Shorts, 6/21.

Stop Smiling presents online excerpts from its new "Gambling" issue, including a good chunk of John Buffalo Mailer's interview with Oliver Stone, recollections from California Split screenwriter Joseph Walsh, a bit of Annie Nocenti's talk with Deadwood creator David Milch and more from her interview with Jennifer Tilly. And online: José Teodoro on My Winnipeg.

This may be a first: breaking a story via a DVD extra. Well, not exactly, since the story is out and the DVD isn't yet. Regardless, Harry Knowles been given a preview listen to a 40-minute conversation between Enzo Castellari and Quentin Tarantino that'll be part of the package when Castellari's 1977 film Inglorious Bastards is released in late July. The news everyone's picking up on has to do with Tarantino's plans to split his Inglorious Bastards into two separately released parts, as he did, of course, with Kill Bill. But Harry has more, too, on why Tarantino's spent more than six years developing this project.

"At 72, having outgrown the smut-minded confines of the pink film, [Koji Wakamatsu] has made his most ambitious work, United Red Army, a 190-minute chronicle of the tumultuous rise and self-destructive collapse of the Japanese militant student groups of the 1960s and 70s," writes Dennis Lim in a profile for the New York Times. "An intensively researched docudrama, teeming with dates, names and events, it is also a personal reckoning with a familiar narrative of idealism and disappointment: Mr Wakamatsu and his regular screenwriter in the 1960s, Masao Adachi, were active members of the radical left."

Also in the NYT:

• "What's striking about David A Price's history of Pixar, the computer animation studio behind Toy Story, The Incredibles and other movies, is how provisional it all seemed in the moment, how key players at important junctures didn't really understand what they were doing even as they were doing it," writes Michael Hirschorn, reviewing The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. "But they kept working because of a sixth sense that something would eventually happen."

• And Katrina Onstad sets the stage for the next unveiling: "Last year's offering, Ratatouille, about a cartoon rat with Cordon Bleu aspirations, seemed like a hard sell. But Pixar may have outdone itself in the weird-premises department with Wall-E, a $180 million post-apocalyptic, near-silent robot love story inspired by Charlie Chaplin." Related: The Boston Globe's Mark Feeney profiles Wall-E director Andrew Stanton.

• "Fabulous real estate plays a lead role in these recollections." Indeed, Sarah Kerr's review of Eleanor Coppola's Notes on a Life begins with the story of the family's acquisition of "a grand old estate" in Napa Valley. Whenever I try to imagine what that place must be like, I begin with the kitchen at the center of that marvelous spread in Shoot the Moon.

• Sam Shepard is directing Stephen Rea in his newish play, Kicking a Dead Horse, opening on Wednesday at the Public Theater. Celia McGee talks with the players.

• Michael Cieply previews Comic-Con International, convening in San Diego July 24 through 27: "Rumbling into its 39th year, this loose-jointed, four-day fan gathering has become the single most important promotional stop on Hollywood's annual circuit of festivals, awards shows and star-studded selling opportunities. But that doesn't make it easy to love, particularly for the studios, stars and writers and directors compelled to come."

"The protagonist's goals are usually what shape the plot, so can one have a turning point without him or her knowing about it?" Kristin Thompson revisits some of the ideas she explored in Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Related: Jim Emerson's latest, "Tell me a story... or don't."

"It is accepted now that Bill Douglas's trilogy of films - My Childhood [1971], My Ain Folk [1973] and My Way Home [1978] - are landmarks in British cinema," writes Mamoun Hassan, who was head of production at the British Film Institute at the time. Melanie McFadyean talks with Douglas about how he met the star of the trilogy, Stephen Archibald.

Also in the Guardian:

• "During the Depression, a movie ticket bought you a cartoon, a newsreel, a B feature and a marquee-topper - something like four hours of entertainment for a nickel (the price of a gallon of gas or a pack of smokes back then)," notes John Patterson. "It was hard to feel Greatly Depressed when Astaire and Rogers, Gary Cooper, the Marx Brothers or Eddie Cantor were living it up on screen.... In 1938, the movies competed only with such distractions as booze, sex, God, the radio or political agitation; there was no streaming online video, no computer games, no 60in plasma TVs, no home-movie market whatsoever. If the economy collapsed tomorrow, would seeing Transformers 2 alleviate your misery or simply compound it? Dear viewer, you have options!"

• Stuart Jeffries talks with Sophie Marceau "about her performance in Female Agents as a secret operative fighting the Nazis. It's an unexpected role for Marceau to take: it's tough stuff, but unintentionally hilarious. Were the women of the French Resistance so glamorous? Did they really fight in full makeup? Doesn't Marceau look hot as she takes aim with steam trains puffing and blowing all around her?" More from Deborah Ross in the Independent.

• Gwladys Fouché asks echt submariners about submarine movies.

• In case you were looking for reasons to dislike Will Smith - and you might be, since, as Variety's Anne Thompson points out, he's still in the "Fluke Zone," "a place where a movie star can do no wrong" - Pete Cashmore suggests more than a few. Spot the deal-breaker.

Larry Gross's 48 Hrs diaries carry on at Movie City News.

"The lovers in The Duchess of Langeais never consummate their love, but it consummates them," writes Roger Ebert.

In the Stranger: Paul Constant on Mongol, Charles Mudede on Bigger, Stronger, Faster* and Bradley Steinbacher on Savage Grace and The Children of Huaung Shi.

In the Boston Globe: Wesley Morris on Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra and Ty Burr on Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker.

Docs reviewed at the AV Club: Tasha Robinson on Up the Yangtze and Noel Murray on Chris & Don: A Love Story and Surfwise.

Adam Ross's interviewee of the week: Craig Kennedy.

In the Independent, Guy Adams senses a "seismic shift" in Hollywood comedy from "subtle 'regular guy' hits" like Knocked Up and Juno to taboo-breakers like You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Tropic Thunder. Stretching, seems to me.

In the New York Sun, S James Snyder reports on "an entirely new brand of video camera, a state-of-the-art device that is poised to permanently alter the landscape of the movie industry. Already well-known to filmmakers - not to mention thousands of owners - the name of the device is the Red One."

Online listening tip. Movie Geeks United! revisit the Summer of 1983.

Posted by dwhudson at June 21, 2008 1:51 PM