May 4, 2008

Shorts, fests, books, etc, 5/4.

The Messiah "The premise of Jesus, the Spirit of God is that Jesus was compassionate and performed miracles, but was not crucified or resurrected from the dead. The message implies that Christianity, a faith of 2 billion people and the core of much Western philosophy, is based on a falsehood." Jeffrey Fleishman talks with Iranian director Nader Talebzadeh, whose "new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith."

Also in the Los Angeles Times: "Developer Sonny Astani wants to hang a 14-story animated billboard on the side of the condominium tower he's building at 9th and Figueroa, up the street from the Staples Center and the new Nokia Theatre, which already is shrouded in video billboards," notes Tim Rutten:

The funny part is that Astani is frank about his inspiration: It's Blade Runner, the 1982 film adaptation of Philip K Dick's dystopia of a visually, environmentally and socially degraded urban future.... Sounds good - until you look a little more closely at what's being proposed. One of the premises of the bleak urban future Dick imagined in the 1968 book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - which inspired Blade Runner - was that the poisoned Earth had been depopulated when all the "successful" people left for extraterrestrial colonies. Society's losers had crowded into the surviving urban areas.

Via Mark Hooper, who lists "five of my favourite sci-fi cities."

Omer Fest Omer Fast, winner of the Bucksbaum Award at this year's Whitney Biennial, "has refused to take part in group exhibitions in Berlin that feature (as one did) the New Hebrews, does not like to think of himself as an Israeli artist or really, for that matter, an artist at all," writes Gideon Lewis-Kraus in a profile for Nextbook. "When asked what he does, he retreats even further and says he 'makes some small films.'"

Jamie Stuart has a terrific entry at Stream on, among other things, how digital filmmaking is actually "shifting photography into a more painterly approach."

The cinetrix has seen Gerald Peary's For the Love of Movies: "It really is an awe-inspiring achievement. And also a lot of fun."

"I resolved then and there never to do a junket interview again. And, at least for the time being, I do not want to talk with actors. I will have nothing to do with Falco Ink or any agency that Betsy Rudnick is a part of. I am not interested in being a marketing tool. I'm interested in inquiry." Edward Champion tells the story.

Well, here's a provocative argument. From the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "The horrible news from Austria may not have surprised cinema-goers. Austria's film-makers have recently warned that their country, despite its beauty and material prosperity, has a horrific, unacknowledged malaise, a moral stagnancy, a festering, unhealed wound in its unconscious mind."

Also in the Guardian:

Tovarisch: I Am Not Dead

Variety's reports that Miramax and Netflix are teaming up to distribute the award-winning Norwegian film Reprise in the US.

For FilmInFocus, Richard T Kelly talks with Nicolas Roeg.

Fests roundup:

The Kid Brother

Which leads us to a books roundup:

  • Via Girish, Adrian Martin: "With Cahiers du Cinéma - both in its printed magazine and internet versions - now in crisis because of being dropped by its Le Monde publisher, it seems as if the book Gilles Deleuze et les Images (edited by François Dosse and Jean-Michel Frodon) may well be, alongside the updated French edition of Nicole Brenez's Abel Ferrara, among the last books to appear under the famous Cahiers banner. And, ironically enough, it is in the Deleuze book that we find a striking reflection by the American film scholar Dudley Andrew about how the globe of film culture is changing."

  • On a related note, that is, concerning Deleuze, Ryland Walker Knight has a book recommendation for you - by way of Stanley Cavell.

10 Bad Dates With De Niro
  • Richard Schickel reviews 10 Bad Dates With De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists: "It's possible, I suppose, that [Richard T] Kelly initially imagined this as a satire on 'listomania,' but the result is quite the opposite. His book, which has a satisfying chunkiness, is perhaps better understood as a highly stylized collection of 80 essays, each consisting (except for one piece by Steven Soderbergh) of an introduction followed by 10 paragraphs, listing in reverse order, for example, the 10 worst wigs in movie history, the 10 most enviable movie nightclubs, 10 great uses of poetry in film and 10 great movie endings."

  • Andrew Lycett looks back on the long relationship between Ian Fleming the Times Literary Supplement.

  • For the Washington Post, Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, reviews Julie Andrews's memoir: "Though Home politely but firmly shuts the door on her readers in 1963, before she'd made a single movie, her first 27 years turn out to have been rich in both fame and misfortune." He's less impressed with Richard Stirling's Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography.

  • Mike Everleth selects his favorite entries in Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader.

  • Then, just because, and via Brian Scholis, the National Book Critics Circle's "Spring 2008 NBCC Good Reads List."

The Telegraph's Will Lawrence talks with Spike Lee about Miracle at St Anna, "drawn from the novel of the same name by American author James McBride. Recounting the deeds of four 'Buffalo Soldiers' from the US Army's Negro 92nd Division, who are trapped behind enemy lines in Tuscany [during WWII], the book is like a Roman mosaic, piecing together different narratives to reveal the complex moral landscape of war." Back at the Guardian, Lee explains why he's chairing the jury for the Babelgum online film festival.

Catch 'em if you can: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir recommends Stuff and Dough, Up the Yangtze and Roman de Gare.

In the Voice:

Hollywood Chinese
  • Ed Gonzalez: "The most jarring thing about Hollywood Chinese, Arthur Dong's survey of Chinese representation in American film from the silent era to the present, is its lack of fury - that and Ang Lee's belief that he's a subversive." In the NYT, Nathan Lee finds it "a fine place to start understanding how, to paraphrase Charlie Chan, Representation like tea leaf in hot water: both need time for brewing." More from S James Snyder in the New York Sun. And indieWIRE interviews Dong.

  • Robert Wilonsky on Made of Honor: "Director Paul Weiland and the three (!) screenwriters it took to boil down thousands of bad movies into 101 minutes haven't provided this one with a single original thought." More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Ed Gonzalez (Slant), Stephen Holden (NYT), Jette Kernion (Cinematical), Keith Phipps (AV Club), Kenneth Turan (LAT), Annie Wagner (Stranger) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

    "Adam Hootnick's Unsettled will not bring peace to the Middle East, but the documentary's goodwill is a corrective to Morgan Spurlock's repulsive Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

    Jim Emerson: "The most important element in any picture is the frame. What is included, what is left out, the arrangements of elements within the composition, the technology used to capture it, the context in which it was captured, the perceptions and rationalizations that participants and viewers bring to the image after it is recorded... Those are the subjects of Standard Operating Procedure." Related: More interviews with Errol Morris: Fernando F Croce (Slant) and Peter Sobczynski (Hollywood Bitchslap).

    "Chop Shop is so deeply contemplative and unvarnished that it risks redundancy even with a succinct 84-minute running time," writes Neil Morris; further down that same page in the Independent Weekly, David Fellerath pinpoints the ironies The Rape of Europa exposes but does not explore.

    I Am Cuba The latest entry in Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon": I Am Cuba.

    Via the House Next Door, Michael Kerpan on Hiroshi Shimizu's 1929 Fue no shiratama (Undying Pearl / Eternal Heart): "Moga were early adopters of up-to-date western clothing - and (to some extent) habits.... Traditionalists viewed them as decadent and threatening. Leftists, on the other hand, primarily disapproved of their vapidity and consumerist orientation."

    Edward Copeland pays tribute to Eve Arden on her 100th.

    "Who becomes a legend most?" asks the Washington Post's Ann Hornaday in a piece offering a few case studies on aging movie stars (Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton and others) as well as suggestions for "career recovery": "The key isn't to make consistently perfect choices, just to make strategic ones, so that the inevitable clunkers are remembered, if at all, as speed bumps in an otherwise remarkable career. It's an admittedly difficult needle to thread: Play to your strengths, but resist being typecast. Stretch, but don't overreach. Keep your dignity, but lose your vanity."

    For the Age, Stephanie Bunbury talks with Rodrigo García about Nine Lives.

    "Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth is actually a delightful movie - to the extent that a horror film about the vagina dentata and castration can be delightful," writes Steven Shaviro. "It might be more accurate to say that it's gruesome, campy, and affecting in more or less equal measure - though the affectingness ultimately wins out, I think."

    The Devils

    "I don't think I could argue that it's a better picture - or at least a more 'serious' one - but on a gut moviegoing level, I do respond to the grotesque excesses of Ken Russell's The Devils much more viscerally than, say, Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc," writes Paul Matwychuk. "Maybe that makes me a vulgarian, but we're living in a vulgar age."

    In the Independent, Roger Clarke tells the story behind the nose-slitting scene in Chinatown.

    "[W]e as honest video producers must not swallow the bait," insists Zack Sultan in Stream. "We ought to collectively resist the Doritos Model of 'user generated' advertising, regardless of how tantalizing it may appear. It won't be easy. These types of competitions have become ubiquitous as distinguished and dubious companies alike find it a cost-effective way to create buzz and perk up their brands."

    Adam Ross's interviewee this week: Melissa Prusi.

    Liza with a Z Lynn Barber profiles Liza Minnelli for the Observer.

    FilmInFocus presents a series of lists, "Five Designers on Design in Film." So far: Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, Deborah Berke and William Scofield.

    Via Jason Kottke, Empire's list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time."

    A list from Josh Rosenblatt in the Austin Chronicle: No Pants.

    Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay points to the Hollywood Reporter's roundtable on "Indie dealmaking."

    "In the late 60s and early 70s, British cinema-goers, and British men in general, had a weakness for Scandinavian women. For a time, the Norwegian actress and model Julie Ege was as ubiquitous as Sweden's Britt Ekland." Pierre Perrone remembers Ege in the Independent. Arbogast has more.

    "Work on a possible James Bond film theme has been abandoned because singer Amy Winehouse is not ready to make music, producer Mark Ronson has said." The BBC reports.

    Via the House Next Door, Ali Arikan issues a call for an Indiana Jones Blog-a-Thon, running May 16 through May 23.

    Tom Hanks has a page at MySpace.

    Online browsing tip #1. Slide shows at Design Observer.

    Online browsing tip #2. The Time 100.

    More online viewing from Jerry Lentz: The Kneale Tapes, a BBC doc on Nigel Kneale; John Wyndham: The Invisible Man of Science Fiction; and Robert Rodriguez's 10 Minute Film School.



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    Posted by dwhudson at May 4, 2008 11:57 AM