Shorts, 7/16.

"Long unavailable on revival or official video circuits, Robert Bresson's first feature - made during the occupation in 1943 shortly after his one-year German imprisonment - was digitally restored by the Centre Nationale de la Cinématographie in 2005, screened at the Cannes Film Festival, and recently released on DVD by Éditions Gallimard." And Doug Cummings reviews Les Anges du Péché at Robert-Bresson.com: "Bresson would later disparage the film's melodramatic elements as well as its occasional theatrical acting, but what might have seemed like indulgence by his later standards has widely been recognized as restraint by others.... Moreover, the film projects a distinct Bressonian sensibility in its fascination with the darker side of religious life, not only the suffering and struggling that occurs between spirit and flesh, but also the psychological turmoil that can flourish within religious codes and institutions."

"A minor America: the term was used regarding the US films selected at the Cannes Film Festival - Zodiac by Fincher, Death Proof by Tarantino, No Country for Old Men by the Coen brothers and Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant," notes Hervé Aubron in Cahiers du cinéma. "Since then we've been wondering if this migration of concept described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their book, Kafka for Minor Literature (Minuit Publications, 1975) would hold up. It's not doing much better for the time being. It remains gimmickry, but it does have staying power, and is spreading to other recent American films, from Cronenberg to Shyamalan, Friedkin to Scorsese."

A special edition of the News Reel at Wim Wenders's official site: "20 Years of Wings of Desire."

"The cinema added something invaluable to the romantic comedy: the camera's ability to place lovers in an enchanted, expanding envelope of setting and atmosphere." How, wonders David Denby, have we come from an era in which the "best directors of romantic comedy in the 1930s and 40s - Frank Capra, Gregory La Cava, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks, Mitchell Leisen and Preston Sturges - knew that the story would be not only funnier but much more romantic if the fight was waged between equals" to what is currently "the dominant romantic-comedy trend of the past several years - the slovenly hipster and the female straight arrow.... the slacker-striver romance." Related: Zach Campbell on Knocked Up and Judd Apatow in general.

Also in the New Yorker:

• "Sicko is a revelation," writes Atul Gawande. "And what makes this especially odd to say is that the movie brings to light nothing that the media haven't covered extensively for years." Even so: "If, in 2009, we actually swear in a President committed to universal health care, the fight will turn ugly."

• "The animation gang at Pixar don't settle for goosing old fairy tales and shining up media-weary jokes, as the DreamWorks folks do in the Shrek series," writes Denby. "They create each movie afresh, and some of their productions, especially [Ratatouille] and The Incredibles, both written and directed by Brad Bird, have reached heights of invention, speed, and wit not seen in animation since the work done by Chuck Jones at Warner Bros in the 1940s." Related: In the Observer, Masoud Golsorkhi marvels at the hit that Ratatouille's become "in the land of 'Freedom Fries.'"

Did you know Mia Farrow is blogging? She's just back from a trip to central Africa. Via Tunku Varadarajan's piece in the Wall Street Journal on ten years of blogs.

Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica points to five blogs that make him think.

Rob Humanick is "hosting an opportunity for you to finally clear out all those stacks of DVD's you desperately want to get back to their rightful owners." The Movies I've Borrowed for an Unreasonably Long Time Blog-a-Thon runs all week long.

"Universal and Tribeca partners Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal" have "optioned the Roy Rowan memoir Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist's Firsthand Account of the 1949 Chinese Revolution," reports Michael Fleming for Variety.

At some point, as reluctant as I've been to, I'll return to the Valkyrie hoopla in Germany. As Bryan Singer prepares to start shooting on Thursday, the debate over the casting of Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg has finally begun to simmer down, so the point at which one can begin look back at the whole mess with a bit of perspective may not be that far off. In the meantime, though, Mark Oppenheimer has a not-at-all unrelated piece in the New York York Times Magazine: "Most people in the Los Angeles acting community believe that the Beverly Hills Playhouse is a serious conservatory where actors train with a master teacher, while others think it's a recruitment center for Scientology. I wondered if it might be both. What if the playhouse was a serious conservatory, and [Milton] Katselas a master teacher, not in spite of Scientology but because of it?"

As it happens, one click over, Jesse Green's profiling John Travolta in the run-up to the opening of Hairspray.

Also:

• Manohla Dargis and AO Scott find that the Harry Potter films make for "a fascinating case study. Looking at the five movies side by side, you can see how the material lends itself to diverse film genres and styles, from breezy children's movie to ominous political thriller, and how very dissimilar directors approach, sidestep and conquer similar material." Related: The Observer's Philip French on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Earlier: the Phoenix entry.

• Larry Rohter talks with writer-director Jorge Gaggero and his lead actress, Norma Aleandro, about Live-In Maid.

• Greg Evans recommends checking out the first season of The Outer Limits, the early 60s sci-fi series boasting the talents of producer Leslie Stevens, screenwriter Joseph Stefano and cinematographer Conrad Hall.

• Brad Stone previews VeohTV: "The software acts like a Web browser but displays only Internet video, presenting full-length television shows and popular clips from the Web's largest video sites, like NBC.com and YouTube."

• And Saul Hansell reports on Sony's entry in the Internet video race, Crackle.

• Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes: "In a strategy that is starkly different from other top film studios, [Ron] Meyer has determined that Universal should stay well behind the leaders, allowing the flashiest and most expensive projects - and typically the biggest payoffs - to go elsewhere."

For the Age, Philippa Hawker talks with Michael Rowland about his debut feature, audience favorite at the Sydney Film Festival and winner of the jury prize in Karlovy Vary: "Its catalyst, as it happens, was his reading of Thomas Friedman's 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a reflection on globalisation and its implications. But Lucky Miles is an unpredictable response: it's a comedy and a drama, an adventure, a buddy movie, a tale of arrivals, discoveries, misunderstandings and blunders."

"B.I.K.E. is probably the closest to an 'insider' look at the infamous Black Label Bike Club, an anti-consumerist group of pro-bicycle culture anarchists, that's going to be made," suggests Mike Everleth at Bad Lit.

"In Back to the Future, Executive Decision, True Lies and dozens of others, Arabs were off-the-peg bad guys. Yet after 9/11, the stereotypes weren't fleshed out with an all-too-real psychopathic ideology, but abandoned." Nick Cohen argues - in the Observer, no less - that those stereotypes should be fleshed out.

Also:

• Vanessa Thorpe: "[T]he extraordinary story of how [John] Myatt and [John] Drewe joined together to con art experts and some of the world's most prominent private collectors over seven years is to be turned into a Hollywood film, with George Clooney and Clive Owen tipped to play the leading roles."

• Gaby Wood has a long backgrounder on Adrienne Shelly and Waitress.

• Sarah Hughes notes that "a disturbing new musical breed has emerged - the 80s-film-turned-musical."

Reviews from the Fantasia Festival are still coming fast and strong at Twitch.

Norman Lear's first and only foray into feature filmmaking, Cold Turkey, "stands as a seamless demonstration of insightful social humor," writes Adam Balz at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

"Television and cinema are similar in design and function, but the split between them strongly exhibits my adopted notion that not only can nothing be understood or interpreted without context, but that context decides the content; to the point that context is more important than the text," writes Ted Pigeon, arguing that we find ourselves at "the beginning of a bigger dialogue about nature of inter-medium influence, connectedness, and disconnectedness and the varying shifts in visual style in various visual media."

MS Smith: "Whatever differences Late Autumn might have with its predecessor, the similarities are more significant, particularly a quality that Michael Atkinson attributed to Late Spring that applies to the later film equally well: 'Ozu's Zen-infused sensibility translates on film to something like the art form's nascent formal beauty: patiently watching little happen, and the meditative moments around the nonhappening, until it becomes crashingly apparent that lives are at stake and the whole world is struggling to be born.'"

For the Guardian, Andrew Dickson meets Helvetica director Gary Hustwit, whose "first attempt at a full-length documentary, shot on a credit-card budget and made up of interviews with designers and typographers, has somehow become a global phenomenon."

For SF360, Glen Helfand talks with Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky about Manufactured Landscapes.

"For all its awkwardness, [Your Mommy Kills Animals] is a documentary for thinkers that offers dense and comprehensive representation of animal rights as movement, ethic, culture and law," writes Sara Schieron. Also at Slant, Rob Humanick on the barely bearable In Search of Mozart: "No wonder history's dead."

Filmbrain runs across linkage between Seconds and 2046 and wonders, "Influence... or merely coincidence?"

Celebrating Katharine Hepburn's centenary, a month-long retrospective, The Late, Great Kate, starts Friday. Susan King's been calling around for the Los Angeles Times: "[S]everal people who worked with her — many of whom called her a friend — offered their impressions of working with the complex actress."

The "B" Movie Celebration lineup is in place. August 17 through 19.

Online magnifying tip. A "History of Film" poster.

Posted by dwhudson at July 16, 2007 7:23 AM