Shorts, 3/9.

"I've just read Judy Stone's new book of interviews, Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World," writes Sara Scheiron in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "'How do you prepare your questions?' I ask. 'I don't,' she replies as I stare down at my list of prepared questions. 'But don't let that intimidate you.'"

"2 ou 3 choses could comprise a postmodern analysis of contemporary culture - a filmic expression of sociological cryptology à la McLuhan, Baudrillard, and Mike Davis - if in fact Godard were a scholar instead of a fellow human being and a textual voyager, seeking out a cinema that awakens us to our surroundings instead of anesthetizes us with sensation," writes Michael Atkinson in the Boston Phoenix. "The late 60s are gone, but Godard's concerns remain electrically pertinent."

"At one point I was great in Godard's eye. Now I'm descended," Abbas Kiarostami tells Keith Uhlich at the House Next Door. "We shouldn't take such comments very seriously. The films that last are determined by time.... I saw some films recently by a filmmaker I respected when I was young, and I couldn't believe it. I didn't like them at all."

Jonathan Rosenbaum notes that the New Yorker's David Denby has, shall we say, shifted gears somewhat regarding Kiarostami - and draws comments.

The most interesting films of the 1970s explored various aspects of the existential antihero in varying totalitarian milieus: Terrence Malick's Badlands, Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Roman Polanski's Chinatown, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, and Bernardo Bertolucci's three great films, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, and Novecento, each of which examines perspectives on the human condition menaced by totalitarianism, each offering a particular insight into the fascist mind." Robert Philbin, nthposition, via wood s lot.

"For some part of you, every viewing of a movie is the first viewing." David Bordwell tangles with the question of why it is we feel suspense (if that is indeed what we're feeling) when we know how a movie ends.

"Wong Kar Wai and Stanley Kwan, two of Hong Kong cinema's leading directors are to team up for a light hearted lesbian comedy about two highschool girls in Taiwan," reports Kung Fu Cult Cinema.

For indieWIRE, Jason Guerrasio checks in on a handful of indies in production: Renji Philip's Antique, Ricardo Scipio's Finder of Lost Children, Johnny Asuncion's Float, Tim Sternberg's Salim Baba and Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me.

The Tailenders "is a provocative and beautifully constructed examination of how messages are carried, translated, and received," writes Doug Cummings. Also: The Legend of Time and The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On.

Jeannette Catsoulis: "Set in 1987, in the waning years of Communist Yugoslavia, Rajko Grlic's Border Post is a profane and playful military drama about boredom, duty and the consequences of reckless lust." Also: "Reeking of self-righteousness and moral reprimand, Michael O Sajbel's Ultimate Gift is a hairball of good-for-you filmmaking coughed up by 20th Century Fox's new faith-based label, Fox Faith. If the goal is to attract Christian dollars to the multiplex, perhaps insulting the artistic sensibilities of their owners is not the best way to go."

And also in the New York Times:

• Beyond the Gates is "a harrowing recounting of the 1994 Rwandan genocide," writes Stephen Holden. "Though less reassuring and not as dramatically coherent as Hotel Rwanda, it still packs a hard punch."

• Dave Kehr on The Prisoner of Zenda and The White Gorilla. More DVDs: The Voice's J Hoberman on Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to Perestroika and a roundup at Stop Smiling.

• "Equus opened last week, and the consensus so far is that [Daniel] Radcliffe has successfully extricated himself from his cinematic alter ego," writes Sarah Lyall in the New York Times. "Considering that playing Harry Potter is practically all he has done in his career, this is no small achievement."

  Sharon Waxman: "The journey of Henry Winterstern is a classic Hollywood tale: of this town's irresistible lure, the particular hunger it breeds and the hubris that so often leads to a sudden demise. But this rapid rise and fall came with some trendy hedge-fund trimmings."

As Tony Blair starts packing his bags, the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw blogs, "There's absolutely no doubt that Blair's government has not merely taken the arts seriously, but taken cinema seriously as a vital constituent of the arts, and was able to channel large amounts of lottery dosh to make more of our movies happen, though with a sometimes controversially elastic concept of what constitutes a British film."

Also in the Guardian:

• Karina Mantavia: "Nishabd shows it is still possible to make mainstream movies about difficult subjects, despite the intellectual snobbery over Bollywood."

• "The way that this spring's slew of Jane Austen adaptations are being marketed, you'd be forgiven for thinking that all Austen ever wrote about was Love, and How to Find It," writes Kathryn Hughes. "What all these one-note adaptations miss is that Austen's books are really not about love, but money." Related: Wendy Ide generally approves of Becoming Jane in the London Times, where she also talks with director Julian Jarrold.

• Ryan Gilbey finds Hal Hartley in Berlin and asks him what he's been up to.

• Stuart Jeffries on why Days of Glory "has been a revelation in France."

Back at the House: Matt Zoller Seitz on Zodiac; more from Michael Joshua Rowin at Reverse Shot.

Tom Sutpen at Flickhead on Neal Gabler's Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination: "[E]very film brought forth under his imprimatur - good, bad, breathtaking, horrible, mind-numbingly awful or jaw-droppingly beautiful - was informed by a distinct, entirely lucid sensibility... True, in later life he did give himself over to empire building with the construction of Disneyland and the planning of what became known as Disney World and EPCOT - endeavors that, it should be noted, were not without their own aesthetic components - and he became something of a cheerleader for industrial capital and a ponce for the more misguided strains of post-war anti-Communism. But by the force of his will (not to mention the promiscuity of his creative suggestions) he expressed himself through the toil of others up to the moment of his passing, even beyond it in some cases. His art, difficult as it was, long outlived him."

Daniel Garrett at the Compulsive Reader on Catherine Tatge's doc on Kerry James Marshall. And for nat creole. magazine, "I think the world is a more honest and hopeful place for having works such as Babel in it."

"Today, Paul Robeson seems impossible," writes Cynthia Fuchs for PopMatters.

In the LA Weekly, Andrew Tracy talks with Philip Gröning about Into Great Silence and Scott Foundas asks Danièle Thompson about Avenue Montaigne.

You'll have heard of "Nollywood, Nigeria's film industry," notes Alex Hannaford. "It produces more than 750 video films a month - far more than Hollywood and Bollywood." But he also meets Tunde Kelani, who tells him, "'Nollywood is just one type of film-making in Nigeria. In the south-west, they make films in the Yoruba language, with actors from a travelling theatre tradition. In the north, they're being made in the Hausa language. Then there's the independent cinema that I'm a part of.'"

Also in the Independent, James Mottram meets Steven Soderbergh.

Jeffrey Overstreet: "Movies That Changed My Life."

A top ten at ScreenGrab accompanied by clips: "The Most Dangerous Films Ever Made."

At the AV Club: "13 Movies featuring magical black men."

Nathaniel R's latest top ten: "Art in the Movies."

Online reading tips. A guided browse from the Self-Styled Siren.

Online listening tip. On the Leonard Lopate Show, Michael Feinstein talks about Soundies, "three-minute black-and-white films featured big band, jazz and swing-era artists," and "forerunners to the music video."

Online viewing tips. Kate Stables rounds up a batch for the Guardian.

Posted by dwhudson at March 9, 2007 12:37 PM