Shorts, 12/26.

"Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 Two or Three Things I Know About Her not only is as timely as ever but also exudes the blistering force of prophecy," writes Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times:

Everything that intrigued yet repelled Godard about modern urban life 40 years ago - the increasing disenfranchisement of the working class, the challenge of sustaining a sense of self in a relentlessly depersonalized, dehumanized consumer society, the erosion of freedom and opportunity in a rapidly evolving technological universe - has only intensified over the decades. Godard's protest of the American quagmire in Vietnam applies to the US invasion of Iraq with tragic accuracy. There seems no question that Two or Three Things stands among the finest achievements of one of the cinema's greatest iconoclasts.

"With 2 or 3 Things... he is exploring film... as an explicit method of analysis - in this case to study and critique the suburbanization of Paris and the growing middle class," notes Darren Hughes. "In this context, the apocalyptic violence and decay of Weekend is downright sublime. 'End of film. End of cinema.'"

Back to Kevin Thomas: "Only now has it become possible to see Rules of the Game as it looked upon its July 7, 1939, Paris debut. That's because Criterion Films has undertaken a complete digital restoration of a fine-grain master print located in Paris after a painstaking search."

Also in the LAT: Irene Lacher profiles Ken Watanabe, Richard Covington has a backgrounder on Miss Potter and Megan Garvey talks with screenwriter Patrick Marber and novelist Zo� Heller about the adaptation of What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal.

"Notes on a Scandal is another squirm-und-drang movie: too creepy-sad to be a comedy, too intense to watch quietly, without letting out frequent whoops," writes David Edelstein in New York.

"Favorite blog of the moment: Armond Dangerous, dedicated solely to 'parsing the confounding film criticism of Mr Armond White,'" writes Alison Willmore in an entry at the IFC Blog, in which she offers quick takes on several films out and about right now.

"Catching up with several of the fall's films, I was struck by how often they played quite self-consciously with the overall shape of their plots," writes David Bordwell.

"Edward Norton is smart, talented and more invested than most working actors in the final cut of his movies." In the Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson looks back on his "astonishing trifecta" this year: Down in the Valley, The Illusionist and The Painted Veil.

Erik Eckholm reports on a documentary screening in February as part of PBS's Independent Lens series, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes: "What concerns [director Byron] Hurt and many black scholars is the domination of the hip-hop market by more violent and sexually demeaning songs and videos � an ascendancy, the critics say, that has coincided with the growth of the white audience for rap and the growing role of large corporations in marketing the music."

Also in the New York Times:

• On view at the [Museum of the City of New York] through Jan 3, Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of Look Magazine presents 130 photographs of artists, dancers, actors, architects, showgirls, boxers, and eccentrics culled from the museum's collection," writes Philip Gefter. "One of the standouts turns out to be the photographer rather than the subject: Stanley Kubrick, who was born in the Bronx and sold his first picture to Look in 1945, when he was just 17... With his series on boxers and showgirls, Kubrick emerges as the dark heart of the show, [curator Tom] Mellins said."

• From Paris, Alan Riding reports on Fr�d�ric Martel's book Culture in America, in which he "challenges the conventional view here that (French) culture financed and organized by the government is entirely good and that (American) culture shaped by market forces is necessarily bad."

• Stephen Holden reviews Night at the Museum (related: Lesley O'Toole meets Ben Stiller in the Independent and Sheigh Crabtree has two pieces on the visual effects in the LAT) and We Are Marshall.

Jeanine Plant at Alternet on Home of the Brave: "Depoliticizing a deeply political topic is nothing new for a mainstream Hollywood film. But political aversion at this moment in time is practically spineless.... But for all of its evident cowardice, the film is nevertheless instructive."

Also at Alternet: "My identity, in part, has been shaped by the effects of a culture of violence and apocalyptic war best found not so much in the stuff of [Mel] Gibson's Mayan epic, Apocalypto, but in the stuff of his Christian epic, The Passion of the Christ," writes Roberto Lovato. More on what Gibson got both wrong and right from Louis EV Nevaer for New American Media.

Michael Guill�n talks with Patrick Galloway about his book, Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, and with Molly Haskell "about her collaboration with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies."

Steve Erickson in Gay City News on The Case of the Grinning Cat: "While some of [Chris] Marker's fascination with protests clearly stems from their evocation of the 60s counterculture, he champions revolt in a way that goes beyond a narrow definition of politics." More from Daniel Kasman.

Barry Levinson will be directing Robert De Niro in an adaptation of producer Art Linson's What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales From the Front Line. Via Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical and Production Weekly.

Oscar Levant would have turned 100 this month. You might remember the pianist, composer and actor best for An American in Paris, but for Misha Donat, writing in the Guardian, "The best of his films was The Band Wagon, the Minnelli musical made in 1953, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse."

"Picnic at Hanging Rock is the exemplary study of disapparition in cinema," writes k-punk. "I know of no other major film which deals with unexplained disappearance."

At Koreanfilm.org, Adam Hartzell is left unimpressed by Rewind and Darcy Paquet profiles Baek Yoon-shik.

Peter Nellhaus on Kon-Fai-Bin (Dynamite Warrior): "[S]adly, it doesn't live up to the promise of the posters or preview."

New reviews at Slant: Nick Schager on Tears of the Black Tiger and Night at the Museum and Ed Gonzalez on Comedy of Power and Coffee Date.

"Flags of Our Fathers is touched by greatness," argues the Observer's Philip French.

Did you know that Borat's actually speaking Hebrew? The AP's Aron Heller in Jerusalem: "The irony of a Hebrew-speaking anti-Semite is not lost on the admiring Israeli audience, which has made the movie a huge hit here."

John Adair on Shoot the Piano Player: "Fran�ois Truffaut's 1960 comic-noir offering both defies and fulfills genre expectations."

"Thanks to films like The Descent and 28 Days Later, I believe that over the course of the next year horror films will be coming into a renaissance not seen since the days of Scream," submits Drew Morton at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced its first eight competition titles for its 2007 edition," reports european-films.net.

"Several well-known Magnum photographers will be present when the Berlinale screens 33 films by and about the agency's great photo reporters during this year's special series Magnum in Motion."

Online browsing tip. The site for Grindhouse. Via Brendon Connelly, who's got tips for making your way around in there.

Online listening tip. Christine Vachon talks about A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond on Fresh Air.

Online viewing tip. Ray Pride has CNN's quick interview with Spike Lee talking about what's been added to the DVD version of When the Levees Broke and his plans to stick with this story "over the years."

Posted by dwhudson at December 26, 2006 6:08 AM