Shorts, fests, etc, 8/25.

"Of all the husband and wife filmmaking teams to emerge throughout cinema history, clear a special place at the table for Frank and Eleanor Perry, who burst onto the scene in 1962 with the immensely successful David and Lisa and went on to make five more features and two short TV films before their divorce in 1971," writes Bilge Ebiri at Moving Image Source. "She wrote; he directed.... This oddest of marital and artistic alliances created some of the most sensitively drawn films of the 1960s - films that have not lost their power after all these years, even if they are rarely mentioned today."

"You might... have expected a 'New Wave' to be a quick-burning phenomenon," writes Jonathan Romney in the Independent, but: "The New Wave directors stayed true to that imperative and avoided becoming relics. Their later work is generally as fascinating as the early breakthroughs: it's not a question of choosing between Godard's Alphaville (1965) and Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1990s), Rohmer's Claire's Knee (1970) and Triple Agent (2004). It's all part of the same long-term adventure, an achievement of marathon runners rather than sprinters. And it's not certain that the baton has yet truly been handed on."

"[T]o reiterate an ancient division in film studies - as personified by the conflict between Sergei Eisenstein and Andre Bazin - what's truly unusual about Rambo is not what happens between the cuts, but what takes place in the span of a single shot," argues John Cline in Flow. "Although it would be necessary to make a more detailed study of the specific cameras and post-production techniques used in Rambo in order to verify my own speculative observations, my preliminary hypothesis is that the relative incomprehensibility of the shots themselves is related to the film's use of digital cameras. More specifically, I believe that the digital camera's pixelated recreation of the light reflected from an object and the particularities of the camera's focus lend themselves to what Gilles Deleuze called a 'movement-image' that is decidedly 'post-human.'"

John Updike reviews Fred E Basten's Max Factor: The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World for the New Yorker. Let's cut to the movin'-on-up montage:

For Douglas Fairbanks's sweaty exertions, Max invented "the first perspiration-proof body make-up" and then "devised the reverse - cinematic sweat - by simply combining equal parts of water with mineral oil." For M-G-M's production of Ben-Hur, he and his staff conjured up more than six hundred gallons of light-olive makeup to match the army of pale local extras to the darker extras already filmed in Italy. He conquered the persistent problem of lip pomade's melting under the hot studio lights by firmly pressing two thumbprints onto the actress's upper lip and then one thumbprint on her lower lip, thus single-handedly creating the sensational new look of "bee-stung" lips. For Joan Crawford, he created "the smear."

Related online browsing: A portfolio of Max Factor ads from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Fests and events:

• In the Los Angeles Times, Scarlet Cheng tells the story behind Made in Hollywood: Photographs From the John Kobal Foundation, "a virtual tour through four decades of glitz and glamour, starting in the 1920s." At the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through October 5.

• "It's impossible to look at the box office numbers without concluding the following: The worst thing that ever happened to indie film was that the studios thought it was a good business." Dade Hayes and Pamela McClintock: "As the indie world gears up for the Toronto Film Festival, the specialty box office is down dramatically compared to other years, while the rest of the BO prospers. Studio specialty arms are battening down the hatches and releasing fewer titles, in dramatic contrast to last year's deluge." Also in Variety, Anne Thompson with a more upbeat take: "Indie film's easy-money era is over, but new opportunities are emerging." Both via the Circuit.

• S James Snyder in the New York Sun: "Sundance is still the ideal place for the unattached art-house wannabe, and Venice and Cannes have the tabloid appeal of red carpets and paparazzi pits, but it is Toronto - the 33rd edition of which opens September 4 - where critics and distributors turn up with Oscar gold on their minds."

• More Toronto previewing: Michael Guillén.

• Fantastic Fest will open with the US premiere of Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Smith will be there in Austin to introduce the screening on September 18. Blake Ethridge has more. Through September 25.

The LA Weekly runs an excerpt: "In the new book In Heaven Everything Is Fine: The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre, Josh Frank (with Charlie Buckholtz) explores the life, work and cold-case murder of Ivers, who was the host of the underground cable show New Wave Theatre and composer of Eraserhead's 'In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song).' This excerpt from the story recalls the moment Eraserhead first caught on with LA audiences at the Nuart Theatre and captured the imagination of a band called Devo."

Tim Adams tells the story of Darby Crash and the Germs. What We Do Is Secret is still in theaters.

Also in the Observer, Killian Fox talks with Olivia Thirby and Philip French assesses Lauren Bacall.

In the Guardian, Paul Rennie offers a close reading of the poster for The Exorcist.

"Hollywood studios and neuroscientists are increasingly using technologies such as brain scans to peer inside the minds of moviegoers," reports Jeremy Hsu for MSNBC. "That alliance promises to do more than just sell Hollywood's movies to the masses - it may revolutionize how filmmakers create movies to begin with." (Thanks, Jerry!)

"John Russell, who contributed elegant, erudite art criticism for more than a half-century to the Sunday Times of London and the New York Times, where he was chief art critic from 1982 to 1990, and who helped bring a generation of postwar British artists to international attention, died on Saturday," writes William Grimes. "He was 89 and lived in Manhattan."

In the Los Angeles Times, Claudia Eller and Josh Friedman report on ThinkFilm's ongoing troubles.

Latest list at the AV Club: "Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!: 26 evil, awful, or just plain stupid educators in TV and film."

Online snickers. The Parallel Universe Film Guide.

Online scrolling tip. Kirk Demarais's paintings of movie families. Via Jason Kottke.

Online browsing tip. "Show People," a portfolio of photographs by Richard Avedon in the New Yorker.

Online browsing and viewing tip. "Okay, cool mentions across the blogosphere are one thing, but a fashion spread in the Sunday Times is something else," writes Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay. "Check out this feature to see Josh Safdie, director of The Pleasure of Being Robbed (my favorite independent film of the year), his brother Benny, actress Eleonore Hendricks and the rest of the Red Bucket Films crew wearing some of the latest Fall fashions. There's also this group of curated Red Bucket Shorts."

Online viewing tip. Craig Welch's How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels at Film Threat.

Online viewing tips. Andre Perkowski's been having himself some fun with Silent Shadow of The Bat-Man, parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Posted by dwhudson at August 25, 2008 2:07 PM