Shorts, 5/8.

"[T]he earnest dramas that critics have given the usually disparaging sobriquet 'Sundance movies' - not to mention those [Robert] Redford himself has made - suggest an aesthetic that leans more to liberal middlebrow than to pioneering visions," writes Ella Taylor in an LA Weekly cover story on the Sundance Labs:

But the edgy, esoteric taste that has shaped the Labs throughout their 25-year existence belongs to [Sundance Institute Feature Film Program director Michelle] Satter, who oversees both the January and June labs. Together with a small band of associates, Satter has taken an excitingly free interpretation of the Institute's commitment to that badly abused word "diversity," and radicalized it even as the broader field of independent film sags beneath its dependence on studio specialty arms. On her watch, even the American regional and/or socially relevant dramas for which Sundance is known have been bracing specimens like Joshua Marston's Maria Full of Grace, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's Half Nelson, Debra Granik's Down to the Bone and Andrea Arnold's Red Road.

For the Independent, Mike Hofman asks "a few smart filmmakers who have some ties to the Sundance universe to share their thoughts" about the sale of the Sundance Channel to Rainbow Media.

An adaptation of Martin Amis's London Fields is on again, reports the Guardian's Francesca Martin: "Amis is working on the screenplay with Roberta Hanley, co-founder of Muse Productions, the film production company behind indie hits such as as The Virgin Suicides, Buffalo 66 and American Psycho. It's a good fit for Amis's novel, which was omitted from the Booker prize shortlist in 1989 amid fierce debate after two of the prize's judges deemed it misogynistic." David Mackenzie (Young Adam) will direct.

For Film International, Eileen Jones reviews The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen, The Coen Brothers Interviews and Joel and Ethan Coen.

"I have been puzzling lately over a genre of film which is hard to situate," writes Davin Heckman for CTheory: "films which deal with forgetting and remembering, in which we ride shotgun with protagonists who are just as interested in character development as we are. While the genre itself has not been fully mapped out, potential candidates for inclusion include Abre Los Ojos (1997), Vanilla Sky (2001), Memento (2000), Minority Report (2002), The Bourne Identity (2002), Paycheck (2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and, most recently, A Scanner Darkly (2006). I call this genre the 'Posthuman Bildungsroman.'"

Steve McVicker, whose I Love You Phillip Morris is being adapted by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (the film stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor), remembers Eagle Pennell in the Texas Observer. Via Movie City News.

In the Austin Chronicle, Marc Savlov talks with Kevin Ford about his "bitingly smart, frequently funny, and warmly wise new film, When Is Tomorrow."

"A film exposing some of the predatory practices of the US-supported sugar industry in the Dominican Republic has itself become the subject of an attack campaign by the entrenched sugar powers." For the WSWS, Matt Waller has the latest on The Price of Sugar.

"Big names like Dustin Hoffman and Sidney Lumet came out for Tuesday's premiere of the new HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which details the questionable judicial dealings that led to the director's now 30-year exile in France," reports Jada Yuan for New York's Vulture. "But the surprise guest of the night was Samantha Geimer, the woman with whom Polanski had 'unlawful sexual intercourse' at Jack Nicholson's house when she was 13."

"So why did you come back to Nashville?" ask Jim Ridley and Jack Silverman in the Scene. Harmony Korine: "Because, I swear, Nashville has this weird kind of hold on me. My heartbeat goes down when I get off the airplane. It's strange: I feel comfortable here, and in some ways the city is a real part of me and who I am." Related: Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper: "[W]hatever else you call Mister Lonely, you can't call it calculated, or cynical, or even - no matter how tempting - contrived. He means it, whatever it is."

Godfrey Cheshire in the Independent Weekly on Wong Kar-Wai's My Blueberry Nights: "Full of the director's trademark stylistic obsessiveness and brittle melancholy, it casts a sly, insinuating spell that surprised me by lasting days after I saw the film." Also, "the most bizarre thing about Redbelt is its grab-bag plotting."

"We cannot consider Redbelt without considering Never Back Down," argues Charles Mudede. "The films were released within the space of two months, and one (Redbelt) is the adult/art-house version of the other (Never Back Down)."

Also in the Stranger: Annie Wagner on Shotgun Stories and Paul Constant on My Brother Is an Only Child.

Speaking of which: Steve Erickson, writing in the Baltimore City Paper, finds that My Brother's "depiction of 60s radical politics isn't exactly flattering. Nevertheless, it's definitely enamored of that period's Italian cinema."

"Some documentaries feel like they were more influenced by traditional narrative cinema than other works of non-fiction," writes Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail. "Yung Chang's devastating Up the Yangtze belongs to this specialized camp. In addition to being a powerful document of the literal drowning of China's past by its rapidly developing present, Chang's remarkably wise debut feature is also a heartbreaking portrait of the underprivileged in all their humble timidity."

Kristin Thompson finds Alberto Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well? "to be a well-made, engaging, and surprisingly affecting film."

For the Observer, Killian Fox talks "to seven successful British actors, directors and producers living and working in Los Angeles about their experiences in Hollywood, from winning Oscars to dining with the coolest bunch of movie stars imaginable."

Sean Axmaker asks, "What's in Your DVD Player, Todd Haynes?"

Online viewing tip #1. The video for Radiohead's "All I Need," via Coudal Partners. Stick with it to the end.

Online viewing tip #2. Darren Hughes has found footage shot in the 40s when John Ford and John Wayne were scouting locations near Mazatlan, Mexico.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Twitch's Todd Brown spots a teaser for Tokyo!, the omnibus film of three shorts by Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry; a teaser and trailer for Takashi Miike's God's Puzzle; and perhaps most promisingly, Ryuichi Hiroki's Your Friends. Todd reviewed the film when he caught it in Udine. And Kurt Halfyard finds a trailer for Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg.

Online viewing tips, round 2. The current batch from Jerry Lentz: Jonathan Ross's profile of David Lynch; a BBC doc on Dennis Hopper; Todd Haynes and Cate Blanchett talking I'm Not There; Borders' Diving Bell and the Butterfly package; Orson Welles, interviewed by Dick Cavett (more and more).

Posted by dwhudson at May 8, 2008 4:11 PM