Shorts, 1/7.

Michel Gondry is a very busy man. Twitch's Todd Brown has details on current and future film projects; and then there's Be Kind Rewind, the exhibition opening at Deitch Projects on January 24, the day before Be Kind Rewind, the movie, opens in theaters.

Eugene Hernandez introduces an indieWIRE survey: "Insiders were asked simply to share their observations on the business of film, festivals and/or distribution. What are the biggest issues facing independent and specialty film at this moment and what are their hopes and/or resolutions for the new year?"

In Steal This Film II, "print historian Bob Darnton speaks of pirate printers situated just outside the reach of the French king in a 'fertile crescent' (from Amsterdam to Geneva) publishing books specially for the French markets thus preparing the ground for the enlightenment and, ultimately, the French Revolution in 1789," writes Felix Stalder in a review posted to Nettime. "[T]he film is suggests that there is a general connection between the loss of control over the distribution of knowledge and the overthrow of the old regimes. This loss of control was not brought about by the magic of technology itself, but by the determination of the people who used the technology to its full extent, even if it brought them in direct opposition to the dominant powers."

Tom Ruffles in nth position on Sharon Packer's Movies and the Modern Psyche: "Despite her clear reservations about the efficacy of psychoanalysis, she appears to have adopted a stream of consciousness approach to her writing which isn't too bothered about the minutiae of research."

"Art video still has a funny reputation, left over from the 1960s, of being a serious medium, made for function rather than pleasure, as opposed to film," writes Holland Carter. Such categories are no longer so easy to define, he argues, pointing to Ryan Trecartin (I-Be Area), Kalup Linzy (All My Churen), Sadie Benning and Nathalie Djurberg as examples of a new generation of artists "are creating a new kind of 21st-century art that is narrative in form and potentially epic in scale."

Also in the New York Times, Peter S Goodman: "A paper presented by two researchers over the weekend to the annual meeting of the American Economic Association [in New Orleans] challenges the conventional wisdom, concluding that violent films prevent violent crime by attracting would-be assailants and keeping them cloistered in darkened, alcohol-free environs."

And Caryn James: "Such a deep streak of nostalgia runs through George Clooney's career that he seems to be working his way through every decade of the 20th century."

Fresh full texts from the Believer: Joshuah Bearman interviews Marjane Satrapi; and Aimee Mann and Patton Oswalt chat.

"When political operatives, fourth graders, and product marketers all make downloadable documentaries, will we redraw parameters around what we mean by 'documentary?'" The question's posed by Patricia Aufderheide in Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, as quoted by Chuck Tryon in his review of the "breezy but informative" book.

"With Page 1 headlines tracking the CIA's destruction of 'severe interrogation' videotapes, Taxi to the Dark Side arrives in theaters as the timeliest of documentaries," writes Sheri Linden in the Los Angeles Times. "But filmmaker Alex Gibney knows too that his unflinching look at the Bush administration's global war on terror might not be the easiest of sells with war-weary audiences."

"Oliver Stone, the maverick Hollywood director, has returned from the jungles of Colombia to launch a scathing attack on America's 'secret war' in the country and blame US President George Bush for the failure of an international mission to free hostages held by armed rebels," report David Smith and Sybilla Brodzinksy, who claim to have from him "the first full eyewitness account of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's effort to secure the release of captives from the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Stone also spoke out in defence of Chavez, whom he called 'an honest man, a strong man and a soldier', and condemned the United States for treating Latin America like a backyard to 'throw trash, piss, do whatever the hell they want.'"

Also in the Observer, Barbara Ellen talks with Helena Bonham Carter.

John McElwee sees The Big Country with new eyes: " High definition was the second coming of a super-western I'd underestimated too long, leaving me to question writers over the last fifty years who've damned William Wyler's 1958 epic with faint praise."

Mike D'Angelo presents an edited version of a year-old debate over "the two celebrated tracking shots from Children of Men - both of which, to my annoyance, wound up placing highly in the Best Scene category of my annual nerd poll, the Skandies. But if that seems like old news to you, just mentally substitute the Big Dumb Pointless Make-It-Stop tracking shot from Atonement, which I also hate."

"While not as overtly political as contemporary filmmaker Mrinal Sen, Satyajit Ray's early 1970s films similarly capture the volatile climate of geopolitical unrest, profound social transformation, and domestic crisis stemming from the introduction of Naxalism into an increasingly radicalized Calcutta student movement," writes acquarello. "In a way, The Adversary represents this fomenting cultural revolution in its bracing idealism and cruel desperation."

"In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan describes going to see the movie The Mighty Quinn in New Orleans during a break in the recording of his album Oh Mercy," recalls Paul Matwychuk:

"Years earlier I had written a song called 'The Mighty Quinn,'" Dylan writes, 'and I wondered what the movie was about. It was a mystery, suspense, Jamaican thriller with Denzel Washington as the mighty Xavier Quinn, a detective who solves crimes. Funny, that's just the way I imagined him when I wrote the song.' After that (I think) facetious remark, Dylan notes that Washington would go on to play Hurricane Carter, someone else he wrote a song about. 'I wondered if Denzel could play Woody Guthrie,' he muses. "In my dimension of reality, he certainly could have."

Todd Haynes's new film I'm Not There takes place within that dimension of reality.

At Twitch, Blake Ethridge talks about Stuck with director Stuart Gordon, screenwriter John Strysik and star Mena Suvari.

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy talks with Francis Ford Coppola about Youth Without Youth.

Zachary Wigon talks with Noah Baumbach for the Tisch Film Review.

"I just learned that screenwriter and novelist George MacDonald Fraser, author of the 'Flashman' ribald historical romps and screenwriter of Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers (not mention Lester's screen version [of the] Flashman novel Royal Flash), died Wednesday at the age of 82," writes Sean Axmaker in the wee hours of the morning, pointing to several obituaries. Related: Ruaridh Nicoll, the Observer: "What MacDonald Fraser had that others - especially Jeffrey Archer - did not was history. The history rang true - about the pirates of the African coast or the soldiers who took part in the charge of the Light Brigade."

Todd at South Dakota Dark announces a "Deeply Superficial Blog-a-Thon" for February 1 through 8: "So long as it has to do with something in the arts or pop culture and it's something you enjoy on some sort of shallow level, it's fair game."

Online photo. "October 1935. Matinee at the Casino Cinema in Amite City, Louisiana," at Shorpy.

Posted by dwhudson at January 7, 2008 7:12 AM