Shorts, fests, etc, 3/15.

David Bordwell notes that JJ Murphy's got excerpts from his book, Me and You and Memento and Fargo: How Independent Screenplays Work at his site: "JJ shows how they obey mainstream conventions of construction while still innovating in other ways. I especially like his discussions of Hartley's Trust, Korine's Gummo, and Lynch's Mulholland Dr. I think it's a book that everyone interested in current American cinema would find stimulating."

"My Twentieth Century could be described as a sort of Hungarian equivalent of Latin American 'magic realism," writes Steven Shaviro, "except - though this may be no more than what has to be the case, when Garcia Marquez's Columbia is exchanged for [Ildiko] Enyedi's Hungary, or when the novel as a medium is exchanged for film - that My Twentieth Century's fantasmagoria is altogether more spectral, more hauntological, than that with which we are so familiar from South American fiction. The ghosts of old Europe continue to stalk through the fabulous inventions of modernity, even as Enyedi makes what is perhaps the first post-Communist film by hearkening back to the pre-Communist world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire."

"Avant-garde cinema would be nothing without its visionary eccentrics, and Harry Smith (1923 - 1991) ranks high on both counts," writes Nathan Lee in the Voice.

Zach Campbell: "[S]eeing the early works (from the pre-Koker days) simply widens our eyes to Kiarostami's capabilities, his range, even as it simultaneously presents deeper burrowings into the obsessions, pathways, and tics of the AK oeuvre."

Film noir "holds that the force of the world is not only indifferent to, but obviously bigger than, the individual, which is why personal satisfaction, whether illegal or immoral, is the solution to the obligatory ride through an unavoidably brittle universe," argues Stanley Crouch in Slate. "Possessed of a shrewd aesthetic that was both meretricious and rebellious, film noir generously utilized sex and violence, firmly rooting itself in American culture."

Eric Skillman for Criterion: "When I was designing the cover for Night and the City, I wanted to find a slightly different idiom to represent 'noir,' to get away from the pulpy, dime-novel look that's normally associated with that era and style. (Something I think illustrator Geoff Grandfield achieved brilliantly with his recent cover for Green for Danger, by the way.) I love that pulpy style on Raymond Chandler novels, but to me, most old film noir posters in that style pale in comparison to how artfully the films themselves are shot."

Acquarello: "Evoking the films of Carlos Saura in its allegorical portraits of culturally entrenched social and psychological landscapes (most notably, in The Hunt) coupled with Luis Buñuel's wry excoriation of the bourgeoisie, Mario Camus's The Holy Innocents presents a caustic and potent indictment of the inhumanity (and corruption) of privilege, class stratification, and marginalization."

"The most harrowing sequences show stone-faced pedestrians huddling in their overcoats as they step over frozen corpses littering the sidewalks." Stephen Holden on Blockade - and on Amateur Photographer.

Also in the New York Times:

• "A documentary grab bag of film clips, diary readings and desultory narration, A Journey of Dmitry Shostakovich peeks at the politics of this controversial composer," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. "Yet absent any kind of narrative discipline, the movie is ultimately as ambiguous and impenetrable as its subject."

• AO Scott on The Go Master: "Gorgeously shot, moving through the decades in a gentle adagio, it is less a chronicle than a tribute - and also, to non-initiates in the game of go, a bit of a puzzle."

• Sharon Waxman: "A frayed relationship between the major studios and exhibitors, cost-cutting across the board and consolidation among the national theater chains has turned a promotional event for big-budget movies [ShoWest] into one that is not promoting very many big-budget movies." More from Leonard Klady at Movie City News.

• Richard Severo remembers Betty Hutton. More from Glenn Kenny, James Urbaniak and, in the Guardian, Ronald Bergan; also: Remembering Peer Raben.

• David Carr: "Under the New Times (now renamed Village Voice Media), The Voice, which has always been the home to permanent revolution, continues to flop from one crisis to another."

Ann Hui "is something of a rarity among her generation of Hong Kong directors, which includes John Woo, Tsui Hark and Wong Kar-wai," writes AS Hamrah in the Boston Phoenix. "Although she sometimes work in the same genres they do, her films are contemplative where theirs are overwrought, nutty, or arty."

"When people decry the Western canon as being about dead white males, they're (partially) right," admits Jim Emerson. "But there are other canons that are even more exclusive, and most of the greats are... well, still great. We live in an age where we know there's a lot more to art, and art history, than the Western canon, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't value it as much as ever."

Keith Uhlich in Slant: "Winner of the 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Padre Nuestro unfortunately lives down to the dubious nature - with a few notable exceptions - of that so-called honor." Also, Robert Keser: "Neither the light-hearted bonbon it aspires to be nor a credible critique of celebrity culture, the trivialized Color Me Kubrick tastes more like a brackish lollipop, after which audiences may well crave a few hours with Full Metal Jacket to cleanse the palate."

"Two thousand and six may go down in history as The Year We Got Scared," writes Judith Lewis in a piece for the LA Weekly in a piece on Hollywood's newly found environmentalism that strikes a few chords Michael Cieply hit the other day in the NYT.

Also in the LAW: Ella Taylor on Beyond the Gates and David Cotner on El Topo and The Holy Mountain; and Luke Y Thompson talks with Nathan Baesel, director of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. More on that one from Rob Humanick at Slant.

At european-films.net, Boyd van Hoeij talks with Saverio Costanzo about In Memory of Myself and "the themes and transformations that make this apparently religious tale really a story for and about everyone."

Michael Wood in the London Review of Books on The Lives of Others: "Wiesler does not find virtue or moral salvation; he finds, through the sheer patience and persistence of his spying, through the long, narrow act of abnegation that is his life, a form of humanity he can approach only vicariously, a world where the pleasures of 'being friendly,' in Brecht's phrase, do still exist against all the odds, and are not a mere mask or lure for corruption."

Vitor Pinto talks with François Ozon for Cineuropa.

"Don Cheadle has solidified five feature film projects that he'll produce and star in," reports Variety's Michael Fleming. "Among them is a biopic of jazz legend Miles Davis, on which he plans to make his feature directing debut."

Calum Waddell talks with Nick Bicanic about Shadow Company for Kamera.

In the Independent Weekly: Godfrey Cheshire on The Death of Mr Lazarescu.

Wiley Wiggins: "I can't stress enough how effective Hiroshi Segawa's photography is in this film, and what a call to see films like this in the cinema and not on television Woman in the Dunes is. I can hardly think of another movie that has so many layers of meaning that are communicated almost solely with visuals."

"With the box-office and artistic success of Pan's Labyrinth and Volver, there's probably no better time for the American Cinematheque to bring out its Recent Spanish Cinema XIII," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. And on March 29: Bangkok (site); related: Jerry Lentz captures a winning moment.

Gary Arnold previews the Kenji Mizoguchi Masterworks series for the Washington Times.

Fun reading from Dennis Cozzalio: "The Best of Professor Jenning's Milton-Free Holiday Midterm."

Attention, screenwriters: Deadline for the free Fade In Central European Pitch Forum is May 15.

Online viewing tip. The trailer for Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow. Thanks, Jerry!

Online viewing tips, round 1. The Clive James Show at Slate.

Online viewing tips, round 2. ScreenGrab's list of the "Kinkiest Films Ever Made," parts 1 and 2.

Posted by dwhudson at March 15, 2007 1:46 PM