Shorts, fests, etc, 9/23.

"Despite his relative obscurity in the United States, Mauricio Kagel, who died in Germany last week at the age of 76, was one of the 20th century's great conceptual artists," writes Chris Dumas in Nextbook. "A composer whose assaultive music was categorized as 'classical' because record stores didn't know where else to put it, Kagel was an intellectual prankster and social provocateur on the grand, protean level of Marcel Duchamp - or Lenny Bruce.... In his short films (and one feature) for German television, he demonstrated a surrealist sense of dramatic illogic and a master's eye for visual form, coupling his propriety-shredding music with equally propriety-shredding images."

"Like a weird cinematic version of the Roll Chronicle of British kings, it sometimes seems that the GPO Film Unit stands at the head of the family tree of British film and television," writes Scott Anthony, introducing an "alphabetical introduction to an enduring, and highly unlikely, cultural legacy." The occasion: Love Letters and Live Wires: Highlights from the GPO Film Unit, at BFI Southbank through October 2.

Also in the Guardian, Michael Billington remembers David Hugh Jones, "an immensely distinguished director in theatre, film and television. Although latterly based in New York, he was a pillar of the Royal Shakespeare Company in a golden decade from 1968 and had a long association with Harold Pinter that led, in 1978, to a memorable BBC Play of the Week, Langrishe, Go Down, and, in 1983, to a film of Betrayal."

And: Timur Bekmambetov "is to take charge of a modern day "graphic novel-style" adaptation of Herman Melville's classic of brooding obsession on the high seas, Moby Dick," notes Ben Child, picking up and mulling over Michael Fleming's report for Variety.

Keira Knightley might play Zelda Fitzgerald, reports the BBC.

As a Film Comment online exclusive, Rob Nelson talks with director Lance Hammer about Ballast.

Laszlo Kriston is having a grand time at the San Sebastian Film Festival. And, as he notes in a dispatch to indieWIRE, he's been watching films, too. Also, a roundup from Kim Adelmon: "What Was Hot This Summer at North America's Three Biggest Short Film Festivals."

More fests and events:

• Michael Guillén has been previewing a few of the Latin American entries at this year's Mill Valley Film Festival.

• "I'm helping to run a film society in my Brooklyn neighborhood, based out of Congregation Beth Elohim." From the House Next Door, Keith Uhlich sends an invitation to tonight's event.

• Dennis Harvey at SF360 on Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer: "Whether you dig jazz or not, O'Day's charisma and her story make this movie riveting." Starts Friday in San Francisco.

• "One of the valuable and particularly enjoyable aspects of this year's Sydney Film Festival," writes Richard Phillips at the WSWS, "was its Deborah Kerr eight-movie retrospective."

Ryland Walker Knight presents a "conjunction of quotations."

"Without a couple of recognizably fallible and ordinary men like Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon at its center, The Dark Knight would ultimately be nothing more than an exceptionally well-tooled and smartly-acted thriller," argues Chris Barsanti at PopMatters. More from John Adair.

"The way I see it, there are two main problems with distribution as it stands today: one, release windows, and two, online experience." Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo for Filmmaker.

"Two titans of the indie film world are in a heated disagreement over distribution plans for one of the fall's biggest releases - a film that might not turn out to be a fall release at all." Steven Zeitchik in the Hollywood Reporter: "The Weinstein Co chief Harvey Weinstein and uber-producer Scott Rudin are in an intense back-and-forth over whether to release the Weinstein Co war-crimes drama The Reader in 2008 or wait until next year." As a reminder, the film is Stephen Daldry's adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's bestseller starring Kate Winslet.

"This week DreamWorks and parent Paramount Pictures will begin the thorny task of unwinding their business ties, specifically as it applies to more than 200 movie projects in development at DreamWorks that are owned by Paramount," blogs the Los Angeles Times' Claudia Eller. Those projects will be of particular interest to Steven Spielberg and his associate Stacey Snider because the new DreamWorks, backed by India's Reliance ADA Group, will essentially open its doors with a bare cupboard. Some of the hoped-for movies have been in the works at DreamWorks for years, and would provide a valuable jump-start for the new venture."

For the Independent, Caitlin Graham rounds up the ten best places to study documentary filmmaking.

Online listening tip. Milos Stehlik talks with Richard Brody about his book, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.

Online viewing tip #1. Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising. Brian Stelter talks with him about it in the New York Times. Catherine Shoard is collecting critical reactions for the Guardian, where Ben Walters finds it "a disappointment that will give ammunition to those who see Moore as a self-aggrandising propagandist while contributing little of substance to the present campaign - one that threatens to put both 2004 and 2000 in the shade when it comes to duplicitous, culturally divisive campaigning."

Online viewing tip #2. From C Jerry Kutner at Bright Lights After Dark: "In celebration of having just received via mail a copy of Amid Amidi's marvelously illustrated book, Cartoon Modern, I am posting one of the defining classics of modernist animation, Flebus (1957), directed and scored by Ernest Pintoff for the Terrytoons studio under the supervision of genius animator/designer, Gene Deitch."

Online viewing tip #3. Mike Everleth has the trailer for the ATA Film & Video Festival, running October 4 through 4 in San Francisco.

Online viewing tips. Via Fimoculous: At the Daily Swarm: "The Death of the Music Critic?"... and at Wired, Jake Swearingen presents "Six New Directors Who Are Making Music Video Cool Again."

Posted by dwhudson at September 23, 2008 1:56 PM