Shorts, 8/4.

Great summertime tip from the House Next Door: "'The Books': At The Sheila Variations, Sheila O'Malley is doing daily excerpts from and commentaries on her vast collection of entertainment biographies."

Amol Rajan reports from Plymouth on Tim Burton's preparations for his Alice in Wonderland: "Burton has chosen the western city because of the ease with which it will accommodate his plans for a Victorian setting. The only confirmed casting is the highly-rated 18-year-old Australian actress, Mia Wasikowska, who recently starred in HBO's acclaimed television psychotherapy drama In Treatment, who is lined up to play Alice."

Also in the Independent, Kaleem Aftab talks with Isabelle Huppert.

"As you'd expect from someone profiled by the New York Times and every indie film magazine known to mankind, [Andrew] Bujalski was hesitant to do another interview," notes Chicagoist Rob Christopher. "But in the end he agreed... on the condition that we talk about anything except his own films. It made for an interesting email exchange (we've kept his eccentric punctuation intact), and included discussions about summer reading, the pleasures of deep dish, and a mini-dissertation of Friday the 13th Part V."

"Games cinephiles play" is a fun entry from David Bordwell that begins by drawing distinctions between cinephiles and cinemaniacs.

"Now let me toss in my proposal for a double bill: 3 Godfathers (John Ford, 1948) and Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai, 1977)." Girish wants to hear about your double bills, too.

"Filmmaker Dominic Angerame, the executive director of experimental/avant-garde film distribution company Canyon Cinema, seems that rarest of artists: someone who can level-headedly run a business and keep it profitable, as well as create highly personal, dynamic art." Erika Young conducts an email interview with him for SF360.

Robert Smithson's sketches toward a "Cinema Cavern" get Greg Allen musing on a "Truly 'Underground' Cinema." And he's got a followup entry on The Postman.

Benoît Lestang "reportedly committed suicide over the weekend." Johnny Butane has the news at Dread Central: "Lestang was the lead effects artist on films ranging from Tell No One to City of Lost Children; from Brotherhood of the Wolf to The Diving Bell and Butterfly and most recently he did the effects for the French horror film Martyrs." And via Movie City News, a photo-heavy hommage.

Paul Cronin's site for Sticking Place Films makes for a pretty intriguing browse; via Movie City News' pointer to his 54-page interview with Errol Morris (PDF).

For Jonathan Lapper, it's high time we rediscovered Robert Walker.

Ryan Gilbey talks with Brendan Fraser for the Guardian, where Paul Rennie takes a close look at the poster for the 1945 Ealing comedy Pink String and Sealing Wax.

"The world certainly isn't wanting for hagiographies of 70s punk-rock trailblazers, but rarely has one felt as inauthentic as Rodger Grossman's feature debut, What We Do Is Secret," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

Online snapshot. The Invisible Ray at Shorpy.

Not so much an online listening tip (though it's that, too) as a tip about some of the best listening online: The Save Segundo Campaign.

Online listening tip. If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger... has Hitchcock and Truffaut talking about The Birds.

Online viewing tip #1. Golden Fiddle has Haskell Wexler, DA Pennebaker, Joan Churchill, Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob discussing the nature of reality, taking pictures and then doing... what? with them.

Online viewing tip #2. "Britain seen from above," at the BBC; probably not what you think it is and definitely worth a look. Via Andrew Sullivan.

Online viewing tip #3. "Part sci-fi, part sex comedy, part art movie, The Fold interweaves stories involving a time-traveling geek with Aspergers Syndrome, an investigation by a Gaming Babes Magazine reporter, a sex cult guru, a right-wing CEO determined to remake history and a New Jersey hot tub salesman for whom things mysteriously start to go the right way.

Online viewing tips. Underground Film Guide: The Videos.

Posted by dwhudson at August 4, 2008 2:03 PM