Weekend shorts.

"In spite of its sensationalistic title and cringe-worthy, torture-porn-like premise, A Bloody Aria isn't just another South Korean gore-fest in the tradition of Park Chan-wook," writes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun. "Much like Michael Haneke's Funny Games, Aria grills viewers for regarding violence as a form of entertainment. But writer-director Won Shinyeon is quite a bit defter than Mr Haneke in terms of implicating the audience and persecuting its tendency to tolerate and justify violence that passes as vigilantism or heroism."

"[A]side from a touching examination of violence as a means of expressing both love and hate, Bloody Aria remains little more than an adept exercise in tongue-in-cheek brutality, its fatalistic overtones too random and undefined to hold any existential value," writes Rob Humanick in Slant. "As such, the film isn't illuminating, just inflammatory."

"Takashi Miike's original 2003 One Missed Call was second-rate techno-phobic J-horror tripe, meaning that Eric Valette's even lousier American remake is something like the next generation of suck," writes Nick Schager, also in Slant. "A brow-furrowing blend of child abuse and adult trauma, Andrew Klavan's screenplay sacrifices coherence for atmosphere at every turn," adds Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. Related: Cristy Lytal profiles Shannyn Sossamon and meets Valette for the Los Angeles Times.

Back in Slant, Fernando F Croce: "The five daily utterances of traditional Islamic prayer provide the structure of Times and Winds, Reha Erdem's slight but striking mood piece set in a small village overlooking the Turkish seaside."

"This is the kind of news item that burns through my guts," fumes Peter Martin at Cinematical: "[A]ccording to Variety, producer Fang Li and co-production company Beijing Laurel Films have been banned from any involvement in the film business for two years by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT, AKA Film Bureau) in China.... The reasons for the ban are related to director Li Yu's Lost in Beijing."

HAF, the Hong Kong - Asia Film Financing Forum has selected 25 projects to focus on; Twitch's Todd Brown is justifiably intrigued by several.

Also: "Mark my words, 2009 is going to be a fantastic year for European animation. Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist should be ready to take its bow, Denmark will have both Journey To Saturn and Eat Shit And Die - not for the kiddies, that one - and now I've just come across fascinating Swedish production Metropia."

In the New York Times, scenes from Oscar hopefuls:

• "Zodiac is about thinking, it's about working things through intellectually, hazarding guesses, trying to solve puzzles (the killer largely communicates through ciphers) and about the dawning of awareness, which encapsulates the experience of watching it," writes Manohla Dargis, focussing on one phenomenal scene, "which in under six minutes lays out the movie in miniature."

• AO Scott chooses a scene from Into the Wild: "In this brief, painful conversation with Jan, the social Chris comes into focus. And in a film composed to a remarkable extent of montage, voice-over and wide shots of big outdoor spaces (usually accompanied by Eddie Vedder's big-hearted songs), the scene is something of an anomaly."

• Stephen Holden looks back on one of "the most surreal moments in Across the Universe... Anyone who experienced firsthand the tumult of the counterculture should recognize the volatile mixture of idealism and rage that runs through the movie and through Beatles songs like 'I Want You (She's So Heavy),' which is used so ingeniously that it sounds as though it had been written for the induction scene."

"Well before Hitler's Holocaust in Europe was planned, let alone set in implacable motion, the events in Nanking essentially established the paradigm for the conduct of World War II. By which one means that both sides subsequently conducted unrestricted warfare against civilian populations, making no distinction between them and military forces," writes Richard Schickel for Time. "There are some stories that, if we become too intimate with them, have the power to destroy us. Seeing Nanking will not do that to a moviegoer. But it will remind the few who brave it that we are not always allowed the luxury of objective witness, that sometimes we are plunged into nightmares from which there is no surcease."

"The Code was not merely some quaint artifact designed to scrub sex, bad language and strong violence from the screen," argues the Self-Styled Siren. "It was explicitly political, designed to uphold one view of American life and one view only.... The idea that the Code made films 'better' is wrongheaded."

The Believer is unfurling the full texts of articles it's only run snippets from online in the past. And they're starting with Nick Hornby's August conversation with David Simon, the creator of The Wire.

"You could call Brian Short's feature-length film [All My Love] avant-garde or experimental," writes Sean Axmaker in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "I'd rather call it an impressionist documentary, another branch in the same family tree as Koyaanisqatsi, but coming from a different sensibility."

"The Violin, it's been reliably reported, has won 46 international awards, and it's not hard to see why," writes Kenneth Turan. "The debut dramatic feature by Mexican director Francisco Vargas is a quintessential film festival film, a potent work made with confidence and skill that effectively melds aesthetic and thematic concerns within an involving dramatic framework."

Also in the Los Angeles Times: Emily Green on The Rough Guide to Film: An A-Z of Directors and Their Movies: "If [Tom] Charity had written the entire guide, this would be a different review, and a far more complimentary one. But much of the book amounts to artless pedantry."

But this is reading season, you know, and Michael Atkinson's got a list of recommendations for you.

"The big surprise about 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is not that it's a deserving winner of the Cannes Film Festival's top award (which it is), nor that it ratifies Romania's newly prominent status in the Premiership of world cinema (which it does), nor even that it will make you feel buoyant about the future of film (which it will)," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman. "What caught me unawares was just how suspenseful it is." Meanwhile, Cineuropa interviews director Cristian Mungiu and producer Oleg Mutu.

Lust, Caution is opening in the UK. "For his sheer muscular verve and ambition, [Ang] Lee deserves a standing ovation," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. The Independent's Anthony Quinn is less enthusiastic. More from Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph, Derek Malcolm in the Evening Standard and James Christopher in the London Times. And Rebecca Davies talks with Lee for the New Statesman. Related: Julia Lovell rereads Eileen Chang.

"Making eloquent use of inarticulacy, films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Mutual Appreciation happen to be precise (and to the extent of their precision, thrilling) depictions of post-collegiate flailing." GOOD editor Jaime Wolf looks back at "Mumblecore through the ages," from JD Salinger through Liz Phair.

Jennifer Merin talks with Guillermo del Toro for the New York Press.

"[T]he future wouldn't have been such a disappointment if Hollywood hadn't gotten our hopes so high." Eric Karjala at Cracked on "2001 to Timecop: 8 Movie Futures Already Proven Wrong."

Edward Copeland announces a new survey: vote for the best and worst leading male performances to ever win an Oscar.

Online listening tip. Glenn Kenny's got this one for you: a discussion of No Country for Old Men moderated by "the suave and debonaire Elvis Mitchell (who's got a movie of his own coming to Sundance); the participants are Jennifer Yamato of Rotten Tomatoes, Jim Emerson, who's done a lot of heavy lifting about No Country over at Scanners; the needs-no-introduction Harry Knowles of Ain't it Cool News, and myself."

Online viewing tip. That speech.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Nick Dawson spotlights the work of rx.

Online viewing tips, round 2. The Naked Campaign. Steve Brodner draws for the New Yorker. Via Drawn!

Posted by dwhudson at January 5, 2008 11:27 AM