Shorts, 1/16.

"Italo horror-meister Dario Argento will shoot Giallo, an English-language homage to the genre that made him a cult helmer, with Ray Liotta, Vincent Gallo and Argento's daughter Asia Argento attached to star," reports Nick Vivarelli.

In the meantime, Final Girl's rowdy Film Club has just been watching and blogging Suspiria.

Also in Variety, though: "Charlize Theron has signed on to join Viggo Mortensen in the bigscreen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bestselling novel The Road," reports Tatiana Siegel. Plus, Ellen Page has signed up for Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It!.

"The Culture Ministry has quietly banned the importing of The Kite Runner, a film based on the best-selling novel about childhood betrayal, ethnic tension and sexual predation in Afghanistan," reports Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul. Related: For the Independent, Arifa Akbar talks with Khalid Abdalla, not only about The Kite Runner, but also about Paul Greengrass's The Green Zone, "which begins filming in Spain this week and stars [Matt] Damon as a disillusioned American captain opposite Abdalla as his Iraqi translator, provides a first-hand view of life inside Baghdad's fortified zone, with all its iniquities and excesses."

"Vertov, in Man with a Movie Camera constantly slows down images to stills, then lets them speed up again, giving lie to the illusion and affirming its power," writes David Pratt-Robson. "[Ken] Jacobs, in his avant-garde films, does so more obsessively: playing films, then stopping them, slowing them, juxtaposing frames from seconds apart in which the background is the same, and the figure, who we've seen walk towards the camera, now lurches forward and back in a close-up and long-shot. Jacobs returns film to a magic-lantern show: a two-dimensional background photo, with silhouetted figures superimposed onto this world who move on their own as if in it."

"You can add William Wellman to the Siren's list of Favorite Directors With Shaky Auteur Status, along with Mitchell Leisen, Jean Negulesco and the award-laden but Cahiers-dissed William Wyler."

"An elegant prelude and illuminating companion piece to Carlos Saura's ¡Ay Carmela!, Fernando Fernán Gómez's Voyage to Nowhere chronicles the turning fortunes and endemic poverty that had befallen the itinerant, road theater performers during Franco-era Spain, resulting from both strictly enforced censorship within the regime's repressive agenda of instilling a selective national culture, and an out of favor, traditional form of entertainment against the popularity of a vital cinema," writes acquarello.

Claude Miller's Un secret (A Secret), based on Philippe Grimbert's novel "is an old-fashioned drama about family secrets set against the background of WWII and the following years," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "Though occasional stylistic flourishes feel unnecessary, on the whole, Un secret makes for compelling viewing despite its many familiar elements, and Cécile de France and Patrick Bruel finally prove they are bona fide star material."

Bill Gibron on Giuseppe Andrews: "Long an icon for those who appreciate his outsider oeuvre, the 28 year old auteur has amassed a creative catalog so important that it's only a matter of time before he's declared the most important filmmaker of the last decade."

Also in PopMatters: George Reisch introduces and excerpt from Nick Bostrom's More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded: "This is Bostrom's claim: that there's a real chance - one in five, he roughly estimates - that me, you, and everyone else you know is a computer simulation of a person, not too unlike those characters in The Matrix."

And Bill Gibron lists "The Most Anticipated Films of 2008."

"There are weird movies, and then there is Mystics in Bali: the film against which other weird movies are measured," writes Jeff at Cinema Strikes Back.

"In response to our Halloween feature Dark Passages: The Films of Dick Maas, the Dutch filmmaker was kind enough to respond to some questions in regard to his work, which spans over twenty-five years, a variety of genres, and two films (to date) concerning killer elevators," write Rumsey Taylor and Thomas Scalzo at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

Roger Avary, the "Oscar-winning co-writer of the film Pulp Fiction, who was accused of driving drunk when he was involved in a fatal car accident over the weekend, released a statement today expressing his 'heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased,'" reports Rene Lynch.

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein on Disney's new winning formula: "Of the 11 movies it released in 2007, eight were Disney label movies, allowing the company to remain relentlessly focused on its brand. By releasing so few films, Disney was able to make more high-quality films by putting extra time into solving script, production and marketing issues than competitors like Sony and Warner Bros, who roll out more than 20 a year."

Nancy Franklin in the New Yorker on PBS's The Complete Jane Austen: "[T]he Austen logjam has many pleasing aspects - as well as aspects that will vex Austen maniacs, but, as far as I can tell from the various Web sites devoted to the author, being vexed is part of the joy of being an Austen maniac."

"[W]hen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly... took the director's prize at Cannes earlier this year, then a Golden Globe at the weekend, it was a triumph that seemed almost without precedent. Could it really be that an artist - an actual, paint-splashing, gallery-hung, privately collected artist - had finally made a film that might lure punters into cinemas?" asks Kevin Jackson. "And could that triumphant artist be, of all people, Julian Schnabel, the smashed-plates bloke in the crumpled pyjamas, the charismatic, loud-mouthed beneficiary of Manhattan's new money in the bull markets of the 1980s?" Related: Jonathan Romney talks with Schnabel for the Independent.

Back in the Guardian: Allegra Stratton reports on which Hollywood celebrities have donated to whose presidential campaigns and David Thomson: "[J]ust because the movie audience has rejected all signs of warfare this year, don't think it isn't preoccupied with dread and bloodletting.... It may be fanciful to read national impulse in the tropes of art. Yet there may be no better way. It seems America is getting ready for a great interior violence. Don't think its civil war was ever settled."

"The story is all about its ending, and so is the film; but the film has to find creative ways to linger." Michael Wood in the London Review of Books on Lust, Caution.

"Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov [12] said Tuesday that he planned to set up a new post-graduate film academy in Moscow with an emphasis on art and intellect rather than commercial craft," reports Nick Holdsworth in Variety.

Jürgen Fauth and Marcy Dermansky will be editing an issue of Mississippi Review Web devoted to the movies. Click Jürgen's name if you'd be interested in submitting work.

"Described as a new 'online social marketplace connecting filmmakers and fans,' Indiegogo.com is launching today, offering a new web-based venue that will 'address the fundraising challenges and market inefficiencies affecting independent filmmaking today,'" notes indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez. Scott Kirsner has more.

Oprah Winfrey's getting her own TV network. Phil Rosenthal has more in the Chicago Tribune.

Online photo. Shall We Dance @ Shorpy.

Online listening tip #1. Sound Opinions: "This week Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of The Swell Season and the film Once join Jim [DeRogatis] and Greg [Kot] for a conversation and live performance."

Online listening tip #2. "For his first full-length feature [Disappearances], Jay Craven convinced Michael J Fox to work for free. Kris Kristofferson not only worked for scale on Craven's latest, but he played two benefit concerts to raise money for the production." Jon Kalish reports for NPR. Thanks, Jerry!

Online browsing and viewing tips. Contributors to Worth 1000 incorporate sci-fi elements into non-sci-fi movies. Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, where he's also pointing to Lainy Voom's The Dumb Man, a film created in Second Life.

Online viewing tip #2. Gawker's got a video of "Tom Cruise, with all the wide-eyed fervor that he brings to the promotion of a movie, making the argument for Scientology, the bizarre 20th-century religion.... [I]t's newsworthy; and we will not be removing it." Naturally, the "Church" has already sicced their lawyers after 'em.

Online viewing tip #3. New York's Bilge Ebiri introduces Seith Mann's five deep breaths, a short that "screened at Sundance and won Best Narrative Short at the Los Angeles and Chicago Film Festivals. Mann has since also directed episodes of Grey's Anatomy, Friday Night Lights and Entourage [as well as The Wire]. He is currently at work on his debut feature. If it's as good as this short, we'll be very, very impressed." Via Scott Macaulay at Filmmaker.

Online viewing tip #4. Peet Gelderblom's Socutera Prize-winner.

Online viewing tips. NewArtTV, via Caitlin Jones at Rhizome.

Posted by dwhudson at January 16, 2008 2:12 PM