Shorts, 12/16.

"Even if you're not that interested in Godard, everybody should be aware of what video cropping can do to the film image." But here, David Bordwell turns to the example of Godard to explain why and how aspect ratios matter.

"Can singing change history?" asks Matt Zoller Seitz. "The Singing Revolution, a documentary by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about Estonia's struggle to end Soviet occupation, shows that it already has." More from Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun and Nick Schager in Slant.

Also in the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis on Arranged: "Packed with the stereotypes it aspires to challenge, Diane Crespo and Stefan C Schaefer's well-meaning but oblivious film presents ostensibly modern young women who are nevertheless defined solely by their faith." More from Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun.

And Andy Webster has made it through Alvin and the Chipmunks: "Despite its shout-outs to the holiday season, this is essentially airplane fodder, not a perennial. Don't hold your breath waiting for the sequel."

Starting Out in the Evening "induced me to read [Brian] Morton's beautifully realized novel, which is so much a literary creation that it hardly seems like movie material," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader. "Arguably nothing of importance is lost as far as characterization is concerned, and in this sense at least [Andrew] Wagner's movie is an uncannily faithful adaptation. These are essentially the same people, fully and complexly realized—all the more interesting since Wagner asked the actors not to read the book." More from Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, DK Holm for the Vancouver Voice, Charles Mudede in the Stranger and Amie Simon at the Siffblog.

At Koreanfilm.org:

• "Shadows in the Palace is the debut work of writer/director Kim Mee-jeung, who served on the production team of King and the Clown and Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield," writes Darcy Paquet. "Shooting on a comparatively low budget using pre-existing sets from King and the Clown and other productions (not that you can tell: the imagery is dazzling), the film can be considered a fusion of genres: part costume drama, part mystery, part J-Horror."

• "Resurrection of the Butterfly (the Korean title translates as 'Shadow') was a project coupling a student director (Kim Min-sook) with a more experienced director (Lee Jung-gook)," writes Adam Hartzell. "This is something to salvage from the film. I would encourage more such projects regardless of the less than succulent fruits born of this particular seedling."

• And two regular contributors are now blogging: Tom Giammarco and Kyu Hyun Kim.

Michael Guillén lunches with Carlos Reygadas and then asks two questions about Silent Light.

For a preview of Beaufort, Israel's entry in the Oscar race that'll be opening in January in New York, see Diana Bletter's piece in Nextbook on the novel the film's based on, Ron Leshem's If Heaven Exists.

Justin Fatica is a "27-year-old self-proclaimed prophet is hellbent on 'raising up warriors for the Lord,' and finds his recruits on the fraying edges of the MP3 generation," writes Lorraine Ali in Newsweek. "In Hard as Nails, an HBO documentary by David Holbrooke (producer of the documentary The Trials of Henry Kissinger and son of former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke), Fatica's MO is more akin to the 'Scared Straight!' phenomenon of the early '80s than the traditional Roman Catholic sermons he grew up with in Erie, Pa."

Anthony Frewin, a former assistant to Stanley Kubrick as well as a typographer and editor, is left unimpressed by Helvetica: "The film was a great opportunity to educate and engage people in typography and it is an opportunity that has been roundly and firmly squandered. Don't bother with this. Go to YouTube and type TYPOGRAPHY into the search box (view here). You'll find dozens of things that really are worth watching."

Referencing Quentin Tarantino, Park Chan-wook, westerns, The Godfather, Don Siegel, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Siodmak and more, Mark Cousins establishes revenge as one of the prime character motivations and storylines in the movies. "So how do we explain the fact that the continent of Africa - which, with all the iniquities of colonalism, has more reason to be vengeful than the Anglophone world - has hardly produced any films about getting its own back?"

Also in the Guardian:

• Oliver Burkeman surveys Forbes' calculations determining movie stars' real value, that is, how many dollars come back for each dollar a star's paid: "If you plotted Crowe's career on a graph, with the x-axis representing his salary per film and the y-axis representing the amount recouped by the studio, the line might resemble, say, the trajectory taken by a hotel lobby telephone when picked up and hurled through the air at an employee's face."

• Geoffrey MacNab talks with Ang Lee.

• Lola Young reviews The Pirate's Daughter, Margaret Cezair-Thompson's novel based on Errol Flynn's love affair with Jamaica.

• And Joe Queenan's seen quite enough puke, thanks.

Robert Avila talks with Crispin Glover for SF360.

"Me and rock biopics go back a long way." Tony Litt's mini-memoir in the New StatesmanControl and I'm Not There.

Jonathan Romney profiles Todd Haynes, whose "films tend to require him to immerse himself totally in his subjects. He effectively had to become a 1950s director to make Far from Heaven, and to evolve an uncharacteristically glacial style for his 1995 medical psychodrama Safe. There's a touch of Method actor in his identification with his topics: embarking on Velvet Goldmine, Haynes went glam himself, clomping around on chunky platform soles, hair in a 1970s feather cut. 'I literally wanted to physically feel the air whistling up a short little shirt that doesn't meet the top of your jeans and feel a little totter on platform heels. I felt that all that stuff was important to getting into that period.'"

Also in the Independent: John Walsh talks with Rupert Everett. Related: The Telegraph's Will Lawrence visits the set of the St Trinian's movie.

"An extraordinary war of words has broken out between actress Dame Helen Mirren and director Michael Winner," reports Simon Crerar in the London Times.

Online viewing tip. Heard Bill Muthafuckin' Murray: The Steve Zissou Remix yet? Erik Davis has it at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at December 16, 2007 12:13 PM