Fests and events, 1/7.

January 24 and 25 will see the US premiere of State of the World, a collection of six shorts "on the theme of global change" by the likes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Chantal Akerman and Pedro Costa, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

In Variety, Robert Koehler calls the omnibus film "a fragmentary but thoughtful panorama (with a couple of exceptions) of the world's have-nots."

"Doc Films, the University of Chicago's venerable film society, kicks off its winter 2008 schedule tonight at 7 with Samuel Fuller's incomparable Pickup on South Street (1953), the first in a Monday-night series on the Hollywood maverick," notes the Chicago Reader's JR Jones.

"The struggle between art and commercialism at Sundance has been played out with all the mutual distrust of a deep-seated sibling rivalry, as if a strapping, broad-shouldered all-American jock has muscled his way into his nerdy younger brother's bedroom and stolen his comic book collection," writes Elizabeth Day. She talks quite a bit with Peter Biskind, author of Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, but also with festival co-director Geoff Gilmore, who tells her, "Robert Redford says that one of the nicest things you can do for a filmmaker is to get him out of debt and I believe that, which is why I'm not defensive about its [Sundance's] success."

Also in the Observer, Laura Cumming on Illuminations, an exhibition the Tate Modern describes as " five film and video works that explore gestures, objects and spaces that shape or express belief." Through February 24.

Last night's New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony "was a livelier affair than usual," reports the New York Post's Lou Lumenick. Update: More from David Carr, blogging for the New York Times - and the Reeler.

Matt Dentler has news of R.E.M. and other acts on their way to SXSW Music.

Posted by dwhudson at January 7, 2008 5:39 AM