Shorts, 8/16.

When I got back to the keyboard a couple of days ago with a head full of London, one of the first online items to catch my eye would be Rachel Donadio's profile of Hanif Kureishi for the New York Times Magazine: "Kureishi is very much a product of London, Britain's centralized cultural capital, where he is able to move fluidly between the literary and film worlds in ways that would be difficult in the United States. And because England's film scene has lower financial stakes (and better state subsidies) than America's, Kureishi has been able to make emotionally ambitious yet modest-budget films whose unresolved, ambivalent endings defy Hollywood convention. He contains multitudes, and London suits them all."

Girish on Sunday: "The question I've been rolling around in my head all week is: How do real and imaginary geographies interact in the movies? But before we go there, let me back up and set the stage..."

"Hollywood's season of wanton destruction has reached its height, along with the season of subtexts so blatant they're super," notes Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "Are these not-so-hidden messages compelling and intriguing or just a good excuse for making things go boom? And what's wrong with boom, anyway?" Related: Salon's Stephanie Zacharek on "blockbuster fatigue."

Then there's traxus4420 at culturemonkey: "Neoliberal assumptions (avowed or disavowed) are typical for the output of most mainstream cinematic and critical output these days, and it's usually not even worth mentioning in the individual case. I bring up superhero movies in this context because they're just so open about it. And yet a liberal media that would spend half the day spitting on Bush and the evils of multinational corporations can spend the other half hyperbolically puffing a movie that shares, in exaggerated form, the contorted view of reality demonstrated every day by these institutions, some of which produced the films."

"This week Le Figaro's Brigitte Baudin described The Possibility of an Island as 'ridiculous' and 'catastrophic,' while Corriere della Serra's Maurizio Pollo wrote that it was 'of a quite exemplary tedium.' Others were less damning: the critic at El País reported that [Michel] Houellebecq had directed his first film 'with more enthusiasm than results.' The most surprising thing about Houellebecq's debut is that it is unlikely to offend anyone very much." Geoffrey Macnab has a long talk with Houellebecq.

Also in the Guardian:

• Stuart Jeffries talks with Mike Leigh and David Thewlis about Naked, "a film that was, the critic Jonathan Romney contended, 'immersed to the hilt in a traumatised conception of the real - the real London of homelessness, violence, sexual exploitation and despair.' That quote wasn't on the posters." Related: That Jonathan Romney link takes you to his most recent piece on Leigh, this one for the Independent.

• "It feels like a terrible waste of time to have sat through two new documentaries about Andy Warhol's Factory, and I say that as a dedicated Warhol fan," writes the Guardian's Jonathan Jones. "There is, I still think, a great film to be made about this consciously strange individual. Unfortunately, none of the endless production line of Factory films even comes close to, or dreams of, overturning the stupidest, most discredited myths about Warhol and his New York." Also: "A painting is worth a thousand moving images." Related: Andrew Pulver on A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory.

• Damon Wise talks with Mel Brooks about the making of The Producers, "the film he directed in 1968 from a script he wrote himself and finished on a budget of just $941,000."

• "The Pineapple Express guys have discovered the essential truth about pothead movies: if you have to be stoned to enjoy them, then the battle's already lost," writes John Patterson, who then turns to Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York: "Apparently the rough cut was four hours long, but the 130-minute version I saw still felt like a life sentence." At any rate, Twitch has three clips.

• Weeks after the leak, the German papers have discovered that the screenplay for Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards is online; the Guardian's Kate Connolly rounds up their responses. Related: Xan Brooks asks, "Should certain directors be barred from filming the Holocaust?"

• Andria Lisle remembers Isaac Hayes.

"The Danes are the first Europeans out of the gate this year with their announcement of their 2009 Foreign Language Oscar submission," reports Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "The country will submit Niels Arden Oplev's religious drama To verdener (Worlds Apart), which was a big hit in Denmark with over 300,000 tickets sold."

"Son of a Lion is the debut feature by Australian Benjamin Gilmour, a coming-of-age drama filmed in secret, under dangerous circumstances, in the forbidding tribal region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan. This, according to a popular 21st century bedtime story, is the hostile region where the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and possibly Hannibal Lecter are even now plotting against our freedom-loving ways." Michael Dwyer talks with Gilmour; also in the Age, Stephanie Bunbury talks with Roy Andersson about You, the Living.

Cineuropa's latest "Film in Focus": Matteo Garrone's Gomorra.

"Sputnik Mania charts those halycon times when the threat of a communist takeover - or a communist-triggered doomsday - seemed so great that our great democracy might not survive," writes Dennis Harvey. Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Amber Humphrey on Trumbo. More on that one from Sam Adams in the Philadelphia City Paper.

"John Perkins, the focus of Stelios Koul's overheated documentary Apology of an Economic Hit Man and a rising star among liberal political commentators, has less satirical wit than Michael Moore and less intellectual authority than Noam Chomsky," writes Andy Webster. "What he has instead is a propensity for melodrama."

Also in the New York Times:

• Singh Is Kinng isn't a great movie," concedes Rachel Saltz. "But the immensely likable [Akshay] Kumar shines as a Capraesque hero who spreads bedrock Indian values - honor your mother, help the poor - by example, most conspicuously as the accidental leader of a feared crime gang in Australia."

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "A low-budget, high-value creature feature, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer harks back to the drive-in classics of yesteryear with unapologetic nostalgia and undisguised affection."

• Nathan Lee: "Expectations were set so low by George Lucas's lousy trilogy of Star Wars prequels that the latest from the Lucasfilm factory, a feature-length digital animation called Star Wars: The Clone Wars, comes as something of a surprise: it isn't the most painful movie of the year!" And: "Parents wishing to stupefy their youngest children for an hour and a half might consider plopping them in front of Fly Me to the Moon - but only if a fourth viewing of WALL•E or a second trip to Space Chimps or a really bright flashlight shining in their eyes is completely out of the question." Related: Rebecca Winters Keegan (Time) and Ray Zone (On the Media) on the second (or third?) coming of 3-D.

• And then there's Lee on Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69: "When will the sexploitation auteurs of America realize that there are fresher, more contemporary settings for tasteless movies predicated on torture and sexual humiliation?"

One Bad Cat: The Reverend Albert Wagner Story "explores a taboo subject (racial divides in the viewing and collecting of art) with irresolvable complexity," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. More from Nathan Lee (NYT) and Martin Tsai (New York Sun).

Mirrors is "a slab of shoddy, hollow rubbish that can't be bothered to concoct imaginative frights or even tenuous bonds between its supernatural terror and its characters' human drama," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

For Esquire, Stephen Garrett moderates a short discussion between old friends Werner Herzog and Philippe Petit. Related: Joe Leydon talks with Man on Wire director James Marsh for the Houston Chronicle.

Aaron Hillis talks with Fred Durst about his "family-friendly dramedy," The Longshots, for IFC.

For the Independent, Amanda Axelson talks with Rory Kennedy about Thank You Mr President: Helen Thomas at the White House.

Tim Lucas presents the "Top 10 Lines of Dialogue from Dallamano's Venus in Furs."

In the London Times, Wendy Ide sees a wave of vampire movies rolling in.

"In just the last few years, consultant Peter Broderick has helped hundreds of filmmakers figure out the right strategies for their films." And Eric Kohn talks with him for Stream.

"Summit Entertainment has pushed up the release date of its hotly anticipated vampire romance Twilight to Nov 21, taking advantage of the BO opening left by Warner Bros' surprise decision to move Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to July." Anne Thompson reports for Variety. On a related note, Robert Cashill: "[I]t's discouraging to see a regime so upfront about putting marketing over moviemaking. Looked at one way, the cover of [You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros Story] caps a record of distinguished achievement. Looked at another, it might front a gilded mausoleum."

New blog on the block #1: Daily Plastic, a joint venture from Robert Davis and J Robert Parks. Do take a look at that "Movie Grid."

New blog on the block #2: Parallax View: "To champion the cause of film literacy, foster public discussion of the place of movies in society, and promote the serious, sometimes delirious cause of film as art."

"Moviestorm is the complete package for creating animated movies - easy to use for novices and fully-featured for advanced moviemakers." Via the SXSW Newsreel.

Online listening tip #1. If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger... presents the last of the Hitchcock/Truffaut tapes.

Online listening tip #2. John Lichman and Vadim Rizov talk with Mike D'Angelo at the House Next Door.

Online listening tip #3. John Powers on Guy Maddin.

Online listening tips. Peter Bowen's guide to film-related podcasts for FilmInFocus.

Online viewing tip. Metropolitan on Hulu (for those in the US). Talking with director Whit Stillman: Eugene Hernandez (indieWIRE), Karina Longworth (SpoutBlog) and Stephen Saito (IFC). Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail: "[W]atching Metropolitan almost two decades after its emergence, it is easy to see why it has been labeled an independent classic."

Posted by dwhudson at August 16, 2008 1:58 PM