Shorts, 2/1.

"Is no one going to say that Robert Altman was a great pothead? Let me, then. Robert Altman was a great pothead. In the war on drugs, he won." So begins Michael Tolkin's appreciation in Artforum. There are stories about The Player here, of course ("some of his methods made sense, and if it was pot sense, the sense is not invalid"), and there's this, too:

There are directors whose movies are just delivery systems for their self-confidence, in which self-confidence is really the thing that entertains, because it takes a bold confidence to successfully tell a stupid story, and for sure there are useful energies we suck from awful films that begin with the director's amazing love of himself. The films of such directors are always the same, until they lose their confidence, and then their movies fail in every way - no fun for us, no money for them. Altman never told the same film twice.

My Name is Albert Ayler "throws open a door on the tumultuous world of a unique 20th-century musician," writes John Fordham in the Guardian.

"Fernando Meirelles and Edward Zwick take note: Amazing Grace is proof that liberal filmmakers can make movies that aren't desperate manifestations of their political guilt," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "Though he wears his heart on his sleeve, Michael Apted does so without apology, positing William Wilberforce's attempts to abolish slavery in Britain in the 18th century as a metaphor for the perpetual struggle of liberal humanists to affect change." Also, Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams.

Also at Slant:

• Nick Schager on Close to Home, "reportedly the first [film] to tackle the subject of Israeli women in the army" and "an occasionally fascinating glimpse inside a particular strata of Israeli life." Also, Severance.

• Rob Humanick: "Epic Movie is something of a wake-up call to how low our collective standards have really become, not to mention an alarming indicator of the narrowing gap between our present 2007 reality and Idiocracy's supposedly fictitious, less-than-flattering vision of 2505 (truly, at times there is no visible difference between this and the fictitious film Ass - a two-hour, single-take, Academy Award-winning shot of a flatulent gluteus maximus - featured in Mike Judge's Fox-aborted dystopian satire)." Also, Room 314.

Signandsight translates Heinz Schlaffer's piece for Die Welt on the rise of religious fundamentalism:

The Enlightenment has always suffered from one shortcoming, which today is its undoing: it has a stock of efficient ideas, but no impressive images. Enlightenment merely takes the form of writings and speeches, critical treatises and constitutional drafts. Enlightenment knows no cathedrals, no holy masses, no chorals or rituals in magnificent robes with which it can feed the perceptive organs of the present, the camera and the screen. In a word: Enlightenment is not television-compatible.

"In recent years, [Molly] Ivins - the unapologetically progressive and exuberantly feisty author and columnist - had become the go-to gal for documentarians seeking pithy and prickly commentary on Texas politics and politicians," writes Joe Leydon. "Indeed, she provided some of the brightest, sharpest and wittiest insights in movies as diverse as Bush's Brain, Last Man Standing and The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress. Her death at the ridiculously young age of 62 is a tragedy." More on a great American personality from Katharine Q Seelye in the New York Times - and of course, the Texas Observer.

Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega at Reverse Shot: "In the Pit may be understood as a political project that gives voices to the invisible pawns of society's underbelly. By doing so, the film unearths the exploitative dynamic of economic and social discrimination that characterizes the institutional policies of the Mexican government and exposes the perverted functioning of a contemporary social order in which class and race dictate who remains 'down there' and who escalates to the higher spheres."

"So, who was this graying character actor inhabiting the role with such natural authority, making split-second decisions in the heat of the moment without losing his cool, the very embodiment of the professionalism to which [Paul] Greengrass's film is, in part, a kind of tribute?" wondered Scott Foundas as he watched United 93. "As it happens, it was none other than Ben Sliney himself."

Also in the LA Weekly: "If director Hans-Christian Schmid's [Requiem] operates smartly outside the confines of the horror genre, its star inhabits her role with a fervor that borders on the terrifying." Adam Nayman calls up Sandra Hüller.

"I don't recall another year when I disliked all of the Best Picture nominees, and indeed regarded three of their number - Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima and Little Miss Sunshine - as among the year's most noxious emissions," writes Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. On the other hand, there's "Notes on a Scandal, which turns out to be one of the few Oscar candidates that I think richly deserves all of its nominations: Best Actress (Judi Dench), Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett), Score (Philip Glass) and, yes, Adapted Screenplay ([Patrick] Marber). In fact, I'd throw in two more nominations of my own: Best Picture and Cinematography (the brilliant Chris Menges)."

Deanna Zandt at Alternet on An Unreasonable Man: "All-in-all, it's a film that accomplishes quite a bit - documenting the history of the consumer advocacy movement, providing insight to the character and caricature of Ralph Nader, and above all, it lets us each answer the question it poses: How do you define a legacy?"

Jeremiah Kipp at the House Next Door: "Trouble Every Day is cinematically astonishing in ways that shame most films. It's a reminder of why we call them motion pictures: stories told through vivid, expressionistic images."

Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole was never a crowd-pleaser and still isn't. That much we know. But John McElwee tells the story of what Paramount tried to do about it, and you might be surprised: "[T]hey gave it every chance, with a campaign as aggressive as any mounted during 1951." As always at Greenbriar Picture Shows, fantastic photos illustrate.

"[T]hrough its Christianity iconography," Superman Returns "reinforces the very ideals Nietzsche rejected," argues Imran Siddequee in PopMatters. Batman Begins, on the other hand, "features a hero much closer to the Nietzschean ideal."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir talks with Philip Haas about his "compelling new Iraq war thriller," The Situation. So does Jennifer Merin for the New York Press.

"I ask myself, can a generation used to learning elaborate strategies for videogames and reading the various icons that appear during their fast action really be so unable to deal with some words on a movie screen?" wonders Kristin Thompson. "Still, seeing Pan's Labyrinth reminded me that we are now at the beginning of the spring semester in many colleges and universities. Almost any professor teaching introductory film courses is no doubt hearing some familiar complaints. Why do we have to watch films with subtitles? Why do we have to watch black-and-white films? Why do we have to watch silent films?"

Kevin Smith: "My Top Ten Films of 2006." His #1: The Departed. Via Jason Kottke.

Descending Ashtray lists its "Top 5 Movies About Artists." Via Coudal Partners.

Posted by dwhudson at February 1, 2007 1:40 PM