Shorts, 10/11.

"I come from Portugal, but I have not spoken Portuguese in years. I am proud of this, even though I have never learnt to speak another language properly. I suppose you could say that makes me feel twice as Portuguese." So begins Raúl Ruiz's just published In Pursuit of Treasure Island, described as "a prelude and a continuation to Raul Rúiz's film, Treasure Island," and a "follow up, or rather, a pursuit of Stevenson's novel."

From the December 1951 issue of Films in Review: Herman G Weinberg on Hans Richter.

The Parallax View runs Richard T Jameson's 1974 piece on Chinatown for Movietone News.

Kimberly Lindbergs pages through the new issue of Cinema Retro.

"[I]n a lot of movies the physicality, the action, the fighting, is the point of the film, not a useless garnish put in to appeal to the masses while the classes can ponder the subtext," argues Grady Hendrix. "For many Hong Kong movies, the actions are the emotions. The brutality of the action in Tsui Hark's The Blade, the physical bond between childhood friends Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Jackie Chan in Dragons Forever and even the fight choreography in Ashes of Time - these movies cannot exist without the action. It isn't a kitsch distraction... it's the point." Via Jason Morehead.

"[M]any of those (especially males) who obsess on the 'meaning' of 'Orson' are actually looking for ways to negotiate their own narcissism and fantasies of omnipotence," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum. "It's part of the special insight of Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, which premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, to perceive and run with this aspect of the Welles myth, which is already implied in its title.... There's general agreement that Welles was self-absorbed. But one way of distinguishing mythopoeia from biography is whether or not his other distinguishing traits - such as his compulsive self-criticism (which could sometimes be even more severe than the charges of his detractors) and his desire to compensate for his self-absorption with certain forms of charm and generosity - are factored into the portrayal. Me and Orson Welles (film and novel) is intermittently attentive to the latter but completely oblivious to the former."

Also for Moving Image Source, Miguel Marias: "I see [Paul] Newman the filmmaker as a sort of unconscious missing link between the 'lost' (or 'injured') generation of Nicholas Ray, Elia Kazan, Richard Brooks, Joseph L Mankiewicz, Robert Aldrich, John Huston, Otto Preminger, Vincente Minnelli, Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, Robert Rossen, Abraham Polonsky and Orson Welles, and a more 'modern,' less plot-driven American cinema whose few truly daring representatives, from John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke or Kent Mackenzie to Michael Cimino, Abel Ferrara or Charles Burnett usually did not last in full or free activity very long."

Joshua Land in Time Out New York: "The latest in a boomlet of explicitly antipatriarchal African art movies to reach American shores, Delwende bears a passing resemblance to the great Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene's 2004 swan song, Moolaadé, in its deliberate pacing, lightly stylized performances and strong feel for the rhythms of contemporary village life, where young men in baseball caps may be seen carrying out ancient customs. But later scenes, in which Pougbila searches the homeless encampments of Ouagadougou - filled with outcast older women - for her mother, seem to unfold in another Africa entirely, its residents caught between merciless tradition and noisy, congested modernity."

"If it's true that a lot of people are getting their news from late-night comedy shows, they get a bracingly blasphemous brew from [Bill] Maher, who pulls no punches, and not just because HBO is where you get to say 'fuck' as much as you want." A profile from Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly.

"By day, [John] Young builds Web sites in West Chester, but by night he organizes the much more old-school, slightly clandestine Guerilla Drive-In." A profile from Sean Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper.

"Longer-running than the presidential campaign and more surreal than Sarah Palin's candidacy, The Reader saga added yet another bizarre chapter late Thursday," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik. "The Weinstein Company confirmed that Scott Rudin has severed ties with the pic - which means he won't be involved in the post session that Stephen Daldry and editor Claire Simpson are currently engaged in and likely won't be credited as a producer on the movie." What's more, "Rudin's departure hardly means an end to the drama."

"Surely it's a twisted sign of further progress that Germany would help pay for a blood-spurting anti-Nazi revenge fantasy, but some party-poopers feel otherwise." Lawrence Levi comments on Assaf Uni's report for Haaretz on the debate in German papers on the German Film Fund's contributions to Quentin Tarantino's budget for Inglorious Bastards.

A still from one film sparks an association with another, After Dark, My Sweet, conjuring a world of memory in Ray Young: "This sleepy adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel I've never read found no audience upon its release except for those miscreants hip to its boozy SoCal élan. Rachel [Ward] played Fay, and Jason Patric portrayed an ex-boxer/mental patient named Collie. The two of them, their manner, overall appearance, wardrobe, speech and lifestyle look as if it were all patterned after my interpretation of Janet and what passed for our 'relationship.'"

"Wow. There are seven Christopher Walkens on stage." Lisa Marks tells the story behind All About Walken.

Also in the Guardian:

• "Reading about the undercover wartime adventures of 1930s British leading man Leslie Howard, as they have been depicted in a new book by the Spanish writer José Rey-Xímena, I was enthralled to learn that a mere actor - O despised breed! - might have been responsible for keeping Francoist Spain out of the second world war," writes John Patterson. "This set me thinking about other actors who did their bit, but in particular about 50s Hollywood tough guy Sterling Hayden, whose wartime activities were spotlighted recently when the CIA released documents concerning the activities of its second world war forerunner, the OSS."

• Bruce Conner "might have been better known and wealthier had he been less suspicious of the 'conservative art gallery system,' stayed off the booze and drugs, and concentrated his energies," argues Ronald Bergan. Also: "I often wonder how many critics repress or minimise negative criticism of a film after having met the director. Is it possible to be objective if one is pally with filmmakers as some critics are?"

• Catherine Shoard offers a list of "the 15 key ingredients of the grim art movie - as circulated to all film-school students during their first week. Take the list to the cinema and tick off the tropes..."

• "[T]here are 203 other festivals scheduled for this month alone, while conservative estimates put the total annual figure at well over 1,000," notes Xan Brooks. "[J]ust how many of these things does the industry really need?"

For indieWIRE, Jason Guerrasio checks in on five truly independent projects currently in production.

"Has being in an interracial relationship changed [Woody] Allen?" wonders Jennifer Tang in PopMatters.

"Good Dick carries its messed-up, highly improbable premise so lightly and gracefully that it ultimately comes off as a sweet, plausible and curiously grounded love story - and touchingly old-fashioned for a movie about the adventures of a serial masturbator and the homeless kid who stalks her." Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. At the AV Club, though, Noel Murray finds it "eccentric and edgy in childish ways, relying on offhand shock and predictable revelations."

"The Express is an honorable example of a tried-and-true formula," writes AO Scott, "squarely aimed at a presumably large cross-section of the moviegoing public: people who love football and hate racism. Like Glory Road, The Great Debaters and numerous other similar movies, it packages a real-life story of athletic triumph and social progress into an accessible, rousing melodrama that is no less potent for being almost entirely predictable." More from Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Mark Olsen (LAT), Hank Sartin (Time Out New York), Scott Tobias (AV Club) and Michael Wilmington (MCN).

Also in the New York Times:

• "Moonlight, mist and thick tropical air permeate the landscape of La León, a sumptuous film about the swirling of desire in the Paraná Delta," writes Nathan Lee. "This lush labyrinth of Argentine waterways is fertile ground for a movie in thrall to the pellucid spectacles of nature - but a rather barren place to find yourself yearning for erotic connection."

• "Some rappers have shown themselves to be adept actors as well, and now Daddy Yankee, a big star in the related musical genre of reggaetón, takes his big-screen shot in Talento de Barrio," writes Neil Genzlinger. "Unfortunately, any acting skills he might have - and it looks as if he might well have some - are powerless against the thudding cliché of a script he is saddled with." More from Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant.

• "Choose Connor, a jaundiced look at political power and moral turpitude, draws you in by creeping you out," writes Jeannette Catsoulis. "Written and directed with unrelenting cynicism by 22-year-old Luke Eberl, Choose Connor is undeniably obvious and intermittently awkward. Yet the filmmaker's choices - long, easy takes instead of jumpy camerawork, spare background music instead of a mood-pop soundtrack - smoothly evoke a world of backslapping cronyism." More from Eric Henderson (Slant) and Michael Koresky in indieWIRE, also featuring an interview with Eberl.

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story is "a wonderful, cold-eyed look at what created this man/monster," writes Eli Sanders. Also in the Stranger: Paul Constant on Secrecy and Christopher Frizzelle on I.O.U.S.A.

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: Gerry.

"[T]he real reason that I viewed the release of [Burn After Reading] with some degree of anxiety is that now, whenever a new Coen brothers movie comes out, I have to put up with the same routine: people who like it say how grateful they are that it's not another Intolerable Cruelty, and people who hate it say that, on the bright side, at least it's not Intolerable Cruelty. Possibly you can anticipate where I'm going with this." Phil Nugent argues his case.

Online listening tip #1. An edition of Back By Midnight dedicated to the new special edition of Psycho.

Online listening tip #2. Vinyl Is Podcast 3.

Online viewing tip #1. While it lasts: Jean-Luc Godard's Made in USA. Thanks, Jerry!

Online viewing tip #2. "Can't wait for Oliver Stone's W.?" asks Joe Leydon. "Then click on Crawford, David Modigliani's surprisingly even-handed and occasionally poignant account of the impact on the citizenry in the small Texas town chosen by George W Bush to be the site of his co-called 'Western White House.' (Yeah, that's right: The place Harold and Kumar dropped into in their last movie.) Filmed over several years, the documentary plays like a rise-and-fall drama populated with colorful, contrasting characters who have profoundly mixed feelings about being used essentially as props in Bush's political stagecraft." Related online listening: The New Yorker's Pamela Colloff.

Online viewing tip #3. "Richard Linklater's iconic and influential feature, Slacker, now available on Hulu," announces Cinetic's Matt Dentler. And Kevin Smith's written a new introduction to the film.

Online viewing tip #4. The trailer for the upcoming doc, Let's Make Money, from Erwin Wagenhofer (We Feed the World). And the Austrian site has an alternative version. Stick through the bits in German; there's plenty in both versions in English. Related: "Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history." For the Guardian, James Buchan reviews Selwyn Parker's The Great Crash: How the Stock Market Crash of 1929 Plunged the World into Depression, Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future.

Online viewing tips, round 1. At Shooting Down Pictures, Jones director Preston Jones comments on Satyajit Ray's Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) and Kevin Lee adds copious notes.

Online viewing tips, round 2. "The son of a film editor, [Richard] Morrison became a master at internalizing a director's intent and distilling it for the title sequence." Six clips, annotated, plus a video interview at The Art of the Title Sequence.

Online viewing tips, round 3. At FilmInFocus, Peter Bowen gathers Election 08 viral video roundups.

Posted by dwhudson at October 11, 2008 2:58 PM