Shorts, 11/30.

White Sun of the Desert, a western, or rather, "eastern," made in the USSR during the Brezhnev era, remains one of the top five bestselling DVDs in contemporary Russia. Cosmonauts like it, too. "Bizarrely, White Sun has become a lucky talisman, ritually watched to this day before each and every launch." Lucy Ash examines its appeal in the New Statesman.

They've seen There Will Be Blood and they're all revved up: Jürgen Fauth, Glenn Kenny and Josh Modell.

Sneak peeks at French films in the works (Bruno Dumont, Alain Resnais and more): Fabien Lemercier (Cineuropa) and Boyd van Hoeij (european-films.net).

For Stop Smiling, Patrick Z McGavin talks with Marina Hands, who's "currently shooting her English-language debut, portraying French fashion icon Coco Chanel in William Friedkin's period drama Coco & Igor, which focuses on the relationship between Chanel and the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen). She is also completing work on Agatha Christie's Le Grand alibi, the latest feature from Cahiers du Cinema critic and editor Pascal Bonitzer."

Also, Michael Joshua Rowin on I'm Not There, "an ambitious, rich, but unfulfilled film." Related: the Nashville Scene's Jim Ridley talks with Murray Lerner about The Other Side of the Mirror.

New blog on the block: Yair Raveh's Cinemascope.

"Everywhere a cynic turns, ready to dismiss this story as another Rushmore rip-off or Knocked Up knock-off, there Juno is waiting," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun. "[Jason] Reitman shatters those conventions swiftly and mercilessly, thanks in large part to his secret weapon, a young actress who, in just two leading roles, has convinced more than a few observers that she may be one of the greatest talents of her generation. Ellen Page, a 20-year-old Canadian, has used her unconventional looks and her razor-sharp flair for sarcasm and understatement to subvert the notion of a leading lady."

"Willard Christopher Smith Jr hatched his scheme for global supremacy at 16, after his first girlfriend cheated on him." A profile for Time from Rebecca Winters Keegan. "The math of moviemaking enthralls Smith, who calls himself a 'student of universal patterns.'"

"Miles Brandman's earnest Sex and Breakfast features two LA couples in their 20s who choose to chase away the relationship doldrums with the help of a group sex therapist (Joanna Miles) and approach it as if they were unlocking the mysteries of the universe," writes Kevin Crust in the Los Angeles Times. "The results are predictable, but an attractive and willing cast eases some of the tedium."

Scott Foundas meets James Marsden, talks with him for the LA Weekly, likes him, then jokes that he'll probably like him less after 27 Dresses comes out. Which, of course, he means in the best way.

James Mottram talks with Robert Duvall for the Independent.

"When Woody Allen arrived in Barcelona in July to start making his latest film, he was greeted with open arms," writes Paul Hamilos in the Guardian. "Just how open those arms were has become the cause of a dispute that has led to the cancellation of the director's plans to film in Spain." Meanwhile, Woody Allen will be joining the "Speechless" parade next week, reports Andrew Wallenstein.

Also in the Guardian, Jason Wood interviews Nick Cave, David Teather sorts through the numbers in that widely discussed report, "Do Movies Make Money?," and: "What's the most overrated film of 2007?" asks Xan Brooks. His nomination: The Lives of Others.

At Tribeca: "12 Great Cross-Dressing Movies."

"[Robert] Zemeckis's Cast Away was a great, sadly underrated piece of minimal, elemental filmmaking," writes Jeff Reichert in Reverse Shot. "Beowulf strives for similar elegant grandeur and, by virtue of its general allegiance to the spirit of its source material and occasional moments of restraint, brushes against success."

Chronicle of an Escape "belongs to that large, undistinguished subset of historical dramas that achieve little more than informing viewers that the events onscreen did in fact take place," writes Mike D'Angelo for Nerve.

"[T]here was something that depressed me about Enchanted, a grim reality that occasionally peeped through the whimsy like New York City glimpsed from the animated fields of Andalasia," writes Slate's Dana Stevens. "This sinking feeling had little to do with what could be seen as the movie's retrograde affirmation of true love and happy endings—after all, if you're going to start complaining about marriage as a plot resolution device, you have to throw out every comedy from Shakespeare on down. No, that intermittent sense of yuckiness sprang from the movie's solemn celebration of a ritual even more sacred than holy matrimony: shopping."

The San Francisco Bay Guardian's Kimberly Chun sits in on a spoiler-ridden Lust, Caution roundtable with Ang Lee and Wei Tang.

Now then. The only thing this next piece has to do with film, really, is that it's been written by a film critic, one of our best, Michael Atkinson. But it's astounding, and, in some horrific way, beautiful, and if you've only got time for one read today, skip everything above and read this one.

Online viewing tip. Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay and the SpoutBlog's Karina Longworth comment on Harmony Korine's new ad for Thornton's.

Posted by dwhudson at November 30, 2007 8:58 AM