Shorts, 2/4.

"Who are the power players in the world of quality cinema? What individuals and organizations make intelligent, well-crafted movies and have the profile, financial resources and/or critical esteem to attract discerning audiences?" Paste's Tim Regan-Porter introduces the "Art House Powerhouse 100: The People Behind the Movies We Love."

Online are the lists of actors and directors, adding up to about half the total. The other lists Cinematical's Eric D Snider mentions (cinematographers, producers, festivals) don't seem to be online. Still, a fun browse.

Randal C Archibold reports on "one of the more unconventional film and media production schools around, the Wounded Marine Careers Foundation, a 10-week apprenticeship program guided by film industry veterans":

Here, a student casually peels off his shirt to reveal indentations and stitches crisscrossing a shoulder nearly obliterated by rifle fire. Another hikes up a pant leg to explain how his prosthetic limb works. And one, in the quiet of a "mess hall," a store house for props, speaks of the nightmares that rob him of sleep.

But it is also a place where marines, most them in their 20s, see a path to dreams and a way to overcome their disabilities, with the guarantee of membership in the main production crew union at the end and producers already calling for their services.

Also in the New York Times (and via Matt Dentler), Roberta Hershenson's appreciation of and talk with Ruby Dee, currently being nominated and awarded for her performance in American Gangster: "Her own perspective was shaped by her decades of work as an activist, including marching with the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr during the civil rights movement. 'As a nation we are growing some thick skin over some basic tenets that are in danger of being lost to us,' she said in the interview. 'Our democracy is getting threadbare.'"

And Charles McGrath "makes a case for pulp fiction that applies to movies as well as to literature," notes Jim Emerson.

"1944 was a hell of a year for film noir," writes Steve-O at Noir of the Week. "Really a turning point. The year saw the releases of Laura, Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet. The trio would go on to influence the entire body of film noir to come. One film from that year is unfortunately forgotten today by most is the amazing Phantom Lady directed by Robert Siodmak."

Eddie Constantine "promises to become another of my grand obsessions," writes Tim Lucas. Plus, related online viewing.

"The second film in Mrinal Sen's thematically connected 'absence trilogy' (along with Ek Din Pratidin and Ek Din Achanak) that examine the implications of a person's unexpected disappearance from a middle-class household on the family's moral consciousness, Kharij expounds on the trilogy's clinical and uncompromising social critique of entrenched, dysfunctional bourgeois values and materialistic privilege that have led to indifference, discrimination, insularity, and exploitation," writes acquarello.

Barbara Leibovitz tells Rachel Cooke "that the process of putting together Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens brought the two of them closer." Cooke: "[I]t's a satisfyingly thorough and honest film and, with its emphasis on Leibovitz's decade-long reign at Rolling Stone, her photographs of dancers and her fine documentary work, it might remind a few people that there is more to her than wind machines, wigs and body-paint."

Also in the Observer:

• Philip French on Battle for Haditha, which "immerses us as no other film on Iraq has done in the dust and smoke of warfare and in the terror shared by civilians and soldiers alike as they're involved in horrific carnage."

• Ally Carnwath and Katie Toms ask a batch of 15- and 16-year-olds what they think of Juno. Related: Craig Mclean talks with Ellen Page for the Independent.

• Interviews: Ed Vulliamy with Julie Christie, Louise France with Kristin Scott Thomas and Tim Adams with Jack Nicholson.

"A random sampling of the citizenry would most likely (if years worth of polling, and a general lack of public outrage, can be believed) come up with a good number of people who may not like torturing all them Middle Easterners," writes Chris Barsanti at Filmcritic.com, "but hey, it's an ugly world... It's for those people in particular that Alex Gibney's deeply unsettling documentary Taxi to the Dark Side should be required viewing, though just about any citizen should feel the film worthy of their time."

At Koreanfilm.org, Kim Hyun Kim finds Someone Behind You to be "yet another rip-off of Tale of Two Sisters, with a chunk bitten off from Death Note thrown in for a good measure."

CJ7 is Stephen Chow's "loving tribute to Hollywood's Cinema of Spectacle, particularly the sci-fi genre," writes The Visitor at Twitch. "Despite its shortcomings, CJ7 is still a very entertaining, hilarious movie. But then again, it has come to the point where every Stephen Chow movie is an event."

Online viewing tip. Andy Horbal joins Kevin Lee in an audio commentary on a scene from Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun.

Online viewing tips. Ian Schafer's got the Super Bowl ads; via Movie City News.

Posted by dwhudson at February 4, 2008 1:58 AM