Shorts, 11/18.

With The Diving Bell and the Butterfly set to open in a couple of weeks, Randy Kennedy pays a visit to Julian Schnabel's studio, where he finds the artist a little ticked off that there are "a lot of people describing Mr Schnabel as a director who paints, and not the other way around. This development does not always sit well with a man who has made thousands of paintings — and millions of dollars from them — over the last 30 years and who once declared that he was the 'closest you'll get to Picasso in this life.'" And there's an accompanying audio slide show.

Related: In the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas profiles Max von Sydow and Choire Sicha meets Emmanuelle Seigner.

But back in the New York Times:

• Charles McGrath visits Steve Martin on the set of Pink Panther Deux, mostly to talk about his memoir, Born Standing Up (excerpt), though another book is mentioned as well: The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z!, illustrated by Roz Chast, "which is just what the title suggests."

• Alix Browne meets Sam Riley and finds that life goes on after Control: "[H]e is now living in Berlin with the actress Alexandra Maria Lara, who plays the journalist with whom [Ian] Curtis had an affair, and he is working on his next feature film, Franklyn, opposite Ryan Phillippe and Eva Green." Related: "Two of Germany's busiest actors, Alexandra Maria Lara and Benno Fürmann, are currently playing opposite each other in Esther Gronenborn's new film, tentatively titled Kaifeck Murder," reports Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net.

• "Suicide, infidelity, spousal abuse and arrested development are the building blocks of Park, a wearisome comedy about disturbed, vehicle-bound Angelenos who take a very long lunch hour in a very ugly public park," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "Viewers familiar with this type of ensemble effort will not be surprised to learn that by the end all have revealed considerably more than what's in their sandwiches." More from Rob Humanick in Slant.

• Also: "A jaunty mix of chanting, baking and spiritual uplift, How to Cook Your Life introduces us to the cooking classes of Edward Espe Brown, a twinkling Zen priest and vegetarian chef." More from Cathy Erway at the Reeler and Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times; indieWIRE interviews Doris Dörrie.

"The acclaim Joe Wright's Atonement has garnered prior to its release illustrates how Oscar hype impacts the review process," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Released any other time of the year, the film may have been seen for what it is: an unspectacular adaptation of a modern literary classic." And, as for The Kite Runner, Marc Forster "has shat on it, transforming a presumably brutal and nuanced account of class difference and innocence lost into Disney-style kitsch."

More on that one from Nick Schager: "Forster exhibits nary a hint of genuine interest in his story's underlying issues of class difference, tradition, and cultural standards of masculinity, too busy is he filling everyone's mouth with hoary platitudes and lavishing attention on cheesy CG kite-flying sequences."

According to David Bordwell, this would be the "Law of the Adolescent Window":

Between the ages of 13 and 18, a window opens for each of us. The cultural pastimes that attract us then, the ones we find ourselves drawn to and even obsessive about, will always have a powerful hold. We may broaden our tastes as we grow out of those years—we should, anyhow—but the sports, hobbies, books, TV, movies, and music that we loved then we will always love.

A pretty Blog-a-Thon-ready concept. And there is a corollary: the "Law of the Midlife / Latelife Return." In yet another marvelous entry, he offers a "view onto the pop-culture landscape in 1960 - 1965," and then addresses you, dear Reader: "Whatever called out to you when your window opened... Make no apologies."

"In a war that, at least in its early stages, was stage-managed as carefully as a Hollywood blockbuster (the 'Shock and Awe' f/x extravaganza, the 'Mission Accomplished' stage spectacular, the Jessica Lynch rescue drama), perhaps it was inevitable that actual movies about Iraq would begin to resemble 'making-of' films - the DVD extras to accompany the feature presentation," writes Jessica Winter in Slate.

"Heima is a bit of an exception in the genre of concert films, which primarily fall somewhere between uninterrupted concert recordings at specific, often high profile venue shows, and more in-depth documentaries that often capture ruptures between band members (such as Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or the more ambient, but still tense Meeting People Is Easy)," writes Jenny Jediny at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "Heima, aside from containing live performances, strongly emphasizes the link between Sigur Rós and their native country. The Icelandic Tourism Board should strongly consider licensing images from Heima for promotional purposes; although I hope it's common knowledge that Iceland isn't a vast and empty tundra, it's still overwhelming to see the striking landscape captured on camera in Heima, a jaw-dropping array of sun drenched valleys, craggy mountains, and lucid, cascading rivers and waterfalls."

"Just when you thought that the Hollywood novel had fizzled out with all the eclat of an inebriated Mickey Rourke driving through Miami on a Vespa, another writer has come along with high-octane fuel for the form," writes Ed Champion in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Set mostly in Los Angeles between 1969 and 1982, the years mirroring Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Steve Erickson's [Zeroville] is a feral and entertaining ride with cultural references, quirky koans, and a few surreal pit stops."

Via Bookforum comes news of a new special issue of Film-Philosophy: "The Occluded Relation: Levinas and Cinema." Editor Sarah Cooper opens the proceedings: "Emmanuel Levinas never wrote about cinema.... There is something provocative, then, in wanting to ask what Levinas's philosophy has to say about cinema, if we understand this realm as the location par excellence of the moving image. Yet this is precisely the guiding question of this Special Issue, which is the first to bring together articles on the work of Levinas and the insights that his philosophy can offer to film studies."

For Stop Smiling, Patrick Z McGavin talks with Laura Linney about "her art and métier, and the professional wonder and personal discovery of working opposite the likes of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sean Penn."

"Gregg Araki's delirious Smiley Face is an unabashed valentine to Anna Faris, an opportunity for the actress to show that she can carry a movie composed of often hilarious nonstop misadventures," writes Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times. "No matter how outrageously or foolishly Faris' Jane behaves, she remains blissfully appealing - such are Faris's fearless comedic skills and the freshness of her radiant blond beauty." And indieWIRE interviews Araki.

Matt Riviera has seen Rogue, Greg McLean's followup to Wolf Creek: "It's telling that the CGI crocodile has more charisma than the lead actor.... There's no reason Australia shouldn't make good genre movies. But in a time when Hollywood is running out of ideas and looking elsewhere for inspiration - remaking every good genre film from France to Korea - is it really a good idea for us to remake bad Hollywood films?"

"First of all, let us not fool ourselves: there may be three major westerns, retro-westerns or quasi-westerns just about to arrive in cinemas, but the western per se - the western as a thriving movie genre - is to all intents and purposes deader than Billy the Kid, Jesse James, John Ford and Sam Peckinpah put together," writes John Patterson.

Also in the Guardian, interviews: Geoffrey Macnab with Anthony Hopkins, Laura Barton with Imelda Staunton and Andrea Hubert with Jason Schwartzman.

And: "Tim Burton has signed a major deal with Disney to direct the 3D films Alice in Wonderland and Frankenweenie."

Ken Russell in the London Times: "Allow me to tell you what I have learnt from a few awful mistakes I have never, until now, bragged about."

"The price of early success is the heightened standard against which lesser achievements are judged a failure. Few careers illustrate this unforgiving rule more clearly than that of Kenneth Branagh." A profile from Andrew Anthony. Benjamin Secher also talks with Branagh - for the Telegraph.

Bookish shorts: Jane Smiley in the Los Angeles Times on Truman Capote and, in the Guardian, Margaret Atwood on Aldous Huxley, Fiona MacCarthy on the Bauhaus and Andrew Motion on Ezra Pound.

Bookforum rounds up recent reviews of rock 'n' roll biographies and points to James Chapman's review of RA Rosenstone's History on Film / Film on History for the Institute of Historical Research, Mark Welch's review of Alan A Stone's Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life for Metapsychology and Jonathan Walter's review of Eric Lichtenfeld's Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle and the American Action Movie.

"Not enough credit goes to our best character actors, actors who, more times than not, never fail, even if they seldom get near top billing." Edward Copeland salutes Burgess Meredith at 100.

Writers' strike roundup:

• "As the former CEO of Disney and the founder of a privately held company that invests in the digital future, you were recently speaking at a conference when you used the words 'stupid' and 'insanity' to describe the Writers Guild strike. Can you explain?" Deborah Solomon talks with Michael Eisner for the New York Times Magazine.

• "About 150 audience members in a tiny Manhattan theater were the only folks in the world to witness a totally new Saturday Night Live episode starring guest host Michael Cera and musical guest Yo La Tengo," reports Derrik J Lang for the AP. "The SNL cast and writers collaborated on staging the special Saturday Night Live — On Strike! event at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to benefit the behind-the-scenes staff affected by the strike."

• "A follow-up to The Da Vinci Code has become the first big-screen casualty of the Hollywood writers' strike," reports the BBC. "Angels & Demons, a prequel to the movie adaptation of Dan Brown's novel, is being delayed by Columbia Pictures because its script needs more work."

"Creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick - the upper-middlebrow maestros behind thirtysomething and My So-Called Life - have launched quarterlife both as a MySpace TV series and as its own social-networking site," writes Troy Patterson in Slate. "The target audience for the latter is, according to Herskovitz's profile page on quarterlife.com, 'creative people, passionate people, people who want to change the world' - in other worlds, people with enough youthful idealism to tolerate the show's high-gloss navel-gazing." More from Rex Sorgatz.

Ed Howard announces that his Short Film Blog-a-Thon has been expanded to a full week, December 2 through 8.

"Writer/actor Michael Blodgett died yesterday at the age of 67," notes Erich Kuersten at Bright Lights After Dark. "Best known for playing hunky hedonist Lance Rocke in Russ Meyer's classic cult film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. A true Hollywood 'b-list beefcake,' he was an iconic presence through the swingin' 1960s, also appearing in Roger Corman's The Trip and feminist filmmaker Stephanie Rothman's The Velvet Vampire."

Online viewing tip #1. Jeffrey Overstreet has video of things getting way out of hand at a David Lynch lecture in Berlin.

Online viewing tip #2. Jeffrey Wells finds John Candy as Orson Welles.

Online viewing tips. Trailers for "a solid handful of more obscure [Yoji] Yamada titles" at Twitch.

Posted by dwhudson at November 18, 2007 3:27 PM