Shorts, 4/14.

"What The Big Country demonstrates is that [Charlton] Heston was really a character actor in a leading man's body, and that his basic character was not Moses or Ben Hur or El Cid but the weak and flawed inhabitant of a physical frame he could not live up to," writes Stanley Fish. "In some of his finest films, he plays that role even when he is the leading man."

Also in the New York Times: "If you want to know how the Olympic torch really began its 'Journey of Harmony,' as the Chinese call its current relay, if you want to see why the torch has had to pass through a human obstacle course composed of protesters, SWAT teams and police in San Francisco, Paris and London, then do not look to Tibet's grievances against China," writes Edward Rothstein. "Look to the opening of Leni Riefenstahl's 1938 film, Olympia."

And Frank Rich has seen Standard Operating Procedure:

Sympathetic critics will tell us it's our civic duty to see it. The usual suspects will try to besmirch Mr. Morris's patriotism. But none of that will much matter. Standard Operating Procedure will reach the director's avid core audience, but it is likely to be avoided by most everyone else no matter what praise or controversy it whips up.... Iraq is to moviegoers what garlic is to vampires.

This is not merely a showbiz phenomenon but a leading indicator of where our entire culture is right now. It's not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don't want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time.... Unable to even look at the fiasco anymore, the nation is now just waiting for someone to administer the last rites.

Chicagoist's Rob Christopher talks with Barry Gifford "about Wild at Heart, working with David Lynch, his love for the writing of Nelson Algren, and the mysterious enduring popularity of the Cubs."

David Edelstein's "New York Movies Canon" has the Guardian's Danny Leigh and Reeler ST VanAirsdale thinking about what's happened to the idea of New York in the movies during the last decade or so.

"Angel Díez's reverent and elegiac rumination on the iconoclastic, deeply personal cinema of Jean Eustache, La peine perdue de Jean Eustache (The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache) hews closer to essay film than straightforward documentary, a muted, brooding tone piece where loss, grief, and mourning are reflected in the images of empty spaces, fragmented figures, and extended silences." Acquarello.

"Dieter Eppler, a German-born but quite international actor whose career encompassed everything from Edgar Wallace krimis and Italian vampire films to the occasional art film like Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, has died in his hometown of Stuttgart, Germany at the age of 81." Tim Lucas offers a toast.

Jay Slater's survey in Film Threat: "The Perverse, Deranged and Lost Movies of Alberto Cavallone."

"Darktown Strutters brings up an important issue for blaxploitation and cinema in general: can filmmakers adequately depict a culture they are not a part of and should their voice be considered as valid as those coming from within?" David Carter at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.

Borys Kit for the Hollywood Reporter: "Shia LaBeouf is making a trip to The Dark Fields, a thriller Neil Burger is directing for Universal." LaBeouf's character "gets his hands on a top-secret pharmaceutical drug that makes you smarter. He experiences sudden financial and social success but soon discovers that the drug has lethal and lasting side effects, including 'trip-switching,' a phenomenon in which time moves with a stop-motion quality."

"Though Jean Renoir's The Human Beast has become the more well known and well respected film, Fritz Lang's American remake Human Desire is an equally provocative film of fate, passion, and suspense." Jeff Markam's got the Noir of the Week.

Vince Keenan recommends a few show business melodramas.

A slew of stars have switched talent agencies lately and "the swaps have grown so frequent and significant that many in the industry have been startled by all the big moves, which some say are a reaction to an overall contraction in the movie business," reports John Horn. Also in the Los Angeles Times, Josh Getlin on "the rapidly shifting terrain in the book-to-film world and the increasing convergence of New York literati and Hollywood filmmakers."

Mike Everleth's enjoyed J Hoberman's The Dream Life: "Although Hoberman's book is subtitled Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, he actually covers material that extends into the 70s and 80s, ending with Brian De Palma's Blow Out, which came out in 1981. It's as if Hoberman had so much fun writing about one decade, he couldn't stop himself from keep going into two more."

Paul Matwychuk talks with David Hajdu about his book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. Bookforum collects reviews.

Online browsing and viewing tip. Via Jason Kottke, The Art of the Title Sequence.

Posted by dwhudson at April 14, 2008 4:14 PM