Shorts and fests, 11/13.

David Bordwell is intrigued by Steven Soderbergh's intentions "to reproduce the look and feel of a 1940s movie" in The Good German and comments at length on several the director told Dave Kehr about for a weekend piece in the New York Times.

Louise Brooks "got to be the hottest woman in the room, if not the universe, for a handful of years until that attitude of hers brought down the curtain and exiled this most self-destructive gal in the whole of American show-business to a menial life unworthy of such an instinctive acting genius," writes John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows. "Well, there's a mouthful, but how else do you sum up the object of such fervent cult enthusiasm?"

Gabe Klinger is filing dispatches from the Torino Film Festival at Elusive Lucidity.

Waggish on God Walks Backwards: "It is the most effective presentation of Debordian spectacle in film that I have ever seen, and more remarkable given that [Miklós] Jancsó abandoned his more classicist leanings to adopt an uglier, harsher contemporary style, all electricity and hum."

Whether or not you agree with Stanley Kauffmann when he calls Absolute Wilson an "excellent documentary," his piece in the New Republic most certainly is excellent.

The hype machine's always had a taste for youth. Karen Maeshiro reports in the LA Daily News on a high school senior his "movie-production teacher" is raving about, Andre Felix. Via Brendon Connelly.

Vince Keenan: "I'm sure I'm missing the point here, but I haven't seen a movie that filled me with such love of country since The Right Stuff. The U.S. and A. isn't perfect, but a boob like Borat can work his way from one end to the other without being arrested or beaten to a pulp. That is something to be proud of." Related: Borat may be heading to Russia after all.

Sujewa Ekanayake asks 51 Birch Street director Doug Block how Truly Indie truly works. Doug's got great things to say about it. Besides, "Getting your film distributed is like having three full-time jobs at the same time, none of which pay."

Eugene Hernandez wraps the AFI Fest at indieWIRE. Also: An interview with Crispin Glover.

Carnegie Mellon's Faces of Democracy International Film Festival runs November 29 through December 10.

In the Guardian, Mark Ravenhill hopes to break the DVD extras habit.

Online listening tip. SpoutBlog: Podcasting up a storm from the Denver Film Festival. Some of the people they've talked with so far: legendary cinematographer Vlimos Zsigmond, indie icon Robert M Young, Kurt Cobain About a Son director AJ Schnack and more.

Online viewing tip #1. A trailer for Dynamite Warriors. Via Jason Morehead: "It's like a Thai kickboxing western, only with men surfing on missiles!"

Online viewing tip #2. At Alternet, Evan Derkacz has a montage of late night comedians' reactions to the mid-terms.

Posted by dwhudson at November 13, 2006 8:23 AM