Shorts, 6/2.

"Nina Paley was not looking for an international controversy," writes Eric Kohn in Forward. "Nevertheless, in April, when the now 40-year-old Jewish cartoonist screened her latest film, Sita Sings the Blues, at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, she said that's precisely what she got."

Whit Stillman writes up a list of five "essential books about Hollywood" for the Wall Street Journal. Via Movie City News.

For indieWIRE, Kim Adelman talks with Matthew Modine about his prolific career as a maker of short films.

Glenn Kenny wonders when it's permissible to play the snob card.

Girish addresses the hurdle he leaps when approaching a horror movie: "Cinema can be a source of rarefied emotions and spiritual edification but ultimately it's much more than those things: it deals with the entire gamut of human experience and sensation. To be truly curious about art in all its variety also means opening oneself up to that wide range of experience and sensation. This is the rationale, the mantra I repeat to myself when trying to work on my squeamishness problem."

He also points to Adrian Martin's take on Armond White.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron spent 16 years trying to get a movie made about Harvey Milk based on Randy Shilts's biography, The Mayor of Castro Street. Many assume they succeeded. After all, Gus Van Sant's Milk, starring Sean Penn, is slated for a December release. "There's just one big problem: Milk is someone else's movie." Patrick Goldstein tells the story.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "If the name Jack Sheldon doesn't ring a bell, consider this: Music elite and bebop fans widely consider him the greatest living jazz trumpeter," writes Gary Goldstein. "Despite - or, perhaps, because of - his cult status, Sheldon makes a compelling centerpiece for the lively, nostalgic documentary, Trying to Get Good: The Jazz Odyssey of Jack Sheldon." And Goldstein talks with filmmakers Doug McIntyre and Penny Peyser.

• Mongol is "thoroughly exotic, utterly romantic, beautifully shot and features some of the bloodiest, most astounding battles ever put on screen. It is - no kidding - totally cool." Lewis Beale talks with director Sergei Bodrov.

• "Although Bonneville is not as sturdy a vehicle for its stars - Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen - as the 1966 red convertible that gives this gentle but slight film its title, it is nevertheless strong enough to allow these splendid actresses to provide a pleasant ride for viewers, mature audiences especially," writes Kevin Thomas.

• "A story about generational expectations and cultural shifts, The Edge of Heaven raises questions it can't answer, which makes it only more powerful," writes Carina Chocano.

• "Hollywood Chinese is both a history of the Chinese presence in American films and a meditation on the difficulties Chinese Americans have had in being seen as individuals and in putting the reality of their experience on screen." A review from Kenneth Turan.

• Choire Sicha takes a phone call from Heather Graham.

"Do you recall the opening sequence to Steven Spielberg's television series Amazing Stories where flapping books take flight? That's the image I think of with Phil." Michael Guillén launches an Evening Class series on the work of Phil Cousineau.

FilmInFocus's new "Movie City": Seattle, with pieces so far by Charles Mudede and Nick Dawson.

"Over Memorial Day weekend, fittingly, Fordham University hosted a conference called The Sopranos: A Wake," reports Joan Acocella. "Among the papers were '"Blabbermouth Cunts": The Sopranos and the Feminist Dilemma,' 'A "Finook" in the Crew: Vito Spatafore, The Sopranos, and the Queering of the Mob Genre,' and 'Slouching Toward Jersey: The Sopranos and Yeats.'" But: "The best session was an interview with Dominic Chianese, or Uncle Junior, who is much handsomer without those enormous glasses which the costumers made him wear, obviously to reveal his gift for acting with his eyes."

Also in the New Yorker, Mike Peed talks with archeologists about Indiana Jones. As one of the editors of the magazine Archeology tells him, "Indy may be a horrible archeologist, but he's a great diplomat for archeology. I think we'll see a spike in kids who want to become archeologists."

Screen's Mike Goodridge talks with Oliver Stone about his "tragicomedy," W. Via Movie City News.

Rich Cohen's Vanity Fair cover story on Angelina Jolie is online, laced with extras.

Big, round table: Cinema Strikes Back meets Mondo Macabro.

"When Disney bought its rival, Pixar, in 2006 for $7.4 billion, many people assumed the deal would play out like most big media takeovers: abysmally," writes Brooks Barnes. "But two years into the integration of Pixar - and as the company rolls out Wall-E, a risky love story about robots that is estimated to cost at least $180 million - the merger is notable for how well it's faring. Indeed, in an industry where corporate marriages often create internal warfare (Paramount and DreamWorks SKG are the most prominent example) Disney and Pixar have found a way to make it work."

Also in the New York Times:

• Allison Hope Weiner meets with M Night Shyamalan to discuss his faltering brand. Says marketing guy David Weitzner: "It's pomposity on the part of studios to think that the public is going to respond to an advertising message that says to see the film because it's from the director of another film. It's stupid and to some degree, it's fueled by ego."

• Elizabeth Jensen previews On the Road in America, "originally produced by a nonprofit group with the hope of showing Arab viewers in the Middle East a broader and more nuanced view of America than that seen in Hollywood exports."

• Anne-Marie Schiro remembers Yves Saint Laurent, 1936 - 2008. More from Kate Betts (i>Time) and Wesley Morris (Boston Globe). Nikke Finke notes that YSL dressed Catherine Deneuve in Belle De Jour, La Chamade, Mississipi Mermaid, Un Flic, Liza and The Hunger." He also was the costume designer for films featuring Jean Seberg, Claudia CardinaleCapucine and Leslie Caron."

• Joe Rhodes talks with Albert Brooks about his role in Showtime's Weeds.

"I have never felt so bewilderingly in charge of puppet strings yet entirely irrelevant as I watch hundreds of people converge to create a new commodity out of what was once just a product of my mind." Joanna Briscoe in the Independent on seeing her bestselling novel Sleep With Me brought to the screen.

"It's exciting watching [Ramin] Bahrani explore the possibilities of neo-realism to dramatize penury and disenfranchisement among the service-class in this country." Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe on Chop Shop. More from Gary Dretzka at Movie City News.

"War, Inc could become a model for a new, grass-roots type of marketing, in which a film's potential audience (with a little help from the director) may be better able to advertise it than the so-called experts are," writes Vicky Ward at VF Daily.

The Madeleine McCann case delayed the release of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone in the UK; Andrew Hubert looks back to other past postponements. Also in the Guardian, a quick Q&A with Ridley Scott.

In the Observer, Philip French assesses the career of James Cagney and reviews Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Zoo, Chemical Wedding and Jules et Jim. More on that one from Peter Preston.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir issues a call: "With summer upon us, I want to accumulate an absolutely killer list of DVDs for grownups and kids (say, ages 4 to 12) to watch together when the beach day gets rained out, or just before bed, or just for the hell of it. What I'm mainly looking for are non-obvious, non-recent and non-computer-animated choices; classics that our generation has partly forgotten, or odder, older, stuff that might broaden the kids' horizons a little and intrigue even the snobbish, film-buff adults in the audience."

For New York, Danny Elfman annotates the finale to Twyla Tharp's new ballet.

The BBC reports on the MTV Movie Awards. Related, via Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog, the Onion: "MTV Movie Awards Snubs Director Jonas Mekas Yet Again."

Online listening tip #1. J Robert Parks talks with Errol Morris.

Online listening tip #2. The IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore discuss "The Art of the Online Video."

Online viewing tip #1. "Independent filmmaking is no place for the faint-hearted, and nowhere is this more apparent then in filmmaker Stephen Petty's original, behind-the-scenes web series Making Still Green." Film Threat's Mark Bell introduces the teaser.

Online viewing tip #2. Tom Charity is a guest Intense Guy. For his chosen clip, he's going with Christopher Walken: "Abel Ferrara's King of New York is one of his favorites, and rightly so."

Online viewing tips. Semih Tareen's Yellow, an homage to Mario Bava and the giallo; via Thomas Groh, who's also collected two samplings from Shameless Screen's YouTube channel.

Posted by dwhudson at June 2, 2008 10:31 AM