NYT, 4/15.

"The general picture that has emerged is one of Cubism bubbling up out of a thick Parisian stew of symbolist poetry, Cézanne, cafe society, African masks, absinthe and a fascination with all things mechanical and modern, mostly airplanes and automatons," writes Randy Kennedy. "But while almost every aspect of [Picasso and Georges Braque's] lives has been scrutinized - their friends, lovers, favorite drugs, hangouts, hat sizes and nicknames (Picasso called Braque Wilbourg, after Wilbur Wright) - one mutual fascination has been largely overlooked: Both men were crazy about the movies." The exhibition Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism will be on view at PaceWildenstein from Friday through June 23.

Dennis Lim calls up Slavoj Zizek to talk about The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. "Zizek has been the star of three documentaries in recent years - which is three more than your average Marxist-Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist." For this one, "He eagerly agreed to conduct what is in essence an illustrated film-studies lecture. The title springs from his assertion that cinema is 'the ultimate pervert art.' As he puts it: 'It doesn't give you what you desire. It tells you how to desire.'" Did you know that he's "a featured commentator on the new DVD for Children of Men, calling it a reflection of the 'ideological despair of late capitalism'"? And here's the best news: "He and [Sophie] Fiennes are also planning sequels. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is in the works, to be followed perhaps by The Pervert's Guide to Opera. (He's a fan.)"

"Jindabyne, which opens April 27, an Australian film directed by Ray Lawrence and starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney, is just the second full-length [Raymond] Carver feature - or even the first if, like some hard-line Carver purists, you don't count Robert Altman's Short Cuts, which came out 14 years ago," writes Charles McGrath. Jindabyne is "a movie that doesn't quite look like a movie: so natural seeming it's a little bleached out, and so understated in its acting that it's the screen equivalent of Carver's transparent, vernacular prose style."

Speaking of Altman, though, Terrence Rafferty looks back on The Long Goodbye, "neither a homage nor a deconstruction, though it contains elements of both. It's a film about transience, about the awful fragility of the things we want to think are built to last: friendships, marriages, faiths of all kinds - including the faith that pop culture can sometimes makes us feel in powerful fantasy figures like Marlowe and his jaunty, street-smart, superbly incorruptible ilk."

Scott Foundas, writing for Variety, found Stephanie Daley to be "a taut, provocative, sometimes overreaching but always absorbing thriller." Now, in a Q&A format a little unusual for the New York Times, Karen Durbin talks with writer-director Hilary Brougher.

Also in the NYT in the past few days:

• Jesse Mckinley attends Steven F Hayward's filmic debut, An Inconvenient Truth... or Convenient Fiction? It is a point-by-PowerPoint rebuttal of former Vice President Al Gore's global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.... 'I agree that we're warming,' he told a reporter, 'and I agree that we're playing a role in it. What I disagree with is his overall pessimism.'"

• Matt Zoller Seitz: "Dreaming Lhasa is a fine example of how feature films can be used to deliver urgent political messages, but as drama, it doesn't quite work."

• Stephen Holden finds Slow Burn to be "a wooden police thriller that is as dull as it is impenetrable and ultimately beyond ludicrous." More from Ed Gonzalez at Slant and Scott Weinberg at Cinematical.

• For Andy Webster, Redline is "about surfaces, for young men with testosterone to burn, and the racing passages snap." John Horn has a backgrounder in the LAT. "There's something agreeably psychotic about Redline," finds Cinematical's James Rocchi.

• Charles McGrath remembers cartoonist Johnny Hart (B.C.), "who died at his storyboard on Saturday at the age of 76, [retaining] a punning, gagman's sensibility."

• "For all their complexity, Hollywood labor talks have often boiled down to issues of leadership," writes Michael Cieply. Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America West, "has helped set a tone of wariness, if not outright anxiety, with his insistence on big solutions."

• Cieply again: "A surge in online promotion and the proliferation of unrated DVDs has eroded the entertainment industry's promise not to entice youth with violent fare, according to a Federal Trade Commission report on the marketing of violence to teenagers."

• Home viewing over at multimillionaire Bill Williams's place must be a fairly awesome if somewhat disturbing experience. Joyce Wadler reports.

• Caryn James: "[I]n a time when no public record or paparazzi snap is likely to stay hidden from snoopy Web sites, the cult of the invisible celebrity has become all but obsolete."

Earlier: "Friday the 13th."

Posted by dwhudson at April 15, 2007 5:51 AM