Shorts, 11/20.

Screen Daily is reporting that Takashi Miike's first English-language film will be Sukiyaki Western: Django, starring Quentin Tarantino. Updates: Brendon Connelly has a bit more. More. And more, too, from logboy at Twitch. Much more from Grady Hendrix.

Fabien Lemercier has news at Cineuropa on the next two features from Claire Denis. White Material, based on the novel by Marie NDiaye, who's written the screenplay, and starring Isabelle Huppert and Christophe Lambert, begins shooting this winter in Cameroon. 35 Rhums, a tale of a father and daughter co-written with Jean Pol Fargeau, will follow.

Congrats to AJ Schnack: "[L]ast night in the mile high city, our own Kurt Cobain About A Son took the Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary Film, at the 29th Denver Film Festival."

Jason Reitman will direct Rainn Wilson in the ninja comedy Bonzai Shadowhands, according to Borys Kit and Nicole Sperling in the Hollywood Reporter.

Crisis in the Shire. "We got to go there - but not back again..." Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh explain why they won't be involved with any of the proposed Hobbit projects. Via Jeffrey Overstreet initially, though the anguished sounds of gnashing teeth and garment rending can now be heard quaking across the hemispheres. Update: Get Alfonso Cuarón, suggests Jeffrey Overstreet: "Guillermo Del Toro can do fantasy brilliantly, but he's too dark and strange. The Hobbit needs to be whimsical. Terry Gilliam's fighting to convince even his fans that he can still make a good movie, after the disastrous Brothers Grimm and the reportedly misguided Tideland."

Anne Thompson is sensing that Universal is writing off Children of Men because it "simply cost too much money (between $72 and as much as $90 million, I've heard) to make a profit," and she has two questions, the first rhetorical, "So what if it makes money or not?" and the second not: "But what made the movie so frigging expensive?"

"Is Mary Poppins a family entertainment or a tragedy with musical numbers?" asks The Little Round-Headed Boy.

"Tony Scott doesn't even wait for Déjà Vu to properly begin before employing the spastic visual stylings that are his calling card," writes Nick Schager.

Also at Slant: Schager on Opal Dream and Deck the Halls; Rob Humanick on Let's Go to Prison; Ed Gonzalez on This Filthy World and Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims; and Keith Uhlich, reviewing Paris Belongs to Us, has the latest addition to Slant's coverage of the Jacques Rivette series at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Jonathan Bernstein in the Guardian: "More than a disappointing weekend at the box office, more than being omitted from the guest list of the current hot spot, more than being punk'd or papped, young Hollywood fears Perez Hilton." Who's having a big day. Robin Abcarian profiles him, too, in the Los Angeles Times.

Bobby tie-ins: Jimmy Breslin remembers the night RFK was shot (LAT); and Shane O'Sullivan claims the CIA did it (Guardian).

The Guardian: "Jeremy Slate, co-writer and star of the cult biker film Hell's Angels '69 died yesterday of complications following cancer surgery. He was 80."

In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (and in German), Ralph Eue talks with Milos Forman about Goya's Ghosts and - bet you didn't expect this - the Spanish Inquisition.

Online listening tip. At Dinosaur Gardens, Cary Grant sings the FCC station identification regulations. Once again, that's: Cary Grant. Sings. The FFC. Station identification regulations. Via Waxy.org.

Posted by dwhudson at November 20, 2006 5:45 AM