Shorts, 2/21.

"I think [John] Ford is a great filmmaker, but I'm not used to thinking of him as a philosopher," writes Dan Sallitt. "And yet the most likely way to resolve the dissonances of Tobacco Road is to postulate that Ford simply has an unusual tolerance for the vicissitudes of the human condition."

In 1925, make-up meant encasing the face in grease and powder before stepping out into blinding carbon-arc lights. The Self-Styled Siren quotes a passage from Mary Astor's A Life on Film and follows up with a few delicious biographical tidbits. Side to the Siren: Vanity Fair's just handed its "Proust Questionnaire" to Joan Fontaine.

"If Columbia had renewed its copyright on schedule, would this film be so widely admired today?" David Bordwell on His Girl Friday and the critical reassessment of Howard Hawks: "Scholars and the public discovered a masterpiece because they had virtually untrammeled access to it, and perhaps its gray-market status supplied an extra thrill. Thanks mainly to piracy, His Girl Friday was propelled into the canon."

"With the Oscars coming up, it felt like a great time to look at one of the best movies about movies I know - or, rather, if not necessarily the best, but certainly one of the juiciest." At SFGate's Culture Blog, James Rocchi recommends The Bad and the Beautiful.

Trevor Griffiths (site) is best known for having written Reds with Warren Beatty. "He was part of group of new writers including David Mercer, Ken Loach, Jim Allen and Dennis Potter who were associated with Tony Garnett, who brought a new realism to British television in the 1960s," writes Ann Talbot in a profile for the World Socialist Web Site. "In the theater, where much of his work has been done, he is one of a group of politicized playwrights that includes David Hare, Howard Brenton and David Edgar." His latest screenplay, recently published by Spokesman Books, is These are the Times: A Life of Thomas Paine, and Talbot argues it'd make a "great film." An interview accompanies her piece.

What "West Wing fans stunned by the similarity between the fictitious Matthew Santos and the real-life Barack Obama have not known is that the resemblance is no coincidence," reports Jonathan Freedland. "When the West Wing scriptwriters first devised their fictitious presidential candidate in the late summer of 2004, they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician - not yet even a US senator - by the name of Barack Obama.... What's more, the West Wing had the Republicans choose between a Christian preacher - a pre-echo of Mike Huckabee - and an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base: a dead ringer for John McCain."

Also in the Guardian: David Jenkins wonders why, in an age of crystal clear digital sound, we can't understand what actors are saying. Jenkins's major offender: Philip Seymour Hoffman.

"One particular subtext in all [Wes] Anderson-[Owen] Wilson collaborations recalls the work of Oscar Wilde - that is, life, through the medium of creativity and troubled genius, imitates art," writes Will Lasky at 24 Lies a Second. "Mapping the idea of 'life imitating art' onto Owen Wilson's biography and Wes Anderson's films reveals their startling convergence."

Paul Haggis and Michael Nozik have optioned Joseph Weisberg's CIA novel An Ordinary Spy. Josh Getlin looks into it for the Los Angeles Times.

David Fincher will direct an adaptation of Charles Burns's graphic novel, Black Hole, reports Variety's Tatiana Siegel. Via New York's Vulture, which has more up-n-coming news. Meantime, goldenfiddle points to Rick Kleffel's review of the novel.

Chris Barsanti is a bit taken back by "Warner Bros' announcement yesterday that they were backing a two-part live-action adaptation of Akira, set to star Leonardo DiCaprio whenever he takes time off from his next Scorsese film."

From a special issue of Transformations on "Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture," Catherine Russell on "Dialectical Film Criticism: Walter Benjamin's Historiography, Cultural Critique and the Archive" and Kristen Daly on "The Dissipating Aura of Cinema," in which she quotes Amos Vogel:

What kind of art is this that depends so heavily on the nature of its presentation, and to which access in a form close to its "original" becomes ever more impossible? What shall we do with the evanescence of film stock?... It is as if King Lear were available only one day per decade in one city per continent, in 50th-generation, pirated, Hong Kong copies of which entire pages were missing, individual paragraphs not quite readable, portions of characters obliterated with frustrating intimations of potential greatness; the stuff of Borges, of Kafka, of Marquez.

Via Bookforum.

"There are a variety of exercises in logic one can run though to demolish the theory that violent entertainment correlates to violent activity," notes James Rocchi in the Huffington Post. Among them: "Economically and demographically similar audiences are watching these films, and yet, viewers in other nations aren't making the leap to arming themselves and shooting people as the final possible act of film appreciation."

"Ramin Bahrani looked ecstatic when his sophomore feature, Chop Shop, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year," notes Eric Kohn, who talks with him for the New York Press. "Turning around to face the cheering crowd, the New York–based filmmaker was greeted by an enthusiastic Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian auteur whose neorealist aesthetic had a profound impact on the 37-year-old Bahrani."

"Israeli films serve as both conscience and instigator, possibly because artists are able to exert influence in a country of just 7.3 million people," writes Michael Fox at SF360. "But Israeli movies have been exposed to even bigger audiences in recent years, garnering praise, prizes and distribution deals on the international festival circuit. With the current and imminent release of The Band's Visit, Beaufort and Jellyfish in the US, on the heels of last year's Close to Home and The Bubble, the wave has reached our shores."

FilmInFocus interviews Brandon Harris of Cinema Echo Chamber.

"Taxi to the Dark Side uncovers no smoking gun," writes Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper. "But better than any recent film, it demonstrates how the combination of hoo-rah slogans and amoral leadership translates into atrocity on the ground." Also, an interview with Alex Gibney.

Time's Joel Stein has had George Clooney over for dinner. Naturally, he's still getting over it. You can watch Clooney climb into his attic, too. Also: "George Clooney swears he has never lost an Oscar pool." Check out his picks and the pretty amusing quips that introduce them.

Steven Shaviro weighs in on the Daniel Plainview debate: "Everything that [Stephanie] Zacharek deplores about the performance is precisely what, to my mind, makes it so great. Day-Lewis's performance 'lacks spontaneity, fire, life,' because Daniel Plainview as a character is entirely devoid of these attributes. He's an empty shell, a hollow man, a mask without a face, a collection of annoying tics and raging drives with no interiority behind it."

"Here is a movie to stop the auteur theory dead in its tracks," offers Scott Foundas in the Voice. "Clearly, the British-born [Pete] Travis was recruited for Vantage Point on the basis of his excellent 2004 debut feature, Omagh, which restaged the events leading up to and following a devastating 1998 car bombing on a crowded retail street in the titular Northern Irish town. Produced by Paul Greengrass, and conceived as something of a companion film to his own Bloody Sunday, there wasn't a moment in Omagh that rang false. There's not a single one in Vantage Point that rings true."

Kyle Ryan talks with Amy Ryan at the AV Club.

More on Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood: David Ansen (Newsweek) and Mary Kaye Schilling (Los Angeles Times.

In the Independent, Stephen Applebaum revisits the Cruising brouhaha.

"[T]he Internet movie download era is more distant than pundits think, for four colossal reasons." David Pogue lists 'em in the New York Times.

Online viewing tip #1. At Shooting Down Pictures, Girish Shambu comments on The Woman in the Window and the cinema of Fritz Lang in general.

Online viewing tip #2. "Tight dresses and rhine-stone rings, drinkin' up the band's beers..." Flickhead's got Joni Mitchell backed by an all-star band in their prime.

Online viewing tips. At retroCRUSH, Robert Berry's got clips of the 25 "Greatest Duets of All Time." Via Fimoculous.

Posted by dwhudson at February 21, 2008 2:39 PM