Shorts, 1/29.

"Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements," Robert Rodriguez tells Whitney Joiner, who is, of course, checking on the progress of Grindhouse, due April 6: two movies, basically (Rodriguez's Planet Terror, 80 minutes, and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, 90), plus four trailers for nonexistent movies by Eli Roth, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright and Rodriguez himself. Scrunged up prints, missing reels - the boys are going all out.

Also in the New York Times:

• Une Vieille Maîtresse, a period piece based on an 1865 novel by Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, is not only a departure in form for Catherine Breillat, it's also got a budget four times that of Anatomy of Hell. But Kristin Hohenadel also talks with her about the most dramatic aspect of the project. Having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2004, Breillat is quite sure that her determination to make this film saved her life.

• He "makes his long-overdue American concert debut with 200 musicians and singers at Radio City Music Hall." And: "On Feb 25 he will be presented with an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, atoning for past omissions. After five nominations, he has never won." Jon Pareles meets Ennio Morricone.

• "[Gary] Shandling has lately been tugged by a powerful, almost obsessive desire to go back and revisit the breadth of his Larry Sanders experience, for the purpose, he said, of finding out both who he was then and how he might give the show, and his role in it, a fitting ending." Jacques Steinberg talks with him about the monster DVD package coming out in April.

After all the arguments and counter-arguments, the Cinemarati have completed their countdown of the top 20 films of 2006. Their #1: Children of Men.

On a related note, k-punk: "British cinema, for the last thirty years as chronically sterile as the issueless population in Children of Men, has not produced a version of the apocalypse that is even remotely as well realised as this." Three points: First, "The catastrophe is neither waiting down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it is being lived through.... Secondly, Children of Men is a dystopia that is specific to late capitalism." The third point relates to a "cultural crisis" and "the theme of sterility" inherited from TS Eliot's The Waste Land.

Depending on your take on Babel, you'll either be thrilled or horrified to hear from Anne Thompson that screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñarritu are talking again. Jeffrey Wells has more. Related: Rob Grace.

Back at the Risky Biz Blog: Why Hitchcock refused to meet Spielberg.

Chris Baker asks Patrick Galloway, author of Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand "to share his Top 5 Most Deliciously Appalling Moments in Asian Shock Films with Wired."

Volver has fended off a challenge from Pan's Labyrinth at the Goya Awards, winning best film, director, actress and two more. EiTB24 reports.

And Movie City News lists the winners of the Screen Actors Guild awards. Related: Blake Ethridge and David Austin interview Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris for Cinema Strikes Back.

In the Guardian:

• "France has fallen dramatically out of love with the auteur and the whole idea of art house film which it invented," writes Angelique Chrisafis. She's got the numbers, and they aren't good. "'Cinéphilie no longer exists in France,' the film distributor Thomas Ordonneau said." And from Michel Ciment, editor of Positif, she hears, "Part of the problem is a lack of credibility of film critics."

• When Tadesse Meskela, spokesperson for Ethiopian coffee growers, and Tony Blair meet in London today, they'll watch Black Gold. Ashley Seager reports.

• Julie Bindel: "Horrible lesbians on screen had a bad effect when they were the only ones." Now, they're not, so Notes on a Scandal doesn't really bother her.

"[L]ast year, about one out of every four films I saw was something I had seen before." Why, and how, do we re-view, asks Girish.

"The Situation is, to put it kindly, a spotty piece of work," writes David Edelstein in New York. "The script is by Wendell Steavenson, a reporter who seems to know everything about Iraq and next to nothing about screenwriting." Also, on An Unreasonable Man: "Nader was obviously nuts to assert that there wasn't 'a dime's bit of difference' between Bush and Al Gore. But the film, directed by Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan, does a brilliant job of putting his 2000 run for president in context—to show how consistent it was with everything he has stood for in his remarkable career." And Seraphim Falls is "surprisingly gripping."

"[N]obody is writing about John Dahl, and that's a shame." So That Little Round-Headed Boy begins an assessment of the oeuvre. Why? Because Dahl has "made at least one bona fide classic and at least three other very, very good films. And he keeps growing and getting better. I think he deserves serious attention."

David Jeffers is on an Ufa kick, writing about the studio's style during its heyday and reviewing Asphalt at the Siffblog.

"There's something anti-Howard Hawks about the way Delmer Daves directs Dark Passage," proposes John McElwee at Greenbriar Pictures.

Mark Kermode: "Perhaps the most personal of [Terry] Gilliam's films, Tideland is a bold expression of artistic independence with little regard for popular taste or PC politeness. For this it should be celebrated, even if the film proves too challenging for some audiences."

Also in the Observer, interviews: Kitty Empire talks with Will Oldham about Old Joy, Chrissy Iley interviews Jessica Lange, Carole Cadwalladr meets Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Solomons talks Oscars with Christopher Guest.

Ann Powers on Dreamgirls in the Los Angeles Times: "Beneath this feel-good story lurks a century's worth of assumptions about self-expression, femininity and race.... In the year of Barack Obama's likely presidential candidacy, shouldn't a pop-culture 'triumph' like this film offer a more complex view of black culture and creativity?" Related: Mark Reynolds on Motown in PopMatters.

"Indian music director OP Nayyar, who composed some of Bollywood's most memorable tunes of the 1950s and 60s, died on Sunday after a heart attack at his home outside Mumbai." Reuters reports.

"Frame-counting is a nifty tool for discovering some secrets of filmmaking, but when we work from a video copy, we need to keep in mind the constraints of the various formats. And whenever possible, check the film!" That's the bottom line on this latest entry from David Bordwell; but there's lots to chew on before he gets there.

Online browsing tip. PopSugar's got Annie Leibovitz's photos of celebs posing as fairy tale characters for Disney World's Year of a Million Dreams campaign. Via John Brownlee at Table of Malcontents.

Posted by dwhudson at January 29, 2007 7:44 AM