Shorts, 8/31.

"A few weeks ago, a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors sat down to celebrate our celluloid city by selecting the 25 films from the last 25 years that best speak to the essential DNA of the Southland," writes Geoff Boucher. "We started with two simple ground rules: The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the LA experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list, a guideline that kept City of Angels specialists such as Michael Mann, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson from dominating." So here's what they've come up with; you can follow along, too, via a map.

Rocket Video responds with a few alternatives and a list of the ten best LA docs.

Also in the LAT: Scott Martelle reviews Rick Wartzman's Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Vince Keenan's just enjoyed Vampyres of Hollywood: "The novel by Adrienne Barbeau (yes, that Adrienne Barbeau) and Michael Scott (no, not that Michael Scott) suggests that many of the movies' brightest lights are in fact the undead. Funny how easy that notion is to accept."

"I've mentioned from time to time the 'shot at a time' sessions I do at film festivals and universities, sifting through a film with the help of the audience," begins Roger Ebert. "Actually, it's something anyone can do, including you... I want to tell you how." Books and methods are recommended and then a slew of comments follows, with Ebert replying to several of them.

"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is literally a Disneyfication (you wonder whether The Gas Chamber ride is being installed outside Paris)," writes Linda Grant. "How can we expect children to understand what we do not?" She's upfront about giving away the ending here, but I found the spoiler worth the read. Related: Mick Brown has a long talk with Vera Farmiga for the Telegraph.

Also in the Guardian:

• "François Ozon is the French director who made the masterly 5x2, and his career has had such fluency and adventure that anything he makes is of some interest," writes Peter Bradshaw, reviewing Angel. "But this really is a failure - an honourable failure, arguably, but a failure, and a pretty complete one at that." Ryan Gilbey and Jason Solomons talk with Ozon; he Independent's Anthony Quinn finds that Ozon "has taken Elizabeth Taylor's beadily satiric novel and transformed it into a droll and somewhat disturbing fantasia on the creative temperament." More from David Jenkins in Time Out and Jason Solomons in the Observer.

• Steven Poole, briefly, on The Studs Terkel Interviews:: Film and Theater: "And here is the man himself, or at least slices of his career-long masterclass. It stretches over four decades, from Truffaut and Buster Keaton, through Arthur Miller, James Cagney and Lotte Lenya, to Ian McKellen and Arnold Schwarzenegger ('I have emotions,' the latter announces, terrifyingly)."

• "In a plotline that couldn't have come straight out of one of his movies, Hollywood scriptwriter Joe Eszterhas has found God." Marina Hyde comments.

• Ryan Gilbey interviews Will Ferrell.

"Several historians would argue that 1913 marked the first major achievements of film as an artform," writes David Bordwell. "Two outstanding films of that annus mirabilis have recently been issued on US DVD. One is a striking accomplishment, the other a flat-out masterpiece. Both discs belong in the collections of everyone who's serious about cinema." And they are: Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley's Suspense and Victor Sjöström's Ingeborg Holm.

Michael Peterson at the House Next Door on Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are Not Alone: "[T]his new Evangelion varies between being a shot-by-shot remake in the Gus Van Sant Psycho vein (adjusted to widescreen), a Star Wars-like Special Edition with updated effects, and a full-on rework of the original series' plot fundamentals that, with each additional entry, promises to differ more and more from the original source. What I do feel immediately confident saying is that the film is a visual masterpiece."

"When Katrin Cartlidge died suddenly in September 2002, the world lost one of its most adventurous, erudite character actresses," writes Matt Mazur in PopMatters. "She specialized in creating noiseless women on the fringe, loners, drifters, working class women, professionals, low-lifes, women of distinction, and everything in between for a handful of the most visionary directors of our time, Lodge Kerrigan, Mike Leigh and Lars von Trier among them. She was the very definition of a 'working actress.'"

Mike Russell posts "one of the weirder pieces of 'celebrity journalism' I've ever stumbled across: [Lee] Marvin's beautifully written, ambivalent first-person account of hunting - and then sparing - a magnificent elk bull."

"Warners might well have dug out their [James] Dean files when Heath Ledger died suddenly last January, for what was this but corporate history repeating itself?" John McElwee looks back on how the company stoked the fires of "Dean-mania."

Nicholas Ray's 1956 film Bigger Than Life "attempted to take on a subject - the rise of psychopharmacology - that was as timely as it was confusing, and the whole movie visibly strains against the pressure of dramatizing the unfamiliar," writes Evan Kindley at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "It gives the impression of a world-changing scientific discovery explained by somebody who doesn't really understand it." Also, Andrew Schenker: "In Hot Blood, the film's Los Angeles gypsy community may be marked by insistent patriarchal attitudes, but they weren't counting on Jane Russell." Here, Ray is "concerned with staging a glorious Technicolor extravaganza, delighting in arranging his characters and their variegated costuming across the 'Scope screen and even staging several dance numbers. Still, if it's difficult to argue with the results from an aesthetic standpoint, this shift in focus on Ray's part nonetheless makes the question of constructing a coherent reading of the film somewhat problematic."

"It's amazing to think that Guy Ritchie is not quite 40 and already he's in the last chance saloon. After the two great follies, Swept Away and Revolver, his new film RocknRolla is make or break." Kaleem Aftab has seen it and, as he writes in the Independent, "There's nothing too wrong with RocknRolla per se, it's just that if you've watched [Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels] or Snatch then you've seen it all before - and done better." Also: Gaynor Flynn talks with Tilda Swinton.

"There is no denying that 'origin tales' are all the rage, and it's not just for superheroes anymore," writes Jessica Barnes at Cinematical. "In an interview with MTV Movie Blog, director Alex Proyas gave a few updates about what he has planned for Dracula Year Zero, and the word of the day is 'realism.' Proyas told MTV, the film will be 'sort of the origin tale that mixes [the historical] Prince Vlad of Transylvania with sort of [fictionalized] Bram Stoker [take]' - I guess if it helps, just think of it as Portrait of a Bloodsucker as a Young Man."

"Critics and moviegoers will decide how it stacks up against its 69-year-old inspiration, but we can tell you now: It definitely is different." Anita Gates introduces a graphic comparing The Women (1939) and The Women (2008).

Also in the New York Times:

• "An adult fable told with childlike simplicity, Year of the Fish updates an ancient Chinese version of the Cinderella story with imagination, charm and just the right amount of sweetness," finds Jeannette Catsoulis. More from S James Snyder in the New York Sun and Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail.

• Also: "Mellow as buttermilk and twice as nutritious, the music documentaries Youssou N'Dour: Return to Gorée and Maria Bethânia: Music Is Perfume trace influences and celebrate connections with tunes to make you tap and sway." More from Matt Noller in Slant.

• And: "Any comedy that can combine death, abortion, Jewish ritual and a mariachi band without curdling into complete lunacy deserves a modicum of respect. In the case of My Mexican Shivah, more would be pushing it." More from Martin Tsai in the New York Sun.

FilmInFocus profiles a blogger this time many of us have been curious about for a long time now: Tom Sutpen of If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.

David Denby is taking New Yorker readers' questions. Via the House Next Door.

For the Telegraph, Andrew Pettie talks with director Saul Dibb about The Duchess. Related: Sam Wollaston interviews Keira Knightley for the Guardian.

Amy Raphael talks with Steve Coogan for the Observer.

Things are looking up for the Norwegian film industry, reports Gunnar Rehlin for Variety.

Mexico is officially considering 11 films from which to choose one to send into the Oscar race. Nathaniel R has a linked-up list.

Online listening tip #1. New York Review of Books podcasts.

Online listening tip #2. "As the summer movie season finally draws - or rather, sputters - to a close, four AV Club writers measure 2008 against 2007, discuss the onset of blockbuster fatigue, and weigh in with their favorite and least favorite films of the last four months."

Online viewing tip #1. Matt Zoller Seitz's Requiem for Kong.

Online viewing tip #2. Lynn Hirschberg talks with Naomi Watts for the New York Times.

Online viewing tip #3. "Happy to see one of my favorite animated short films of all time, Mark Osborne's More, on YouTube's Screening Room (courtesy of Wholphin)," notes Matt Dentler.

Online viewing tips. "The 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube," as selected by Ajesh Patalay for the Observer: "Joy Division's TV debut, readings by Jack Kerouac, a Marlene Dietrich screen test, Madonna's first performance... and much more."

Posted by dwhudson at August 31, 2008 3:53 PM