Shorts, 5/29.

"[I]f I want to remind myself that the movies are capable of achieving a level of transcendence comparable to a painting by Rembrandt or Turner, or to a symphony by Mozart, I run a film by Renoir," writes Peter Bogdanovich in the New York Observer. And of course, he's got stories to tell:

Extremely taken with Boudu Saved From Drowning - the ironic and satirical saga of a bum floating down a river whom a middle-class family "saves" - I went right over to the Renoirs' beautiful Beverly Hills living room and raved about the film, quietly observed by the giant Renoir portrait of Jean at 15 with a rifle (now at the LA County Museum) and a few small Cézannes.

Jean smiled and looked delighted: "Oh, thank you so much! You are very kind." After more effusiveness, I asked what he himself thought of the picture. "Oh, well," he said with his strong French accent, "you know, we made it in the early days of sound, and sometimes the sound is not so good. Also, because we had no money, we had to buy the film stock as we went along, and some of it does not match, and sometimes the cutting is a little too fast, and sometimes it is too slow, and the music is not so well recorded, but I think, maybe, it is my best picture!"

Doug Cummings: "I'm always proud of the resources Trond Trondsen and I provide at Robert-Bresson.com, and our latest project - years in the making–is an exclusive online Bresson Bibliography that uses Jane SloanShmuel Ben-Gad's recent bibliographies as a starting point."

"A failed escape through transgression and transcendence - in body, spirit, and mind, respectively, and somewhat interchangeably - is the common ending of my favorite Rivette films: L'amour fou, Out 1 and Céline and Julie Go Boating." David Phelps.

"[M]y bedside reading during Cannes this year included I Peed On Fellini, a wonderful new memoir by the Australian film critic and former Sydney Film Festival director David Stratton," writes Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. "In one chapter, Stratton reminisces about his friendship with Variety's late, legendary Paris-based film critic Gene Moskowitz, who, in the 1960s and 70s would file reviews from Cannes by typing them on a manual typewriter and air-mailing them to New York, where, several weeks later, they would finally appear in print. Technologically speaking, we've come a long way since then, but I wonder if the movies - and movie criticism - are any better for it."

"Like William Faulkner and Alexander Dovzhenko, Jia [Zhangke] is a hick avant-gardist in the very best sense - someone whose outsider/minority status enhances both his humanity and his art," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum. "Working in long, choreographed takes, and mixing realistic accounts of working-class life with diverse forms of cultural shock and fantasy ranging from animation to SF to rock, he already qualifies as a poetic prophet of the 21st century, and not only for China."

"[Alfred] Vohrer is a filmmaker whose mysterious life and career would probably reward a book-length examination," suggests Tim Lucas. "[W]hile Vohrer didn't launch the krimis, he was by far the most essential contributor to what the krimis became (especially in their uses of garish imagery and macabre humor), much as Mario Bava's approach to filming thrillers defined the giallo."

Jim Emerson sees the future present in Theodore Roszak's Flicker.

"Among avid consumers of serial television, there is no more hubristic claim than to say that you know Lost - know it in every convolution of its intentionally anarchic plot, know it in understanding the real meanings of all of its allusions to Philip K Dick or game theory, or the Gospel of John, or Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence," writes Ginia Bellefante in the New York Times. "To watch Lost is to feel like a high school grind, studying and analyzing and never making it to Yale.... It is an opiate, and like all opiates, it produces its own masochistic delirium."

"Bill Henson's photographs of a nude 12- and 13-year-old boy and girl had been due to be shown in an art gallery in Sydney last week, but were confiscated by police after complaints from a child protection campaigner," reports Barbara McMahon. Among those coming to his defense: Cate Blanchett (Adam Jasper comments for frieze). Also in the Guardian, Sarfraz Manzoor reports on "a new generation of British Asian Bollywood stars."

"This is music that drops jaws in any context," blogs Samuel Wigley: "Lest [Arvo] Pärt's sound begin to work in the opposite direction, jolting us from our involvement with a film as we recognise what a cliché its use has become, it is I think time to give it a rest."

Scott Foundas (LA Weekly) and Ray Pride (Movie City News) talk with Joachim Trier about Reprise.

Online eeeek! tip. Jordan Gray's winning poster from SpoutBlog's Zombie Photoshop Contest.

Online viewing tip #1. Matt Zoller Seitz reviews At the Death House Door. More from Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail.

Online viewing tip #2. Zach Campbell's got a long clip from Robert Gardner's phenomenal Forest of Bliss."

Online viewing tip #3. "Inspired by I Know Where The Summer Goes, an exhibition of celebrated photographer Ryan McGinley, who also contributed to the making of the video, Gobbledigook will take you on a place where innocence is still alive." No fat clips!!! has the clip and the tune and all you need to know, but for starters, the tune is from Sigur Rós and the photography's by Christopher Doyle. Via Bryant Fraser. NSFW.

Online viewing tip #4. Jonathan Lapper's Frames of Reference, "the idea being no chronological order, no genre order or preference, simply the language of film referencing itself."

Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2008 12:14 PM