Shorts, 9/20.

"Ozu's name came up often last week at TIFF, most frequently in regard to Hirokazu Kore-eda's domestic drama, Still Walking, and Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum, which was directly inspired by Late Spring," writes Darren Hughes. "I watched Late Spring for the first time last night (yeah, I know) and had a grand time spotting the details that echo throughout Denis's film. Mostly, though, I was struck by just how strange a filmmaker Ozu really is, particularly in his cutting. It made me realize that I'm not so sure, exactly what we mean when we call a film 'Ozu-like.' (See Girish's 'Received Ideas in Cinema' post.)" Update, 9/22: Billy Stevenson.

David Bordwell considers "one of the most powerful weapons in the filmmaker's arsenal. A director can disarm our emotions through a single reaction shot."

"Sadly, the great Cuban film director Humberto Solás died from cancer on September 17th, aged 66," notes Catherine Grant. "There's a great and touching obituary by Latin-American film scholar and fellow filmmaker Michael Chanan in today's Guardian."

Luis Mandoki: "Brave truth-teller or cheap political shill? Los Angeles audiences will be able to judge for themselves when Fraude Mexico 2006 opens here theatrically Oct 10, following a sold-out screening this week at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival." Agustin Gurza talks with him for the Los Angeles Times. Also in the LAT, Jevon Phillips: "Loved Kung Fu Hustle, and Shaolin Soccer was an epic romp of martial arts fun, but now comes word that actor/director Stephen Chow will direct Seth Rogen and star opposite him as Kato in Columbia Pictures' The Green Hornet. for the Los Angeles Times.

"Oscilloscope Pictures has acquired North American rights to director Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father, which played at Slamdance and the SXSW Film Festival." The Hollywood Reporter's Gregg Kilday, via the SXSW Newsreel.

"A rapidly escalating legal fight between Warner Brothers, which has already shot Watchmen, and 20th Century Fox, which claims to own rights to the graphic novel on which it is based, is headed for trial in federal court in Los Angeles next January," reports Michael Cieply. "That is just two months before Warner is scheduled to release the film in the United States, while Paramount Pictures distributes it abroad."

Also in the New York Times:

• "Taking Father Home, the debut feature of the Chinese director Ying Liang, is a poetic study of resolve and revenge," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. "It is also a stunning introduction to a rare new talent." More from Cullen Gallagher at Hammer to Nail.

• "The release of All of Us, a documentary about HIV/AIDS and African-American women in New York, is well timed given recent headlines about the alarming persistence of the crisis," writes Nathan Lee. "But this powerful, conceptually sure film is relevant beyond the concerns of the moment as both a model of documentary method and compassionate social filmmaking." More from Andrew Schenker in Slant.

• "An Angolan word for encampment, 'quilombo' refers to the villages throughout Brazil originally founded by insurgent and fugitive slaves under desperate conditions," notes Laura Kern. "Leonard Abrams's documentary Quilombo Country is an up-close-and-personal look at the state of these villages today." Also: "Realistic performances and genuine emotions make Matthew Bonifacio's quiet charmer Amexicano much more than just another preachy treatise on illegal immigration." Related: indieWIRE talks with Bonifacio and writer Carmine Famiglietti.

• "In the Kingdom of Malaria, inky clouds obscure the sun and loony scientists are rewarded for diabolical inventions." Jeannette Catsoulis: "There's scant reward, though, for sitting through Igor, an animated twist on the Frankenstein story that never sparks to life." More from Robert Abele (Los Angeles Times), Jeffrey M Anderson (Cinematical), Tasha Robinson (AV Club), Nick Schager (Slant) and Megan Seling (Stranger).

• Laura Kern on My Best Friend's Girl: "Kate Hudson loosens her wholesome screen image a notch in her latest star vehicle, a racy comedy, which aims to be tasteless (it often is) and romantic (it mostly isn't)." More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC) and Eric D Snider Cinematical). And in the LAT, Josh Friedman argues that the movie got a load of free PR when co-star Dane Cook groused about the poster on his blog.

Australians are hoping that Baz Luhrmann's Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman - "described as an Antipodean Gone With the Wind - will help revive their flagging tourism industry, reawakening interest in the country and promoting its landscapes as effectively as the Lord of the Rings movies did for New Zealand," reports Kathy Marks. "So excited are tourism officials that they have commissioned Luhrmann to direct a $50m (£22m) series of advertisements, which will be shown in Europe, the United States and across Asia next month, in the lead-up to the film's November release." More from Jeff Dawson in the London Times.

Also in the Independent: "The little-explored subject of 'go-fasters' - drug-traffickers who zoom in almost ostentatious convoys of three or four cars from Spain to large French cities - will be examined in a thriller movie and an autobiographical book to be published soon." Edward Fortes reports on Go Fast.

"Full of clowns and foolery, signifying nothing, Burn After Reading is as deliberately self-canceling a story as you would expect from its title, or from its setting in an imaginary Washington where no one is the least bit interested in government," writes Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "So let the Coen brothers tell me that life is absurd, that the world is fallen, that God is illusory but Satan (or Javier Bardem) is emphatically real. I can take it. But when they call me an idiot for listening, I get a little impatient." More from Justin Stewart at Stop Smiling.

The documentary O Lucky Man! will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Tuesday; its maker is John Harris:

To understand the furies that threatened to define [Lindsay] Anderson's view of the world, the best place to begin is the last of the Mick Travis trilogy: Britannia Hospital, in which [Malcolm] McDowell turns in not much more than a cameo, and Anderson returns to the idea he used for If...: portraying an institution as a microcosm of British life, replete with its howling hypocrisies and air of post-imperial doom. Derek Jarman predicted the film "would finish Lindsay in the British film industry", and he wasn't far wrong: when it was shown at the 1982 Cannes film festival, the British delegation staged an organised walk-out.

Also in the Guardian: "[A]s much as I respond to the anti-religion of Luis Buñuel - i.e. Christ taking part in an orgy in L'Age d'Or (1930) - I can be enraptured by overtly Christian directors," writes Ronald Bergan. "Ordet (1955), directed by Carl Dreyer, who struggled for years in vain to make a 'Jesus film,' is an extraordinary expression of spiritual optimism and a testament to the absoluteness of faith.... But it took a homosexual Marxist to make the greatest screen version of 'the greatest story ever told' (or 'the greatest lie ever told' from an atheist's point of view). Applying neo-realist methods, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes Christ out of the opulent church and presents him as an outcast Italian peasant among real people in The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964)."

And Emma Brockes meets Bette Midler and Xan Brooks talks with Ben Stiller.

Screening in the UK:

• Wendy Ide in the London Times on The Wave: "It's an interesting and provocative idea somewhat marred by wretched performances from several of the kids and the same whiff of sanctimony and naivety that made The Edukators, another tiresomely right-on film from Germany, such a trial." More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Trevor Johnston (Time Out), Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard) and Tim Robey (Telegraph).

• Tim Robey in the Telegraph on Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's Linha de Passe: "The shame and terror of criminal enterprise hits with more force here than the high-octane machismo of other Brazilian hits." More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Wally Hammond (Time Out), Wendy Ide (Times) and Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard). Related: Ambrose Heron's interview with Salles. Online viewing tip: Salles at the Guardian. Earlier: Reviews from Cannes.

• The Evening Standard's Derek Malcolm on The Chaser: "This stylish debut from South Korean director Na Hong-Jin, a huge success in its country of origin, never quite reaches the level of Memories of Murder, the best thriller from there in recent years. But it is still distinctive..." More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian). Reviews from Cannes.

• David Jenkins in on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: "Superior animé caper comedy with wit, energy and mad invention to spare in which time travel is used to soothe the emotional ills of a dynamic, if slightly dizzy-headed, young schoolgirl named Makoto." More from Phelim O'Neill (Guardian)

Dan Sallitt shares a few notes on David Lean.

Cineuropa's new "Film Focus": Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Lorna's Silence.

Jonathan Rosenbaum has seen Patti Smith: Dream of Life and is a little thrown off by how "my favorite punk star... modulates from angry iconoclast to contented Detroit housewife and back again with scarcely a bump."

Bob Cashill at PopDose: "Ten Fall Movies You Should See (Then Tell Me About) Before You Die."

New blogs on the block:

• Seattle-based curator and author Robert Horton, who wrote our primer on East German Cinema, has launched The Crop Duster.

• Former Cinematical contributor Kim Voynar's Film Essent. AJ Schnack has background.

• The Kind of Face You Hate, via Glenn Kenny.

FilmInFocus goes "Behind the Blog": Sujewa Ekanayake.

Online listening tip. Jack White and Alicia Keys's theme for Quantum of Silence, "Another Way to Die."

Online viewing tip #1. Ray Pride has Ben Kingsley as Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye.

Online viewing tip #2. Via Al Young at Twitch, Grzegorz Jonkajtys's short, Ark.

Online viewing tips. "On September 30, The Mindscape of Alan Moore is released on DVD, featuring an in-depth look at one of the most brilliant comic writers... ever?" Nick Confalone introduces a clip at Vulture, where Bilge Ebiri's got an award-winning "sweet little film from Britain, Lions Are Green, about a young colorblind boy who draws a green lion in class and gets called out for it."

Posted by dwhudson at September 20, 2008 12:36 PM