Shorts, 8/27.

Lust, Caution is set to screen in Venice and Toronto before opening on September 28. Dennis Lim talks with Ang Lee and James Schamus - and even exchanges a bit of email with Tony Leung: "'Brokeback is about a lost paradise, an Eden,' Mr Lee said this month, taking a break from a final sound-mixing session in Manhattan. 'But this one - it's down in the cave, a scary place. It's more like hell.'" Related: Glenn Kenny on how Lee and Schamus have reacted to the NC-17 rating; and on how the story's been reported.

Also in the New York Times:

• In the wake of this summer's deluge of sequels, "most of which scared up satisfying revenue if not critical approval," Jeanette Catsoulis argues that "only three films succeeded on both fronts: The Bourne Ultimatum, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Live Free or Die Hard. Though hardly artistic milestones, or even unanimously feted, all three were smart, entertaining and - most important - keenly attuned to the expectations of their audience."

• Death Sentence, The Brave One, Outlaw. David M Halbfinger looks into "why revenge movies are making a comeback this season, as politics bleeds over into another film genre."

• "To some observers, [José] Saramago's exile has made him less relevant than other contemporary Portuguese greats like Antonio Lobo Antunes, who, using the polyphonic techniques of high modernism, continues to explore the psychic wounds left by Portugal's recent political history," writes Fernanda Eberstadt in a profile for the Magazine. "To others, Saramago has taken on the role of a more universal conscience, giving his literary fables about the failures of democracy or the tyranny of corporations a broader reach. For the director Fernando Meirelles, who is making the film of Blindness, this universalism was the great achievement of that work. 'It's an allegory about the fragility of civilization,' Meirelles told me."

• And for T Magazine, Lynn Hirschberg interviews Abbie Cornish and Cathy Horn observes Harvey Weinstein among the fashionistas.

Michael Guillén talks with Jamaa Fanaka about his 1975 film, Welcome Home, Brother Charles: "I wanted to have my films affect people in an entertaining way but also make strong statements. Sometimes, in order to get to people, you got to use some kind of instrument to get their attention. I wanted to debunk that myth of Black sexual superiority based upon the size of the sexual equipment. I felt that in order to get that attention I had to do something obscene that was so outrageous; that would take the myth and blow it up for the lie that it is. It was so new and so shocking that people didn't know how to take it."

"Im Sang-Soo's The Old Garden (Orae-doen jeongwon) returns to the political themes explored in his recent satire The President's Last Bang," writes Matt Riviera. "While there is a love story at its heart, The Old Garden is a bittersweet tale of a love affair aborted tragically by the fateful clash of political conscience and historical inevitability."

Scott Derrickson will direct Keanu Reeves in a remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, reports Michael Fleming for Variety.

"Georgie Fame's song 'The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,' written after seeing the film, was top of the charts and performed on TV by a chorus of boys and girls toting machine guns and wearing 1930s gear. 'The Speakeasy Look' and 'The Bonnie Parker Look' began to appear in the fashion pages." The Observer runs a long and fun piece by Philip French on the making and immediate reception of Bonnie and Clyde and follows it with a where-are-they-now list of primary cast and crew and a few items comparing and contrasting 1967 and 2007.

Also, according to Paul Harris, Todd Haynes's I'm Not There is "at the center of the biggest Oscar buzz of the year." Well, let's not go overboard. I'm probably looking forward to this one more than any other film this season, but please. I'm thinking: Palindromes, only, you know, fun. At any rate, Film Forum director Karen Cooper has seen it, of course (it'll open there) and tells Harris, "It leaps off the screen. The director has created something here that is just so unusual."

And Amy Raphael meets Ryan Phillippe.

Hermoine Eyre profiles Atonement director Joe Wright for the Independent.

At Cinematical, Ryan Stewart talks Halloween with Rob Zombie.

Posted by dwhudson at August 27, 2007 9:42 AM