Shorts, 5/6.

Praising its "conversational clarity," Girish excerpts and highly recommends Peter Wollen's essay "An Alphabet of Cinema," first delivered in Rotterdam ten years ago and since collected in Paris Hollywood: Writings on Film.

The Siren finds Thomas Doherty's Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I Breen and the Production Code Administration to be "a frustrating book. Like a pre-Code film shredded for later release, it's the things left out that are the most tantalizing."

Follow along at home: Chris Cagle uploads a draft of his course, History of Narrative Film.

"Over the course of 2008, we'll cursorily salute one aspect of our glorious past," announces Esquire. "This month: Hollywood."

"The one-two combination of Welcome to LA and Remember My Name ought to have established [Alan] Rudolph as one of the most important talents of the modern American cinema, but it took Choose Me's skillful deployment of farce conventions to defuse the antipathy with which many filmgoers greet his work." Dan Sallitt in 1985.

"Naomi Kawase's Embracing is both an evocation of, and disjunction from, Jonas Mekas's diaristic memory films, a journey in search of a lost past through the empty spaces and resigned silence of an unreconciled - and incomplete - present," writes acquarello.

"Every once in a rare, long while, a film appears with such a sweeping gust of rejuvenation that it has the power to restore not only one's faith in cinema but in humanity as a whole," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "Benh Zeitlin's Glory at Sea is one of these miracles."

DK Holm, blogging for the Vancouver Voice, spots a recent trend, "the 'quarantine' movie. This is a film that posits the arrival of some aggressive and murderous agent or a grave disease that necessitates the isolation of a building, town, or country."

"In a letter uncovered this week, we learn of the Clockwork Orange conceived back before Stanley Kubrick came on board and made his film with Malcolm McDowell," reports Sean Michaels in the Guardian. "It reveals that Mick Jagger wanted to play the psychotic thug Alex, while the Beatles were interested in providing the soundtrack."

Keith Uhlich launches a new series of columns at the House Next Door: "Keith's Korner: Confessions from the Editor."

A fresh list at the AV Club: "'I'm trying to rape the viewer into independence': 17 Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs."

At Slackerwood, Anne Heller has notes from Laura Dunn and Robert Redford's presentation of The Unforeseen in Austin in March.

Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure and Barbara Kopple's Harlan County, USA get David Byrne thinking about objectivity and truth.

All "caveats aside, I found My Blueberry Nights to be a somewhat beautiful, poignant film," writes MS Smith.

Noir of the Week: Frank Launder's I See a Dark Stranger.

"What to watch for Mother's Day?" A list from Flickipedia.

At FilmInFocus, designer Jonathan Adler picks five films featuring a notable sense of design.

Online viewing tip. The demo for Iron Sky. Nazis on the Moon!

Online viewing tips, round 1. From Alison Willmore: "Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno shorts, in which she enacts the mating rituals of various insects, are now all up online here."

Online viewing tips, round 2. Brian Eno on "the best film I've ever seen," Barry Lyndon. Via Coudal Partners, also pointing to Martin Schoeller's Close Up.

Online viewing tips from Jerry Lentz: a talk with film historian William K Everson. More. And more talks with Scott B and Beth B, Stuart Gordon and Max von Sydow.

Posted by dwhudson at May 6, 2008 2:09 PM