Shorts, 11/26.

"Director of stage and screen, Robert Lepage is criminally little-known by name in the US and yet he is arguably the most imaginative and talented multi-hyphenate of his generation," writes Jonathan Marlow, introducing his interview for SF360. Lepage's staging of The Rake's Progress can be seen at the San Francisco Opera through December 9.

"Though the infant mortality rate in filmed opera is high - famed fiascos include 1953's Aida with Sophia Loren miming to Renata Tebaldi's voice - we can think in compensation of Syberberg's Parsifal, Losey's Don Giovanni, Bergman's The Magic Flute," writes Nigel Andrews. "Next week we have the UK release of Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute: very different from Bergman's, possibly a candidate for smacking, but with moments of giddy grandeur."

Also in the Financial Times, Emanuel Levy talks with Daniel Day-Lewis about There Will Be Blood.

Here's a great idea for a list, and what's more, it's a fun read: Johnny Dee matches scientific theories - Hugo de Vries's Reality of Mutations, Schrödinger's Cat, for example - and matches them with movies based on, inspired by or simply inadvertently suggestive of. Even better is the news hook for the piece: Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, airing Monday on BBC 4, in which Mark Everett, better known as Mark E of the Eels, goes off in search of an explanation for his father's theory of many worlds. Matching movie: Sliding Doors.

Also in the Guardian: Emma Brockes talks with Ian McKellen and John Patterson dreads another season of Christmas movies. Related: Collin Souter's list of "the Worst Christmas Movies Ever!" at Hollywood Bitchslap.

José Padilha's Elite Squad, "a violent look at Rio's drug wars from the perspective of a SWAT team, has put him at the center of a furious debate over police violence and middle-class drug use and has become the most talked-about movie here since City of God in 2002. Critics have called Mr Padilha everything from an extreme leftist to a right-wing fascist." Alexei Barrionuevo talks with him about, among other things, the way the film has been "grossly misunderstood by some, in Brazil especially."

Also in the New York Times:

• Citing deals between HarperCollins and Sharp Independent and Random House and Focus Features, Rachel Donadio notes that the publishers "will get a cut of the box office sales, as well as revenue from DVDs, cable TV and other media. And the authors involved will get more say in choosing screenwriters, actors and directors. Some worry that the increasingly cozy relationship between Hollywood and publishing companies is changing expectations of literary success - and may even be changing the way novelists approach their work."

• "When Brad Pitt dropped out of the political thriller State of Play at the 11th hour on Wednesday, he did more than throw a wrench into the works of one of the highest-profile movie productions under way in a Hollywood already overheated by strike-related contingency planning. He might have helped tip the balance of power between actors and studios, at least temporarily, in the employers' favor." David M Halbfinger explains.

• David Carr lunches with Woody Harrelson: "He can riff on hemp, the dark ends of Big Pharma and the wages of conformity with alacrity. And he lives in Maui, a tough commute for a working actor, partly because he does not want himself or his family to be imprisoned by a grid of consumer culture and Los Angeles ambition."

• "When Sex and the City, the movie, began shooting in New York this fall, the sight of its stars was both commonplace and traffic-stopping, breathlessly chronicled by bloggers and gossip writers." Melena Ryzik, too, is on the set.

• Anna Kisselgoff remembers Maurice Béjart, "he French choreographer whose flamboyant and populist ballets made him the equivalent of a pop star in Europe.

"How do you solve a problem like a bloody, R-rated musical about a serial killer, starring movie actors who aren't professional singers?" Paul Brownfield tells the story behind Sweeney Todd and talks with Tim Burton.

Also in the Los Angeles Times, book reviews: Leslie S Klinger on Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters and Andrew Lycett's The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Arthur Conan Doyle; Erika Schickel on Steve Martin's Born Standing Up; and Nick Owchar on Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard.

Why would Peter Bart perpetuate the myth of "Bob Shaye the Gambler" in Boffo! How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb, wonders Kristin Thompson.

"Over his entire career [Steve] Erickson has challenged readers with a fiercely intelligent and surprisingly sensual brand of American surrealism that can, at times, seem impenetrable," writes Jeff VanderMeer in the Washington Post. "For this reason, it surprised me that almost everything in Erickson's new novel Zeroville entertains so readily without seeming watered down or slight."

"Since 2000, the year Jimmy Corrigan was published, [Chris] Ware has contributed to the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine and the latest Penguin edition of Voltaire's Candide," writes Jeremy N Smith in the Chicago Tribune:

His work has been chosen for separate exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He has edited or helped edit at least three major anthologies of the best of the last century of American comics.

Now Ware has been called away once more from the drawing board, this time to edit The Best American Comics 2007, which includes exactly zero kids stories or superhero adventures. For several reasons, it is a strange book, and that strangeness speaks, I think, to why reading comics may currently be almost as challenging as it is rewarding.

And you'll have heard and/or seen that Ware's designed the poster for The Savages, a film we'll be hearing a lot more about this week.

An all-star list of avid readers chooses the best books of 2007 for the Observer, where Craig McLean profiles Natalie Portman and Jason Solomons braces himself for awards season: "Making art into competitive sport is clearly ridiculous - but you look a right curmudgeon saying such things when you're clutching a statuette and wearing a fancy dress."

The year is 1955... at StinkyLulu's place, home of the Supporting Actress Smackdown.

"[T]he burden of criticism, as an elucidation and not as an explanation, is not to build a film up (trumpet its many virtues) nor to tear a film down (harp its many deficiencies) - it is to simply offer the best (say the most interesting and comprehensive) picture of the object at criticism for the reader," argues Ryland Walker Knight.

It's not even December yet, but Entertainment Weekly has already chosen its "Entertainers of the Year: 25 Top Stars of 2007."

Damon Wise profiles Casey Affleck for the London Times.

Online listening tip. Colin Murray talks with Kevin Smith for the BBC. Thanks, Jerry!

Posted by dwhudson at November 26, 2007 2:01 AM