Shorts, 9/27.

"There is a quality of science fiction to the landscape: Quatermass (Nigel Kneale's occultist sci-fi teledrama of the mid-1950s) by way of urban Brutalism. In short, it's the terrain that will comprise the mythic landscape of Punk." Michael Bracewell has been watching a two-DVD set, The BBC in the East End 1958 - 1973; he then turns to With Gilbert & George "made over an astonishing 17-year period by one of their former models, Julian Cole... The fact that Cole has made his tightly edited, yet epic film out of nearly two decades of filming, lends a fascinating sense of temporality to the finished piece."

Also in the October issue of Frieze, Rosemarie Trockel has evidently been quite impressed by 2001 and Christy Lange reviews Miranda July's collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You and Melissa Gronlund: "Keren Cytter's works play the role of being films but deliberately miss the mark... Films that should be standard love triangles, Western gunfights or neo-noir murder–suicides descend into joyous cacophonies of filmic clichés done just wrong."

"If the story was good enough, even the Americans would sit still for the preposterous idea that there might be another country that spoke their language but looked different, with tiny cars and plates with hardly any food on them," writes Clive James, looking back on the BBC's Summer of British Film for the Times Literary Supplement. "There for a triumphant moment and then gone again, exultant at the black-tie awards ceremony and then back scrambling for a pittance, the British Film Industry has always been a creature in oscillating transit, somewhere between a phoenix and a dead duck."

What's fresh at Order of the Exile:

• David Ehrenstein in 1978 on Rivette's Duelle and Noroît.

• Kevin Jackson in 2002 on La Religieuse (The Nun), "once the most notorious film in France."

• Updates to Andreas Volkert's photoessay, "On the Streets: Le Pont du Nord."

"This year marks the 20th anniversary for POV/American Documentary, a curated strand of documentary films shown on American public television each summer." Agnes Varnum considers the impact of the series for indieWIRE.

"Variety may characterize some genres more adeptly than Horror, but Horror is indisputably the most perennial. In response to this trait (as well as our annual boost in traffic during the month) we introduce 31 Days of Horror." And it's Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

"Armed bandits raided Francis Ford Coppola's Argentine headquarters and stole a computer with the screenplay for the upcoming feature film Tetro, according to local news media." Bill Cormier reports for the AP.

"Martin Scorsese has committed to direct an untitled documentary about the life of George Harrison," reports Michael Fleming. Also in Variety, word that Robert Redford has signed on for an adaptation of Richard A Clarke's Against All Enemies.

Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle "featured at Cannes in May and Edinburgh in August, and will play at film festivals in Vancouver and Rome in the next few weeks," notes Kirsty Scott in the Guardian. "But [director Simon Miller and producer Christopher Young] wanted its British public premiere to be in the heart of the Gaelic community, before it goes on release across Scotland, with arthouse appearances in England later in the month. The Screen Machine, Britain's only mobile cinema, has parked up outside the Benbecula hotel where Miller is staying, and later that evening will expand into a 102-seat auditorium."

"From the end of the Civil War through the 1920s, many rural communities systematically purged their black residents," writes Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "Banished offers a startling tour into an unforgotten history that remains invisible to most Americans, with the erudite [Marco] Williams, who is simultaneously polite and confrontational, as our host. It would be ludicrous to suggest that he doesn't take sides: Williams clearly believes that a major historical crime has been swept under the rug, and his film is loaded with moments of understated emotional power." Also, in Outsourced, John Jeffcoat's "depiction of the call-center world is funny, fascinating and almost anthropological; he never preaches at you on the morality, or lack thereof, of this distinct late-capitalist phenomenon."

IndieWIRE interviews Angels in the Dust director Louise Hogarth.

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song "offers an inspiring portrait of America's most enduring folk artist," notes Peg Aloi in the Boston Phoenix.

In Peggy Ahwesh and Keith Sanborn's The Deadman, "All of Bataille's brilliantly profane ideas are simplified to somewhat naive transgressive images," writes Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica.

"Quiet City is a key film for understanding the Mumblecore attitude toward narrative and filmmaking," writes Dave at Chained to the Cinémathèque.

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson celebrate one year of Observations on film art and Film Art.

Online viewing tip. Jack Schafer's Rupert Murdoch Film Festival at Slate.

Online viewing tips. Arianna Huffington introduces a clip from War Inc: "It delivers a wicked punch in the gut, making you laugh, wince, and get outraged all at the same time. Naomi Klein, whose writings on Iraq helped inspire [John] Cusack, feels the same way. "War Inc is one of those rare satires with the danger left in,' she told me. 'It cranks up the dial on the state of privatized war just enough that we can finally see our present clearly. As you're watching it, you can't help wondering: can these guys really get away with this? Are we all going to get in trouble? It's an extremely good feeling. It's what risk feels like.'" Also at the Huffington Post, Cusack asks Klein about The Shock Doctrine.

Posted by dwhudson at September 27, 2007 3:48 PM