Shorts, 10/4.

Via C Jerry Kutner at Bright Lights After Dark, Chelse McKee talks with Robin Wood for the Manitoban about "his recent retirement from teaching with York University and his plans for the future."

"[W]henever I see a film praised for its 'human' qualities, I'm always apt to raise an eyebrow." Some notes on the "human element" in film from Glenn Kenny in the Auteurs' Notebook.

Oliver Burkeman talks with Oliver Stone: "At least in part, W - co-written with Stone's collaborator on Wall Street, Stanley Weiser - is a good-faith attempt to answer the core question about the president, which Stone frames thus: 'How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?' (Hint: Jesus was involved.) It also delivers a frisson, reminiscent of Stephen Frears's film The Queen - which Stone cites as an influence - of being a fly on the wall during recent major affairs of state."

Also in the Guardian:

• Ronald Bergan: "In Alexandra, [Alexander] Sokurov presents us with the beauty of old age without any sentimentality, extremely rare in the cinema where the old, if visible at all, are treated as either very wise or very stupid, lovably twinkly-eyed, eccentric or grotesque."

• "When independent distributors complain about the overcrowded US marketplace this is the kind of weekend they have in mind," writes Jeremy Kay, and for evidence to back him up, just glance at the string of entries below this one.

• "The Mona Lisa of the modern age, Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring, is in town again and kicking up a storm," writes Simon Jenkins. "As a result, members of the Catharina Vermeer admiration society must take up arms once more to defend their heroine. After the novel by Tracy Chevalier and the lush Scarlett Johansson movie comes a stage play by David Joss Buckley at London's Haymarket. The story is the same mix of sex, jealousy and frowning moodiness amid the paint pots and varnish. If I were Vermeer, I would sue."

• Peter Bradshaw on Import/Export: "Writing about one of [Ulrich] Seidl's earlier movies, Werner Herzog claimed that he had never looked so directly into hell - with his latest film, that view is clearer and sharper than ever." More from Andy Gill (Independent), Wally Hammond (Time Out), Wendy Ide (London Times), Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard) and Neil Young (Tribune).

• "Tilda Swinton has become one of the few 'must see' performers in the film world," argues David Thomson.

• John Patterson: "Whoever says women aren't funny has never encountered Anna Faris, the distilled essence of postmodern ditzy blondeness who, if the stars are aligned and if there's any justice in a cruel and arbitrary universe, may soon become a star after nearly a decade of trying."

• Peter Bradshaw on the new Brideshead Revisited. More from Dave Calhoun (Time Out), James Christopher (London Times), Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard), Anthony Quinn (Independent) and Sukhdev Sandhu (Telegraph). And Alice Jones goes all where-are-they-now on the 1981 Brideshead Revisited for the Independent.

In Fear(s) of the Dark, the London Times' Wendy Ide finds the old "problem of all portmanteau movies: as with collections of short stories, the quality is somewhat uneven. A Kafka-esque cautionary tale about a young man's relationship with a female who sees him as prey is unsettling; a story of a demented dog owner and his pack of slavering hounds less so."

Time Out clips some of the best quotes from 40 years of interviewing filmmakers. Via Movie City News.

Back in the Independent, John Lichfield: "At a time of unrelieved gloom in world affairs, many predicted that the nostalgic glow of Faubourg 36 would triumph over the sweat and slang of the classroom drama, Entre les Murs [The Class]. After five days each movie has already attracted around 350,000 cinema-goers but it is the low-budget Entre les Murs which tops the French box-office."

Doug Freeman talks with Justin Dillon about Call + Response, "a harrowing and important documentary on the contemporary slave trade that attempts to engage an audience that he recognizes is largely unaware that the problem even exists. The worldwide statistics are staggering, but in the United States alone, an estimated 200,000 people are living in slavery."

Also in the Austin Chronicle, Shawn Badgley interviews August Evening director Chris Eska, while Anne S Lewis talks with Frank Popper about Can Mr Smith Get to Washington Anymore?.

Up-n-coming:

• Charlotte Gainsbourg and Romain Duris in Patrice Chereau's Persecution. Esa Keslassy, Variety.

• Jeffrey Wells: "Willamette Week's Aaron Mesh reported yesterday that director Todd Haynes (I'm Not There) is 'in talks to produce a television adaptation of Mildred Pierce, the 1945 Joan Crawford tearjerker. The wrinkle is that Haynes intends to base his film on the original James M Cain novel instead of the Michael Curtiz film."

• Jack Black in a Bourne Identity spoof. Borys Kit, Hollywood Reporter.

• Hilary Swank in legal thriller Betty Anne Waters. The AFP.

Michael Shnayerson profiles Amy Adams for Vanity Fair.

At As Little as Possible, JJ finds a lengthy 2005 interview he conducted with Dan Aykroyd.

Tim Lucas remembers "Filipino exploitation master" Cirio H Santiago, 1936 - 2008.

"The biggest problem with the May-December dynamic is that it's such a potent metaphor for so many things (power, corruption, trust), that lesser filmmakers make the mistake of treating it literally," writes Sean Nelson in the Stranger. "French master Claude Chabrol makes no such error in his new film, A Girl Cut in Two, about a young woman torn between a decadent literary codger and a mentally unstable billionaire dandy. Just the opposite—at times he seems so committed to the metaphors set loose by a hopeless love triangle that he fails to suggest what the players see in each other."

"Propelled by geysers of blood and tidal waves of neuroses, Tokyo Gore Police plumbs wounds both cultural and physical to deliver splatterific social satire," writes Jeanette Catsoulis in the New York Times.

In the Voice:

• Jim Ridley on Just Buried: "More twee than any movie about serial murder has a right to be, writer-director Chaz Thorne's grisly farce ladles a quirky-cute score over its dirty deeds in place of a point of view."

• Ella Taylor: "I came to Beverly Hills Chihuahua with poison pen at the ready - only to be won over by the exuberant charms of Raja Gosnell's comedy, about a snobby, privileged Chihuahua named Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) and her similarly spoiled-rotten 90210 dog sitter (Piper Perabo)." More from Nathan Lee in the NYT: "As multimillion-dollar frivolities about the pets of the ruling class go, Chihuahua is reasonably diverting. As one that happens to be opening in the middle of an economic meltdown, its mere existence feels utterly insane." And more from Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times), Keith Phipps (AV Club) and Nick Schager (Slant).

• Vadim Rizov talks with David Zucker about An American Carol. More from Rebecca Winters Keegan in Time: "About as common per capita as vegans in Texas, Republicans in Hollywood are having a coming-out party of sorts in Zucker's new movie." And more, too, from William Goss (Cinematical) and Nathan Lee (NYT).

• "Smother feels like the sort of misbegotten curiosity that Comedy Central uses to fill its Sunday-afternoon programming," writes Tim Grierson.

• Ed Gonzalez notes that Fireproof "appeals... only to the already (or easily) indoctrinated." More from Rebecca Winters Keegan in Time.

For the Independent, Kaleem Aftab looks back on some of the better cameos in film history.

John Hiscock talks with Viggo Mortensen for the Telegraph.

Jason Sperb at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope: "I'm pleased to announce that Will Scheibel and I will be co-hosting a James Bond blogathon from Oct 24th to Nov 16th, in anticipation of the newest Bond film, Quantum of Solace, which opens in the UK on Oct 31st, and in the States on Nov 14th."

Jason Bellamy issues a call for a "Politics & Movies Blog-a-Thon" for November 4 through 9.

New blog on the block: OMG Video: "The 2008 Election, Where Truth Is Stranger and Funnier Than Fiction."

Online desktop tip. James Seo's got your Wong Kar-wai calendar for October.

Online listening tip #1. Stefan Forbes, director of Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Online listening tip #2. A conversation at the House Next Door: John Lichman, Vadim Rizov, Keith Uhlich, Glenn Kenny and Andrew O'Hehir.

Online listening tip #3. Aaron Aradillas talks with Talia Shire, cinematographers Gordon Willis and Allen Daviau, and film critic Keith Uhlich about The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration.

Online viewing tip #1. Owen Hatherley comments on Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica's Dom (House).

Online viewing tip #2. William Friedkin's 1975 interview with Fritz Lang. Thanks, Jerry!

Online viewing (and interacting) tip. "For the duration of the online show of Ken Jacobs, tank.tv offers a unique opportunity for discussion with the artist himself in an extended Q+A session."

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2008 2:10 PM