Shorts, 8/23.

As much as I have loved Buster Keaton since I first laid eyes on him, I don't think I fully experienced him until I read Walter Kerr's chapters in The Silent Clowns. One of the most magnificent films I know, Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu, is forever reverberating off Robin Wood's consideration of it and Ugetsu Monogatari, "The Ghost Princess and the Seaweed Gatherer." (Wood taught me how to see Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, too.) The Shining is a greater movie because of Richard T Jameson's unforgettable Film Comment cover story. Of course, the movie is what it always was, but Jameson's piece is a masterful interpretation - the way a musician's interpretation of composition can explore it so deeply and resonantly so that the composer and the interpreter, working in concert, fuse and become co-authors of a particular performance."

"Johnnie To has reunited with Mad Detective actor Lau Ching-Wan on a picture titled Look, which To is obviously planning on sneaking through production before The Red Circle ramps up." Todd Brown has more at Twitch.

Jonathan Rosenbaum posts five letters from Jean-Luc Godard to Rob Tregenza concerning Inside/Out, which "tell a fairly coherent story of their own—-specifically the story of the multifaceted activity of Godard as producer of Tregenza's third feature, which was shot in rural Maryland and which includes two actors from For Ever Mozart in its cast, Frédéric Pierrot and Bérangère Allaux."

"It's tempting to call The Garden a story of innocence and experience, of evil corrupting paradise, but that would be doing a disservice to the fascinating complexities of a classic Los Angeles conflict and an excellent documentary that does them full justice," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. "Produced and directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, The Garden takes us behind the scenes into one of the most incendiary LA situations of recent times. That would be the fierce battle over a 14-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda streets known as the South Central Farm, a dispute that turned so bitter and protracted it is still going on."

"A fundamental question facing serious filmmakers who want their movies to be seen is how unvarnished the reality contemplated by their films can be before audiences become alienated," suggests Stephen Holden, introducing "a checklist of 10 of the best art films in theaters this summer."

Also in the New York Times:

• Woody Allen, "Excerpts From the Spanish Diary": "Scarlett came to me today with one of those questions actors ask, 'What's my motivation?' I shot back, 'Your salary.' She said fine but that she needed a lot more motivation to continue. About triple. Otherwise she threatened to walk. I called her bluff and walked first. Then she walked. Now we were rather far apart and had to yell to be heard. Then she threatened to hop. I hopped too, and soon we were at an impasse. At the impasse I ran into friends, and we all drank, and of course I got stuck with the check." Related: José Teodoro in Stop Smiling on Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

• Danny and Oxide Pang's remake of their own Bangkok Dangerous opens on September 5. Terrence Rafferty: "There's something touching about the Pangs' dedication to purely visual storytelling, because their high-impact, music-video-like style has, in 2008, a whiff of quaintness about it. The quick cuts, the tight close-ups, the propulsive pace, the abrupt shifts to slow motion, the slightly dreamy, stoned air that seems to envelop every action - all their signature effects have a distinct late-80s feel to them."

• Realisms, the second part of The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, "showcases 19 artists who find fictions lurking behind every window, door and screen." Karen Rosenberg picks out some of the highlights.

• Holland Carter on "two [Dia:Beacon] installations that, in very different ways, quietly commemorate artists now gone whose names have a magic ring to contemporary ears," Tacita Dean's Merce Cunningham performs Stillness (in three movements) to John Cage's composition 4'33" with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six Performances; six films) (through September 1) and Imi Knoebel's 24 Farben - für Blinky.

• "Leopoldo Serran, a screenwriter who adapted the novels of his Brazilian countryman Jorge Amado for the movies, and who worked with the directors Carlos Diegues and Bruno Barreto in bringing Brazilian films to the attention of American audiences, died on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 66," writes Bruce Weber. "Mr Serran's best-known work was Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands), a 1976 film written with Mr Barreto and Eduardo Coutinho."

• "The lessons of the documentary Crossing Borders - and the film is not subtle about them - are so self-evident, you might think there's no need to convey them," writes Andy Webster. "But that would be a mistake. In 2007, the German filmmaker Arnd Wächter brought four college-age Americans to Morocco to join four Moroccans of similar age for a weeklong tour of their country."

• "All hail Anna Faris, fake bimbo par excellence, master of the birdbrained double take, our reigning queen of intelligent stupidity," writes Nathan Lee. "On the sneaker-clad heels of Smiley Face, an inspired stoner farce from 2007, come the plastic stiletto shenanigans of The House Bunny, a breezy, ditzy comedy about the misadventures of a Playboy bunny exiled from the chinchilla cocoon of Hugh Hefner's mansion." Also, John Anderson talks with Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, "a successful female writing team, one whose output (Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, She's the Man) has been frothily funny yet informed by female empowerment." More on the movie from Sean Axmaker (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), Erik Davis (Cinematical), Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Scott Foundas (Voice), Nick Schager (Slant), Dana Stevens (Slate), Scott Tobias (AV Club) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon). And R Emmet Sweeney's got "An Appreciation of Anna Faris" at IFC.

• "There's something to be said for a movie that knows exactly what it is and then whacks that knowledge home like a rusty pipe in the face." Again, Nathan Lee: "Case in point: Death Race, a delectable bit of B-movie savagery that actually does feature pipe melees, among much other kicky (and punchy and impaled-by-a-metal-spikey) ultraviolence." More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Aaron Hillis (Voice), Philip Kennicott (Washington Post), Michael Phillips (LAT, where Tom Roston talks with director Paul WS Anderson), Keith Phipps (AV Club), James Rocchi (Cinematical) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

• And Nathan Lee: "The small-town oddballs in The Sensation of Sight are weighted down by some obscure tragedy, but as this long, lugubrious weepie makes its way toward revelation and redemption, it becomes clear that the really oppressive thing here is the filmmaking itself."

• And Nathan Lee sums up the plot of The Longshots, and then: "What makes this one different? Absolutely nothing." More from Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Gary Goldstein (LAT), Jette Kernion (Cinematical), Joe Leydon (Variety) and Nathan Rabin (AV Club).

• Dave Itzkoff talks with JJ Abrams about Fringe, "an hourlong drama about an investigative team whose explorations lead to a shadowy world of science fiction and the seemingly supernatural." Debuts on Fox on September 9.

• "As an actor in films like Hustle & Flow, Crash and Iron Man, Terrence Howard has played characters whose calm demeanor conceals a suppressed rage that is the result of dreams deferred, denied or realized on only barely acceptable terms," writes Anthony DeCurtis. The debut album Shine Through It tends "toward a blend of orchestral jazz and upscale R&B, with lush textures of flutes, horns, strings, female backing vocals and keyboards accompanying Mr Howard, who plays delicate acoustic guitar."

• "In Bollywood the motion picture industry remains resolutely star struck, even as special effects have helped to reduce Hollywood's dependence on big-name actors," writes Anupama Chopra. "Five men dominate the business in Bollywood: Shahrukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan (the Khans are not related), Akshay Kumar and Hrithik Roshan. Each of these stars function almost as a one-man studio, with an in-house production company."

• Neil Genzlinger has some fun with roles a slew of actors played before playing the US president.

"The Chaser is the grittiest, snazziest and gutsiest Korean thriller in years and one of the best Korean films of 2008," writes Kyu Hyun Kim at Koreanfilm.org. Also, Seven Days is "really not as clever or poignant as its makers probably think it is, but it may make a surprisingly strong impression for ordinary fans of Korean cinema, and is, needless to say, a must for Kim Yun-jin fans."

Tim Lucas on Simon, King of the Witches: "Despite its scary title and the violent, druggy, sexist, black magic trappings of its original promo campaign, this isn't a horror film at all, nor a particularly exploitative one; it's actually part character study about a homeless, mostly likeable, cigar-smoking practitioner of White Magic who lives in a storm drain and a satire of the myriad cults arising from the ashes of psychedelicized Los Angeles of the early 1970s, informed to some extent by the gnostic legends of Simon Magus."

Badlands "is eloquent about the intersection of crime, romanticism and myth-making in America, and innovative in its use of colour, editing and voiceover. It's also a miracle that this mighty work could have emerged from such an apparently shambolic production." Ryan Gilbey tells the story.

Also in the Guardian:

• John Patterson: "No matter how much things improve, race always finds new ways to make us crazy. One line from Tropic Thunder sums up the whole demented parallel-universe of blackface: 'I know who I am!' says Lazarus. 'I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!'"

• "There are thousands of features and shorts stored in processing laboratories throughout Britain that have been deserted by their owners," writes Phelim O'Neill. "They just sit there, accumulating dust and fines, until they are slung out or burnt. There could be some real classics in there, although the quality of the films is irrelevant; all films, even the bad ones, deserve the chance to be seen if requested."

• Maddy Costa talks with Romola Garai about, among other things, Angel. Related: Kevin Maher interviews François Ozon for the London Times.

• David Thomson: "[Ben] Kingsley is 65, yet it's as if his wings are only now taking on their golden tip and their greatest power."

In PopMatters, Marco Lanzagorta examines "some of the most representative and appealing representations, real or metaphoric, of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transvestite, and transsexual monsters that have haunted the silver screen."

David Lowery's been thinking... "It all began when I noted to a friend a few weeks ago that my appetite for films these days is pretty squarely bifurcated between two vague categories: I either want to see something small and strange and unique, something that will get under my skin, or I want really great pop. There's a middle ground between Mr Lonely and Iron Man, and I don't think I'm too terribly interested in whatever occupies it."

"So here we are in the middle of a war about movie superheroes (see comments threads here and here)," sighs Pat Graham. "The word itself begs for judicious scare quotes - why 'super'? why 'heroic'? - but what predictably gets the blood boiling, at least among the die-hard fans, is anyone calling these wayward exotics 'childish.' How can you write off a whole genre, the argument goes, when it's never a one-dimensional, monolithic thing? And basically I agree.

Geoffrey Macnab profiles Joel and Ethan Coen for the Independent.

"John M Stahl's 1939 When Tomorrow Comes is handicapped by an undistinguished script and by the structural problems posed by the 'other woman' genre," writes Dan Sallitt. "And yet something about the concentrated quality of Stahl’s camera style lifts and unifies the project."

John Cassavetes's A Child is Waiting "combines Hollywood's Golden Age star Judy Garland with modern golden boy Burt Lancaster and several of Cassavetes's stock players from his independent work (his wife Gena Rowlands, John Marley and Paul Stewart) to tell a gloves-off story about the place of the mentally retarded in mainstream American society," writes Marilyn Ferdinand. "Garland would be less of a problem in telling this tale than the differing philosophies of its producer [Stanley Kramer] and director."

Annie Wagner on Tuya's Marriage: "The arid landscape, seen with a patriotic affection, is a stirring sight. More wonderful, though, is the story: unusual, understated, and sincere." Also: "Transsiberian is an entertaining film. Just don't expect finesse - and suffer the xenophobia in silence." And also in the Stranger, Charles Mudede on Godard's Vivre Sa Vie: "[T]he more I think about this movie, the more I'm convinced that the part of me that wants to read it in Marxist terms is absolutely right."

Will Lawrence talks with Guy Ritchie for the Telegraph.

Steve Erickson talks with David Gordon Green about the nuts and bolts of making Pineapple Express for Film & Video.

For indieWIRE, Eric Kohn talks with Alejandro Springall about My Mexican Shivah.

For Movie City News, Ray Pride talks with James Marsh about Man on Wire.

"[Y]ou are the readers I have dreamed of." Roger Ebert's "Confessions of a blogger."

Lists: "Top 20 Animated Feature Films" at Screengrab (parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) and "10 Underrated Songs by Fictional Music Groups (in Movies)," from Christopher Campbell at the SpoutBlog.

Online viewing tip #1. "Simon Pegg here, with an introduction to a series of video blogs, made last year on the set of the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, released on 3rd October and based on Toby Young's memoir about going to New York and making a tart of himself."

Online viewing tip #2. C Jerry Kutner in Bright Lights After Dark: "I offer this clip as follow-up to my post re The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (Guy Maddin 1995). It shows the degree to which Maddin's style and thematic concerns have evolved in the 12 years since the earlier film was made. Note the differences. Most obviously, Eye Like a Strange Balloon is a photographed dream. Spanky: To the Pier and Back is photographed real life."

Online viewing tip #3. Ted Zee's got the trailer for New York, I Love You, "the next city to fall in love with," from the producers of Paris, je t'aime, so you know what that means: lots of stars and star directors.

Online viewing tips. Eliza picks some "Great New Videos" for Creative Review.

Posted by dwhudson at August 23, 2008 3:52 PM