Weekend shorts.

In a recent piece for Film Arts, Katy Chevigny "notes the recent trend over the past decade of declaring the Year of the Doc in response to the increase of nonfiction filmmaking, which reflects a change in both the industry (as technology gets cheaper) and the art form (which larger audiences are beginning to notice)," writes Eric Kohn in Stream. "I'm of the opinion that too much of a good thing is still a good thing."

"Filmmaking requires perseverance, zeal, sometimes even a pathological commitment to see a project through. Now imagine making movies in Baghdad." Anthony Kaufman profiles Kasim Abid and Maysoon Pachachi, who "set up their first three-month course with around 20 students, but the class lasted up to a year, because students often couldn't get into the school." Also at FilmInFocus, Peter Bowen's "Short History of Iraqi Cinema" and Nick Dawson's "Brief Guide to the Iraq War on Film."

And look who's blogging at FilmInFocus: Cary Fukunaga, who's working on his next feature, Sin Nombre. Parts 1 and 2.

"[T]he Haus der Kunst has become one of Germany's leading galleries of modern art," blogs Keith Griffiths at FilmInFocus. "It is curated by one of Europe's most manic, imaginative and maverick museum directors - Chris Dercon, who has invited the Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul to create an ambitious new film-video installation provisionally entitled Primitive, for the museum's large 'foyer' space. This will open in the spring of 2009 alongside major exhibitions of the work of Gerhard Richter and William Eggleston." He brings up Munich's respected showcase because it was in the Haus der Kunst that the Nazis staged the infamous Degenerate Art Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition; see comments below) in 1937. And on that note, he segues into screenings in Thailand of Syndromes and a Century with the portions censored there replaced by scratched black leader - and quotes a local critic: "If the film had been allowed to un-spool a year ago without any cuts, it would long be out of the consciousness of the mainstream viewing public. Before the censorship debacle, Syndromes and a Century was a remarkable film. Now, it is truly historic."

"This year marks the 40th anniversary of the genesis of the American Nightmare," writes Marco Lanzagorta. "Indeed, four decades ago the landscape of US horror cinema was drastically and permanently altered by the release of four revolutionary films: George A Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Franklin J Schaffner's Planet of the Apes. Furthermore, these movies faithfully embody the social and cultural anxieties that characterized one of the most distressing periods in US history."

Also at PopMatters, Bill Gibron on Mike Myers's Love Guru controversy: "[T]he notion of a non-native using another country and religion's foundation for funny business smacks of a strange, almost surreal tactlessness."

"For the past 43 years no Pakistan-made film had been distributed commercially to movie theaters in India until the opening here of [Shoaib] Mansoor's movie, Khuda Kay Liye (In the Name of God).... The release of the film, which broke all box office records in Pakistan last year, was hailed here as a significant moment in the slowly progressing India-Pakistan peace talks." Amelia Gentleman reports in the New York Times.

Twitch's Todd Brown notes that Lars Von Trier will be shooting his Antichrist in Germany this summer. More from Annika Pham at Cineuropa.

Cineuropa's Naman Ramachandran notes that "Danis Tanovic (the Oscar-winning No Man's Land, Hell) is ready to roll with his new project Triage." The film will star Irish actor Colin Farrell (In Bruges), Spanish diva Paz Vega (Sex & Lucia) and British icon Christopher Lee (Star Wars).

"I am locked, half-naked, in a wooden box in an abandoned hospital in the East End of London, playing a mathematician called Kalman." Alex Cox takes a role in Alex de la Iglesia's The Oxford Murders.

Also in the Guardian: Jarvis Cocker dabbled in film once and recalls his "adventures in the avant-garde world"; and Noble and Silver on moviegoing these days.

"Wong [Kar-Wai]'s sense of artistic priorities - his art, period - is the true subject of My Blueberry Nights," writes Matt Zoller Seitz at the House Next Door. "It's spare, relaxed, playful and very, very loose. Coming on the heels of the symphonic, Proustian romantic drama 2046 (arguably his most ambitious movie) and his stunning segment of Eros, The Hand (surely his most precise) it's the directorial equivalent of a musician following up back-to-back marquee performances with an after-hours jam session."

The Oregonian's Shawn Levy on Last Year at Marienbad: "It maddens, beguiles, frustrates, and tantalizes, and has done so for nearly 50 years; it was, in fact, designed for just that effect. It's gorgeous - almost too gorgeous - and artificial and dense, and it fights off analysis with an air of studied indifference and a trickster's self-satisfaction. And it's got tremendous sticking power: experience it once and even if you hate it you'll find it unforgettable."

Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook on La France: "Bareness and simplicity define this oddity of a war film, which is why the pooling shadows and light of the evenings speak so loudly, for they enrich a mysteriously simplified work."

"If Michael Haneke ever makes a film about love (save for the psychosexual transgressions of The Piano Teacher), chances are he'll reach for Valeska Grisebach's Longing (Sehnsucht) as a point of reference," suggests Tim Wong in the Lumière Reader.

"The combination of director Lee Joon-ik and screenwriter Choi Seok-hwan has been golden, not only with their record-breaking smash hit King and the Clown but also with mid-sized hits like like Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield (2003) and Radio Star (2006). Their films are sometimes clever, but never flashy or trend-chasing." Darcy Paquet reviews their new, "unusually fun movie," The Happy Life.

Also at Koreanfilm.org, Adam Hartzell on Zhang Lu's Desert Dream.

In the Voice:

• "Bizarre and hysterical." Vadim Rizov on Ben Stein's Expelled. More from Jeannette Catsoulis (New York Times), Andy Klein (LA CityBeat), Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times) and Nick Schager (Slant).

• Ernest Hardy: "Director Jean-Pierre Limosin's Young Yakuza, a documentary on the immersion of a troubled Japanese youth into the shadowy, sorta-legal-but-still-illicit world of the yakuza (Japanese mafia), never delivers either the thrill of its underworld setting or much insight into its complicated workings." More from Neil Genzlinger in the New York Times.

• Aaron Hillis finds the horse racing doc, The First Saturday in May, "isn't exactly a winner, but it places." More from Jeffrey Gantz (Boston Phoenix), Robert Levin (cinemattraction), Nathan Rabin (AV Club), Bill Weber (Slant) and, in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis: "If Barbaro weren't one of the main attractions in The First Saturday in May, and if his name weren't being used in the marketing, the movie's lapses might be forgivable. It would still be a bad documentary, marred by dribbling camerawork and pointless choices... but it wouldn't smack of exploitation." Related online listening: Ed Champion talks with filmmakers Brad and John Hennegan.

"A certain superficial 'leftist' will simply make life easy for him or herself by arguing that [Charlton] Heston was always 'essentially' a right-winger and there is nothing to be gained by looking at his life and career," write Joanne Laurier and David Walsh at the WSWS. "Such people never learn anything. The more challenging task is to look at the evolution of individuals like Heston as the product of objective historical and social processes."

"With her slightly askew beauty and her compelling but unorthodox mix of neuroses and earthy sexiness, Teri Garr was always destined for underappreciation," writes Reverse Shot's robbiefreeling, adding that her "simultaneously hefty and vulnerable work in Tootsie still might be her career pinnacle, and it's worth noting that she stands out even in a cast positively brimming with stellar supporting actors (Charles Durning, Jessica Lange, Dabney Coleman, George Gaines, Sydney Pollack), each of whom abscond with at least two scenes."

"The more the Siren watches, re-watches and reflects upon [John] Garfield, the more she thinks that he - not the inarguably magnificent Brando - was the definitive American screen actor, the one who divides it all into Before and After." And this glides into a defense of Hedy Lamarr.

Dan Sallitt salutes André Bazin, who'd have turned 90 yesterday.

So. Here comes Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. May 22, all over, just days after its world premiere at Cannes. "Per Spielberg's strict decree, not even the Paramount marketing team has been allowed to see any work-in-progress versions," writes Steve Daly, opening Entertainment Weekly's "Summer Movie Preview" package. "Neither has EW. But we do have inside intelligence on what it's about: greed, abduction, the Cold War, anticommunist fervor, torture, theft, artifact-acquisition rivalry, and the post-WWII generation gap, among other things."

Daly also talks with Spielberg and George Lucas - and with Harrison Ford.

Meanwhile, Anne Thompson is tracking rumors and counter-rumors.

Oh, and that "Crystal Skull"? "Twelve such skulls, carved from solid crystal or quartz, are known to exist," reports John Lichfeld in the Independent. "Doubts about the authenticity of the skulls as Aztec or Mayan artefacts have existed for years." Now the French national museum service's research and restoration center, C2RMF, has determined they're fakes. The one they've got, at least, was "probably made in a small village in southern Germany in the second half of the 19th century."

Before Indy, though, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay opens on Friday, and back in EW, Shirley Halperin hosts a roundtable on stoner comedies. Participants: Seth Rogen (Pineapple Express), Doug Benson (Super High Me), Tommy Chong (Up in Smoke, etc), Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and John Cho (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle). Related: Nicolas Rapold talks with Hurwitz and Schlossberg for the New York Sun.

In the Independent, Andrew Gumbel tracks the rise and fall of New Line Cinema.

Ted Zee notes that HBO has lined up quite a slate of new docs for the summer's Monday nights, beginning with Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (June 9) through to The Black List, Vol 1 (August 25).

In the Philadelphia Weekly, Matt Prigge lists "Six independent female filmmakers who really ought to be allowed/made to direct more."

"Ten defining films of the noughties so far," from Phil Hoad at the Guardian.

The Movie Poster Addict's found one it likes as much as Twitch's Todd Brown, who describes the film, Robert Sigl's The Spider, as "a 15 million dollar production shooting in Turkey. Archaeology, demon possession, reincarnated emperors, it's got it all. Plus that killer poster."

Spencer Sloan made me laugh. Out loud.

In signandsight, Ekkehard Knörer has a good laugh at The Red Baron.

Things via Coudal Partners: the 2001 Spacesuit Restoration Project; a storyboard for The Shining with Kubrick's extensive notes; the closing credits for Hal Ashby's Being There, probably the best outtakes reel ever; Italian movie posters and ads.

The cinetrix wants a Cinemobile.

Online contest. Mark A Rayner's "Vintage Ads of Fictional Futures," via Joshua Glenn.

Another contest: "What's the Big Idea?" The Green is looking for photos and short films.

At Shorpy, "Saturday Matinee: 1925."

Posted by dwhudson at April 19, 2008 4:23 PM