Shorts, 3/4.

Girish offers a few passages from Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s and points to Adrian Martin's new column for Filmkrant, "Enthusiasts and Contrarians."

As Jonathan Rosenbaum retires, the Chicago Reader sets up a page with that video interview and a selection of some of his favorite reviews and lists.

Odienator recaps "Black History Mumf."

The cinetrix discovers FilmSound.org.

"Now that the Oscars are over and our first viable female presidential is floundering toward failure, it seems like a good time to take stock of sexism in our culture," writes Amy Monaghan. "That's why Radar, using Knocked Up as a mildly chauvinistic baseline, and employing the highly scientific method of surveying our girlfriends, set out to uncover the most misogynistic movies of the 21st century."

"Tootsie was conceived, consciously or not, to be re-enacted," argues Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times Magazine. "Watch it just once, and you'll find it eminently memorizable, quotable, performable." The cinetrix comments.

"For years the [French] northern region, Nord-Pas de Calais, has been stereotyped as a miserable hell of disused coal mines and rusting factories, where alcoholic, unemployed or suicidal inhabitants keep warm by beating each other up or gorging on chips with vinegar," writes Angelique Chrisafis. "But now a comedy about the prejudices endured by northerners has become a surprise box office hit, sparking a cult-like craze for the region surrounding the Channel tunnel and an outpouring of love for its wronged inhabitants. Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, set in a small town near Dunkirk, has proved such a hit in its opening days that Hollywood has bought the rights to make its own version set in a US backwater." More from John Lichfield in the Independent: "The film - a kind of extended TV sketch with one joke - looks likely to be one of the biggest box-office successes since Amélie in 2001."

Back to the Guardian: David Attenborough, retiring now after 54 years on television, "has given us an extraordinarily complete picture of the natural world," writes Stuart Jeffries.

And back in the Independent, Sally Williams: "It is astonishing, Paul Taylor admits, that his debut documentary We Are Together, made when he was still a student, is now playing to a critical wave of acclaim on the festival circuit."

"Cultural attaché to a movie producer. Not a bad gig." Lizzie Widdicombe talks with Brian Grazer and discovers that the position is real - 15 to 20 people have held it over the past 20 years.

Also in the New Yorker, Michael Chabon: "[T]he most reliable proof of the preposterousness of superhero attire whenever it is translated, as if by a Kugelmass device, from the pages of comics to the so-called real world can be found in film and television adaptations of superhero characters."

"Though [No Country for Old Men] is unmistakably a Coen brothers movie, it's also in some ways their least characteristic film," argues Reed Johnson.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "To many students of mathematics, Flatland stands alongside Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as one of the most beloved stories of the modern age," writes Margaret Wertheim, noting that last year "saw the production of not one but two new film versions, the first a full-length animated feature directed by Ladd Ehlinger Jr, updating the story from Victorian England to contemporary America, and the second a 30-minute animation starring the voices of Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell and Michael York, which has just been released on DVD. Accompanying the latter is Flatland: The Movie Edition, published by Princeton University Press, in which we get [Edwin A] Abbott's novella plus the script of the movie, along with an introduction by Brown University mathematics professor Thomas Banchoff and commentary by the film's writer and producer (Seth Caplan), director (Jeffrey Travis) and chief animator (Dano Johnson)."

• A profile from Robert W Welkos: "Virtually unknown to American audiences, [Hannelore] Elsner is so celebrated in her homeland that the German government awarded her its Order of Merit, the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation."

• Choire Sicha meets Maura Tierney.

Demetrios Matheou talks with Emily Mortimer for the Independent.

Rachel Cooke meets Kathleen Turner: "She speaks five languages, talks about politics and sex with a frankness and intensity that is positively Parisian and has been known to read, well, books." And of course, she's written one, too: Send Yourself Roses.

Also in the Observer:

• "It would be hard to imagine a more inspiring show than Brutal Beauty, a celebration of the art of Derek Jarman," writes Laura Cumming.

• Elizabeth Day's primer on the Anthony Pellicano case.

• Philip French on Toshiro Mifune.

At indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman reports on how Michael Moore's plans for a "Doc Night in America" are faring: "Reactions to the plan are largely split between documentary filmmakers, who welcome any initiative that helps get their work out to the world, and industry insiders, who are skeptical about the plan's feasibility and disturbed by what they see as a further ghettoization of the documentary form."

Dan Callahan's "5 for the Day": Shelley Duvall. Also at the House Next Door: "45 Books for the Literate Music Fan," from the Bullz-Eye.

A new, all-black production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens at the Broadhurst Theatre on Thursday; Boris Kachka profiles Terrence Howard for New York.

Online wow. At Boing Boing, David Pescovitz's found a shot of an avalanche on Mars; goldenfiddle has another.

Faith and Film Critics Circle unveils its "Best of 2007" list. Via Jeffrey Overstreet.

Online listening tip. Rob Davis and J Robert Parks discuss their favorite films of 2007.

Online listening tips. A "look at how Hollywood has showcased American cynicism about politics" on the Leonard Lopate Show - plus Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.

Online viewing tip. Amy Walker's "21 Accents," via Fimoculous.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Eliza selects some "Great new videos" for Creative Review.

Online viewing tips, round 2. Via Coudal Partners, Smashing Magazine's "25 Brilliant Animated Short Movies."

Posted by dwhudson at March 4, 2008 9:46 AM