Weekend shorts.

"Ken Belson and Brian Bremner's Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon is "an informative study and a breezy read," writes David Bordwell. "For a more comprehensive analysis of how Asian media empires work, go to Michael Curtin's brand-new Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV. Michael is a close friend and colleague, so in principle I'm biased; but I'd think this a terrific book if he were a stranger. Among many other things, it shows that media globalization isn't a one-way flow, from Hollywood to ROTW (Rest of the World). Asian media are globalizing too, and the process is both fascinating and far-reaching." But wait, there's more: an improved version of his own Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema is now online - and free to browse or download in full.

"The problem is not that I don't like or admire American Gangster," writes David Poland. "The problem for me is that one of the very best gangster epics of all time is sitting there, unfolding before our eyes... and suddenly we are stuck in the middle of Russell Crowe's character's custody fight. And really, what the hell does that have to do with this American Gangster? Not a whole hell of a lot."

"I was fortunate enough to see a working copy of Alejandro Adams's film Around the Bay, which is a quietly powerful, poignant film," writes Nick Rombes. "In some ways, it is the opposite of a mumblecore film: there is a clarity to the proceedings that's hard to define, but that lodges the film in your brain."

"Paramount, even if it maintained a solid following for its Marx Brothers series, could never hope to profit in the face of expenses like those incurred on Duck Soup," writes John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows. "Word was out that Duck Soup was a flop, but this wasn't altogether fair to the Marx Brothers. The long wait of three or so decades to have their final Paramount offering declared one of the greatest sound comedies was hopefully worth it. Groucho acknowledged as much in old age."

You may have heard that Stephen Fry is blogging. Looks like the server problems have been fixed; he's back.

"Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Morgan has started work on a sequel to The Queen, which will dig into former UK prime minister Tony Blair's relationships with US presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush," reports Adam Dawtrey for Variety. Michael Sheen will be playing Blair, obviously, but Ben Walters, blogging for the Guardian, wonders who might be cast in other roles.

The Wolf of Wall Street "is the autobiography of New York stockbroker Jordan Belfort, a flashy, drug-abusing, hooker-hiring, model-marrying master of the universe sent to jail for securities fraud and money laundering in the 90s." Martin Scorsese wants to direct the adaptation; Leonardo DiCaprio wants to star. But, Jay A Fernandez explains, neither will be getting started until Warner Bros and Paramount figure out how big a piece each studio will have in teh movie.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "Arabs and Arab Americans in Hollywood live in an interesting time," writes Ashraf Khalil. "The appetite for Middle Eastern stories and themes boomed after 9/11 and grew again with the ongoing grind of the war in Iraq. But the roles suddenly being created for Arab-heritage actors often are limited to those of terrorists or are otherwise so poorly drawn that actors must swallow their pride to take them. And that's if they even get offered the parts."

• The paper argues that airlines, not Congress, should determine what's okay to screen on planes.

• Robert W Welkos: "When Academy Award winners slip through the cracks."

• The "over-the-top absurdist symbolism" in The Darjeeling Limited "is why [Wes] Anderson is often accused of being in love with himself, but you could say that it displays the opposite," writes Carina Chocano. "The way he calls attention to the construction of the narrative is refreshingly frank; it's like he's tipping his hand, admitting that he's trying to work it all out too."

"A couple of documentary movies just now making the rounds will extend your historical perspective, stir your thinking about complicated issues, and maybe get you to fantasizing about moving to Australia or Sweden." Phil Nugent watches Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America and Lake of Fire.

At the House Next Door: "Eastern Promises is as affecting as it is savage, and it violates as many expectations as it satisfies," writes Matt Zoller Seitz at the House Next Door. "That's the director's blood onscreen. Every shot pulses with life."

"David Lynch, Wim Wenders and Wong Kar-Wai are among 60 of the world's most acclaimed film directors who have surprised the arts scene by taking up the cause of the Georges-Méliès art house cinema in the suburb of Montreuil-sous-Bois," reports Angelique Chrisafis from Paris.

Also in the Guardian:

• "Now is a strange time to be watching The War, Ken Burns's 14-hour recounting of America's involvement in the second world war," writes John Patterson. "Set against the cynicism and geopolitical myopia of contemporary Washington, the 'Good War' as elucidated by Burns - America's foremost 'respectable' mainstream documentarian, a finder of rare and stirring footage, and an impeccable liberal centrist - must inevitably seem like a saintly and noble endeavour. The Greatest Generation had the Good War, of which they were rightly proud; the hippies had the Bad War, of which they were rightly ashamed; this luckless generation has the Stupid War, and we hardly care it's happening."

• Joe Queenan: "As a rule, film score classical music is used as a shorthand: Handel indicates that the snobs have arrived, Mahler that someone is about to die, but not before pouting about it, and Wagner is a sure sign that big trouble's a-brewing."

"Battle for Haditha is a genuine achievement," declares the WSWS's David Walsh, who talks with Nick Broomfield and two of the Iraq war veterans who take on roles in the film. More from David D'Arcy, this time in Screen Daily.

"If Anupama Chopra's King of Bollywood were only a sprightly biography of the Indian film superstar Shah Rukh Khan; a concise history of the development and sociology of Bollywood film; and a convincing argument for how India's growing economy has changed its films, and how Bollywood stands to play a larger role in the world film market, that would surely be enough," writes Charles Taylor. "The larger significance of the book is that a major American publishing house is bringing out a biography of a major foreign star, largely unknown in the United States. And that is remarkable at a time when newspaper and magazine editors and film distributors are increasingly reluctant to offer readers and viewers what they haven't already heard about."

Also in the New York Times:

• "If you're going to make a film as repellent as Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door, you had better make sure that your redeeming reasons for doing so are crystal clear," writes Neil Genzlinger. "Gregory M Wilson, the film's director, either doesn't have any such reasons or doesn't know how to convey them, which means that he has made the kind of movie that makes you wish you could rinse your brain in bleach, to wash all traces of it from your memory." More from Rob Humanick at Slant.

• "[I]n recent months, veterans of a once-storied Puerto Rican regiment, the 65th Infantry Regiment... have gotten their due in a documentary called The Borinqueneers, which was first televised in New York over the summer and continues to be broadcast on public television nationally," writes David Gonzalez in the New York Times. "In a way, it is a passionate rejoinder to Ken Burns, whose World War II documentary drew sharp criticism from Latino and American Indian groups for initially ignoring their contributions during that war."

• Nicolai Ouroussoff remembers "one of the most influential architecture critics of his generation," Herbert Muschamp. More from Verlyn Klinkenborg and from Time's Richard Lacayo.

"The Age of Innocence is a film fecund with the passions that pulse beneath its fabulous surfaces. Like our friendship did, it arrays a precise hieroglyphics of appearances beneath which lies a sea of overwhelming desire and eviscerating pain." A personal piece from Richard Armstrong at Flickhead.

Michael Nyman's score gets kjolseth thinking at Movie Morlocks about A Zed and Two Noughts, "as beautiful as a fall day with a horizon full of changing colors. If you see nothing but dead leaves, that's your problem, not mine." Also, Moira on Roger Livesey.

In American Heritage, Christine Gibson looks back the September day in 1952 when Charles Chaplin and family boarded the Queen Elizabeth to leave the US for good: "His exile was 30 years in the making, a product of changing national attitudes and Chaplin's role as one of the pioneers of a powerful new medium whose messages could be understood by citizens of any country, speakers of any language. Despite years of investigation, no proof ever materialized that Chaplin belonged to the Communist party. His impoverished youth in London had left him with a lingering suspicion of authority and unrestricted capitalism, however." Via Bookforum's collection of links, "What are Hollywood values?"

"The weirdest Western since Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a rambling and impressionistic tone poem, constantly pushing the boundaries of film in strange and unexpected directions, conjuring with its mosaic of moods something that feels both ancient and startlingly contemporary - along with a haunted feeling that follows you home from the theater and lingers in the mind for weeks afterward," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly.

In the Voice:

• "Strange Culture, an impishly intelligent documentary by Lynn Hershman-Leeson, proposes that overzealous authorities seized on the [Steve] Kurtz case as an opportunity for political intimidation - persecution as propaganda," writes Nathan Lee. "Leeson blends his cautious testimony with performances by Thomas Jay Ryan (Kurtz) and Tilda Swinton (Hope [Kurtz]). Slipping in and out of character, variously embodying, studying, and commenting on their counterparts, the actors manage both dramatic reenactment and its deconstruction with aplomb." More from Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine and, in the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis: "Alternately teasing and terrifying, Strange Culture is a near-perfect alignment of subject and form. In its creative assessment of our current judicial climate, the need for artistic freedom has seldom seemed so urgent."

• Abigail Deutsch: "'A difficult choice, between perfection and heavenly delight,' crows the announcer at an Indian-cooking contest during this movie's climax. Sadly, Pratibha Parmar's Nina's Heavenly Delights offers neither."

• Ed Gonzalez on Broken: "Freely toggling back and forth in time, White lays on Hope [Heather Graham] a misogynistic guilt trip that revolves around bird-brained psychoanalysis and gratuitous girl-on-girl action." More from Stephen Holden in the NYT: "If Broken, directed by Alan White, defies basic credibility, it is at least well acted."

Ed Gonzalez at Slant on The Seeker: The Dark is Rising: "Do not blame the film for having one-eighth the budget of The Chronicles of Narnia or any of the Lord of the Rings movies, but cast it aside for not having one-eighth of those films' heart and gravitas." More from Jeannette Catsoulis in the NYT.

"Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced a list of the 25 best documentaries, as selected by its membership (and presented by Netflix)," reports indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez. "The IDA's 3,000 members, including filmmakers, executives and educators, named Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx's Hoop Dreams as the best documentary, selecting the movie from a list of some 700 films." Anthony Kaufman comments. Well, rants, actually.

"[W]hat we saw on Wednesday night was a symbiosis between Hollywood and the Holy Spirit." For the Austin Chronicle, Mike Dolan watches the Friday Night Lights team shoot at a "Pentecostal megachurch."

Tim Lucas remembers Charles B Griffith, who died on Friday at the age of 77: "With the possible exception of Charlie Kaufman, I don't see any other Chuck Griffiths climbing up the ranks of today's screenwriters and the movies need such voices - irreverent, acerbic, edgy, well-read, flippant, disdainful of the hoi polloi yet also generous, transcendent. Griffith was an unpolished gem of a screenwriter, a beatnik/stoner/outsider who smuggled those crazed and (then) highly individual sensibilities into the mainstream via [Roger] Corman's commercial cinema."

Online listening tip. Cinematical's James Rocchi talks with Time Out New York's David Fear.

Online fiddling around tip. The Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. Via Golden Fiddle.

Online viewing tip #1. Dwight Garner: "Brendan Gill, the New Yorker writer, and James Laughlin, the founder of New Directions, are no longer around - both died, within six weeks of each other, in 1997. A year before, however, in 1996, they sat down at Laughlin's home in Norfolk, Conn, with a camera rolling, and gave this charming dual interview. It now available on, of all places, the Web site for Jack Spade, the designer of men's accessories."

Online viewing tip #2. Carolee Schneemann's Fuses "attempts to answer the question of whether or not it is possible to shoot the act of sex without falling prey to being "mere pornography" (or to the objectification of women)," writes Mike at Esotika Erotica Psychotica.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Forget the Film, Watch the Titles. Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tips, round 2. Half a dozen from the Guardian.

Posted by dwhudson at October 6, 2007 3:49 PM