Shorts and fests, 2/25.

Previewing The Gates, Richard Lacayo recalls meeting David and Albert Maysles back when they were editing Running Fence in the 70s: "What I realized even then was that Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a perfect Maysles subject. They've always insisted that the social processes involved in getting their work approved and built - all the bureaucratic hassles, community forums and press conferences - were an integral part of their art. And the Maysles love all those processes."

Word is, Warner Bros wants a pretty thorough reshoot of Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. "[T]his is bad news for those who were looking forward to Spike Jonze making a Spike Jonze film," write the folks following such developments at Where the Wild Things Are. Via Mark Hooper, who recalls the full troubled history of this adaptation for the Guardian.

Bourne 4? Yep. Jessica Barnes has details at Cinematical.

Festival roundup:

• "The inaugural Marfa Film Festival runs May 1 - 5," notes the Circuit's Michael Jones. Yep, that Marfa.

• From firsts to lasts: Ray Pride passes along confirmation that this year's New York Underground Film Festival (April 2 through 8) will indeed be the last, though the organization behind it will live on.

• Danielle DiGiacomo files a dispatch from the just-wrapped Big Sky Documentary Film Festival at All These Wonderful Things.

• Karina Longworth asks Daniel Stamm about A Necessary Death. Speaking of SXSW, Wiley Wiggins has a finger in three pies.

• The The SouthSlam Film Festival? "Sort of like Slamdance, but in Austin," explains Chris Garcia.

"Barton Fink may remain the key Coen Brothers film, the gateway to all their concerns, such as language, social hierarchies, and the ability to weave tales," proposes DK Holm, blogging for the Vancouver Voice.

At Not Coming to a Theater Near You, Cullen Gallagher enjoys a 1935 comedy: "What makes Baby Face Harrington stand out is not its clever satirizing of gangster movies, nor its status as a mid-period film of director Raoul Walsh, nor its cast that reads like a 'Who's Who' list of underappreciated character actors, but that its very premise is about the elevation of these 'character actors' to star status: the foregrounding of what is normally merely background ephemera."

With his novel Monster, 1959, David Maine "has concocted a sly, minimalist pastiche of monster-movie clichés, rendering them with perfect mimickry," writes Janet Maslin.

Also in the New York Times: "[T]he victory of Sony's new Blu-ray high-definition disc over a rival format, Toshiba's HD DVD, masks a problem facing the studios: the overall decline of the DVD market," report Brooks Barnes and Matt Richel.

Related: The Economist on how Hollywood's fears are keeping it from reaping the potential rewards of online distribution. Via Steve Bryant.

"In narratives that have long-fascinated the American imagination, heroes of color sacrifice themselves so that white characters may live more freely, implicitly absolved of the original American sin of racial oppression." In PopMatters, Derik Smith riffs on I Am Legend and Barack Obama's candidacy.

Logan Hill profiles Christina Ricci for New York.

Online browsing tip. Vanity Fair posts its "Hitchcock Classics" portfolio.

Online viewing tip #1. Gabriel Wardell has Jimmy Kimmel's response to Sarah Silverman.

Online viewing tip #2. Chris Anderson discusses his Wired cover story, "Free!" Via Fimoculous, also pointing to Jad Aburmrad's "Video Digest" for the Morning News.

Posted by dwhudson at February 25, 2008 2:22 PM