Shorts, 10/21.

In the New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry marvelously captures 28 years of friendship with Diane Keaton in a few brief sentences, and then:

Over the years, sometimes with the help of the New York writer-curator Marvin Heiferman, Diane has sniffed out collections or archives of photographs that she feels are unjustly overlooked, neglected, or lost—like, very often, the tarnished human beings who appear in them. Once convinced, she mothers these archives and attempts to arrange for their exhibition and safekeeping and, so far, publication in five books to which she's written prefaces. They include pictures of actors doing publicity stills in the Technicolor era (Still Life, 1983), clown paintings (Clown Paintings, 2002), salesmen in training (Mr Salesman, 1993), tabloid photographs from the long-defunct Los Angeles Herald Express (Local News, 1999), and citizens of Fort Worth, Texas, as captured over a quarter of a century by the commercial photographer Bill Wood (to be published in the forthcoming Bill Wood's Business). All these groups are, in the eyes of Keaton and Heiferman, about to be sucked forever into the labyrinth of oblivion, to take their places among the billions of the forgotten.

Cormac McCarthy "is famous for two things: his omnivorous curiosity and his extreme reclusiveness. In his 74 years, he's given a total of three interviews. But here he chats freely with the Coen brothers, who have a tendency to finish each other's sentences. Time's Lev Grossman was invited to observe." Also via Movie City News, Adam F Hutton in the Brooklyn Paper on how the Coens are giving back to the neighborhood that's put up with them, not to mention George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand, during the filming of Burn After Reading.

"[T]o help you tell your Rendition from your Redacted, Salon has compiled this handy guide to the current (and upcoming) spate of movies dealing with the war." A cute chart, presented by Eryn Loeb.

Ron Rosenbaum notes a coincidental connection between Hillary Clinton Chinatown fundraising mini-scandal and, well, Chinatown, "the greatest American movie of the past half century." Watching it again, he recalls an amusing Jack Nicholson anecdote.

"B-movie superstar Bruce Campbell and Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson first met on the set of 1992's Army of Darkness," blogs Mike Russell, who chats with both. The occasion: "Richardson is producing My Name Is Bruce, a forthcoming horror-comedy in which a sleazy actor named 'Bruce Campbell' is kidnapped by small-town yokels in the fictional town of Gold Lick, Oregon; they believe the thespian really is the zombie-slaying hero of the Evil Dead series, and want him to battle a real-life Chinese demon. Campbell co-wrote, directed and stars in the movie, and shot much of it on his property in Jacksonville, Oregon."

Also, a talk with Karen Black following a screening of Brand Upon the Brain!.

Nehemiah Persoff studied at the Actors Studio under Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg and went on to rack up credits in around 50 films and 400 TV shows. "At 88, the retired actor admits to feeling conflicted and wonders if perhaps he should have ignored the siren song of Broadway and Hollywood and returned to Israel to help build the country," writes Harvey F Chartrand in the Jerusalem Post.

Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net on The Secret of the Grain: "With this third film, [Abdellatif] Kechciche establishes himself clearly as one of the primary voices of immigrants in Europe, a French equivalent, at least in spirit, to Germany's Fatih Akin."

"Lars and the Real Girl may be a self-consciously cute, low-budget art-house comedy, but its central conceit is a perfect metaphor for what's happened to male and female characters in mainstream comedies," argues Carina Chicano. "He's a schlub, she's beautiful. He's active, she's passive. He's maladjusted, she's placid. He's unreliable and immature, she's patient and forgiving. He's funny and charming, she's conventional and dull. He's the subject, she's the object."

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "Director Michael Verhoeven has dealt with the issues of Germany's heritage from World War II in such fiction features as The Nasty Girl and The White Rose," notes Mark Olsen, "but [in The Unknown Soldier] he turns to documentary to examine the emotions stirred up by a museum exhibition that not only explored the accepted villainy of the SS but also questioned the extent to which common foot soldiers had knowledge of and were culpable for the Holocaust and related crimes and atrocities."

• Lael Loewenstein argues that "as compelling as The Price of Sugar is, it also represents a squandered opportunity. A stronger connection could have been made between the film's subject and our own responsibility as consumers."

The New Statesman's put Michael Moore on its cover:

• "Moore's deftness and dark humour in Sicko, which is a brilliant work of journalism and satire and filmmaking, explains - perhaps even better than the films that made his name, Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 - his popularity and influence and enemies," writes John Pilger. "Sicko is so good that you forgive its flaws, notably Moore's romanticising of Britain's National Health Service, ignoring a two-tier system that neglects the elderly and the mentally ill."

• "Journalism and documentary-making are about the truth - otherwise they would be called fiction - and if either of them presents untrue information, it is betraying its reason for being," writes Brian Cathcart. "Yet the idea that people must always get their facts right, like almost everything that is labelled common sense, is incomplete and unsatisfactory."

• Jonathan Beckman asks seven professionals: "Michael Moore: hero or villain?"

In the New York Times, Dave Itzkoff talks with Jerry Seinfeld ahead of the November 2 release of Bee Movie, "by far the most substantial project that this 53-year-old comedian has taken on since pulling the plug on his Seinfeld television sitcom in 1998." Also, Lynne Hirschberg talks with Marion Cotillard and Deborah Solomon asks Marjane Satrapi all about Persepolis.

Ed Gonzalez at Slant on The Island: "After exorcising a demon from a young woman, a person from Anatoly's past appears, and though the stage seems set for an examination of the man's regret for having wasted his life, director Pavel Lungin has long blown his load on the chilly vistas of the White Sea to care much, and so Anatoly's crisis never feels resolved, simply dissolving into the gauzy ether of the film's Orthodox pageantry."

"For a lot of actors, not being able to act would be an obstacle, but Jean-Claude [Van Damme] has transformed it into his trademark." At Slate, Grady Hendrix turns in an oddly amusing tribute.

Alice Jones talks with Mark Strong, who plays Septimus in Stardust and is "currently shooting Ridley Scott's new Middle Eastern epic, Body of Lies, in which he plays the smooth-talking, Savile-Row-suit-wearing head of the Jordanian Secret Service. 'A fantastic wildcard,' he admits." Also in the Independent, James Mottram talks with David Cronenberg.

"It's official: the Harry Potter movie franchise has now made enough money to buy a small planet (£2.2 billion worldwide!), making it the highest-grossing film series ever, topping 22 Bonds and six Star Wars films," writes Daniel Etherington. "It's no wonder then that there's a gold rush among the movie studios to find 'the new Harry Potter.'"

Also in the Guardian:

• Peter Bradshaw tries to imagine what that new Star Wars TV show's going to look like.

• It "may be that the very idea of any national New Wave is a relic," suggests Danny Leigh, "that in a world this tech-accelerated and truly global (for good and for bad), the best and most radical filmmakers are now unlikely to appear en masse from Bucharest (or Tehran, or Bangkok), but to be getting their inspiration from all corners of film history, with their peers scattered across the planet."

• A bit of up-n-coming news: "The screenwriter David Benioff is to adapt Charles Cross's biography, Heavier Than Heaven, which is partly based on [Kurt] Cobain's unpublished diaries as well as interviews with friends and family members."

• Emma Brockes meets Naomi Watts.

In the Observer, Susannah Clapp reviews London stage productions of Glengarry Glen Ross and Swimming with Sharks.

Online viewing tip. Arthur Lipsett's first film, Very Nice, Very Nice, a must-view via Doug Cummings.

Posted by dwhudson at October 21, 2007 11:18 AM