February 6, 2007

Shorts, fests, events. 2/6.

Nicole Brenez: Abel Ferrara Ferrara, Fassbinder, Pasolini. The three compact paragraphs Girish posts from Nicole Brenez's Abel Ferrara are simply stunningly good primers on all three.

Here's one you might want to save for the weekend or slurp all up right now; it's a long but quick read, though one that'll spark a few marathon thoughts. Matt Zoller Seitz and Keith Uhlich discuss "the death and rebirth of cinema" at the House Next Door.

"The wunderkind [Anders Thomas] Jensen's scripts are all schematic and prone to stock characters," writes Ed Gonzalez, "but they are soap operas after all - full of great sensitivity and compassion, even for the most fallible of human creatures - and After the Wedding is beautifully performed by its eager cast." Also in Slant, Rob Humanick on The Messengers and, again, Ed Gonzalez: Lights in the Dusk suggests what it might be like to stare at Bill Murray in a coma for 75 minutes."

"Perhaps what is most striking about Jia Zhang-ke's latest digital feature, Still Life," writes acquarello, "is its unexpected maturity, a marked evolution away from capturing the sad, eccentric tales of youthful indirection and cultural anachronism of contemporary Chinese life under an often contradictory, dual economy system that defined his earlier films towards a more somber - and classically humanist - portrait of anonymous, uprooted lives lived in the (un)certainty of state-sponsored phased extinction along the margins (and bowels) of China's profoundly transforming economic and physical landscape."

Final Score "Final Score is only the second Thai film to open this year, and by Thai standards is unusual," writes Peter Nellhaus. "Unlike the usual horror films or comedies, or horror/comedies that get national rollouts, this is a documentary. As it turned out, in addition to recording the life of several high school seniors, the film had unexpected drama from a nationwide scandal."

"[I]f the bad news out of Africa never seems to end, neither do the pop-cultural responses," writes Manohla Dargis. "It's hard enough to keep track of the globe-trotting [Angelina] Jolie, who has done more good in the world than most of the housebound pundits who poke fun at her. My problem is that I have almost bottomed out when it comes to films about Africa."

Also in the New York Times:

  • Why is it taking so long for the likes of Kimberly Peirce, Darren Aronofsky, David O Russell and Spike Jonze - in other words, the group of filmmakers Sharon Waxman wrote about in Rebels on the Backlot - to make movies, she wonders. Part of the problem, she hears, lies in the stakes: Failure is not an option. "More than any other factor, though, Hollywood veterans cite the absence of the kind of creative ferment that coursed through the Hollywood of the 1970s, the challenge that one cinematic triumph posed to other artists." The rest of the piece is spent pointing to this year's outstanding example of camaraderie in action: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo Del Toro. David Bordwell and Karina Longworth comment.

  • David M Halbfinger: "Presidential contenders, racing to show financial strength, have naturally turned first to Los Angeles, where Democrats have long found the lowest-hanging fruit: entertainment industry players who take their politics seriously and have the money to prove it." Meanwhile, for the Los Angeles Times, Jim Puzzanghera reports on Hollywood sending its messengers to DC: "Invited to the symposium 'The Business of Show Business' are members of Congress, federal and state officials, think-tank scholars and the media, who will get an earful from directors and moguls about the industry's global economic muscle, how movies are made and its challenges in the digital age." Related: The paper's crash course, "Hollywood 101."

  • Lewis Milestone's 1930 Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front is "a model of Oscar seriousness," writes Dave Kehr. "And because it tells the story of a brutal war from the point of view of the enemy, the film has been evoked by more than one contemporary Oscar pundit as proof that Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima stands a chance in this year's best-picture race." More DVDs: Susan King in the LAT.

  • Terrence Rafferty on the "oddly stirring" Hannibal Rising: "[W]ithout an implacable cop or an anguished profiler to provide a 'normal' societal perspective - something, anything, else for a viewer's fickle affections to latch on to - the monster has you all to himself; and warily, tentatively, gradually, you begin to see the world his way. It's as if you'd been exposed to a mild, multiplex-specific strain of the Stockholm Syndrome." Related: Matt Singer at IFC News on prequels past.

Dancing Joni
  • "She is in possession of one of the most extraordinary song catalogs of the past half-century. Her chords break harmonic rules, have no technical names and defy Western musical theory. Her voice is an instrument that has grown sublimely heavier and huskier over the decades." Now, after ten years of relative silence, Joni Mitchell is back - with a ballet, an exhibition, a documentary and, yes, a new album. David Yaffe has a longish visit with an extraordinary woman.

  • Caryn James riffs on "why Edie is having another cultural moment, or how her slick Warholian fame has metamorphosed into a more complicated legend that speaks to the present."

  • Laura M Holson on what's going on at DreamWorks: "[Steven] Spielberg, who rarely speaks out about such corporate matters, is concerned that the studio he built with the music impresario David Geffen and the movie executive Jeffrey Katzenberg is losing its identity, something he has furiously fought to protect." David Poland comments.

Back to the LAT: Patrick Goldstein celebrates the friendship of Randy Newman and John Lasseter.

"It would seem that movies are inherently too much like dreams to escape the literal, subjective-perspective analogy for long," writes Michael Atkinson for IFC News. The Science of Sleep "is a love song to the developmentally arrested, mixing and matching levels of consciousness while adhering carefully to Freud's faith in desire as a motivating force - desire for romance, for fame, for emotional justice, for a parent's unconditional love." Also, Vibrator is "already one of 2007's best 'releases,' and another point in the argument for acknowledging DVDs as the new and viable alternative-exhibition platform."

Brandy Agerbeck has a "graphic facilitation" and a few notes on Errol Morris's talk at the Chicago Humanities Festival last year: "An interesting aspect about the Abu Ghraib project is that Morris has the opportunity to interview the photographers. We have an opportunity for more context than just the images themselves." Via Jason Kottke.

David Walsh at the WSWS on Letters From Iwo Jima: "According to the 'principle of counterpoint,' perhaps only an Eastwood, rightly or wrongly associated in the past with a patriotic and 'law-and-order' outlook, could have gotten away with this film. Nevertheless, it took a certain amount of courage."

Erich Kuersten, blogging at Bright Lights After Dark, is bugged by a certain "trouble I believe lies with the vanguard cinema studies professors. Bloodied from their battles with stodgy literature professors over the worthiness of 'pop culture' as a field of study, they seek to deaden the levity of their material, assuming that dourness and authority go hand in hand."

The Unseeable At Twitch, Stefan is relieved to see The Unseeable. For him, it works: "My faith in Wisit Sasanatieng continues, and I for one am eagerly anticipating his take on the martial arts genre with Armful, currently in production."

Anne Thompson in the Hollywood Reporter: "Screenwriter-director Rian Johnson has cast Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi to join Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz in Endgame Entertainment's The Brothers Bloom, an international con man adventure that is Johnson's follow-up to 2005's teen film noir Brick."

"People believe [9/11 conspiracy film] Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small," writes George Monbiot, drawing a firestorm of comments. "Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues - global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality - while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously."

Also in the Guardian and Observer:

  • Ed Pilkington meets Mia Farrow: "I can't help thinking that she sacrificed a huge chunk of her career by working with just one director - her partner, to boot. Take Crimes and Misdemeanours: a great, dark film but a completely unmemorable part for Farrow. But she is having none of it. "OK, my part was inconsequential and not at all satisfying, but it was his best film to date, quite chilling.'"

  • Peter Preston: "'The British are coming' in hundreds of headlines. This is the big league, and we're in it. But winning over there on the night of the long carpets and tremulous speeches has a clear cost as well as a cosy glow."

  • What's more, "is the portrait of Britain painted by this year's strong turnout a genuine snapshot of UK filmmaking talent or a picture postcard of cabbages and queens?" asks Mark Kermode.

  • Carole Cadwalladr talks with Simon Pegg about Hot Fuzz and more.

Speaking of Brits and winners, the Evening Standard's Tom Teodorczuk reports on his paper's British Film Awards. At the top of the list: United 93, Daniel Craig and Judi Dench.

Nathaniel R has now filled out all of the over 40 categories in the "06 Film Bitch Awards," one of the most elaborately designed year-end lists out there, a real pleasure to browse.

Shattered Glass Movie of the week for Lance Mannion and James Wolcott: Shattered Glass.

At In These Times, Erin Polgreen recommends the "funny, fast-paced and engaging record of contemporary politics in the United States," Can Mr Smith Get to Washington Anymore?

A Judy Davis list from Dan Callahan at the House Next Door: "These five films I've picked focus mainly on her TV work, and some things that might be lesser known, or underappreciated."

"This past week, Robert Greenwald was the keynote speaker at the Center for Social Media's 'Making Documentary Matter' conference." And Doug Block passes along Docs in Progress co-founder Erica Ginsberg's notes.

That Little Round-Headed Boy presents "75 Reasons I Love The Music Of John Williams."

Fests and events:

The Rape of the Sabine Women

Accepting submissions through April 16: The Waterfront Film Festival screenplay competition.

Out today: The Journal of Short Film, Volume 6.

Good heavens. Look at all these upcoming Blog-a-Thons. Andy Horbal's got a list.

Online viewing tip. David Poland has lunch with Jackie Earle Haley. Related, Paul Matwychuk: "But oh my God, what levels of abasement his character had to descend in order to earn Haley that Oscar nod!"



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Posted by dwhudson at February 6, 2007 12:46 PM