Shorts, 12/6.

Whether or not Spurlock's found Public Enemy #1, he's already signed up for another project. As Michael Fleming reports in Variety, a doc based on the runaway bestseller Freakonomics is going to have quite a roster of filmmakers: producers Chad Troutwine (Paris je t'aime) and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong) "have enlisted Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Laura Poitras (My Country My Country), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) to each direct a docu segment on chapters in the book."

Also: Michael Mann and Johnny Depp are teaming up for Public Enemies, a crime thriller set in the 30s.

"Like everyone else I know, I'm bone-tired of stunt books of the 'Year I Ate Nothing But Gummy Bears' variety," blogs Dwight Garner. "But every once in a while, an advance copy of a memoir crashes on my desk with a premise that makes me happy to contemplate. Such a book is The Film Club by the novelist David Gilmour, which comes out next May. Here's the cover line: 'The true story of a father who let his son drop out of school - if he watched three movies a week.'"

"A refreshing burst of irreverence is always in order from Mike Nichols and with his new film Charlie Wilson's War he's serving up a 'true' 1980s Washington satire, an era of blissful naivete concerning our military commitments, with panache and something resembling abandon - it's a light and breezy ride that doesn't tire even as it befuddles," writes Brandon Harris.

The Great Debaters "depicts Wiley [College]'s most glorious chapter: 1935, when the black poet and professor Melvin B Tolson coached his debating team to a national championship," writes Laura Beil in the New York Times. "No one knows whether the story will raise the college's fortunes, but Wiley, which has not been able to support a debate team for decades, is suddenly feeling the glow of celebrity."

Also: "Elizabeth Hardwick, who as a studious Kentucky belle set her ambitions on becoming a member of New York's glittering intellectual elite and then achieved them, as a critic, essayist, fiction writer and a co-founder of the New York Review of Books, died on Sunday in Manhattan," writes Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. "She was 91." More from Phil Nugent and, at Slate, Jim Lewis.

AJ Schnack comments on "where we find ourselves in the documentary community in early December 2007. We have film critics admitting that they will look the other way, maybe give an extra star or a higher letter grade if the film deals with the right issue, the right topic. And why shouldn't they? No one within the documentary community has given any indication that craft is the thing we hold most dear. If they look to the prestigious Full Frame Film Festival, they see that awards are handed out to the film 'that best portrays women in leadership,' to the film 'that best exemplifies the values and relevance of world religions and spirituality,' and to filmmakers who 'lay bare the seeds and mechanisms that create war.' Nothing for editing, composing, cinematography or directing."

"Koji Wakamatsu needs little introduction," writes Tom Mes, prefacing his interview at Midnight Eye. "But if the earlier works of this pink film pioneer have conquered their place in the pantheon, it's less well known that he continues to make movies that touch the sore spots of Japan's post-war history. His latest epic, United Red Army (Jitsuroku Rengo Sekigun: Asama Sanso e no Michi), an engrossing, three-hour plus retelling of the final days of the titular terrorist group and the famed Asama-sanso hostage case, is a film that fills in some of the blanks in the officially sanctioned accounts of history."

Related: A Zootrope Films petition "to lift the 'X-rating' ban on Koji Wakamatsu's The Embryo Hunts in Secret."

Signandsight translates Jan Schulz-Ojala's piece in Der Tagesspiegel on the new wave from Romania: "These new filmmakers call themselves - in reference to the fall of Ceaucescu in December 1989 - 'December children.' And unlike old masters such as Lucian Pintilie, who has lived in exile in France for so long that Romania might as well be Absurdistan to him, or Radu Mihaileanu (Train of Life) another emigrant to France, they make realistic cinema albeit with a satirical twist - testaments to a lively confrontation with the past that double as imposing critiques of the present."

For acquarello, Jean-Paul Civeyrac's Fantômes "presents a reconstituted contemporary mythology of human desire and frailty, where limbo is the banal reality of unreconciled memories, and immortal love exists only in the illusion of an irretrievable, transitory bliss."

"Sam Mendes is to direct his first operatic production at Glyndebourne in Sussex," reports the BBC. "The former director of London's Donmar Warehouse theatre will debut with Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2010."

"Ridley Scott is to take on the bloody saga of the Gucci dynasty, chronicling the ups and downs of the Italian fashion family as it developed its world renowned brand," reports the Guardian, where Simon Hattenstone talks with Donal MacIntyre about A Very British Gangster. Related to both items: Michael Wood in the London Review of Books on American Gangster.

I'm Not There "is an ode to joy," writes Jim Emerson. "I laughed, I cried. Afterwards, I was elated, stoned, so happy just to be alive." More from Tom Hall: "I'm Not There would not be sustainable as an entertainment if each of the Dylan narratives were pure pop brilliance, and this is why, in my opinion, the much-maligned Billy the Kid section of the film, which evokes Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller and other psychedelic westerns of the early 1970s, works." Also: "Sometimes I doubt Richard Kelly's commitment to Sparkle Motion."

For Hollywood Bitchslap, Peter Sobczynski talks with John Turturro about Romance & Cigarettes.

Cinema Strikes Back has notes on a recent Q&A with Jirí Menzel.

For SF360, Jennifer Young listens in on a Q&A with Holly filmmakers Guy Jacobson and Guy Moshe.

In the Los Angeles Times, William Georgiades has a quick talk with Marion Cotillard, who, since playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, has been campaigning for two years now and has just two more months to go.

For Stop Smiling, Drew Fortune meets Crispin Hellion Glover.

"Wir sagen Du! Schatz (Family Rules) is an original idea; it tells the story of a man, who faced with the rather triste prospect of spending Christmas alone, decides to steal some relatives and subsequently barricade them, and himself, into the 17th floor of a tower block for festivities en famille," writes Tamsin Walker for Deutsche Welle. "There has been a shift in perception of high-rise blocks in recent years, and they are now seriously en-vogue among German directors."

In American Heritage, Jack Kelly tells the story of Louis B Mayer. Via Bookforum.

Sand and Sorrow, a documentary on the ongoing (and even worsening) crisis in Darfur produced and narrated by George Clooney and debuting on HBO on Thursday, is recommended by Joanne Ostrow in the Denver Post: "Its smart political, historical, even literary and spiritual discussion eases us out of our detachment and into the horrors of genocide."

Bella rolls on: "Behind the scenes of the heartwarming indie film is an aggressive grass-roots marketing campaign that began more than a year before the film's release in October," reports Robert W Welkos in the Los Angeles Times. "In the campaign, such unlikely forces as adoption advocates, Latino groups, church leaders, businessmen and an army of folks from various walks of life took up the cause of Bella and its pro-adoption theme."

"[O]ver the past few weeks, I've put a passel of portable DVD players through their paces, and they no longer feel like an extravagance." A shopper's guide at Slate by Sam Eifling.

Faces Dennis Cozzalio loves.

Online wow: "America Calls for More..."

Online browsing tip #1. Wood and lino-cut film posters by Peter Strausfeld, via Will Kane, via Coudal Partners.

Online browsing tip #2. "Mark Mothersbaugh started designing rugs in earnest six years ago. From his exhibit catalog: 'I liked the idea that you had a functionality with rugs that you missed with framed art pieces. They are much more pleasant to lay on, walk on, play on than pieces of paper. Rug burns are generally better than paper burns.'" Also in the LA Weekly: a profile by Randall Roberts.

Online browsing tip #3. At AICN, Merrick's points to USA Today's pix from the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer.

Online desktop tip. The Wong Kar-Wai calendars at Lossless.

Online listening tip. Ed Ward on Fresh Air on The Other Side of the Mirror, capturing Bob Dylan's performances at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, 64 and 65.

Online viewing tip #1. Kevin Lee compares George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1988) with David Fincher's Zodiac (2007); and gathers more critical voices on The Vanishing as well.

Online viewing tip #2. Phil Nugent's got Jessica Yu's Sour Death Balls at ScreenGrab.

Online viewing tip #3. Via Ted Z, a clip from David Gordon Green's Pineapple Express with Seth Rogen and James Franco.

Online viewing tip #4. Michel Gondry's video for Björk's "Declare Independence." Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #5. "Hitler Gets Banned (His Ultimate Downfall)." Thanks, Jerry!

Online viewing tip #6. Woody Allen is "Speechless."

Online viewing tips, round 1. "Several Parisienne People cigarette ads by, in order, Emir Kusturica, Giuseppe Tornatore, Robert Altman, Joel & Ethan Coen, Roman Polanski, David Lynch and Jean-Luc Godard/Anne-Marie Miéville," all at the House Next Door (scroll down).

Online viewing tips, round 2. Phil Hoad's screen crushes.

Online browsing and viewing tip. Nerve's "Hollywood Sex Scene Database."

Posted by dwhudson at December 6, 2007 12:32 PM