February 19, 2007

Shorts, 2/19.

The Number 23 "The Number 23 didn't have to be as narcotizingly bad as it is," writes David Edelstein in New York. "The stars had to be in perfect alignment."

Girish summarizes Emilie Bickerton's piece in the Nov/Dec 06 issue of the New Left Review on Cahiers du Cinema.

David Lowery on David Lynch's Hotel Room: "I tracked down a copy of it the other day, to refresh my memory, and found in it evidence of a prominent throughline stretching out in both directions, across Lynch's entire career."

Zach Campbell opens an exchange with Matt Clayfield on Cassavetes.

The Liverputty team's enthusiams for all things samurai is so abundant that their appreciation of Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy has spilled over to the House Next Door: 1, 2 and 3.

"I was raised behind walls in Mexico City, but still ran the streets like a rat part-time, a beady-eyed troll among big-eyed statuettes glazed in snot," writes Booker prize-winner DBC Pierre. "Surrealist director Luis Buñuel was the instrument it took to publicly articulate the truth about poverty in that city, that absence of love.... Los Olvidados took barely three weeks to make in 1950 on a shoestring budget, but hit the world screen like a fist through plate glass."

Also in the Guardian:

Tennessee Williams: Notebooks

"In the arresting Private Property (Nue Propriété), Belgian director Joachim Lafosse makes the most of [Isabelle] Huppert's versatility," writes Matt Riviera.

"Three decades after his death, Pasolini is ripe for reappraisal," argues Ian Thomson in the Telegraph.

"In order to work out what makes [Lukas] Moodysson tick, [a] priest, [a] psychoanalyst and a psychic watched his new feature Container several times and wandered round the bizarre art installation that he created to accompany it. Inside the Container Crypt, a documentary, records their observations," writes Geoffrey Macnab. Also in the Independent: Lesley O'Toole meets Virginia Madsen.

Don't You Forget About Me "The genius of quintessential [John] Hughes is that the movies are impossible not to take personally," writes Joal Ryan, reviewing Don't You Forget About Me, a collection of essays.

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Gina Piccalo: "Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary about pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady and his devastating California legacy, has earned its filmmaker multiple awards and an Oscar nomination. Now the film is kicking up new controversy and litigation from LA to Ireland, where O'Grady now lives." And Marla Dickerson on Mexico's swanky new movie theaters.

Michael Wood writes an appreciation of Kurosawa in the London Review of Books.

"At 44, [David] Fincher remains Hollywood's reigning bad-boy auteur, and his impatience with meddling has become as famous as his tendency to test his actors' patience, stamina and preparation." David M Halbfinger explains why, for Fincher, Zodiac "isn't just any old serial-killer story."

Also in the New York Times:

  • Alan Riding on why Amazing Grace may be received differently in the US and the UK.

  • Dave Kehr: "Hollywood is notorious for abandoning its past, but luckily there are people like Bob Burns around to pick it up, put it in a cardboard box and take it home."

  • "Ugandans are struck by [Forest] Whitaker's likeness to [Idi] Amin, and moved by the scenes of an era they would like to forget. They are proud that one of this year's surprise Hollywood hits was about their country and filmed in their country. Now, nearly five months after its release in the United States, it has finally landed here - and landed in style." Jeffrey Gettleman reports.

  • Maria Aspan reports that a high-pitched sound that teens can hear but adults can't has been used in ads for The Messengers.

  • "[I]n Hollywood and on Wall Street, some question the focus at New Line," reports Sharon Waxman.

Reviews:

Breach

"Days of Glory's rote narrative and perfunctory filmmaking have it destined for dismissal, but the contemporary backdrop against which it has been released makes the film, at the very least, a potentially interesting political metaphor," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at Reverse Shot. More from Slate's Dana Stevens, Salon's Stephanie Zacharek and Robert Cashill.

Gabriela Zabala-Notaras and Ismet Redzovic at the WSWS on two recent features popular down in Australia: "As well intentioned and sympathetic as the filmmakers may be - and this is not unimportant - Kenny barely rises above an amalgam of clichés in the form of a full-length feature film. Suburban Mayhem, directed by Paul Goldman, seems inspired by the Tarantino school of filmmaking and is a poor attempt at subverting the so-called family values that are constantly peddled by the media and politicians."

Sujewa Ekanayake proposes a microinvesting model for DIY, ultra-low and no-budget films.

Devin Gordon in Newsweek: "Why TV Is Better Than The Movies."

"So, is [24] executive producer Joel Surnow simply Leni Riefenstahl with a soul patch?" wonders Matt Cornell at Cine File Video.

John O'Hara's Hollywood "Three new paperbacks tell us why we love movies, how directors make them, and what life in Hollywood might once have been like." Rachel Hartigan Shea in the Washington Post on Colin McGinn's The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact, George Stevens's Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood's Golden Age at the American Film Institute and John O'Hara's Hollywood: Stories by John O'Hara.

Stop Smiling runs an excerpt from José Teodoro's talk with Guy Maddin.

Online viewing tip. David Lowery has the trailer for Hou Hsiao-hsien's Ballon Rouge.



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Posted by dwhudson at February 19, 2007 8:57 AM