Shorts, 2/28.

"Jonathan Beller's new (but long in preparation) book, The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle, is, I think, the most important work of film theory since Deleuze's two Cinema volumes appeared more than two decades ago," writes Steven Shaviro. "Or, even better, forget the qualifier 'film': Beller's book is the first important work of aesthetics, or of 'theory' generally, of the new century.... Nobody who wants to deal seriously with the fate of 'culture' in this age of astonishing new technologies, and equally overwhelming new mutations in the forms of exploitation and domination, will be able to ignore this book." The crux, suggested, of course, by the title: "We have passed, in the course of the past century, from an industrial mode of production to a cinematic one." Shaviro also points approvingly to Le Colonel Chabert's take.

At SF360, Michael Guillén recommends Cinemachismo: Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film, "a thoroughly captivating study, and essential reading for anyone interested in Mexican film, gender studies, and theories of queer spectatorship."

The film studies syllabus as mixed tape: Andy Horbal takes this idea to places you're not expecting to go.

Leah Garchik has more on that pre-Oscar screening of Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth in the San Francisco Chronicle. That guest list is something else. Via Movie City News.

"Amir Muhammad's latest film Apa Khabar Orang Kampung, which documents the stories of former Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) members, has been banned," reports Bissme S for the Malaysian Sun. "The 72-minute film which earlier this month premiered at the Berlin Film Festival features interviews with about ten Malay members of the now defunct CPM who currently live in exile in southern Thailand. This is the second film by Amir which has been banned since May last year."

Fernando F Croce adds King Vidor's The Crowd to Slant's collection of "100 Essential Films": "As the follow-up to the director's successful WWI drama The Big Parade, the film was intended as a vast, ambitious work, yet for all the overreaching themes at play here, it is supremely intimate."

Michael Z Newman expands on his piece in In Media Res, "Indie Volkswagons on Screens Big and Small."

In Filmmaker, Justin Lowe tells the story behind Colma: The Musical, "an upstart indie produced on a shoestring budget in the San Francisco Bay Area that has built a groundswell of support on the festival circuit over the last year, earning awards and prominent placement on year-end critics' lists."

"Only recently have movies begun to crack one of Hollywood's most troubling and least openly discussed problems: an international 'color line' behind which films relying on black stars often do not perform well," writes Michael Cieply. "The box office prowess of Dreamgirls overseas will help signal whether this newfound success is fleeting or more lasting."

Also in the New York Times, Laurie Goodstein reports on the controversy among archeologists and Christians kicked up by The Lost Tomb of Jesus, the James Cameron-produced doc that "claims to provide evidence that a crypt unearthed 27 years ago in Jerusalem contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth." Related: In the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries looks into the history of past discoveries of supposedly holy relics.

The team that brought us The Departed is busily announcing new projects. William Monahan is working on a final draft of The Long Play, "the story of two friends who survive 40 years in the music business, from 60s R&B to contemporary hip-hop," according to the Guardian's Dan Glaister. Mick Jagger, who's producing, brought the project to Martin Scorsese. Also: Monahan's teaming up with Leonardo DiCaprio for another remake of a film by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, Confession of Pain.

Meanwhile, the Alejandro González Iñárritu vs Guillermo Arriaga feud rages on. Jo Tuckman reports.

Ray Pride: "Proposition screenwriter, murder balladeer and all-round mustache man Nick Cave talks new projects with Bernard Zuel in the Sydney Morning Herald upon the release of a new album by a four-piece group drawn from his Bad Seeds that he's calling Grinderman."

Erica Orden interviews Miranda July for the New York Sun, and Ted Z notes that an adaptation of her multimedia performance piece, Things We Don't Understand and Definitely Are Not Going to Talk About may be July's next film project.

More up-n-coming news at Cinematical:

• Monika Bartyzel on an adaptation of John Searles's Strange But True.

• Ryan Stewart has news of Danny Boyle's followup to Sunshine. Also, a remake of Scanners and Robert Downey Jr's joined the cast of Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder.

• Erik Davis notes that Alan Arkin's joined the cast of Get Smart, starring Steve Carrell; also, a remake of Weekend at Bernie's?

• Jessica Barnes on an adaptation of Max Brooks's World War Z: An Oral History of The Zombie War.

For Keith Uhlich, Bamako "does as much to resist its rhetoric as to support it. What emerges is a grander agenda: not just reclaiming Africa's economic well-being, but its very sense of self." Also at the House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz on John Frankenheimer's The Train, "one of the most influential yet least-appreciated great movies."

Rob Nelson in the Voice: "Sex and power, seized and stifled, are the intertwined subjects of Raise the Red Lantern."

"'Kamikaze documentary' - that was the phrase used by more than one critic when Kazuo Hara's bristling, intensely odd film The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On cut its slim but recalcitrant swath through the world's theaters in 1987," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC News. "It earns the label." More: "Although made entirely from footage shot in the 80s, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On rests alongside films like Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain and Kinji Fukasaku's Under the Flag of the Rising Sun as a devastating denunciation of Japan's participation in war," writes Steve Erickson for Nerve. More from Mark Asch in the L Magazine.

The Self-Styled Siren reviews Frances, featuring "the finest performance Jessica Lange ever put on film," and "The Strange Fame of Frances Farmer."

"Despite the wonders of his earlier work (City Lights and Modern Times are brilliant) the discontinuity present in [Monsieur Verdoux] takes the film to a new level," writes John Adair. "Not only does it breathe new life into Chaplin's onscreen persona, but it traverses new ground by examining the dark underbelly of a Depression-era, Capitalist, and warmongering society."

John Brownlee reports for Wired News on the ways "artists have explored the legacy of silent cinema, not as a dusty anachronism but as a rich medium from which lessons about music, performance and art can be drawn." Via Bill McClain at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope.

For the New York Observer, Sara Vilkomerson looks ahead to the movies of spring.

"CNN asked the '08 hopefuls [for, you know, the presidency] to name their favorite movie and got some provocative answers," notes Robert Stein. Via Mick LaSalle, who comments.

Steve Bryant charts (literally) the way his media intake has radically changed in just the past couple of years and argues, "Hollywood's current course - spending more money on fewer blockbusters - only distances it from the consumption habits of Americans. Embrace immediacy."

"[Nathan] Gardels and [Michael] Medavoy's analysis of Hollywood vs foreign films falls into a common pattern within journalistic writing on entertainment," writes Kristin Thompson. "As soon as some trend or apparent trend is spotted, the commentator turns to the content of the films to explain the change. If foreign or indie films dominate the awards season, it must be because blockbusters have finally outworn their welcome. If foreign or indie films decline, it must be because audiences want to retreat from reality into fantasy."

Online viewing tip #1. trailer for Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, screening at the IFC Center at the end of March.

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Maxed Out.

Online viewing tips. ScreenGrab's "10 Best Nude Scenes of 2006," parts 1 and 2.

Posted by dwhudson at February 28, 2007 3:27 PM