Shorts, fests, etc, 8/17.

"What has enabled superhero comic-book movies to blast into a central spot in today's blockbuster economy?" asks David Bordwell. His first order of business is to brush aside the zeitgeist notion; for the many reasons he lists, it simply doesn't cut it. In its place, he offers several suggestions "based on my hunch that the genre has brought together several trends in contemporary Hollywood film. These trends, which can commingle, were around before 2000, but they seem to be developing in a way that has created a niche for the superhero film." A nice followup to Kristin Thompson's second report from Comic-Con.

Meantime, here come more superheroes. Ben Walters reports for the Independent.

In the Los Angeles Times, John Horn looks back on a visit to the set of The Road:

In adapting [Cormac] McCarthy's National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, [director John] Hillcoat and [screenwriter Joe] Penhall (as well as the actors and production team) toiled to weigh hopelessness against faith, the worst of humanity opposite the possibility of civilization. But for some, including one top distributor of specialized film who passed on the Nov 14 release, the cinematic version of The Road was ultimately still too bleak to appeal to moviegoers.

So even as the filmmakers were ratcheting up the story's danger and despair, they also were pushing to make the movie as uplifting as possible, emphasizing its intrinsic father-son love story and promoting the notion that the Boy embodies some sort of messiah. Along the way, movie version also became much less a story about a post-nuclear catastrophe and more a tale of climate change and a dying planet.

"47 after its premiere, Kent Mackenzie's The Exiles (1961) has finally returned to its iconic setting of Los Angeles," celebrates Doug Cummings, noting that its run at UCLA (through Saturday) "is being used to promote at least one historical tour of Bunker Hill. Although the new print premiered in Marseilles and New York City, you'll have to pardon Angelenos like myself if we act proprietary about the movie, rebirthed in the wider cinephiliac consciousness by CalArt's Thom Andersen, whose Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) claims, 'better than any other movie, [The Exiles] proves that there was once a city here, before they tore it down and built a simulacrum.'"

"Mexican filmmaker Enrique Rivero on Saturday took home the top prize of Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival with his film Parque Vía, about a man who has put himself in voluntary seclusion," reports the AFP; here's the full list of award-winners.

At Twitch:

• Peter Martin: Nobuo Mizuta's Maiko Haaaan!!! "lives up to expectations as a 'crazy Japanese comedy,' but it actually has much more to offer."

• Rodney Perkins: "[I]t is somewhat difficult to see the appeal of [Hideo Nakata's] L: Change the World to anyone beyond young people, and hardcore fans of the original films and the manga upon which it is based."

• The Visitor on Ho Wi Ding's Summer Afternoon, 15-minutes short and "quite a technical feat": "Don't miss the film! I'm serious!"

"Summer is here and the time is nigh for an annual accounting of the Bay Area film scene - and as far as new international cinema goes, I'd say we've done quite well in the past 12 months." Michael Hawley at the Evening Class.

Online listening tip. At Cinematical, James Rocchi and Kim Voynar talk Telluride (August 29 through September 1) and Toronto (September 4 through 13).

Online viewing tip. Death Star over San Francisco, via Coudal Partners.

Posted by dwhudson at August 17, 2008 1:24 PM