July 19, 2008

Shorts, 7/19.

David Lynch It's "David Lynch Day" at DC's.

Whether or not you plan to read Leigh Montville's The Mysterious Montague: A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf and Armed Robbery, do see Colman McCarthy's succinct telling of the tale in his review for the Washington Post.

"The uncut version, whether you call it Amanti d'oltretomba or Night of the Doomed, is an important title from the Italian Golden Age pantheon, and one of Barbara Steele's best star vehicles," writes Tim Lucas, reacting to news that an original negative has been found. "Not a notch on Black Sunday, of course, but it is significant as the only horror film for which Steele dubbed her own performance (one of her dual roles) - and the news about the discovery of the original negative element is wonderful. Just to know that people over there are looking for such things is wonderful."

Also, a review of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man: "[A]s music documentaries go, this is about as good as they come."

The Room "There is nothing on this planet quite like The Room," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Character logic is primitive at best. Narrative flow? Pre-mammalian. All this could've meant deadly amateurish boredom if not for the pervasive, hypnotically strange imprint of auteur-star [Tommy] Wiseau. He might have made the ultimate performance art prank here - or he might unknowingly be it."

Disney "finds itself fending off a chorus of accusations of racial stereotyping in its forthcoming big-budget cartoon, The Princess and the Frog: An American Fairy Tale, which marks a return to hand-drawn animation," reports Arifa Akbar in the Independent.

Also: "It looked increasingly unlikely yesterday that cinema audiences in this world will get to see the planned film sequels in Philip Pullman's children's fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials. Sources in the film industry said that plans for a sequel to The Golden Compass appeared to have been put on ice following the fervent Christian protests surrounding the first film, which led to boycotts and box office disappointment in the United States."

Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and screenwriter Jesse Wigutow are teaming up for a doc based on Frank Snepp's Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech. Christopher Campbell has more at Cinematical.

The Unknown Having seen Tod Browning's The Unknown, Michael Guillén writes up a terrific appreciation of Lon Chaney.

"My Winnipeg is [Guy] Maddin's most hauntological film, as well as his most 'political,'" writes Steven Shaviro. "Maddin has always played off campy humor against abject affect; but in this film, these two dimensions of feeling are more indiscernible than ever before, fusing in a kind of all-embracing ghostliness."

"Faustus's Children uses its integration of political commentary with supernaturalism and a Baudrillardian aesthetic mission to reclaim pastiche as a form of political commentary from the 'blank parody' / 'dead language' paradigm identified by Frederic Jameson in his work on postmodernism," argues Dave McDougall in the Auteurs' Notebook. "By making these aesthetic parameters the primary 'characters' of the film, the film situates itself as an example of 'art practice' via the moving image; it's a fully realized conceptual work that lacks a human element, but in so doing brings its political subtext to the fore, exploring the artificial hopes of both cinema and contemporary leftist zeal - but leaving hope for a brighter morning to come."

Wise Kwai reports that Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been honored as a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.

In the Austin Chronicle, Kimberley Jones revisits WarGames, "the 1983 blockbuster that chilled to the bone anyone who had newly installed an Apple IIe in the family room." Related online viewing: "On Friday, May 30, Craig Silverstein hosted a panel and an exclusive screening at Google of the 1983 suspense film, WarGames, in honor of the 25th Anniversary DVD."

Roman Polanski "There could be a motion to dismiss based on prosecutorial misconduct." That's Roman Polanski's lawyer, Douglas Dalton, talking to Michael Cieply about the tentative actions he's taking now that Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired has documented a questionable judicial process all those years ago. Related, and via Ray Pride, Heidi Atwal's interview with filmmaker Marina Zenovich.

Also in the New York Times:

  • "Mara Manus, the Public Theater's top financial executive for the last six years, will take over as executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the society said Wednesday." Robin Pogrebin reports in the New York Times. And: "Describing it as a 'front porch' for Lincoln Center, the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien have redesigned Harmony Atrium between West 62nd and 63rd Streets as a 'theatrical garden' featuring 20-foot-high walls of plants and rods of falling water."

  • Bill Carter: "The nominations for television's biggest award, the Emmy, were released on Thursday morning, adding more fuel to the argument that much of the best creative work in the medium is now being done on cable, and to the perception that shows do not necessarily need big audiences to be celebrated by the television academy." The nominees in major categories; and the complete list. More from the NYT's TV Decoder.

  • "A struggling anorexic and her physical opposite form an unlikely friendship in disFIGURED, a funny, awkward and often uncomfortable drama eager to confront the pain beneath the pounds," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. More from Matt Noller in Slant.

  • Charles Isherwood on Eh Joe, directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Liam Neeson: "Although it lasts just half an hour, this staging of a Beckett piece originally written for television is one of the most wholly satisfying nights I've spent at the theater this year. Remarkably, Mr Neeson draws a transfixing portrait of a man on the edge of emotional collapse without speaking a single word."

  • Patricia Cohen talks with Kay Ryan, the new US poet laureate. More from David Orr.

"When Al Gore presented Pittsboro, NC, filmmaker Michael O'Connell with the award for best documentary at this year's Nashville Film Festival, he didn't just rattle off a prepared speech and smile for the photo-op. The former vice president, once berated for his lack of visible emotion, nearly choked up onstage as he recalled the plight of Ed Wiley, the protagonist in Mountain Top Removal, O'Connell's film about a devastating method of coal mining in Southern Appalachia." Matt Saldaña profiles one of the winners of the Independent Weekly's Indies Arts Awards.

Chicago Outdoor Film Festival At FilmInFocus, Peter Bowen offers a brief history of watching movies outdoors; Scott Macaulay presents a list of the "Most Insane Movie Sequels"; and Mike Plante takes a look at the work of six animators who are bringing handiwork back to the art.

"Dark clouds have gathered over the whole of Hollywood's top tier," writes Phil Hoad. "'Star power is definitely waning,' says one producer at a major Hollywood production company. 'There's no mystique any more. The power of celebrity has been commodified, and that weakens people's willingness to go and see stars. I can see Tom Cruise on Perez Hilton; why should I go to the cinema?'" In a related piece, David Thomson writes, "You cannot grasp the age of stardom, or the failure of the stars' personal lives so often, without understanding the intensity with which they were loved by strangers. The great age did not last: oddly enough it was killed in part by the moment when the stars overthrew the studios." Meanwhile, in the Independent, Geoffrey Macnab offers a historical overview of the impact of the literal deaths of movie stars.

Also in or at or in very close vicinity to the Guardian:

  • "John Lennon once said he wasn't one for doing autobiography, but a new film - from the Bafta-winning writer of the Ian Curtis biopic Control - will take up the challenge with a controversial retelling of his early life," reports Jo Adetunji.

The Scarlet Empress

"An engaging, BBC-style documentary about Manchester, England's answer to Tony Soprano, A Very British Gangster is a must-view for casting agents," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. "There haven't been this many slack-jawed mugs with crew cuts and bad teeth on-screen since Trainspotting." More from Jeannette Catsoulis (NYT), Andrew O'Hehir (Salon) and Julia Wallace (Voice).

Ray Pride talks with Catherine Breillat about The Last Mistress. "All the French writer-director's films are anatomies of hell, but this time she's courting provocations instead of simply imposing them," writes Max Goldberg in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. More from Sam Adams (Philadelphia City Paper), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Jon Frosch (Stranger), Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle) and Matt Prigge (Philadelphia Weekly).

Alexandra "[T]he babushka [Galina Vishnevskaya] we see at the beginning of [Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra] - riding a rattling train through the moonless night, being helped into a mean metal tank, dragging her banged-up roller bag toward the army base - is in fact a living ark of Russian art," writes Charles Mudede in the Stranger. "It is art that is visiting the army, the young captain, the bomb-damaged city. It is art (and not a mother) that soldiers admire and can't stop looking at. But art is no stranger here, in the miserable land of war. 'There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism,' wrote Walter Benjamin. In Alexandra, art must confront this truth and be made sensitive to the suffering of humankind."

Also: "Because so many critics have failed to see the brilliance of Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, notably the one at the Village Voice, I must lead them by the hand, out of the cave and into the day of truth."

"It's easy to see the attraction that Kent Mackenzie's 1961 film The Exiles - a jazzy cinéma-vérité portrait of 14 hours in the life of a band of Native Americans living in a picturesquely downtrodden Los Angeles neighborhood - would have for Milestone, as it marries the socioeconomic concerns of their re-releases like Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba with a similar brand of bravura Southern California underground auteur style seen in Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep," writes Chris Barsanti at Film Journal International. "Although Mackenzie's work will probably never attain the kind of totemic stature of those films - being not as stylistically driven or showy - it certainly deserves to stand alongside them as one of the great under-seen cinema gems of the 1960s." More from Richard Corliss in Time.

"Like Lee Chang-dong's 2007 Secret Sunshine, Charles Oliver's debut feature Take deals with the awkward moral quandaries of infanticide and the subsequent, touchy relations between a killer and his victim's mother," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "That Lee's film remains unreleased in this country is no doubt due in part to the fact that his film, unlike Oliver's, did not star Minnie Driver (although it did win an award at Cannes for its actress, Jeon Do-yeon). But in spite of this star pedigree, Oliver's film manages to grapple with some knotty questions about justice, even if it is not quite as bold or ironic as Lee's." More from Steve Dollar (NY Sun), Ed Gonzalez (Voice), Joshua Land (Time Out New York), Nathan Lee (NYT) and Mark Peikert (New York Press).

A Man Named Pearl "Feature-length elaborations on quirky, inspiring human-interest stories are generally to be avoided, but I'll make an exception for A Man Named Pearl," writes Vadim Rizov. More from Jeannette Catsoulis (NYT) and Andrew O'Hehir (Salon).

Also in the Voice:

Simon Abrams talks with Satoshi Kon for Twitch.

Dave Calhoun in Time Out on Donkey Punch: "This bloody, waterborne horror doesn't exactly scream with originality, but the filmmakers make up for it with a strong atmosphere of sex and violence - both latent and unleashed - good performances and a mostly imaginative approach to genre." More from Xan Brooks (Guardian), James Christopher (London Times) and Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard).

Once Ryan Gilbey (New Statesman) started watching The Wire, " the pictures that I was seeing in my capacity as film critic began to look compromised and conventional. The show had spoiled me."

James Mottram profiles Penélope Cruz for the Independent, where Roger Clarke notes that one of the most famous lines from The Godfather was improvised.

Adam Ross's interviewee of the week: Ibetolis.

Calamity Jane The Film Experience launches the "Musical of the Month" on August 6 with Calamity Jane. You can join in, too.

Online listening tip. At the House Next Door, John Lichman and Vadim Rizov talk with Benten Films' Andrew Grant and Aaron Hillis.

Online viewing tip #1. Seems odd that I haven't mentioned Joss Whedon's Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog yet. But I have now.

Online viewing tip #2. Martin Scorsese and Tina Fey in... an American Express ad. Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #3. At the SpoutBlog, Lauren Wissot reminds us that L'Age d'Or is surreally sexy.

Online viewing tips. Half a dozen from the Guardian's Kate Stables.

Posted by dwhudson at July 19, 2008 9:45 AM