Shorts, 3/29.

In the Independent, Louise Jury hails the launch of Dirk Bogarde.co.uk. Created by Bogarde's nephew, Brock Van den Bogaerde, its 600 pages "a reminder of the literary as well as the acting output of the star of films including The Blue Lamp, Darling and Death in Venice, but also a glimpse into the private world of one of the 20th century's more complex leading men."

The Telegraph's John Hiscock talks with Danny Boyle about Sunshine. Via Movie City News.

"Paul Andrew Williams made a startling debut with low-budget Brit flick London to Brighton last December," writes Chris Tilly, reporting for Time Out on his second project: "The Cottage focuses on two brothers who kidnap an underworld figure and then stumble on a dark rural secret. Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith have signed up to star, with Jennifer Ellison and Steve O'Donnell lending support."

It takes quite a while for the San Diego Reader's Duncan Shepherd to finally get around to actually reviewing Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso, but the getting there is good. Then: "I would be much happier in my work if every week of the year I had to see a dusted-off reissue from 1962. Not a lot of them could be more rewarding than this one."

"Since 1915, slavery has been at the heart of some of filmdom's greatest productions, created by top talents ranging from showmen to artistes to blockbuster filmmakers to the Hollywood Ten. The buying and selling of human flesh has appeared onscreen in various forms, including 'white slavery,' but motion picture human bondage appears primarily in four film genres." A primer of sorts from Ed Rampell and Luis Reyes.

Also in the New York Press:

• "One of the finest American film debuts of the new century (and one of the least appreciated) is Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," declares Armond White. "Montiel turned a working-class memoir - an urban lament - into a poetic appreciation of the music, the almost-stifled feelings and near-tragedies of common life. All that is what's missing from Adam Sandler's respectful good try, Reign Over Me."

• Felicia Feaster: "Stupendously obvious in its divisions between patriot virtue and money-grubbing vice, Training Day director Antoine Fuqua's Shooter is cinema as purgative—a big-budget high colonic to the American political system and a sense of impotent rage against the machine."

• Jennifer Merin: "Air Guitar Nation's main thrust is fun, and it's a blast and a half of that."

• David Freeland on Music From the Inside Out: "The chief problem is that we never hear one extended orchestral piece without interruptions from the players themselves, who weigh in on such ineffable questions as 'What is music?'"

• While the movie at hand is The Hills Have Eyes 2, Eric Kohn asks Wes Craven about the future: "So you won't be sending Freddy Krueger to Iraq?" "Uh, no. But now that you mention it, can you sign this release?"

Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Adam Mars-Jones recalls a scene in The Straight Story in which Sissy Spacek's character looks out a window.

We see a pool of light under a street lamp. A ball rolls into it. Nothing happens for a few moments, and then a boy trots up to retrieve his ball. Later in the film it is explained that Spacek's character was bereaved of a child, which accounts for the intensity of her gaze but not the effect of the image on the audience. At this moment, [David] Lynch seems to be saying, "Tell the truth - weren't the images more beautiful when you didn't know what they 'meant'?" Well, yes and no. The images float free of the story. But they need a story to float free of.

You can probably see where this is going: "The story in Inland Empire is everywhere and nowhere.... Eraserhead may have been his most private film, but he cut twenty minutes, unprompted, after its first screening at a Los Angeles film festival. That is the aspect of David Lynch that I missed most of all during the three hours of Inland Empire."

"So where is this vibrant online doc community headed?" asks Jonny Leahan once he's listed and linked to several hubs of documentary-related activity at indieWIRE. "'I think it's clearly moving towards online distribution and exhibition of documentary content,' says [Doug] Block."

DK Holm iChats with Mike Russell about Serenity Tales, a Firefly fan comics site: "Russell is, uncharacteristically so among the common run of reviewers, a happy-go-lucky fellow who proudly wears his nerd cred on his sleeve.... He is also an example of that recent Internet phenomenon, someone who is both a good writer and a good artist, the sort of person who could only have blossomed in a forum such as the world wide web, where such dual talents can be simultaneously employed."

Also at ScreenGrab: Cobra Verde is "one of those lunatic endeavors that is hard to describe in any way that doesn't make it sound more interesting than it is to watch," writes Phil Nugent. "I saw strong men and women charge into that theater with the excitement of a bunch of kids at the carnival, only to file out two hours later in need of rest, refreshment, and the director's head."

"[T]hough The Page Turner clearly aims for ambiguity of meaning, you'd have to be blind, or deaf to the strenuously long-faced score, to miss the signs and portents that keep piling up in this dispiritingly transparent movie, which brandishes its foregone conclusion 20 minutes in," writes Ella Taylor. Also in the LA Weekly, Scott Foundas talks with Paul Verhoeven about Black Book.

Identity Theory film editor Matthew Sorrento revisits "a landmark in France's redefinition of the crime film," Elevator to the Gallows.

Matthew Clayfield: "Like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (perhaps the closest thing to Black this side of Duchamp's Étant donnés, which is saying something when you remember that Duchamp was himself the subject of one of the many conspiracy theories swirling around the bifurcated girl at the time), Black is a kind of memory play, quietly chilling in its revelations. It submerges itself in the Hollywood dream factory and, confirming our worst, unspoken suspicions, reveals it to be an abattoir." At the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne through Sunday.

"Sidney Poitier is his name, and elevating the ethical consciousness of American cinema is his game." David Sterritt on what we and he think of him now that Oprah's put him back in the spotlight again. Also at PopMatters, Bill Gibron on Glen Morgan and his remake of Bob Clarke's Black Christmas.

Ray Winstone's joined the cast of the upcoming fourth Indiana Jones film, reports the Guardian.

Also:

• "For some people, the return of Prick Up Your Ears to cinemas next week will be of little significance," writes Ryan Gilbey. "But for me, this biopic about the short life of the playwright Joe Orton is the catalyst for a tidal wave of ambivalent memories associated with the film's original release."

• "Back in the day, Song of the South might conceivably have been read as a warm-hearted salute to America's 'coloureds,'" blogs the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "Since then it's become a shameful embarrassment for the company, the equivalent of a racist old relation who can't be introduced to polite company." Now that Disney's considering re-introducing it after all, Brooks, who wonders and worries about not being bothered by the film when he saw it at the age of 9, wants to see it on DVD with adult eyes. Also: What are your favorite London movies?

• Katie Allen: "Tax incentives, a wealth of skills and a strong film-making heritage are continuing to draw Hollywood studios to Britain, according to Pinewood Shepperton, which unveiled forecast-beating results yesterday."

Online viewing tip. Ray Pride: "With Julia Loktev's gorgeously restrained Day Night Day Night showing at New Directors / New Films, cinematographer Benoit Debie's showreel is worth a peek, as well as this excerpt from Loktev's film."

Posted by dwhudson at March 29, 2007 9:44 AM