January 20, 2008
Shorts, 1/20.
"Though they might be reluctant to admit it, the new Romanian filmmakers have a lot in common beyond their reliance on a small pool of acting and technical talent," writes AO Scott in a longish survey for the New York Times Magazine of the Romanian wave (in which Cristi Puiu insists that there is no wave, and what's more, he's not a filmmaker). "Because of the stylistic elements they share - a penchant for long takes and fixed camera positions; a taste for plain lighting and everyday décor; a preference for stories set amid ordinary life - Puiu, [Corneliu] Porumboiu and [Cristian] Mungiu are sometimes described as minimalists or neo-neorealists. But while their work does show some affinity with that of other contemporary European auteurs, like the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who make art out of the grim facts of quotidian existence, the realism of the Romanians has some distinct characteristics of its own."
One national cinema flourishes, another flounders: "When Americans see the new Italian cinema they're shocked, because they're used to the old masterpieces," Saverio Costanzo (In Memory of Me) tells Nick Hasted in a wide-ranging piece on the state of the country's film scene. "[W]e are scared of showing the beauty of Italy, or an open story. The maestros were too open, too happy to work in cinema. They used the country up."
Also in the Independent, Nicola Christie talks with Helena Bonham Carter and Susie Rushton profiles Johnny Depp. Related: "Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street,... first slashed his way into public consciousness in 'The String of Pearls: A Romance,' serialised in 18 parts in publisher Edward Lloyd's journal the People's Periodical and Family Library between November 1846 and March 1847," begins a brief history by Louise Welsh for the Guardian.
Also in this week's Review: Jane Campion recalls how, in late 1982, when she was 28, she went to meet Janet Frame to ask for the rights to turn the writer's autobiography into a television mini-series:
Frame sensibly suggested I wait until I had read the next two volumes of her autobiography, due out in 1983 and 1984. In the meantime, she would not sell them to anyone else. She liked boldness, she said, and made me hopeful despite my being just a student. Her taste in film was more sophisticated than mine. She talked about Last Year at Marienbad and said she favored films with strong atmosphere.
Eventually, the "television series became a film, and I have often tried to think through why people loved it so particularly."
"While Katyn - Andrzej Wajda's latest film - is enjoying worldwide exposure (an international premiere at the Berlinale, inclusion in the pre-selection of nine films vying for the 2008 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film), the director has revealed a few details about his new production," reports Dorota Hartwich in Cineuropa. "In May or June, shooting will begin on his screen adaptation of the short story 'Tatarak' by writer and poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz."
Though it won't see its official premiere until the Berlinale, Doris Dörrie's Kirschblüten (Cherry Blossoms) has won the Bavarian Film Award. Other winners include Fatih Akin (Best Director, The Edge of Heaven) and Veit Helmer (Special Jury Prize, Absurdistan).
"Lust, Caution and The Warlords collected the most nominations for the upcoming Asian Film Awards," reports Patrick Frater. "Ceremony, in its second year, will take place in Hong Kong March 17."
Also in Variety:
"I spent approximately 3000 hours in that dark cell between 1971 and 1975, briefly interrupted by a couple of other projects. It was during the archival research that I developed the idea of a dramatized feature film about an English soldier who sees his first action on D-Day, interweaving the archive footage to expand and tell the story." In the Guardian, Stuart Cooper recounts the making, forgetting and rediscovery of Overlord - plus, a compliment from Stanley Kubrick.
Also, Stuart McGurk meets people who collect screenplays.
Tim Lucas has just seen Dario Argento's The Mother of Tears: "As I expected, it's not in the same league with Suspiria (1977) or Inferno (1980) - its dazzling precursors in the 'Three Mothers' trilogy; its visual look is so subdued that it doesn't seem a close relative at all.... I'm mostly disappointed that Argento's staging of horror sequences has lost its former sense of beauty so entirely."
"Stephen Lowenstein's interview collection My First Movie: Take Two is both instructional manual and warning for the young guns, offering the remarkable stories of 10 directors' first films, while also making clear just how draining directing a film is," writes Saul Austerlitz in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Nikil Saval is not at all won over by I'm Not There and writes in n+1: "At least one critic has compared, without embarrassment, the film's incessant referencing and cataloguing as analogous to Finnegan's Wake. A more reasonable interpretation is that [Todd] Haynes is drowning in his film school education, just as his audience is drowning in allusions, and not a single original idea floats by to rescue him or us."
Back in the New York Times: "A meticulous record of a vanishing world - [Jia Zhangke's] cinematographer, Yu Lik-wai, surveys the wreckage with slow panning shots that evoke the horizontal expanse of Chinese scroll paintings - Still Life is an act of commemoration and of stoic protest," writes Dennis Lim in the New York Times. "'I don't start from a political standpoint,' Mr Jia said. 'But if you make a film about China right now, you have to talk about the politics and the changes that are affecting people.'... At 37 he has amassed a body of work - seven feature-length fiction films and documentaries - that is remarkable for its formal ambition, ethnographic richness and moral weight."
And: "After the clobbering Italian fashion has taken of late - in some accounts for its inability to produce a new generation of hot designers, in others for using underpaid Chinese immigrants to make overpriced handbags - Isabella Rossellini is making a stand for Milan," reports Eric Wilson.
"Texas State University announced last week the acquisition of Cormac McCarthy's papers for its Southwestern Writers Collection, part of the Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library in San Marcos," reports Kimberly Jones.
Also in the Austin Chronicle, Burnt Orange Productions "is officially in 'hiatus' after making four films, according to Tom Schatz, the longtime UT film professor and former Radio-Television-Film Department chair who championed the notion of connecting film academia with film business realities." Joe O'Connell reports.
Persepolis "is the furthest thing from the limitless taffy-pull of contemporary computer animation," writes Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader. "It is in fact quite deliberately reactionary, a return to "nature" if you will, a homespun product of the human hand... The general effect, overriding any risk of trivialization, is something in the vicinity of the Brechtian 'alienation effect,' something distancing, something cushioning, so that we experience such painful subjects as political oppression, imprisonment, torture, execution, etc., less viscerally and (for all the outward resemblance to a Saturday-morning TV kiddie cartoon) more cerebrally."
More from Shaun Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper, where Sam Adams talks with Marjane Satrapi. "Remember, on 9/11 there was a huge candlelight vigil in Tehran in sympathy with us," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. At any rate, "While so many films about coming of age involve manufactured dilemmas, here is one about a woman who indeed does come of age, and magnificently."
For the LA CityBeat, Steve Appleford talks with producer Lawrence Bender about the long-term impact of Pulp Fiction and An Inconvenient Truth and about his support for Barack Obama.
In the Independent, Bob Flynn talks with Nick Broomfield about Battle for Haditha.
With Cassandra's Dream out, Cineaste has gone ahead and posted Cynthia Lucia's interview with Woody Allen from its forthcoming Spring issue.
Tasha Robinson interviews Glen Hansard for the AV Club.
"The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn up and otherwise desecrated," reports Jason Burke in the Observer.
For a special issue of the Observer's Review that looks back 40 years to 1968, Philip French writes, "The two key film's of the year were Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Lindsay Anderson's If... Kubrick's picture managed to combine pessimism about the Cold War with a mystical vision of the future in space. If... was an ambiguous, allegorical film that distilled the confusion of the zeitgeist and was an apparent call for a root-and-branch revolution. It went on to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes the following year."
Taking Adam Ross's "Friday Screen Test" this week: Annie Frisbie.
New blog on the block. The New Yorker's Goings On.
Online listening and viewing tips. Borders offers a clip from the audio version of Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography. Thanks, Jerry! Then there's more Scientology proselytizing. At Slate, Troy Patterson comments on Gawker's version: "The strangest thing about this video is that it feels only moderately strange. An action hero and an against-the-odds evangelist shine with the same righteousness, and both are pushing redemption."
Online viewing tip #2. New York's Bilge Ebiri has Marlene Rhein's Let Me Tell You a Story.
Online viewing tip #3. David Poland lunches with Ellen Page. Related: Gwynne Watkins's "Hollywood Guide to Pregnancy" at ScreenGrab.
Online viewing tip #4. The trailer for The Vanishing of the Bees. Via David Pescovitz at Boing Boing.
Online viewing tips, round 1, from Creative Review.
Online viewing tips, round 2, from the Guardian's Kate Stables.
Posted by dwhudson at January 20, 2008 11:22 AM
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