Shorts, 11/7.

"[T]his mere asteroid in the blogospheric firmament has apparently made a small but intriguing bit of history, or something, with the upcoming Fossethon, still scheduled to kick off this very upcoming Saturday, November 10, 2007," writes Bob Westal. And ArtsWom explains: "In a motion that may be the first of its kind, Sky Arts are lending their own support to the blogathon by airing the Fosse tribute on Saturday 10th November. This follows a personal request from ArtsWom and may very well be the first time that a national television station has had its schedule altered due to activity in the blogosphere."

"What is far more important than explicit or implicit political statements on the level of character constellations, dialogue and setting, is a politics of the cinematographic image. It is, one can argue, this aesthetic version of a political consciousness or this implicitly political aesthetics that lies at the core of what - in spite of all differences in mood, subjects, personal temperaments and obsessions - really connects these directors and justifies the ever problematic use of a label like 'Berlin School' or 'Nouvelle Vague Allemande.'" Via Girish, an excellent introduction from Ekkehard Knörer in Vertigo.

"I really appreciate you guys getting so into a Todd Solondz discussion yesterday," writes Dennis Cooper. "It was top notch, and I found it really fascinating." The previous entries: "Life During Wartime is the title of Todd Solondz's new film, currently in the production stages"; Palindromes; Storytelling; Happiness; Welcome to the Dollhouse; "So the other day I was thinking about Todd Solondz..." Thanks, Steve!

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, "if the three-minute trailer is anything to go on, nails the warm Mediterranean sensuality of Barcelona," blogs Variety's John Hopwell. Glimpsed: "Javier Bardem takes Scarlett Johansson on a carpet; Penelope Cruz and Johansson snogging in a photography dark room." Meanwhile, at Cinematical, Erik Davis posts a trailer for Cassandra's Dream.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian presents its Goldies this week. Stands for Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery Awards. There are two winners in the Film category, Samara Halperin and Kerry Laitala. Cheryl Eddy: "All of Halperin's works - especially the ones that use her trademark technique, stop-motion with plastic toys - convey the filmmaker's ability to find gleeful joy in unexpected places, be it a construction site (as in 2006's Hard Hat Required), the Wild West (1999's Tumbleweed Town), or the homoerotic subtext of Beverly Hills, 90210 (2001's Sorry, Brenda)." And: "A self-described "media artist-archaeologist" whose art hinges not just on subject matter but on the physical manipulation of film stock, Laitala makes movies for viewers who're willing to leave their preconceived notions about cinema at the screening-room door."

"[W]omen have a love for Hitchcock's movies that they often don't feel for other suspense directors," writes the Self-Styled Siren:

His movies do an uncanny job of tapping into the darkest, toughest and most common female insecurities - something that has helped keep the movies alive over all these years.... A woman looks at a Hitchcock movie and sees the heroine confronting the same questions that may torment her. Does my sexual history make me unlovable? (Notorious, The Birds, North by Northwest). Is he just biding time with me, or will he make a commitment? (Rear Window). Is he crazy? am I crazy for loving him? (Spellbound).

And the two movies that Hitchcock made with Joan Fontaine go very deeply indeed into these questions. In Rebecca, the woman wonders, does he really long for his previous lover? (Which is the same question asked in Vertigo, to be answered in one of the darkest endings Hitchcock ever filmed.) And in Suspicion, the question becomes the worst one a lovelorn woman can ask - did he ever really care for me at all?

David Bordwell analyses a series of images: "Even if the later scenes weren't as compelling as they are, this café sequence would make [In the City of Sylvia] one of the most adventurous films I've seen this year. By revising the simple, long-lived POV schema, [José Luis] Guerin has made it yield fresh feelings and implications. As with Lubitsch's film, an imaginative sequence like this provokes the jubilation you feel in the presence of calm, precise artistry."

"Ever since I started reading about cognitivism in cinema and media studies, a movement popularized by David Bordwell in the 1980s, it's been difficult to take a stand on the issue of affective response," writes Ted Pigeon. "The general problem I have with the cognitivist camp is that it seems to leave very little wiggle room for the social components of the biological and physiological aspects of sensory perception and experience."

"From her first documentary, 1981's award-winning Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, a key strategy has been introducing audiences to their own history," writes Robert Avila, introducing his interview with Connie Field for SF360. "This is again the case with her latest project, a mammoth six-film series covering the global struggle against South Africa's apartheid regime. The first completed installment, Have You Heard from Johannesburg: Apartheid and the Club of the West," is now playing in the Bay Area.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, two docs by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, follow the cases of the West Memphis Three. "Now evidence, including DNA samples, has emerged to suggest the real killers are still at large and that three innocent men have been behind bars for almost 15 years," reports Paul Harris.

Also in the Observer, Philip French reviews Elizabeth: The Golden Age; Alison Weir, author of Elizabeth, The Queen, tells Paul Arendt that the film's "just a travesty of history." Jesse Ataide doesn't mind, though.

And Sean O'Hagan talks with Sean Penn. Related: Richard T Kelly, author of Sean Penn: His Life and Times and Ten Bad Dates with De Niro, offers a list of "Ten Best Sean Penn Barnets on Celluloid."

In Tarrafal, acquarello finds "a metaphor for Pedro Costa's densely layered themes of dislocation and statelessness." Also: "In Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema, David Desser examines the creative and revolutionary spirit that defined the 1960s Japanese new wave movement (nuberu bagu) apart from the facile identification and synchronicity associated with the coincidental emergence of the French new wave, and more importantly, refocuses his exposition within the indigenous specificity of Japanese culture in the face of postwar social, economic, and geopolitical transformation."

"[D]espite the best efforts of its actors, much of [Lee Myung-Se's] M feels like an inside joke," writes Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org.

"Though he polarized critics in his prime, African-American avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler has come into favor as a cult hero and jazz pioneer long after his body was found floating in the East River in 1970," writes Aaron Hillis, opening his review of My Name Is Albert Ayler. "Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life."

Also in the Voice:

• "In the midst of this consultant-polished election season, 's inside look at Evo Morales's successful 2005 run for the Bolivian presidency is both refreshing and just plain fun," writes Julia Wallace, reviewing Cocalero for the Voice.

• Ella Taylor: "At once tender and tough-minded, Steal a Pencil for Me offers a useful corrective to the sentimental prevailing notion that the Shoah only happened to saints." Related: indieWIRE interviews director Michele Ohayon.

• Abigail Deutsch: "La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family) - which bears the name but none of the inspiration of Gaudí's masterpiece - stars Néstor Cantillana as Marco, an atheist and aspiring architect who believes that if God existed, he'd be hanging out in that very church, smoking.... [T]he ending is cheaper than the girlfriend, and that's saying something."

• Chuck Wilson: "If it weren't for two excessively violent deaths, P2 could be termed a refreshingly old-fashioned thriller, one dependent on hairbreadth escapes and the pluck of its heroine."

• Nick Pinkerton on Holly: "[T]hough the storytelling is haphazard, artistry often transcends mere good intentions."

• "Lacking the absurdist je ne say what of fellow crank Bill Murray (who tried his hand at Christmas fare with Scrooged), the demonic physical comedy of Ben Stiller (amassing kid cred with Night at the Museum), or the freestyling innocence of Will Ferrell (Elf), [Vince] Vaughn brings to the kiddie party the same thing he brings to the adult party: a six-foot-five attitude problem," writes Michelle Orange, reviewing Fred Claus. At Slant, Nick Schager gives it 1½ out of 4 stars and, in the Los Angeles Times, Susan King lists past Clauses.

Jason Sperb's been reading Thomas Cripps's Slow Fade to Black and Making Movies Black: "Cripps is a historian first, not a film scholar--and so he is not under the obligation to provide a tightly wound thesis which would neatly draw together everything he wants to say. Rather than form a linear argument, Cripps is more interested in constructing a linear timeline, with incidental arguments dropped in here and there. Of course, larger concerns emerge."

Stop Smiling recommends a batch of "Essential Hollywood Books."

"Tom Lisanti's latest book Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood has just been released and it's definitely one of his best," writes Kimberly Lindbergs.

For MTV, Josh Horowitz talks Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. Via goldenfiddle. Related: "Written by [Robert] Towne, directed by Nicholson and released in 1990, The Two Jakes may not be a masterpiece, and it certainly never approaches the Greek-tragic grandeur of Chinatown," writes Dennis Lim. "But it's also a richer, more resonant movie than its nonexistent reputation suggests."

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• Not only are all of Hollywood's Iraq war movies floundering at the box office, they probably won't be winning any Oscars, either, writes Ann Donahue: "Where's our Platoon? Where's our Deer Hunter? Where are the movies that capture both the hearts of the academy and the dollars of the general public?"

• Paul Lieberman talks with Nicole Kidman about how "she rediscovered her love of acting in writer-director Noah Baumbach's dark comedy," Margot at the Wedding. And Elizabeth Snead meets Golden Compass costume designer Ruth Myers.

• Patrick Goldstein has a question for John Lasseter: "According to Metacritic.com, Ratatouille remains the best reviewed American movie of the year. Yet none of the Oscar pundits even mentions it as a best picture contender. Doesn't that bug you?" Also: "What we have now is a specialty business in dire need of reinvention, from the kind of movies that are made to when they're released. You don't need a business degree to know that every over-saturated market eventually has a shakeout."

• "Rattle & Hum, it's not," writes Chris Lee. "Heima is more art-house movie than concert rockumentary... Moreover, the film's meditative evocation of Iceland's people and terrain - 'Heima,' after all, is Icelandic for 'home' or 'homeland' - leaves little doubt about how Sigur Rós came to be a product of its environment, a place where quiet is the new loud." More from Marcus O'Dair in the Financial Times.

• Reed Johnson profiles Gael García Bernal.

• Mark Olsen talks with Amy Ryan about Gone Baby Gone.

• Robert W Welkos talks with Marc Forster about The Kite Runner: "You know, the thing that made me happy was that the author loved the movie. I felt I captured the spirit of the book. I felt if he is happy, I'm happy. If other people don't like that, so be it." Welkos also looks at a few Oscar winners who haven't shined much since.

• Susan King talks with Hal Holbrook about Into the Wild.

For the Independent, Kaleem Aftab heads to Abu Dhabi to talk with Harvey Weinstein: "What he may lack in elegance of appearance... is forgotten as soon as he opens his mouth. As they say in the industry, he talks a 'good game.'"

Dennis Cozzalio carries on his long conversation with Don Mancini, covering in this round the states of film criticism and horror.

In the New York Times:

• "Get out your handkerchiefs, if you please, for Rock 'n' Roll, the triumphantly sentimental new play by Tom Stoppard," writes Ben Brantley. "Writing about the political and cultural legacy of the late 1960s in his own late 60s (Mr Stoppard recently turned 70) has, for better or worse, exposed this playwright's soft side - mostly for better."

• "The history of so-called gangsta rap is inseparable from the history of gangster movies." Kelefa Sanneh previews Jay-Z's American Gangster. Adds FishbowlNY: "In his new video ('Blue Magic' from the American Gangster soundtrack), Jay-Z drives through the streets of Harlem flashing huge stacks of 500 Euro bills. Not dollars. Euros. Some commentators think it marks a cultural watershed." Related: Paul Krugman finds a couple of models of the falling dollar.

• "A paean to the rewards of old-fashioned craftsmanship in an age of mechanization, [Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037] directed by Ben Niles, amounts to a de facto infomercial for Steinway & Sons, the 150-year-old company that is the biggest name in the high-end piano business," writes Stephen Holden. More from Jim Ridley in the Voice and from Tom Hall.

"Flower in the Pocket is endearing in its many straightfaced comic moments," writes the Visitor at Twitch. "This double-winner at this year's Pusan International Film Festival is a strangely beautiful and funny ode to neglected human beings."

Stephen Moss talks with Ridley Scott, who's "currently shooting Body of Lies in Morocco 'with Leo [DiCaprio] and Russell [Crowe]; a 90-day shoot would be usual, but I'll do it in about 76'; and he is planning Nottingham, a revisionist take on the Robin Hood story to be shot next year, with Crowe (who is becoming a Scott fixture) starring as the sheriff, upholding the law against a dubious bandit hiding out in the woods." A click or two over at the Guardian's film blog, Ryan Gilbey asks, "Who is the worse director out of the Scott brothers - Ridley or Tony?"

Also for the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries talks with Timothy Spall.

At IFC News, Alison Willmore talks with Anton Corbijn about Control.

Eastern Promises, "or at least what's best in this movie before it succumbs to sheer gore and then to terminal resolution anxiety, producing happiness and relief when it should have quit while the going was bad, is all about a violence and horror that come from somewhere else, invading the ordinary world from a zone as strange as the individual angry mind," writes Michael Wood. Also in the new issue of the London Review of Books: Slavoj Zizek on "What to Do about Capitalism," Nicholas Guyatt on Chris Hedges's American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America and Mike Davis's diary, "California Burns."

MS Smith's seen Resident Evil: Extinction: "I'll admit that my fondness for Milla Jovovich got me into the theater, but my belief in this film's relevance has really evolved from my interest in cultural history, in moving from the kind of functional film criticism that would condemn Extinction as anything but empty popcorn entertainment towards the connection between the film's subject matter and the environment in which its makers live and create. For all of its B-movie and action-horror characteristics, Extinction is almost ideal in this regard; that fiery, burnt sky is appropriate for a film essentially about destructive forces, particularly the kind that have recently preoccupied or plagued the public imagination."

When you think of studio-era musicals, certain directors come to mind. Other directors don't. But a few "considered to be our best directors also stuck their toe into this genre's waters at least once, with fairly good results," writes HighHurdler at Movie Morlocks.

The AV Club: "21 good books that need to be great films, like now."

For Discover, Sidney Perkowitz, an Emory University physics professor and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science and the End of the World, picks the "5 Best and Worst Science Based Movies of All Time." Via Coudal Partners, also pointing to a 30-minute doc, A History of Sci-Fi Television.

Oh, but I do love James Israel's irregular feature, "Movies I Will Never Ever See Based on the Stills."

Not film-related, but: "Required reading," sez Jim Coudal. "AIGA Interview with John Berg, art director of Columbia/CBS Records from 1961-85. Via DO."

Oh, and today's Doonesbury.

Online lookit tip. At Cinematical, Erik Davis has pix from Righteous Kill, featuring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Online browsing tip. Animation Backgrounds. Via Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing.

Online listening tip #1. I Was Peckinpah's Girl Friday. Thanks, Jerry!

Online listening tip #2. Aaron Dobbs recommends Radio Lab.

Online viewing tip #1. Valkyrie, a featurette. Related: The Reeler's ST VanAirsdale stumps Tom Cruise on the evening of his gala tribute at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Online viewing tip #2. The Listening Dead, via Collin A at Twitch: "After playing to great acclaim around the world, Mucci's painstaking ode to silent cinema now floats about the digital ether, waiting to ensnare adventurous web surfers with its charms."

Posted by dwhudson at November 7, 2007 2:53 PM