Shorts, 11/19.

Michael Guillén: "Sumptuous as embroidered brocade, Curse of the Golden Flower outdoes [Zhang Yimou's] last two [wuxia] entries in spectacle but is most noteworthy for avoiding the politically confusing obfuscations of Hero and the vertiginously saccharine sentimentality of House of Flying Daggers. Its elegance is not only in its production design, but in the stark lines of its dark story: a brooding meditation on the corrosive heart of gold."

"I can recognize a cultural turning point when it smacks me in the kisser. Griffith has been trounced. Chaplin rules." Click his name to find out what in the world Stuart Klawans is going on about in the Nation.

At the House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz points to Issue 7 of The High Hat: "The latest edition of the pop culture magazine includes 12, count 'em, 12 articles on Robert Altman, including Short Cuts, California Split, Thieves Like Us, A Prairie Home Companion, Popeye and Secret Honor. Not to mention articles on 'The Existential Paradox of Technical Death Metal,' the rivalry between Marvel and DC Comics, and a piece on institutions as represented on HBO's The Wire and Deadwood, written by frequent House commenter Hayden Childs."

"Is Nazi Germany a fit subject for sympathy?" asks Nick Hasted. "In the case of individuals caught up in the conflagration of the Second World War's final days, three upcoming films suggest that the answer may be a careful yes." The three: Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, Steven Soderbergh's The Good German and Reg Traviss's Joy Division.

Also in the Independent, Mark Hooper: "It's been an extraordinary few months for Hollywood's A-list actors: embarrassing outbursts, drunken tirades and - here's the real issue - their films tanking spectacularly at the box office. Are we witnessing the last generation of true movie stars?" And Roger Clarke tells the story behind the everybody-in-bed scene in Performance, "one of the most groundbreaking films in British cinema."

For the Latino Review, Dan Schubert visits the set of The Screwfly Solution to talk with Joe Dante. Via Brendon Connelly, who hears "that the eventual DVD of Inland Empire is to feature the first ever audio commentary by David Lynch. Wow."

"The consecration of a fleeting, fugitive moment is one of [Wong Kar-wai's] specialties," writes Dennis Lim, following a visit to the set of My Blueberry Nights, where Jude Law and Norah Jones have kissed around 150 times. "Perhaps more than any filmmaker since Alain Resnais, his great subject is time - or more specifically lost time. His rhapsodic movies, haunted by voice-over ruminations and swathed in lush regret, seem to transpire in the realm of memory. People and places are mourned even as they are captured on camera."

Also in the New York Times:

• Kristopher Tapley: "At 61, [Eric] Roth belongs to a tiny fraternity of senior screenwriters — Akiva Goldsman, Paul Attanasio, William Broyles Jr and a few others come to mind — who work squarely at the crossroads of art and commerce, on big dramas for big studios. It is a hard piece of turf, which demands grit from those who would defend it." The Good Shepherd opens December 22.

• "As one of the titanic figures of Western culture... Ludwig surely deserves his own Amadeus. Why has no movie captured the imagination of the masses on his behalf?" asks Daniel J Wakin. "Maynard Solomon, a biographer of both Mozart and Beethoven, said Amadeus tapped into a 'fundamental myth' about the jealousy of Salieri, a mediocrity, over the genius of the 'eternal child' touched by God. Beethoven's myth is altogether different. 'The heroic myth never really reaches us on a personal basis,' he said, 'but the Amadeus myth does.'"

• "In the wake of Ray and Walk the Line, musical biographies that did well in recent awards seasons, filmmakers have lined up to portray Marvin Gaye, Charley Pride, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Now, with a pair of potentially competing projects, it's Miles Davis's turn," reports Pat H Broeske.

• "Much like [George] Miller's excellent Babe: Pig in the City and his dystopian Mad Max trilogy, Happy Feet presents a vision of the world seen through a glass darkly," writes Manohla Dargis. "One of the most underrated films of the 1990s, Pig in the City was a terrible commercial disappointment, an animal-farm noir that hewed closer in apocalyptic tone and feel to the Mad Max films than to its sunnier, much-beloved predecessor, Babe. Happy Feet is Mr Miller's first film in eight long years, and while compromised by the uplift and affirmation that mainstream animation regurgitates like a mommy penguin, it also shows a remarkable persistence of vision. Even in a story about singing-and-dancing fat and feather, Mr Miller can't help but go dark and deep." Related: The LA CityBeat's Andy Klein talks with Miller.

• "With Bobby, Emilio Estevez, writer and director (as well as one of a huge ensemble of actors), sets himself a large and honorable task. It is important to appreciate this in spite of his movie's evident shortcomings," writes AO Scott. More from Stephanie Zacharek in Salon and Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. Related: For the LA CityBeat, Andy Klein meets Estevez and Christian Slater.

• AO Scott: "In both Nine Queens and his second (and final) film, The Aura, [Fabián] Bielinsky made use of a familiar film noir vocabulary, but not for the usual young-fimmaker-in-a-hurry purpose of showing off his facility with genre tricks. Rather, his movies restore some of the clammy, anxious atmosphere that made the old noirs so powerful to begin with." More from Martha Fischer at Cinematical.

• "[S]tories about heroin addicts are all alike: they shoot up, they nod out, they jones.... it's always the same story, always," laments Manohla Dargis. "The Australian film Candy doesn't add anything substantively new to that story, though it has been nicely directed by Neil Armfield, known in his country for his theater work, and features striking performances from Heath Ledger and Geoffrey Rush." More from Robert Cashill. Related: For the Reeler, Clémentine Gallot watches Ledger hold up under a barrage of silly questions.

• Anita Gates: "It isn't often that you see a film about Israelis and Palestinians that can be called hopeful, but Ronit Avni's assured, thoughtful and clear-eyed Encounter Point certainly qualifies." Much, much more from Annie Frisbie at Zoom In Online.

• Laura Kern on Shinobi: "[D]espite a wealth of magical and visual splendor, the film's obtrusive resemblance to a video game, in appearance and (lack of) emotion, cannot be easily glossed over."

• Maurie Alioff's backgrounder on The Journals of Knud Rasmussen: "In creating this unconventional film, [Norman] Cohn and [Zacharias] Kunuk were driven by one purpose: getting the complexities of the native experience right."

• After 22 years renting videos to New Yorkers, Movie Place is being forced to close by its landlord. Alex Mindlin has a colorful report and a graphic charting other video outlets in the city that have passed on accompanies the piece.

"Bette Davis, Liza Minnelli, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand - too unattractive to be stars, at least by Hollywood standards. Cher, Dolly Parton, Carmen Miranda, and yes, Tammy Faye Baker - too over the top. Madonna, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford - too trashy for their respective times. Yet, all have succeeded, and in their success, they have earned the admiration of homosexuals worldwide. And it doesn't hurt that, for the most part, they have embraced their gay fans, in turn." And so, Michael Abernathy poses a few questions to explore at PopMatters: "Why is it that older gay men are attracted to such tortured souls? Why don't gay women share the same list of icons? And why don't young gay men share the same attractions for these legends?"

"A major elision in the global DVD catalogue is at long last amended, and gorgeously so, with the Criterion Collection's new transfer of Jane Campion's Sweetie," writes Nick Davis for Stop Smiling.

"Like its setting, [Iraq in Fragments] presents too many ruptured ideals and bruised lives, too few exits and settled truths - which is precisely why Americans cannot afford the luxury of looking away," writes Noy Thrupkaew for the American Prospect. "Poetic rather than prescriptive, allusive rather than allegorical, James Longley's guerilla masterwork brings us to where we should have started in Iraq: the humble regard of people whose problems cannot be fixed in a month, much less in the blink of an Iraq-fatigued eye." Related: Tony Perry asks Longley about the making of the film for the Los Angeles Times.

Harry Sheehan on The Cave of the Yellow Dog: "While it's too bad [Byambasuren] Davaa can't quite control her pedagogical side, the young filmmaker displays formidable abilities nevertheless." Also in the LA CityBeat: Brent Simon: "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny captures with such full force of personality the swagger, unchecked id, and playtime allure of music that it reminds you - albeit in garish, heightened strokes - of why one falls in love with music in the first place."

"The black exploitation film as a tool in the process of social control? - better for a dominant white class to peddle fantasies of black power to black audiences after so many of its political leaders had been assassinated, than to have said leaders making real strides." This is what Zach Campbell is setting out to explore at Elusive Lucidity.

Magnolia Pictures has bought the North American rights to distribute Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger from Miramax, reports Todd at Twitch. A theatrical release is planned for early next year with a DVD to follow.

Filmbrain reviews Im Kwon-taek's Chang (Downfall), "a flawed but earnest melodrama from 1997 that tackles Korean history from the rise of industrialism in the 70s to the economic slump of the 90s, as viewed from the underworld of brothels and prostitutes."

Wolphin interviews the directing team behind Funky Forest: First Contact; via Blake at Cinema Strikes Back.

Guillermo del Toro opens the pages of his notebooks for the Guardian, while Jonathan Romney interviews him for the Independent.

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

• "Curious to investigate the incongruity of black American soldiers fighting a war for George Bush when the president had abandoned their community, [George Gittoes] accompanied [Elliot] Lovett back home," reports Sarfraz Manzoor. "Rampage, the eventual result of the time the director spent in Miami, is a terrifying and compelling dispatch from an American war zone."

• "Mihir Bose's Bollywood: A History tells the rise of the Indian film industry from the first moving-picture screening on the subcontinent in 1896, just seven months after the Lumiere Brothers premiered their work in Paris, to India's first genuine crossover success, Ashutosh Gowarikar's Lagaan, in 2001," writes Edward Marriott. "It is a story that Bose, who grew up in Mumbai, tells with pace and enthusiasm."

• James Cameron: "I can count on the fingers of one hand the people who have really made a difference to me in my life as a film-maker. These are the ones who, in addition to becoming lifelong friends, have also inspired, mentored, partnered and challenged. Stan Winston is one of these."

• Dan Glaister: "In a series of advertisements to run in the film industry magazines Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, Philip Morris will ask the film industry to refrain from showing its brands in any future films." Also, a report on Hollywood agents prowling through YouTube in search of fresh talent.

• Jason Solomons interviews Will Ferrell (more from David Thomson). Also: "Why I love dance films."

• Mike Sterry explores Machinima.com.

• Laura Cumming on "the strange decline of [Douglas] Gordon's art in recent years - from intellectually dense to bafflingly blank." Related: Time Out's Garth Evans on "artists' films."

• Rowan Walker talks with Steve Anderson about Fuck.

• John Patterson on the mysterious death of George Reeves.

• Christopher Priest's novel The Prestige has been reissued; Alex Clark has a review.

"Look up Michael Arndt on the Internet Movie Database and you'll find just one credit: Little Miss Sunshine. So how did a rookie screenwriter hit a classic comedy home run his first time up?" asks Anne Thompson in the Hollywood Reporter. "Simple, it took only one year to write and 100 drafts - and another five years before it went into production."

Nevermind the celebrity couple toodling around Italy. Paul Cullum meets Darren Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz. Also: Why Now, Voyager pops up in The History Boys and For Your Consideration.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "[T]he old rules of childhood engagement are rapidly evolving," write John Horn and Chris Lee. "Instead of consigning children to the periphery of horrific realities, these films are dragging kids - preteens to toddlers - right into the middle of the mayhem."

• Lisa Rosen: A "funny thing happened to London's hit play The History Boys on the way to the multiplex: Its cast of 12 relative unknowns remained defiantly intact."

• Susan King talks with Paz Vega about 10 Items or Less.

• Kenneth Turan on the new Preston Sturges DVDs: "The first Hollywood writer to segue to solo directing, winner of the first Oscar given for best original screenplay, Sturges combined slashing wordplay with chaotic slapstick and completely unhinged plots in a way no one has even come close to duplicating." Notes on more new releases from Susan King.

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy, pointing to his interview with Kate Winslet: "See Little Children, and prepare to share my wonder at its quality and my simmering outrage at the raw deal its getting from the studio that should be supporting it."

Time Out interviews: Wally Hammond with Patrice Chéreau and Ben Walters with Tim Burton.

Dennis Cozzalio presents his response to Jim Emerson "request for a personal list of real laughers, augmented by the 12 other picks that I left off in an attempt to at least appear to be playing by Jim's rules. As the wise guy once said, dying is easy, comedy is hard... and whittling down a list of comedy favorites to five choices may be even harder."

Film Threat's annual "Frigid 50: The Coldest People in Hollywood" list is up, "detailing the least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown. Before celebrities fall off the face of the Earth, they get one warning, and the Frigid 50 is it." Via Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog.

Wagstaff lists five favorite title sequences at the House Next Door.

The Weinsteins and Blockbuster. Can they do that? Legally? A discussion rages at Ezra Klein's blog, via Chuck Tryon.

Online listening tip. This American Life on the civilian casualties of the war in Iraq.

Online viewing tip #1. YOUTUBERS. Brilliant. Via ticklebooth.

Online viewing tip #2. David Poland on the holiday season as LA sees it.

Posted by dwhudson at November 19, 2006 3:29 PM