Shorts, 1/24.

"The third round of the Book Review's Reading Room series is up and percolating," announces the New York Times' Dwight Garner. "The topic this time: Walker Percy's odd, winsome 1962 novel The Moviegoer."

"I personally would propose these three words, which are certainly at the driving heart of my own practice: richness, intensity and gesture." Adrian Martin in a terrific interview that originally ran in the Slovenian magazine Ekran nearly a year ago and appearing in English now, thanks to the interviewer, interviewee and Girish.

"[I]t is only when the human interest is understood within its wider contexts specifically - not as the dramatic heart of a social message but as micro-developments within a macro-narrative - that I think Still Life emerges as one of the very richest and most important 'festival films' of recent years that I've had the fortune of seeing," writes Zach Campbell.

Reviewing Don't Touch the Axe at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Ian Johnston stress how much it "is in keeping with Rivette's other films. And I have to say I'm simply left in awe at the formal mastery of this film. Rivette's firm, steady hand guides the film, scene by scene, with a calm precision; there's a finely-calibrated weight and solidity to every level of the film, from individual shot to sequence to the effect of the film as a whole.

Jimmy Carter Man from Plains gets Godfrey Cheshire thinking about the moment "when America's mind turned a fateful corner, the one separating a polity based on observable reality and one heavily infused with solipsistic fantasy." You'll want to read that Independent Weekly piece. Then, at the newly redesigned site for Vue Weekly, Brian Gibson has more on Jonathan Demme's doc.

"Oliver Stone has set his sights on his next directing project, Bush, a film focusing on the life and presidency of George W Bush, and attached Josh Brolin to play the title role." Michael Fleming's piece is more than the usual Variety news item. He gets Stone to tell him quite a lot about what he's got in mind, e.g., "if Nixon was a symphony, this is more like a chamber piece, and not as dark in tone," and to talk about losing Pinkville three weeks before shooting was to start.

Also: Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody are lined up for Cadillac Records, playing Muddy Waters and Leonard Chess, respectively, reports Dade Hayes.

Daniel Kasman annotates a list of his "favorite films that were given a theatrical run of at least a week in the United States in 2007."

Nick Davis revs up his countdown.

"Caramel, the directing debut of Lebanese actress/music video director Nadine Labaki, concerns five women who frequent a beauty salon in Beirut, their lives unfolding onscreen in between hair stylings and waxings (the latter accomplished with the sticky, burnt-sugar mixture for which the film is named)," writes Joanne Nucho at Reverse Shot. "[D]espite its ethnographic accuracy and refreshing open-endedness, Caramel is still a traditional movie, and an ultimately pleasing 'chick flick' at that, warm and charming. Though Caramel manages to steer clear of directly addressing the war, its specter haunts the film... At the same time this portrait is a hopeful one, and in some ways it's directed at people outside of Lebanon as well as those within, for whom everyday life goes on despite decades of conflict and turmoil."

"If Marlon Brando remains one of the very greatest of screen actors, perhaps it lies in a paradox: that he was the screen actor who more successfully than anybody else suggested the intimacy of the stage whilst in fact acting in front of a camera." Tony McKibbin in Film International.

A few months ago, Ztohoven, a Czech art collective, hacked the country's early morning weather broadcast with a video depicting a nuclear blast: "Across the Krkonose Mountains, or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a rising mushroom cloud," writes Michael Kimmelman:

Some Czechs expressed outrage over Ztohoven's action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant, even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.

Not long ago a film that became a local hit, Czech Dream, documented a boondoggle by two young Czech filmmakers, who enlisted advertisers and publicists to devise a marketing scheme for a nonexistent supermarket. The movie's goal, like Ztohoven's, was to wag the dog: lampoon media manipulation and public gullibility.

"Part social realism in its searing depiction of the plight of the underprivileged against the transforming economy of an increasingly modernized Turkey, and part poetic essentialism in its psychological portrait of a desperate man succumbing to the mania of a delusive, blind faith, Yilmaz Güney and Serif Gören's Umut (Hope) captures the precarious atmosphere of a nation at a political and economic crossroads." Writes acquarello.

Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) and Ross Douthat (Atlantic) both disagree with Manohla Dargis's take on Cloverfield - but for different reasons. More from DK Holm in the Vancouver Voice. Dave Itzkoff looks back on literary monsters. And then, for comic relief, there's John Rogers.

"Sumptuously photographed in glossy digital video by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr, Youth Without Youth is extremely well crafted, handsomely mounted and almost impossible to sit through," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly.

For IFC News, Aaron Hillis talks with Woody Allen about Cassandra's Dream.

"[F]or Kimya Dawson, the 35-year-old den mother of the tiny anti-folk scene, all the attention for her music in the film Juno is a little troubling." Ben Sisario talks with her for the New York Times.

Laura Barnett talks with Jane Birkin for the Guardian. Also, Mark Brown reports on stage version of Brief Encounter and Eric Shorter remembers Don Fellows, 1922 - 2007.

Novid Parsi interviews Roger Ebert for Time Out Chicago. Via Movie City News.

Teeth: In the Austin Chronicle, Melanie Haupt talks with Mitchell Lichtenstein, while, in the Philadelphia City Paper, Sam Adams interviews Jess Weixler.

Nathan Lee: "Directed by Gregory Hoblit from a screenplay by a trio (a trio!) of whomevers, Untraceable hasn't the brains of a class-act psychothriller like The Silence of the Lambs (though it does reprise that film's titillating homophobia); worse yet, it lacks the balls to juice up the trashy verve of the Saw series. Stuck in the middle, it leaves everyone stranded, actors and audience alike."

Also in the Voice:

• Ella Taylor on Orthodox Stance, "Jason Hutt's mildly absorbing vérité trot through the pugilist's quest for a junior title that will put him on the pro-boxing map." More from the Reeler and Bill Weber in Slant.

• Julia Wallace on Trailer Park Boys: The Movie: "I'm sure the pot-laced antics of these trashy dudes are, like, totally hilarious on Canadian TV, but they don't translate well to America or the big screen." Also, Alice's House, "an utterly average foreign art-house film, with all the strengths and flaws that label implies."

• Jim Ridley on How She Move: "Apart from the exuberant athleticism of the step battles... the movie's chief appeal is a largely unknown cast." More from Armond White in the New York Press.

"Seen 40 years after its initial release, Melvin Van Peebles's [Story of a Three-Day Pass] is a wildly uneven first feature that is often as awkward as the lovers in the film," writes Peter Nellhaus.

Tim Lucas: "The final ballot for the Sixth Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards has been posted, and I'm proud to announce that Video Watchdog and its contributors have received a total of nine (9) nominations this year." Also, a memorial fund for Maila "Vampira" Nurmi.

Offline reading tip. Doug Cummings recommends Beyond.

Online viewing tip #1. Jacques Prévert and Salvador Dalí at the DVblog.

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Dead On: The Life and Cinema of George A Romero. Via Coudal Partners.

Posted by dwhudson at January 24, 2008 2:58 PM