Shorts, 10/26.

"Jem Cohen's lyrical, observant documentaries, Chain and Building a Broken Mousetrap, offer a fleeting glimpse of how we inhabit public space in the early 21st century, well over a century after the Paris Arcades that Benjamin so attentively studied throughout the last two decades of his career," writes Chuck Tryon in Art Signal. "Cohen's films self-consciously evoke a Benjaminian approach to mass culture that builds upon and extends the cine-essays of Chris Marker, focusing his lens on the contemporary equivalent of the Paris Arcades, the shopping malls, theme parks, and chain restaurants that dominate our landscape."

Acquarello on Pedro Costa's In Vanda's Room: "Composed of long take, stationary shots, often of cramped interior spaces or narrow alleys framed against neglected building façades, doorways, and even gouged walls that reflect the characters' economic bondage and spiritual captivity, the film's oppressive moral landscape and interminable stasis are also revealed through repeating episodes of inarticulate, idle conversations, hardscrabble drug use, door to door peddling, acts of petty theft, and habitual rummaging (most notably, in Vanda finding an antique model ship that had been inadvertently left outside that alludes to the country's own historical change in fortune from colonial empire to increasingly marginalized country within the economic homogenization of a borderless European Union)."

"Costa's first film, O Sangue... while stunning to look at, doesn't quite work aesthetically or even at a basic narrative level," writes Darren Hughes. "By contrast, Casa de Lava is much more assured and coherent. Costa claims to have begun the project out of anger with Portugal's turn to the right amidst the formation of the European Union, which precipitated a dramatic restructuring of the nation's economy, including the privitization of television."

With the Edition Filmmuseum release of Class Relations in a package that includes "two major short films... that offer rare and illuminating glimpses of the filmmakers' working methods... the number of films on DVD (with English subtitles) about Straub and Huillet now outnumber the films on DVD by Straub and Huillet, which is unfortunate given the importance of their work," notes Doug Cummings.

"Alain Resnais gives no signs of retiring anytime soon," reports Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "After his well-received choral work Coeurs (Private Fears in Public Places), which premiered at Venice last year, the 85-year-old director is currently in pre-production on L'incident (The Incident), an adaptation of the eponymous novel from Christian Gailly."

Ted Z passes along news that Michel Gondry is working on a documentary about his aunt.

Glenn Kenny has a fun entry on what happened when he, "Stephanie Zacharek of Salon, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, Armond White of the New York Press, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, Scott Foundas of LA Weekly, the venerable David Sterritt and the venerable Phillip Lopate and moderators Richard Porton and Cynthia Lucia of Cineaste" all "ad a grand time arguing over the course of three 150 minute panels over two days." Heavens. "It was kind of exhausting."

Michael Snow gets Girish thinking about how we perceive what we see (and hear) when we watch.

"Ring the bells! Storm the gates! Raise the flags! And spread the word over the mainstream, fascist-controlled media!" yelps Josh Rosenblatt in the Austin Chronicle. "Friday, Oct. 26, Alex Jones, Austin's greatest freedom fighter, radio-show host, filmmaker, and "speculative historian" (my term; copyright pending) is releasing his latest movie, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, on his website, InfoWars.com."

"This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Hollywood 10 and the Hollywood Blacklist, an epidemic of censorship in the movie industry that set the stage for 'McCarthyism,' a term that evokes the fearful and oppressive mood of that bygone era and resonates with our current age of repression under the Bush regime." Ed Rampell looks back at Truthdig. Via Bookforum.

"The conventional cinematic portrayal of unconventional parents, particularly those of a left-wing bent, is as wacky, irresponsible people who place bizarre ideals above their progeny's need for a nutritious supper and regular music practice," writes Melissa Benn. "From Mrs Banks, the mother in Mary Poppins who would rather campaign for 'Votes for Women' than stay at home and tidy the nursery, to Hideous Kinky, the tale of a hippie chick (played by Kate Winslet) who hauls her two young daughters through a series of exotic adventures in North Africa, film has captured the clash between adult self-absorption and the childish need for security and attention. Blame It on Fidel, a low-key masterpiece out now on selected release, is the latest addition to the genre."

Also in the New Statesman: "The overwhelming majority of black actors of my generation have found that their only hope of a career lies in America (an old maxim states that 'in Britain, white actors have careers and black actors have jobs')," writes Kwame Kwei-Armah. "This is not just an issue about acting. It also presents a huge problem for my work as a playwright, and for the visibility of stories from the black community in general.... So, how can we begin to turn this inequality around? There is hope, as we have proved in the past that it can be done."

From David Byrne's Journal: "Dinner at the home of Susan and Leonard Nimoy. They are big art collectors and a Joseph Beuys piece in their living room features a photo of the Beuys clan sitting in a room all gazing up at the TV, giving it their full attention. They're watching Star Trek."

"Redacted is an act of voyeurism that becomes a part of the thing that it claims to denounce," blogs George Packer for the New Yorker. "If the pictures from Abu Ghraib and Zarqawi's homemade videos are war porn, Redacted is film-theory porn—a stylized snuff film inside a meta-critique of the media." Via Movie City News.

"Steve Buscemi and Daniel Bruehl (Good Bye, Lenin) have joined the cast of John Rabe, Florian Gallenberger's true story about a German businessman who saved more than 200,000 Chinese during the Nanjing massacre in 1937 - 38," reports Ed Meza.

Also in Variety:

• Michael Fleming: "Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio will reteam early next year on Shutter Island, a Dennis Lehane novel."

• Also, Michael Mann will direct an adaptation of Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine starring Robert De Niro.

• The Deal, something of a prequel to The Queen by writer Peter Morgan and director Stephen Frears, has been acquired for broadcast on November 8 by HBO, reports Dominic Schreiber.

Michael Mann will also likely direct a film about Alexander Litvinenko, reports the AFP.

Screenwriters are racing to wrap up their first, third or final drafts before their Guild's contract runs out on Halloween night. Rachel Abramowitz and Robert W Welkos report in the Los Angeles Times.

Also: Indiewood's having a rotten year, reports Rachel Abramowitz: "[T]he specialty divisions en masse are having a down cycle. So far, 2007 has not borne any breakouts like Little Miss Sunshine, Brokeback Mountain or The Queen. 'We're all suffering. It's the entire business,' says Focus Features Chief Executive James Schamus. 'At least someone should be succeeding. It's as bad a fall as I've ever seen.'"

And: "In a year that has seen a veritable logjam of movie musicals, rockumentaries and biopics about famous singers - and at a time when more such films are being green-lighted every month - it was bound to come along: a magazine dedicated to the intersection of pop music and moviemaking," writes Chris Lee. "Enter Movies Rock, a custom publishing supplement that will be mailed to about 16 million subscribers of 14 Condé Nast magazines - such as Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ - beginning Nov 1."

In the New York Times:

• "Hollywood directors have been doing commercial work for decades - usually to bring in extra cash, turn a project around quickly and show the range of their talent," writes Claire Atkinson. "These days, however, there are new reasons people with boldface names make ads: to keep up in a multimedia world where the ability to master various platforms is at a premium and where consumers are as likely to see their work on YouTube or TiVo as at the multiplex."

• "Although the Walt Disney Company has always had a bit of a translation problem in France - remember those pitchfork-wielding farmers who showed up in force to protest the 1992 opening of Euro Disney? - the company seems to have found a new ambassador in Remy the rat," reports Brooks Barnes.

• Lia Miller reports that Wes Anderson's short Hotel Chevalier will be screening in theaters after all as The Darjeeling Limited opens wider.

• And David M Halbfinger reports that Ed Burns's Purple Violets will be the first feature to make its commercial debut on iTunes.

• Jordana Lewis reports that New York's Legislature will soon be considering a version of California's Dead Celebrities Bill, which ensures that families of, yes, dead celebrities will maintain control over rights of publicity.

Revamped theaters: Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly and Elina Shatkin in the LAT on the Silent Movie Theatre and Andrew Repasky McElhinney in the Philadelphia Weekly on the Ambler Theater.

"The Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta - more commonly truncated to FAVA - is hardly a standard arts organization," writes David Berry. "Founded in 1982 by a group of 16 Edmonton filmmakers trying to find a way to make film equipment more accessible, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the organization maintains a certain kind of boundless creativity—after all, it still boasts an impressive number of original members." Also in the Vue Weekly, Josef Braun talks with filmmaker Gary Burns about why co-ops matter.

The Observer's Jason Solomons talks with Buscemi about Interview, his remake of a film by Theo van Gogh, whose career Kate Connelly reviews while looking ahead to further planned remakes.

More interviews: Boyd van Hoeij with Nocturna directors Victor Maldonado and Adrià García at european-films.net, Patrick Barkham talks with Cate Blanchett for the Guardian, Will Lawrence meets Clive Owen for the Telegraph and Gill Pringle interviews Josh Hartnett for the Independent.

"Jan Kounen is a French music video and feature film director who has specialized in bringing the spiritual world to the screen." Rak Razam talks with him for Filmmaker.

Online browsing tip. From Jim Emerson: "Guy Budziak makes film noir woodcuts in high-contrast black and white."

Online viewing tip. Ryland Walker Knight's got a string of clips from the night in 1970 when John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara were guests on the Dick Cavett Show.

Online viewing tips. The Guardian's Phil Hoad rounds up clips sampling fashion on film.

Posted by dwhudson at October 26, 2007 2:50 PM