Shorts, fests, etc, 9/16.

It's Kenneth Anger day at DC's.

"East Asian Auteurs" is the theme of the latest issue of Offscreen, featuring editor Donato Totaro on Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights, Edwin Mak on Jia Zhangke's Platform and Unknown Pleasures, Hwanhee Lee on Park Chan-wook's Oldboy and Peter Rist's conversation with Zhuang Yuxin. And then, breaking ranks, is Daniel Garrett with his piece on Eric Guirado's The Grocer's Son.

"A modestly budgeted western made by Leonard Goldstein Productions in 1954 (for a 1955 release by United Artists), Stranger on Horseback came in the middle of Jacques Tourneur's most neglected and perhaps most beautiful period: the years of declining prestige that followed the personal triumph of his favorite among his films, the elegiac and humane Stars in My Crown (1950)." Chris Fujiwara at Moving Image Source.

"Wild Combination, Matt Wolf's doc on the composer Arthur Russell, plays SF360 Film+Club on September 22, so SF360's running Amy Taubin's piece on the film from this summer's issue of Film Comment:

The last time I encountered Russell, whom I knew from my involvements with The Kitchen, was in 1991 on the downtown C train. As was his wont, he handed me his headphones so I could listen to a few seconds of the tape that he had probably just recorded. Then he asked me if I knew any filmmakers who might want him to write a score. I said that I couldn't think of anyone worthy, which was true but a bit cavalier. It wasn't until after he died and I had seen My Own Private Idaho that I realized how perfectly Russell's music would have meshed with Gus Van Sant's vision.

More fests and events:

• "[A]lmost 60 years after Rashomon won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival as well as an honorary Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is premiering a restoration of the film Thursday at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills," notes Susan King. Los Angeles Times "critic Kenneth Turan will host a discussion on Kurosawa before the screening."

• "There are still more programs to come but the 2008 edition of the Sitges festival - the largest genre film festival in the world - announced both the competitive and non-competitive parts of their official selections today." Todd Brown's got 'em at Twitch.

• "Starting with his 1961 short Ball's Bluff, where he first mused on a Civil War soldier, shot in the buttocks, who awakens in modern New York lost and alone, [Robert] Downey made six low-budget shorts of increasing notoriety, hilarity and formal sophistication that had an especially sharp eye for absurdities of the era's social and racial tumult," writes Brandon Harris at Hammer to Nail. "Robert Downey: A Prince, running through Thursday at Anthology Film Archives, has proven to be a heady and frequently hysterical journey through that particular stretch of Downey Sr's career."

• Mike Everleth has the lineup for the Antimatter Underground Film Festival, running Friday through September 27 in Victoria, Canada.

• The WSWS posts the first installment of Richard Phillips and Ismet Redzovic's report on the Sydney Film Festival.

"Here are 10 things about you 'professional' film critics that really frost our patooties." Finite jest from professional critic Kathleen Murphy at MSN.

"Preparing for Global Financial Apocalypse: Seven Lessons from the Movies." A list from Kevin Buist at the SpoutBlog. Then, Christopher Campbell: "10 Movies to Watch When Feeling a Financial Crunch."

Online viewing tip. At the CR Blog, Patrick posts an Indian Nokia ad.

Posted by dwhudson at September 16, 2008 2:06 PM