Shorts, 5/20.

Catherine Munroe Hotes profiles Tomoyasu Murata and Company, whose work "nestles somewhere between high art and popular culture. Some of his films have a modern look to them, but others are influenced by Japanese traditional art and nostalgia for an earlier time."

Also at Midnight Eye, Jaspar Sharp reviews Fine, Totally Fine, "one of the funniest, most charming and genuinely unique films I've seen in a long, long time"; Tom Mes on Jeans Blues: "A simplistic Bonnie and Clyde redux, somewhat clumsily directed by Toei action stalwart [Sadao] Nakajima, it is saved by the kind of unapologetic socio-political backgrounding that was prevalent in the studio's films of the period"; and Paul Jackson on Appleseed, "a prime example of how anime's comparative niche appeal can afford a film success despite limited merits."

Michael Guillén has an overview of TCM's series Race and Hollywood: Asian Images in Film, running throughout June.

"As I edit, I think often of Claire Denis - not out of a need for answers or influence, or even for inspiration, but rather for the comfort of knowing that some of the more difficult parts of this path I'm taking are already well-worn." David Lowery.

Laurence Fishburne will direct, produce and star in an adaptation of Paulo Coelho's best-selling novel The Alchemist, reports the BBC.

"Mark Ruffalo and Amy Adams are attached to star in writer-director Noah Baumbach's next feature, Greenburg, for producer Scott Rudin." Gregg Goldstein has a bit more in the Hollywood Reporter. Via Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical, where she's also got news of Asger Leth's next film, Olympia, "set against the backdrop of the ancient Olympic Games in Greece as war waged between Athens and Sparta."

And Christopher Campbell has news that José Padilha (Bus 174, Elite Squad) has signed on to make an action movie for Warner Bros.

"Christian Bale is to play rebel leader John Connor in three sequels to the Terminator franchise, its producers have revealed." The BBC's Mark Savage has more.

"John Woo is to direct 1949 a big budget romancer that will crank up as soon as he has finished his epic Red Cliff," reports Patrick Frater in Variety.

Abraham Lincoln turns 200 next February and the Spielberg movie won't even half the hoopla - brace yourself, advises Karen Springen.

Also in Newsweek, Joshua Alston on Recount: "The battle may have been between Al Gore and Bush and their armies of lawyers, but in cinematic terms, the person who walks off with the whole thing is Laura Dern, who plays Katherine Harris with abandon and vigor." And a few of the real-life players comment on the film.

"This is all definitely part of the general trend.... People in the film world are going to Texas and Germany. Artists, filmmakers, movie theaters - we're getting pushed out of Manhattan, and my evolution is yet more proof of that." Ray Privett is leaving his position as programmer of the Pioneer Theater to run his own production company, Cinema Purgatorio. S James Snyder talks with him for the New York Sun. Ray Privett comments on the piece.

"[H]ow often are today's critics (and filmgoers for that matter) given the opportunity to use their noggins once the lights go down?" asks Filmbrain. "Are filmmakers living up to their half of the bargain, treating us with respect...? Less and less, I'm afraid. What's even more disconcerting is that spoon-fed meaning is finding its way into areas of cinema that were once refuges for those interested in something other than the bottom line." Comments ensue, of course; plus: The cinetrix and Keith Uhlich.

Michael Atkinson presents the "first of what might be interminable random sortings of bests."

Flickapedia has more than a few Memorial Day recommendations.

"The Siren generally writes about artists she loves, and the ones she doesn't she leaves alone. Still, not even the Siren can like everyone." A finely illustrated list.

"It's odd thinking of Lino Brocka directing a big-budget action epic, much less directing the late action-star-turned-presidential-candidate Fernando Poe, Jr in a World War 2 epic - but there you are; even if you watched Santiago again and again, it still feels odd," writes Noel Vera.

"I venture to guess that at one point The Evil Twin was supposed to be a straightforward retelling of a traditional ghost story, usually a young virgin wronged by the Confucian family system and blamed for sins she did not commit," writes Kyu Hyun Kim at Koreanfilm.org. "Alas, the only carryover from that type of classic Korean ghost story is the long-haired, white-clad visage of the vengeful spirit. Nearly everything else has been updated disastrously."

"Is any genre more despicable, more dependably hollow than the rock documentary?" asks Zach Baron in Artforum's diary. "So all credit to Matt Wolf, whose documentary on the downtown cellist and disco auteur Arthur Russell, Wild Combination - which had its raucous New York premiere at The Kitchen last Thursday - turns out to be one of the genre's few incandescent exceptions to the rule."

Charlie Bartlett has Andrea Hubert sorting drugs by generations. Also in the Guardian: "Reliance Big Entertainment, the media arm of Anil Ambani - the world's sixth richest man - [has] announced it would be making 10 Hollywood movies for a billion dollars." Randeep Ramesh reports.

Blake Ethridge has a long talk with Richard Kelly about Southland Tales.

Patrick Kevin Day talks with Mel Brooks for the Los Angeles Times, where Patrick Goldstein turns up some dour stats: "Of the 250 top-grossing American movies in 2007, only 6% were directed by women, down from 7% in 2005 and 9% in 1998."

Lesley O'Toole profiles Dennis Quaid for the Independent.

"Shreveport [Louisiana], home to about 200,000, equally divided between black and white, has become a kind of Hollywood South," reports David Carr in the New York Times. "More than 40 mostly independent productions, both television and film, have turned this very Southern city into a location stand-in for New York, Alaska and Maine in movies like Blonde Ambition, Factory Girl, The Mist, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay and The Great Debaters."

Online scrolling tip. More trains in cinema at The Art of Memory.

Online viewing tips. At Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder has a list of every movie at the Internet Archive that appears in Mike Weldon's Psychotronic Video Guide.

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 3:41 PM