Weekend shorts.

Samuel Adamson has adapted Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother for a stage production that opens at the Old Vic on Monday for a limited 13-week engagement. For Time Out, Ben Walters talks with Adamson and Almodóvar. Via Movie City News.

"Producers Graham King and Martin Scorsese have assembled a heavyweight British cast for their royal biopic The Young Victoria," reports Naman Ramachandran at Cineuropa. "Emily Blunt plays the titular role of Queen Victoria in the film that charts the monarch's tumultuous ascension to the British throne."

"[Jodie] Foster, the Yale grad, perhaps one of the best talkers in all of showbiz, insisted she's not advocating simple-minded revenge," writes Rachel Abramowitz, who talks with her about The Brave One. "She certainly would prefer that audiences leave with a higher-minded message about the cost of violence, about the fear that has lurked in the hearts of Americans ever since Sept 11. 'There's something incredibly true about the rage and fear that we don't lay claim to, but once you experience it, you know it's been there all along and everybody else walking down the street is lying to themselves,' she said recently over a cup of coffee.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• Cristy Lytal recalls a visit to the set of John August's The Nines: "The film's largely improvised Part 2, a making-of documentary about a fictitious television pilot titled 'Knowing,' allowed August and his actors to co-write characters in the most immediate and collaborative way possible. August even posed questions to the actors as the pseudo-documentary's off-camera interviewer."

• Sharon Mizola talks with Raúl Ruiz about Klimt: "Ruiz, 66, who has made more than 50 films in the last 20 years in Chile and Europe, firmly established himself as a cinematic maverick with his use of nonlinear storytelling, dramatic color effects and unexpected points of view, and his work here is inspired by the fragmented, circular narratives of Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler - a Klimt contemporary. In other words, it's not the usual biopic."

• Patrick Day's attended the premiere of Rob Zombie's Halloween: "[O]ne suspects the wild, growling Zombie of concert fame is quite a bit removed from the devoted horror movie fan who lovingly casts his favorite character actors in all his films."

• "The allure of a romantic two-hander in which an attractive pair of strangers spend a lot of time walking and talking and - audiences usually hope - heading in the direction of Happy Ending Land has made movie favorites out of everything from Roman Holiday to Before Sunrise to this year's indie hit Once," writes Robert Abele. "Striving for that connective tingle but falling all too short of something swoony or deep or wittily satisfying, though, is American writer-director Evan Richards's London-set In a Day, which devotes most of its brief 80 minutes to the morning-to-evening conversational ramble of a struggling female jazz musician and a male graphic designer."

• John Anderson on Blood and Tears: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: "The strategy seems to be: Talk to as many august heads as one can gather in a feature-length film and give what seems like equal time to both Palestinian and Israeli points of view, until the end, when you cast the Israelis as patient and the Palestinians as crazy."

• Jay A Fernandez and John Horn report on why the studios are scrambling to get next summer's blockbusters in the can now: "The studios' contracts with the Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild of America expire June 30. Their deal with the Writers Guild of America runs out this October, but the WGA is expected to work without a new pact temporarily, hoping the delay will give it more clout as the DGA and SAG contracts also expire. While the guilds have separate demands, they are united in their quest for revenues from new media such as video on demand, Web downloads and cellphone content. To beat the strike deadlines, the studios must start filming by March 1."

"A whole slew of Hollywood stars is rapidly becoming not merely irrelevant, but obsolete." And John Patterson's celebrating. Also:

In each month between now and March, however, American cinemas will release two movies dealing in different ways with Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the war on terror, "extraordinary rendition" and returning war veterans, among other topics - which include grief, desertion, battlefield murder, rape, post-traumatic stress disorder and so-called "blowback", repercussions from botched, covert interference abroad - until recently considered too raw to be recreated on film for a nation at war.

Yet most of these big-budget movies seem weirdly apolitical in this deeply political time, never addressing the heart of the matter. The hard work of criticism and political analysis is actually being left to the small-budget, indie realm, or is done instead, like much other labour that Americans should be doing for themselves, by foreigners.

And also in the Guardian:

• "I can't help wondering how much of the current enthusiasm for what was once known as world cinema is purely that - and how much a rejection of Hollywood at a time when the wider America is so reviled," blogs Danny Leigh. "In other words, is George Bush responsible in some odd tangential way for the rediscovery of Jean Renoir and Fassbinder?"

• Sam Delaney looks back on a turning point in the late 70s and early 80s when British ad directors started landing features: Alan Parker, Ridley and Tony Scott, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Lyne.

• Tamsin Evans concentrates on the present: "Britain is awash with film talent, including brilliant script writers and some of the world's most skilled technicians. However, arranging finance remains an often insurmountable task for producers."

• Bobbie Johnson talks to the Swedes behind the Pirate Bay about their run-ins with the studios: "The three-year campaign to bring down the website is almost an epic of Hollywood proportions, sprinkled with high-flying lawyers and accusations of political extremism. And yet, so far, the chase has failed to bring the pirates down."

"Recently we went to see Ratatouille and both loved it. We thought it was the best Hollywood movie we've seen this summer." Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell exchange ideas and links. The cinetrix has recently caught the film, too, and she's reminded of another.

"Could there be anything more thankless than taking over a project tailor-made for your genius father, a master of animation renowned for his grace and deep humanity, and attempt to match his best work?" asks Jürgen Fauth. "When it was announced that Goro Miyazaki, son of anime legend Hayao, was directing the adaptation of Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea novels, you didn't have to be Yubaba the witch to know that it would end in tears. And so it has. LeGuin is disappointed, Miyazaki father and son are embroiled in a public feud, and the movie is a wasted opportunity that can't help but show occasional glimpses of the greatness that might have been."

Gerald Howard had waited for decades to see Norman Mailer's Maidstone before he finally caught it in July, when it hit him "like a video transmission from the faraway Planet 60s - a civilization in the throes of a crackup.... For reasons its creator could hardly have anticipated, this lurid, ludicrous, lunatic spectacle was worth the wait. At one level, Maidstone is a Norman Mailer version of a Rat Pack movie, albeit in the manner of Artaud."

Also in the New York Times:

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "More vérité than cinema, the documentary Skid Row is so raw that it's virtually unwatchable. Unwisely choosing a recognizable hip-hop artist (Pras Michel of the Fugees) as their avatar, the directors, Niva Dorell, Marshall Tyler and Ross Clarke, have all but erased the line between social investigation and celebrity stunt." Robert W Welkos profiles Pras Michel for the LAT.

• And: "Luridly earnest and laughably immoral, Illegal Tender is an old genre movie with a new look. Call it Hispanixploitation." More from Walter Addiego in the San Francisco Chronicle, Lael Loewenstein in the LAT, Eugene Novikov at Hollywood Bitchslap, Nick Schager at Cinematical and Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

• Stephen Holden on Resurrecting the Champ: "As the story takes a predictable turn from disgrace toward redemption, the film sacrifices credibility for a weepy, pandering pseudosincerity." More from Kevin Crust in the LAT.

• Matt Zoller Seitz: "The maudlin, grotesque western September Dawn, about the massacre on Sept 11, 1857, of about 120 settlers by Mormons (and their Paiute Indian mercenaries), apes Schindler's List in hopes of creating a Christian Holocaust picture." Yikes. More from Mark Olsen in the LAT, James Rocchi at Cinematical and Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE.

• "[D]espite their quirks, the three real estate agents and their clients - three couples in search of a dream home - featured in Closing Escrow are improbably endearing," writes Laura Kern. More from David Wiegand in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Andy Webster on Mr Bean's Holiday: "The kids at my screening loved it." More from Stephanie Zacharek at Salon. Also: "War squanders the considerable merits of its leads." More from Joe Leydon in Variety: "The teaming of action stars Jet Li and Jason Statham may raise audience expectations for a lean, mean ass-kicking machine, but War turns out to be a flabby and formulaic programmer." And Nick Schager at Slant and Scott Weinberg at Cinematical.

For Peter Nellhaus, Geoff Andrew's The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall "provides a fairly good overview... For those who are more familiar with Ray's films, the book may not provide as much information as might be desired."

JR Jones in the Chicago Reader:

Two new independent features - one dramatic, the other documentary - show how badly fear eats away at the national psyche and how easily the government can become as threatening as any terrorist. Right at Your Door, the debut feature from writer-director Chris Gorak, imagines what might happen if terrorists detonated a series of dirty bombs across Los Angeles, releasing a lethal virus and forcing people to duct-tape themselves into their homes. [More.] It's pretty scary stuff, but not nearly as unnerving as Lynn Hershman-Leeson's Strange Culture, the true story of a mild-mannered conceptual artist whose purchase of harmless bacteria got him fingered by the FBI as a bioterrorist. Watching them side by side, you realize how unprepared we are for a genuine bioterror attack, partly because the feds are so willing to squander time and money prosecuting an innocuous left-wing artist.

"There are two movies opening this week about screwed-up young men struggling with romance in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and, as it happens, both of them are directed by actors," writes Slate's Dana Stevens, referring, of course, to The Hottest State and Dedication. "The resemblances in story and theme between the two movies may be purely casual (though their common location does suggest that Williamsburg is becoming romantic comedy's new Manhattan, the place angsty heroes go to pine for their Annie Halls). But watching the two films makes for an object lesson in what tends to happen when thespians get behind a camera."

"Director Nanouk Leopold is a rare species in film land: a female auteur from the Netherlands." At european-films.net, Boyd van Hoeij talks with her about Wolfsbergen.

"It wouldn't be accurate to call Private Property a thriller, but it has a slow-burning intensity that's oddly suspenseful, and it shifts gears effectively once the tense family dynamic suddenly changes," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

Michael Fox talks with Julie Delpy about 2 Days in Paris for SF360. So does Kevin Maher for the London Times. More on the film from Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle and Christopher Orr in the New Republic.

Kathy Fennessy wraps her interview with John Sayles at the Siffblog: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

Tasha Robinson interviews Alan Alda for the AV Club.

In the Independent, Lesley O'Toole talks with Kevin Bacon about Death Sentence and Stephen Applebaum reviews Jesus Camp. Related: Pam Spaulding at Alternet: "Ted Haggard's Back, He's 'Completely Hetero' and He's Begging for Cash."

"[T]he horror genre remains the only genre in which women are guaranteed to save the day." Jeremy Griffin explains at PopMatters.

Nick Pinkerton at Stop Smiling on The Invasion: "I can say without any great excitement that the movie is better than its reviews: As straight-ahead, propulsive, reptilian-brain action, it 'works' as often as not. But it's unworthy to stand with its predecessors."

"Where Harvey Weinstein goes, Hollywood follows. And Harvey Weinstein is jetting off to Asia." Adriane Quinlan reports for Time.

At Movie Morlocks, Richard Harland Smith reminds us that the Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon takes place on August 29.

On a non-film-related note, Michael Atkinson. Can he get an Amen? Absolutely, from me: Amen.

Online fiddling around tip. Nathaniel R reinvents Exquisite Corpse.

Online viewing tip #1. At Facets Features, Phil Morehart posts the trailer for Fantoma's October 2 DVD release, The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume 2. Or click the title for higher definition.

Online viewing tip #2. Matt Dentler's got a trailer for Great World of Sound.

Online viewing tips. "You can't really call yourself a fan of the movies, or humanity for that matter, if you've never stopped and asked yourself: What the hell is Christopher Walken doing?" For Esquire, Daniel Murphy lines up and introduces six clips.

Posted by dwhudson at August 25, 2007 12:32 PM