Profiles and interviews, 9/18.

SiouxWIRE scores a coup: the first interview with the mysterious director of LYNCH.

Also: "Born into a life of art, Eszter Balint has been a musician, an actor in both stage and film, and a witness to the vibrant art scene of New York since the late 70s. Known to many for her role in Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise, her deadpan performance as John Lurie's cousin Eva encapsulates a beat mentality that together with Lurie and Richard Edson create the fascinating trio that's the backbone of the film."

The Stranger has unveiled this year's Genius Awards (Christopher Frizzelle explains) and Annie Wagner profiles the winner of one, Linas Phillips: "With both Walking to Werner and his work-in-progress Great Speeches from a Dying World - both of which could be classified as experimental documentaries - Phillips deliberately pushes his audiences to the point of discomfort, whether aesthetically (is this shot intimate or just indulgent?) or ethically (is it okay to pay addicts to appear in a film about their lives—cash that they could then use to maintain their addictions?)." Then: The Film Shortlist.

The first question for Greil Marcus in the Ink Q&A at Powell's: "What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?"

In 1975, Francis Coppola, then the new owner of the now long defunct San Francisco magazine City, demanded that as the TV columnist I review every movie on television every week: his friends wanted a guide, he said. This being pre-cable, it was doable, barely. I equipped myself with reference books on westerns, science fiction, spy movies, detective and crime movies, and spent one night a week deliriously writing about between 40 and 70 movies I hadn't seen - plus a few I actually had. It was fun. It was a riot of self-referentiality. The game was to discover hidden patterns in the glut of everything from the 1930s B and C pictures the local minor channels had bought up for peanuts to classics to weird 1950s relationship dramas - one week there might be a run on uncle-killings, either of or by. Two weeks later might find the same actor over the course of two decades lining out a passable autobiography - not of himself, but of a composite character imprisoned in type-casting, yearning to breathe free.

The column was printed in the smallest possible type; I was sure no one was reading it; I've never encountered evidence to the contrary. I was writing in public and in secret at the same time. I could say anything — and of course there was a chance that someday, someone, might notice, and... I have no idea. It might be the best writing I've ever done.

In the London Times, Kate Muir profiles Tilda Swinton.

Editor Christopher Rouse "really hit it off with Paul Greengrass, with whom he has cut two Bourne films as well as United 93," notes Bryant Frazer, introducing his interview with him for Film & Video.

Noting raves Cate Blanchett's received for her performance in I'm Not There and that "critics in Toronto were responding equally enthusiastically to her second stab at Queen Bess, in Working Title's Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Geoffrey Macnab proposes: "This versatility underlines why Blanchett is one of the supreme screen actors of her era, but also underlines why she is not one of its best-loved stars. She is too quicksilver, too spiky. Contemplating her career, it is hard not to be reminded of another equally imperious and volatile performer from the golden age of Hollywood, namely Katharine Hepburn." Further down that same page in the Independent, Alice Jones lists "Cate Blanchett's Top 12 Films."

Also in the Independent: Yariv Milchan: Angelina Jolie and James Mottram talks with Kurt Russell and George Clooney. David Gritten also talks with Clooney for the Telegraph.

For a profile of Michael Winterbottom, Andrew Pulver visits the set of Genova, the ghost story Winterbottom's working on featuring Colin Firth, Catherine Keener and Hope Davis. Related: James Mottram's Winterbottom profile in the London Times.

Also in the Guardian:

• David Thomson files an entry in his Biographical Dictionary of Film: Claire Danes.

• Phil Hoad talks with Apichatpong Weerasethakul about censorship in Thailand.

• Superbad "arrives here in the UK where the Apatow backlash is in full swing," notes Peter Bradshaw, who gets a kick out of it anyway (and defends Knocked Up to boot). Also, John Patterson interviews Seth Rogen; Andrew Male, Michael Cera.

Creative Review interviews Ben Cronin of Framestore CFC about creating the video for the Chemical Brothers's "The Salmon Dance."

"Producers like Sydney Pollack and Scott Rudin, once tightly bound to the studios, have long since reoriented their careers around cheaper, more difficult but more creatively intricate independent films like last year's Breaking and Entering, from Mr Pollack, or Notes on a Scandal from Mr Rudin," writes Michael Cieply. "That [Kathleen] Kennedy/a> and [Frank] Marshall whose association with [Steven] Spielberg anchored the high end of studio work with films like Schindler's List and Empire of the Sun - should find themselves, too, on the festival circuit signifies yet another step in Hollywood's continuing evolution."

Also in the New York Times, David M Halbfinger reports on how Kevin Morris is "trying to build bridges between Hollywood and Silicon Valley" and Brooks Barnes reports on producer Hyung Rae Shim's aim "prompt South Korean pop culture to wash over the United States, as it has done in much of Southeast Asia and China in recent years."

For Time, Kay Johnson talks with Oliver Stone about going back to Vietnam.

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2007 10:18 AM