Shorts, 10/1.

Opinions are divided over the question of how high the Islamist threat should sit on the political agenda. Is it the challenge of an epoch for Western culture - the new totalitarianism in the face of which we must stand up for our freedom? Or is it "merely" a very complex security problem. Television images provide no answers here. They do not show how and what Islamists think.

Romuald Karmakar's film Hamburger Lektionen (Hamburg Lessons) makes this thinking visible by opting for extreme asceticism.

"For decades, Egyptian film served as the cultural glue that held the Arab world together," writes Borzou Daragahi. "Cairo produced extraordinary and artful cinema as well as popular entertainment. But movies like the The Aquarium or 2005's The Yacoubian Building have become rare. Rapidly shifting values, economics and technologies have combined to erode Cairo's status as capital of the Arab film business.... [A] small core of actors and directors is struggling to revive film in this 'Hollywood of the Orient.'" Also in the Los Angeles Times is Katharine Houreld's AP piece on the film scene in Kenya.

"The Israeli director Dror Zahavi succinctly describes the plot of his latest film Shabat Shalom Maradona (Sabbath Greetings Maradona): 'It's the story of the 48 hours spent in Israel by a suicide bomber who gets stuck in Tel Aviv and doesn't know what to do until the switch of his bomb has been repaired.'" Donald Macintyre in the Independent: "Arresting - and accurate - as Mr Zahavi's summary is, it hardly does justice to the complex emotional, psychological and, albeit indirectly, political layers of what is certain to be the one of the most unusual and daring feature films due to screen next year."

The pieces that make up "the ambitious multivideo work 9 Scripts from a Nation at War by artists Andrea Geyer, Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander and David Thorne, recently on view at Documenta 12 in Kassel... ask how we position ourselves in the face of the ongoing war in Iraq. How do we speak about it and against it? And from what positions is such speech possible?" Julia Bryan-Wilson in the new issue of Artforum.

James Ellroy in the Guardian on "why [Dashiell] Hammett's vision is more complex than that of his near-contemporary Raymond Chandler":

Chandler wrote the man he wanted to be - gallant and with a lively satirist's wit. Hammett wrote the man he feared he might be - tenuous and sceptical in all human dealings, corruptible and addicted to violent intrigue. He stayed on the job. The job defined him. His job description was in some part "Oppression." That made him in large part a fascist tool. He knew it. He later embraced Marxist thought as a rightwing toady and used leftist dialectic for ironic definition. Detective work both fuelled and countermanded his chaotic moral state and gave him something consistently engaging to do.

Also in the Guardian: "The performance of the two leads and the style of the film has already got many observers wondering if American Gangster will finally land [Ridley] Scott an Oscar," writes Paul Harris. "Scott has certainly not shied away from [Frank] Lucas's brutal side, but he has also included a strong sense of black power in the creation of his drug empire. That means Lucas is likely to join a long list of gangsters and criminals that have been embraced by Americans who love a villain who snubs authority."

And Rachel Williams: "Lois Maxwell, the actor who was the original and, for many, the definitive Miss Moneypenny in the James Bond films, has died aged 80." More from Geoffrey Macnab, Premiere's Glenn Kenny and, for the New Republic, Isaac Chotiner.

Jette Kernion talks with Richard Kelly about Southland Tales for Cinematical.

"The acclaimed US filmmaker David Lynch has been awarded France's top civilian honor - the Legion d'Honneur." The BBC reports.

"[P]ersonal hardship is leading to a professional evolution" for producer Elizabeth Avellan, whose marriage with Robert Rodriguez has, like Grindhouse, been split in two. Whitney Joiner checks in with her.

Also in the New York Times:

• Brown Bunny and Shortbus and now Lust, Caution: "These films and [HBO's Tell Me You Love Me] fall under 'hard-core art,' said Linda Williams, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of books on both pornography and cinema," writes Mireya Navarro. "They escalate the explicitness, trying to step beyond the conventional but not veer into pornography."

• Joseph P Fried reports on an "after-school and weekend program run by the Downtown Community Television Center, a 35-year-old nonprofit production and training organization in Manhattan. The center's professional filmmakers produce television documentaries (15 of which have won Emmy Awards), and its trainees include high school students, some of whom are bent on pursuing film-related careers."

• If lobbyists can pressure studios "toward a virtual ban on tobacco images in all but films with R or NC-17 ratings," what's next? Michael Cieply suggests that this "precedent could embolden other groups campaigning to rid movies of portrayals of gun use, transfat consumption or other behavior that can be proved harmful to the public." Related: Bryan Farrell for In These Times.

"David Cronenberg's latest, Eastern Promises, is a powerful movie, better than nearly anything else (David Lynch aside) being made in the English-speaking world these days," writes Steven Shaviro. "But..."

At AICN, Moriarty has a good long talk with Sean Penn about Into the Wild.

Artur Aristakisyan's 1993 documentary Palms "is a celebration of those who have escaped The System and live freely for their own sake and for the sake of others; no minor accomplishment for a film comprised of human frailty, vulnerability and rampant destitution," writes Doug Cummings.

"I'd like to see the LFF reflect London and introduce audiences to local talent, but I'm not sure it could ever do so for more than a couple of nights," writes Jason Solomons. "[M]aybe François Truffaut was right when he said that the words 'British' and 'film' were mutually exclusive. We don't really love our films." Also in the Observer, Katie Toms sees Jodie Foster popping up in literature, music, even video games.

Eric Mahleb at Quiet Please in 2005: "Architectural Representations of the City in Science Fiction Cinema," via Coudal Partners.

Ed Gonzalez on Brian Springer's The Disappointment: Or, the Force of Credulity: "Though not as elegant in structure as Marker's great essay films, this heady document is a bizarre illustration of the futility of people desperately looking for things that have been lost to history." Also, For the Bible Tells Me So: "[O]ne wonders what purpose the film can possibly have if it doesn't end up being screened within the vile confines of Focus on the Family."

For Boyd van Hoeij, writing at european-films.net, Control "does have some trouble taking off before finally finding its way to a haunting conclusion. Fans of post-punk music and bleak UK arthouse films will be Control's main audience and they should be aware that Control deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible."

Anywhere Road is the new independent distribution company behind the recent releases of Antonia and Black Irish. For SF360, Susan Gerhard talks with founder and president Robert Ogden Barnum.

StinkyLulu hosts another Supporting Actress Smackdown. The year is 1990.

Online browsing tip #1. Julia Rothman: "Before I go into all the books I got at the NY Art Book Fair this weekend, I have to post about this book that just came out. This is the book version of Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher's Learning to Love You More website. If you haven't checked this site out, it's a must see."

Online viewing tip #1. Bill Clinton.

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Oswald's Ghost, via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #3. Credit sequence for Love in the Time of Cholera. Via Ray Pride.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Lumiere Videos. Read the manifesto. Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

Online viewing tips, round 2. "Music videos of the month": Creative Review.

Posted by dwhudson at October 1, 2007 7:38 AM