Shorts, 7/20.

Tim Lucas watches the trailer for Todd Haynes's I'm Not There and sets out on virtual journey in search of the song and anything he can learn about it. Great stuff.

Emily Gordon and a friend take apart David Denby's piece in the New Yorker on the supposed devolution of the romantic comedy. For one thing, Gordon wishes it'd been written by someone "whose ideas about sex and love were informed in great part by John Hughes, David Lynch, Kevin Smith, Cameron Crowe, Nicole Holofcener, Amy Heckerling, Todd Solondz, Woody Allen (the movies and the man), Martha Coolidge, Nora Ephron, Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino - now there's a ripe and unstable blend.... What I'm saying is that just as screwball comedies were shiny fairy tales for the eras of disappointing early marriages, stock-market crashes, and limited opportunity for personal expression, There's Something About Mary is a shiny fairy tale for ours."

Daniel Day-Lewis's "choices seem to reflect more than just industry realities or access to the juicy roles someone of his stature commands," argues Jim Cullen in Common-place. "Actually, his recent body of work shows a remarkably textured, yet consistent, vision of American history." Via Bookforum.

AJ Schnack launches About A Blog.

Via Michael Sippey, I see that Errol Morris is now blogging for the New York Times. Just one several-day-old entry so far, but what an entry.

Also in the NYT: "JK Rowling's monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas - from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to Star Wars," writes Michiko Kakutani, reviewing the publishing event of the year. "And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, Soprano-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people's fates. Getting to the finish line is not seamless - the last part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours - but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters' story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect."

Rowling, by the way, is not at all happy that reviews are already appearing. Mike Collett-White and Robert MacMillan report for Reuters - and the AFP reports on the reply: "'Our feeling is that once a book is offered up for sale at any public, retail outlet, and we purchase a copy legally and openly, we are free to review it,' said culture, books and theater editor Rick Lyman in a statement."

Related: "Might the hive mind of fanfiction predict the plot of the seventh Harry Potter?" asks Kevin Kelly.

Meanwhile, Marc Savlov on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: "This is the first of the eventual septet's volumes to be directed by [David] Yates, and it's also the first to improve, literally, on its source material."

Also at the Austin Chronicle:

• Brad Neely is only one of the Austin-based animators making waves at Super Deluxe. Marc Savlov has the story. Related: Wizard People, Dear Reader.

• Spencer Parsons reviews Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes and finds it "interesting how thoroughly Ferris Bueller and Pretty in Pink's Andie Walsh dominate discussion. They fire up more identification and consternation here than the whole Saturday morning detention crowd combined."

• Raoul Hernandez: "'I've met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you, you're 20 minutes.' So sneers Jan Sterling at Kirk Douglas during 1951's Ace in the Hole, and you can almost hear Billy Wilder yukking it up softly off-camera."

Jürgen Fauth reads Colin McGinn's The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact: "The first half of the book, where he investigates 'the metaphysics of the movie image' and the way we perceive it, is required reading for anybody trying to get a better handle on what it is, exactly, those flickering shadows do to us in that dark room.... In the final stretch, though, McGinn loses himself in conjecture and pursues all the wrong angles."

Joe Leydon's got an alternative reading suggestion: "The following are verbatim excerpts from actual student term papers I have received over the years.... Again, let me emphasize: These excerpts aren't from e-mails, or blog postings, or hastily scribbled answers on exams. These are from term papers."

"Fish Kill Flea is an elegy, not just for this one flea market, but for the almost-completely-dead American phenomenon of small, self-contained economic systems," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

The Nashville Scene's Jim Ridley talks with Jay Jonroy about his debut feature: "There is much humor in David & Layla, some of it surprisingly raunchy: you'll never hear the phrase 'Mr President' again in quite the same way. But the comedy stops mid-film for a sober interlude in which Layla, whose parents were butchered by Saddam Hussein, shows David images from the 1988 Iraqi genocide of Kurdish civilians at Halabja. This sequence, Jonroy says, is the reason he wanted to make the film."

Related: "Packed with meals, music and religious ideas, the movie offers interesting looks into Jewish and Kurdish Muslim traditions," writes Michael Ordoña in the Los Angeles Times. "Though it's no Romeo and Juliet, David & Layla is an offbeat cross-cultural romance with a positive message."

"Summercamp! is a documentary about, well, about summer camp. But it turns out to be the saddest, sweetest, most magical and most deeply affecting movie of the season," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.

Dave Shulman meets Matt Groening at his house on the Pacific coast ("Huge, but not ostentatious; just big and friendly, with high ceilings, good light, good art and beverages") and has a leisurely talk for an LA Weekly cover story. Groening is busy, though: "The Simpsons recently broadcast its 400th episode and shows no signs of slowing down. Futurama's back in production (although not necessarily for prime time). He's got a new book out, an empire to oversee, his Life in Hell deadline each week, two teenage sons and, of course, The Simpsons Movie." Related: "Zack Kim performs a beautiful version of the Simpsons theme by playing two guitar at once," notes David Pescovitz at Boing Boing.

Stephanie Bunbury talks with Tom Kalin about Savage Grace for the Age.

"Aachi and Ssipak works because it has taken a taboo and run with it spectacularly," writes Adam Hartzell at Koreanfilm.org. "It's a dystopic future with no redemption except that of having fun with what remains are left."

Death at a Funeral "is sure to be measured against stalwarts like Waking Ned Devine that mock the ritual of a memorial service to skewer the respectability out of family life," writes David D'Arcy at Screen Daily. "While the movie falls well short of those standards, its manic pace and inane characters generally sustain the laughs."

"No End in Sight brings us closer than most accounts to cracking the perpetually confounding riddle of incompetence and ideology that characterize the administration's mismanagement of the war," writes Nicolas Rapold. Do watch the trailer.

Also in the L Magazine:

• Mark Asch: "Set a month into Margaret Thatcher's second term and sharing its title with the last good Clash song, This Is England passionately resurrects the moment of skinhead subculture's evolution from antiauthoritarian camaraderie into gangish belligerence."

• "At the heart of the international debate over Darfur is the recognition of history repeating itself, and The Devil Came on Horseback may have missed some opportunities in this regard by sticking to a straight path through [Brian] Steidle's journey," writes Cathy Erway. "Still, his story is unfinished, and that is the film's final unsettling triumph."

• Cullen Gallagher: "What Anthony Giacchino's documentary The Camden 28 seems to be asking is, 'Why can't we produce anti-war activists like in the old days?'"

• Michael Joshua Rowin recommends Walking to Werner. More from Matt Zoller Seitz in the NYT: "Werner is annoying, but there's no denying that it's a trip."

For the Los Angeles Times, Susan King talks with Rolf de Heer about Ten Canoes. Kevin Thomas writes, "De Heer, whose films include the well-received The Tracker, has understandably been highly praised by the Aboriginal community for evoking its culture and traditions with such authenticity, respect and grace."

Someone with Tribeca talks with Anne Hathaway and director Julian Jarrold about Becoming Jane. Related: In the Guardian, Steven Morris reports on "a cheeky experiment by an Austen enthusiast" that proves it'd be very difficult to become Jane today.

At PopMatters, Chadwick Jenkins returns to his exploration of Ingmar Bergman's use of Bach.

For 10 Zen Monkeys, Susie Bright talks with Jamie Gillis, "the first male superstar of porn."

Matt Bartley inducts cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki into the Hollywood Bitchslap / EFilmCritic Hall of Fame,

Jonathan Lapper launches a new series, "Acting Up," highlighting passed over performances. First up: Evelyn Varden as Icey Spoon in The Night of the Hunter.

Eric Kohn in the New York Press on Colma: The Musical: "[I]t's neat to see another product of the shoot-on-the-fly approach enabled by digital video that explores a genre often relegated to major studios—and manages to maintain its street-smart attitude rather than becoming sappy all at once." Related: Alison Willmore talks with director Richard Wong at the IFC Blog. Also, "Interview could easily qualify for a journalism class syllabus - if only because it drives home the importance of not underestimating the intelligence of your subject."

Geoffrey Macnab celebrates a 70th anniversary: "An extraordinary array of films has been made at Pinewood: everything from lowbrow farces with Roy Chubby Brown (1992's UFO) to extravagant masterpieces such as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's ballet film The Red Shoes (1947). The studio has been home to superheroes and fantasy figures (Superman, Batman, Lara Croft, etc) while hosting Carry On films and (very occasionally) 'kitchen sink' and 'social problem' dramas."

Also in the Independent, Kaleen Aftab, is celebrating, too: the "renaissance in African cinema." And Lesley O'Toole interviews Richard Gere.

In the Guardian:

• David Thomson on Alain Resnais and Peter Bradshaw on Private Fears in Public Places. More from the Telegraph's Tim Robey.

• Peter Bradshaw on Buy It Now: "Antonio Campos's satirical fantasy about a teenage girl putting her virginity for sale on eBay was originally a half-hour short which won the Cinéfondation prize at Cannes in 2005. Now it has been expanded to feature length. This is a ropey 62 minutes."

• In the news: Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow; Catalina Sandino Moreno and Steven Soderbergh; Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman; and of course, Tom Cruise in his Nazi uniform. More on that at some point after I return from a quick holiday.

Adam Ross's interviewee this week: Ross Ruediger.

Online browsing tip. At Red Carpet Style Awards: "The Simpsons Go to Paris With Linda Evangelista," a spread in Harper's Bazaar via Coudal Partners.

Online browsing and viewing tip. The work of Raoul Servais at SiouxWIRE.

Online listening tip. Michael Moore on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Online viewing tip #1. Let the Bodies Hit the Floor, via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tip #2. "A great find," writes Alex Ross. "Ethan Iverson links to a YouTube excerpt from the Soviet-era cartoon Ballerina on a Boat, with music by none other than Alfred Schnittke."

Online viewing tips. Two by Harmony Korine at the DVblog.

Posted by dwhudson at July 20, 2007 8:16 AM