Weekend shorts.

"Recently we lost two American actors who embodied widely different styles, and their passing is a reminder that the very presence of an actor can suggest everything about a film," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Adds John Patterson: "With the deaths of conservative Charlton Heston and liberal Richard Widmark within a week of each other (and with blacklisted director Jules Dassin sneaking less noisily off-stage midway between their two splashier exits), it feels as if the 1950s, that most lushly American of decades, are finally slipping over the horizon like the last sliver of land glimpsed from the stern of an ocean liner."

Also in the Guardian, Jeremy Kay reports on 3-D's comeback.

Chris Cagle launches Film of the Month Club: "Each month a member will select a film, after which other members can watch and post their reflections and reactions.... The idea behind this grab bag approach is to facilitate a conversation among all corners of the film blogosphere. And to watch more movies."

"After writing this indieWIRE article, 'Webolution or Wild Unknown,' about the not-so-distant future of digital rights and Internet-based distribution, it got me thinking how close we really are to Godfrey Cheshire's prophetic 1999 article, 'The Death of Film/The Decay of Cinema' (a must-read to see how prophetic he was)," blogs Anthony Kaufman. "For FilmCatcher, I've written up a little op-ed, 'Against the Future of Cinema: There is No Such Thing as Small Movies,' which is definitely more opinion than journalism, and certainly ignores the realities of the marketplace for an idealistic call to action: Throw away your iPods, dump your Netflix subscription, stop saving for that AppleTV and get thee to a Movie Theater."

Related: Ricky D'Ambrose in the Tisch Film Review on "distinctions between the kinds of spaces available for film viewing (specifically, between private and public spaces of reception)."

"As I was watching some Thorold Dickinson films during his recent retrospective at the Walter Reade, I started thinking about dramaturgy, and how it relates to my tastes.... [I]t occurred to me that classical dramaturgy could be seen as a way of creating a relationship between internal and external views of a work of art." Dan Sallitt elaborates.

"The films of Georges Franju are full of sleepwalkers, automatons, and prisoners," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Oppressed stages of being reign over his characters, eclipsing psychology and even drama as signifiers for understanding his strange stories."

Continuing his series on films from the Pre-Code era, John McElwee turns to Mystery of the Wax Museum, in which "Warners brought its horrific nastiness closer to home thanks to modern settings. Again there was Fay Wray helpless and exposed, this time literally, as she lay convincingly nude before [Lionel] Atwill's admiring gaze. For once, audiences got what lurid advertising promised."

"Kristin and I have already written admiringly about Pixar on this site (here, here, and here). It's quite likely that this studio is making the most consistently excellent films in America today," writes David Bordwell, who describes a talk given by Bill Kinder, Director of Editorial and Post-Production: "I've always been uncertain about what an editor does in the animation process. Since every shot is planned and executed in detail, what can be left for an editor to do? Bill started from that question. No, editing digital animation isn't just a matter of cutting off the slates and splicing perfectly finished shots together."

The latest entry in Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: Primer. And at Filmmaker, Scott Macaulay has a sort of Primer primer.

"Final preparations are underway before shooting begins on April 21 on the detective film Bellamy, the 54th feature by Claude Chabrol," reports Fabien Lemercier for Cineuropa. "The director will work for the first time with Gérard Depardieu."

"Japanese comedian / writer / painter / actor / director / whatever else he may want to be Takeshi Kitano unveiled his latest film Achilles to Kame (Achilles and the Tortoise) yesterday," notes Todd Brown at Twitch. "As has been his pattern with recent efforts he actually shot this one in secret before announcing it to the public - shooting began in February - and he's aiming to debut the picture in Venice."

"Natalie Portman is attached as the lead in a new film version of Wuthering Heights," reports Dade Hayes for Variety.

"Sam Raimi is extending his reach into the booming horror DVD genre," reports Thomas K Arnold for Reuters.

"Filmmaker/playwright Jang Jin has carved out a niche all his own in the film industry these past several years, and although he participates on Going By the Book as a screenwriter and producer - not a director - his contribution is unmistakable." Darcy Paquet at Koreanfilm.org.

"I can never forget Anthony, never repay my debt to him. But I will celebrate him every day for the rest of my life." In the London Times, Harvey Weinstein looks back on the highlights of making each movie, The English Patient on, with Anthony Minghella.

Vanity Fair runs an excerpt from David Kaufman's Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door.

Margy Rochlin talks with Helen Hunt about Then She Found Me, a film she's co-written, directed and stars in: "'In my life I've always thought, "As long as I understand the rules, it'll be OK." But the theme of the movie is that the sand is always shifting,' Ms Hunt said, with a laugh and a shudder. 'What a horrible thing to make a movie about.'"

Also in the New York Times:

• "For a film about erotomania, Prom Night is a curiously flaccid affair, dampened by a risible villain (Johnathon Schaech) and a bloodless script that channels all its tension into the choosing of the prom king and queen," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC) and Nick Schager (Slant).

• Again, Jeannette Catsoulis - on Tehelim: "If your goal is to illuminate the tension between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, losing your audience in liturgy may not be the best strategy."

• "A generally entertaining but half-baked variation on Richard Linklater's high school period piece, Dazed and Confused (made in 1993, set in 1976), Remember the Daze (set in 1999) takes its cue from the earlier film in an excess of ways," writes Laura Kern. "Ultimately, the ensemble of more than 20 featured characters seems as vapid as the intentionally caricatured adults who pop up on occasion. Where are this decade's John Hugheses? Or even the Cameron Crowes?" More from Bob Baker in the Los Angeles Times.

Speaking of Hughes. In a piece for the New York Sun on the "Apatow imprint," Steve Dollar notes that Hughes "harbored a similar fascination with freaks and geeks, as well as situations arising out of adolescent (or adolescent-minded) social awkwardness. But Mr Hughes managed to create strong, sympathetic female characters who had more to offer than drunken rites of passage or stern lectures about putting childish things behind."

"It is a curious anomaly in the male-dominated history of Middle Eastern cinema that female directors have been pioneers." In the Independent, Kaleem Aftab segues from the examples of Aziza Amir and Forugh Farrokhzad into talks with Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and Nadine Labaki (Caramel).

"The first half of this debut feature from director Brad Furman and screenwriters Joshua and Jonas Pate details the effects of Felix's injuries on him and his family, and in these sequences, Furman draws superb performances from [John] Leguizamo and [Rosie] Perez, two actors whose hyperactive energy has often been a distraction," writes Chuck Wilson, reviewing The Take for the Voice. So "when the screenwriters shift into revenge-thriller mode... one wishes that [Furman had] found a way to stay at the house with Felix and Marina, who don't need guns to thrill." More from Rachel Saltz (New York Times) and Bob Baker (Los Angeles Times).

"Hou [Hsiao-hsien] the outsider has adopted a teasing, playful, deliberately ungrounded viewpoint in Flight of the Red Balloon," writes Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "He comes and goes so freely that you may be surprised, near the end, to realize how deeply he's drawn you into a down-to-earth story."

"There are very few filmmakers with the technique, style, and sheer will to create strange, instantly accessible worlds that not only draw the viewer in, but also remain in the mind as places worthy of revisiting," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "In America, David Lynch is the most obvious living example; for me, Guy Maddin, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alfonso Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro are among the others with that power... as is Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov, whose latest feature, Alexandra, opens this week at the Nuart." More from Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times.

Eric Gillin for Esquire: "With a new book, Real Hollywood Stories, in stores now, we talked to Scott Raab about his career annoying the crap out of celebrities."

Stephen Armstrong profiles Donald Sutherland for the New Statesman.

Adam Ross's interviewee this week: James Frazier.

Bob Cashill presents a Summer 08 movie guide at Popdose.

In the Los Angeles Times, Chris Lee reports on yet another viral marketing campaign, this one for Quarantine, a remake of the Spanish [Rec]. Related: James Urbaniak on a possible case of viral marketing: "Who can tell anymore?"

As for [Rec], which opens this week in the UK, Nigel Floyd, writing in Time Out, finds it to be the "most effective of this year's Blair Witch-style shaky-cam horror movies" and "more focused and far scarier than either Cloverfield or Diary of the Dead." More, briefly, from Xan Brooks (Guardian) and Kevin Maher (London Times).

"At what point in the long and distinguished history of the horror film did the pump action shotgun become so seemingly indispensable to the genre?" wonders Arbogast. Adam Ross responds.

Ed Halter buys some books.

From Dan Jardine and Ben Livant at the House Next Door: an exchange on Rashomon. Also, Michael Healy on Shine a Light.

Dystopias: Dave Itzkoff on the ending of Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! (the novel on which Soylent Green was based); dizzie Ed with a bit of Orwell; Chris Barsanti on kids these days.

Online browsing tips, plus a spot of online viewing via Coudal Partners: "Cinemas of Italy" and "Adult Movie Posters of the 60s and 70s." Then, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

Online listening tip #1. The Bryant Park Project performs the first few pages of that supposed screenplay for Oliver Stone's W.

Online listening tip #2. A Kindlings Muse round on several recent releases.

Online viewing tip #1. Josh Levin offers a primer on movie car crashes for SlateV.

Online viewing tip #2. At Cinematical, Eugene Novikov notes that the trailer for Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace is up at the site.

Online viewing tips, round 1. "This insane montage of every instance of 'What?' from the Lost series started me thinking about this genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage," writes Andy Baio. "For lack of a better name, let's call them 'supercuts.'"

Online viewing tips, round 2. Twitch's Todd Brown notes that Europa Net's got behind-the-scenes interviews shot during the making of Christopher Doyle's Warsaw Dark.

Online viewing tips, round 3. More from Jerry Lentz: Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Filmmaker, a doc made in 1970 and fascinating to see now; Eraserhead Neighborhood; and Rick Fahle talks with Julie Andrews about Home: A Memoir of My Early Years for Borders.

Posted by dwhudson at April 12, 2008 1:30 PM