Shorts, 8/30.

"Tone is at the center of a new approach to film studies that is beginning to make itself felt in a wealth of excellent books and articles," writes DK Holm at Quick Stop Entertainment. "Well, it's not exactly new, really, having roots in the work of the Movie writers from the early 1960s onward. And it's not exactly sweeping the universities, as semiology, deconstruction, and other French imports did in the 1970s. But there is already a substantial body of work representing this new approach.... The best introduction to Tonal Studies is the new, second issue of a Close-Up." Further down that same page, DK interviews Douglas Pye, one of the editors of the issue, and George Wilson, author of Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View.

"Abbas Kiarostami makes only one half of his films. The rest is up to the audience to create themselves." Launching Subtitles to Cinema - this'll be one to keep an eye on - Karsten Meinich talks with the director.

For Digitally Obsessed, Mark Zimmer asks Tim Lucas about his monolithic new book, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark: "It is his story, but it's also the story of the period of Italian popular cinema to which he and his family were witness - pretty much its first century. So the book encompasses silent films like Quo Vadis? and Cabiria, into the Mussolini period with its fantasy classic The Iron Crown, the birth of neorealism, the 'Hollywood on the Tiber' years that saw the rise of celebrities like Totò, Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni and Steve Reeves (all of whom worked with Mario Bava)... and then the Bava career that people already know something about, but there are still many, many surprises."

"Patricio Guzmán, the great Chilean documentary director, recently returned home after many years in exile to make Salvador Allende, a biographical tribute to the democratic socialist leader, overthrown as Chilean president in a 1973 military coup, whose ghost continues to haunt Latin America (and should haunt our own country as well)," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "He humanizes one of the last century's most enigmatic and tragic figures, and makes an almost forgotten episode of modern history come vividly to life."

Charles Ferguson's "superlative" No End in Sight is "the Iraq movie everyone should see, and surely the one to see if you're only going to see one," writes Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly. "Ferguson's reexamination of the occupation's crucial phases not only proves strikingly synoptic and clarifying, it also demonstrates cinema's unique value in grappling with the Iraq meltdown. Unlike the stacks of books that delve into the same issues, the film gives us the look of the Baghdad streets as well as the characters who populate this wrenching drama." But for Christie Schaefer, writing at WSWS, "Ferguson presents much valuable and harrowing material. His notion that such a neo-colonial adventure could be done 'properly' is what needs to be rejected."

Ella Taylor on Private Property: "[Joachim] Lafosse, who co-wrote (with François Pirot) the semiautobiographical script, is at pains to spread the wealth of infantile futility, but beneath his studied evenhandedness there's no mistaking the feverish Freudianism - all too common, and all too unconscious, in male directors of family dramas - of his ambivalence toward Pascale [Isabelle Huppert, who] has played more than her share of haughty bitches, and at 54 she remains as careless of her durable beauty (with her, one never feels that dropping the makeup is a bid for Oscar) as she is precise about pugnaciously unilateral, yet fragile character."

"It's extraordinary to see Hitchcock's distinctive cinematic vision emerge at such an early point in his career." Billy Stevenson on Blackmail.

David Bordwell, who's sparked quite a discussion with an entry on The Bourne Ultimatum, has gone back and rewatched Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum: "My opinions have remained unchanged, but that’s not a good reason to write this followup. I found that looking at all three films together taught me new things and let me nuance some earlier ideas."

At SF360, Michael Fox talks with Miles Matthew Montalbano about Revolution Summer: "It was the start of the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, 9/11, all of these things were at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. I don't feel like I have any answers politically, or that that's the filmmaker's place, but it came from a personal place of feeling so angry some days and frustrated other days. 'Why aren't we all out in the streets right now? Why aren't we throwing bricks and bottles? No one cares, this is always the way things are. Let's just go get a beer and have a good time.' I was trying to reconcile those feelings in myself, and wondering what should we be doing now."

IndieWIRE interviews Vanaja director Rajnesh Domalpalli.

In the New York Times, Michael Cieply reports on all that riding - for New Line, for director Chris Weitz - on The Golden Compass.

At the Reeler, ST VanAirsdale responds to Anthony Kaufman's Voice piece on distribution and exhibition woes in NYC: "Maybe the larger issue is not too few screens for too many movies, but too many distributors whose gatekeeping mechanisms - let alone their release platforms - need repair. There absolutely are too many bad films being made, bought and foisted upon audiences that can afford less and less to visit the cinema in the first place."

A fresh list at the Evening Class: "Michael Hawley's 'Tabulation of Deprivation' (AKA 50 Films He Wishes Would Come to the Bay Area)."

Posted by dwhudson at August 30, 2007 2:45 PM