Shorts, 6/19.

James Campbell, in a piece for the Times Literary Supplement calling for the publication of James Baldwin's letters, quotes from one written during an ill-fated Hollywood adventure:

Towards the end of 1968, he commented on his lengthy battle with producers at Columbia Pictures, by whom he had been hired to write the script for a film about Malcolm X:

I hope that they have finally understood the point of my intransigence and are reconciled to the fact that, in essence, they are merely privileged to pay for a movie which I have been hired to make. I have never encountered among any group of people a more eery sense of reality. The California sun has scrambled their brains, the swimming pools have clogged their ears.... They are not wicked: they are simply sublimely incompetent.

The film was never made, though the script was published in 1972 as One Day When I Was Lost (Spike Lee's 1992 film about Malcolm X included a credit to Baldwin).

Via Dwight Garner. Very related, good stuff: An entry from Peter Scholtes, posted last year and chock full of further pointers.

Darren Hughes raises a glass and calls for "A Toast to Cinephilia!" Why? Let him tell you. Terrific story.

Wishing Roger Ebert a happy 65th yesterday, Facets Features pulled up a 1979 one-on-one with Ebert and Werner Herzog.

"Marc Forster will direct the 22nd James Bond film." And of course, Daniel Craig's on board. Michael Speier reports for Variety, where Peter Gilstrap has this: Michael Apted will direct The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment in the Narnia series. Andrew Adamson, who directed the first, has also directed the second, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.

Tom Hall has a first peek at "Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte De Noël (Tale of Christmas), starring long-time Desplechin collaborator Mathieu Amalric and the luminous Catherine Deneuve."

"William Friedkin's notoriously lurid 1980 thriller Cruising will be getting a theatrical run in New York, LA and San Francisco the first week of September just prior to its debut on DVD." The New York Post's Lou Luminick has more.

David Bordwell considers how late 19th century narrative painting informed early cinema's approach to staging and composition.

"[F]or all the time and dedication [Yoichi] Sai gave to the project, it's a shame to report that the resulting film is a tremendous disappointment." Filmbrain on Blood and Bones.

"A frequent candidate for the finest martial arts movie ever made, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin has at last been rescued from the video bargain bins (where it has long languished under the title Shaolin Master Killer) and given a first-class release by the Weinstein Company's new Asian action label, Dragon Dynasty," cheers Dave Kehr, noting, too, that the "extras include an interview with Gordon Liu (recently seen in two roles in the Kill Bill films) and a commentary track by the musician RZA of Wu-Tang Clan (a Shaolin scholar of some standing) and the Los Angeles film critic Andy Klein."

Also in the New York Times: Though it isn't due in theaters until September, The Kingdom will be popping up here and there throughout the summer, evidently to test audience reactions. According to Michael Cieply, people are reacting well so far to a "popcorn movie" set in Saudi Arabia. Screenwriter Matthew Carnahan "said he wrote drafts that were far more political and 'nihilistic' than the finished film. And he fretted for a time that [director Peter] Berg's insistence on honoring basic values of the buddy-cop genre might be 'dumbing this movie down.' But, Mr Carnahan said, he also came to believe that wrapping his notions about shared responsibility for the world's ills 'in conventional movie plot and conventional movie characters' was the way to reach people."

And Thomas Lin profiles character actor Kim Chan, now in his 90s.

"After a few hours of labor pains, [Knocked Up] climaxes with the birth of what looks like a real live baby. Are newborns allowed to work in the movies?" Turns out, yes. Kathryn Lewis explains in Slate.

"It has been easy to underestimate and underappreciate Ken Loach, by far the most distinctive, profound and consistent filmmaker to work in Great Britain in the last 40 years," writes Michael Atkinson, reviewing the "paradigmatically Loachian" Raining Stones. Also, Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu is "a 'new silent' film, scrupulously faithful to HP Lovecraft's seminal Cthulhu tale (first published in 1928), that runs only 47 minutes but packs enough storytelling and energetic incident to fill out a miniseries."

"Ostensibly a film about the German occupation of Poland during World War II, [Andrzej] Zulawski takes a treatment written by his father (based on his personal experiences) and turns it into an emotionally loaded trip through the guilt of a young man, Michael, who has witnessed the death of his wife and child, himself escaping." Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica on The Third Part of the Night, Zulawski's feature debut and "one of the most powerful war films that I've ever seen at least."

"[S]he's an iconic figure in a country's consciousness, a figure known to millions in a cinema mad country, and one of their great artists. She is Helena Ignez, in New Zealand to celebrate the Cinema Novo at the Film Society, and is impressively known as the Muse of Cinema Novo." And Brannavan Gnanalingam talks with her for the Lumière Reader.

Emine Saner interviews Guillaume Canet for the Guardian.

"The filmmaker who's plunged headfirst into the brutal world of ultimate fighting is... David Mamet." Patrick Goldstein visits the set of Redbelt for the Los Angeles Times.

Dead Silence has Flickhead "spooked and amused from beginning to end."

"Cinematographer Alex Thomson passed away on the 14th," notes Faisal A Qureshi at ScreenGrab. "Thomson's work on Excalibur led to collaborations with some well-known directors such as Michael Mann (The Keep), Ridley Scott (Legend), Michael Cimino (Year of the Dragon) and David Fincher (he was brought in at the last minute on Alien 3). For me though, Thomson's finest work was on Kenneth Branagh's underrated Hamlet."

13 screenplays are set for this fall's Central European Pitch Forum.

Online grinning tip. Karl Hubbuch's 1932 drawing, The Film Star Spends Two Minutes in Her Parents' Garden.

Online browsing tip. Grace Weston's photography, via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #1. Larry Blamire "is currently having "way too much fun" writing, directing, and occasionally acting in his latest creation, Tales From the Pub, six episodes of which are presently available for free viewing on YouTube," reports Tim Lucas.

Online viewing tip #2. "[R]eal places, real people. For the travelogue alone, this gets my full five stars," writes Jason Scott. But the point of the "fantastic" Good Copy Bad Copy, of course, is its wide-ranging pulse-taking of the current state of intellectual property right now. And it's free to view, too. Via Waxy.org.

Online viewing tip #3. The Clintons.

Online viewing tips, round 3. "While it's morbidly amusing to imagine candidates groveling for LonelyGirl15's endorsement, YouTube is slyly attempting to appear democratic without actually accomplishing anything." At 10 Zen Monkeys, Lou Cabron rounds up "YouTube's 5 Sorriest Questions for the 2008 Presidential Candidates."

Online viewing tips, round 2. Mike Plante argues the case for Apart From That. Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

Posted by dwhudson at June 19, 2007 2:00 PM