmann. If anyone's proven that urban planning can have a severely detrimental effect on a city's economic prospects, it's Stimmann. I wish Tzortizis had been able to work in a little more quotage from Niklas Maak, as he's currently one of the best and most forward-thinking writers on architecture and design in Germany.

Online gazing tip. "There can never be enough Pre-Code at the Greenbriar!"

Online browsing tip. At Radar, Michael Musto introduces a collection from Warhol's World, " a tubby little book featuring snapshots of his countless acquaintances, all taken by the alleged social-phobe himself." Via Jason Kottke.

Online viewing tips, round 1. The best of August at no fat clips!!!

Online viewing tips, round 2. A slew of new trailer finds at Twitch.

Online viewing tips, round 3. Antonio Pasolini: "The organisers of the Rio de Janeiro film festival have teamed up with the popular Porta Curta streaming site to show 17 of the competing films from the festival's Première Brasil section. You can also vote for your favorites."

Posted by dwhudson at September 27, 2006 12:46 PM