Shorts, 10/20.

"Well, you know the bad news, and we are all left to wonder at how the last serious depression went on the worst part of 10 years and was only finally dispelled by a war," writes David Thomson. "Then there is the good news. The last time there was such a depression, the place once known as Hollywood produced I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Footlight Parade, My Man Godfrey, Man's Castle, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, The Grapes of Wrath, Dead End, Our Daily Bread and City Lights.... How will it be this time?... You only have to look at the films the US mainstream has made in this century so far to know that we lack the talent or experience that will count."

Also in the Guardian: "The life of the Chinese film director Xie Jin, who has died aged 84, would make an excellent movie in itself, reflecting the turbulent history of his country in the 20th century," writes Ronald Bergan. "He shone brightest among those contemporaries who emerged after the establishment of the people's republic in 1949 and was one of the few directors to continue to make films during and after the cultural revolution. It was not an easy ride."

"On a recent Sunday, members of an extended Jewish clan, most of them Brooklyn-born, gathered at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, in lower Manhattan, to watch a movie about their family. The movie was not a compilation of old wedding films or aging, ketchup-tinted bar-mitzvah footage but a screening of Edward Zwick's new feature, Defiance, which opens in December." In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik relates the amazing story the film tells before returning to the descendants of the Bielski brothers, who spear-headed a series of encampments in the Belarusian woods which "included libraries, nurseries, and clinics" where nearly 1200 Jews remained out reach of the Nazis in WWII.

"Shooting gets underway today in the Dreux area on L'arbre et la forêt (The Tree and the Forest), the fifth feature by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau," reports Fabien Lemercier for Cineuropa. "The duo's latest work - TV drama Born in 68 [trailer] - will be shown on Friday, October 24 on Arte in its original version: two 100-minute episodes. The cast for L'arbre et la forêt includes seasoned actors Guy Marchand (Inside Paris [trailer]) and Françoise Fabian (5x2 [trailer]), alongside Belgium's Yannick Renier (Private Lessons [trailer]), Sabrina Seyvecou, François Négret, Catherine Mouchet, Jacques Bonnaffé and Sandrine Dumas."

From the earliest urban legends to the latest computer games, Americans have embraced fantasies of the city's destruction as 'a reaffirmation of New York's greatness,' said Max Page, a professor of history and architecture and the author of a new book called The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears and Premonitions of New York's Destruction." Sam Roberts in the New York Times: "'We destroy New York on film and paper by telling stories of clear and present dangers, with causes and effects, villains and heroes, to make our world more comprehensible than it has become,' writes Professor Page, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst."

"Those who have spent the last three or four years following the parallel production nightmares of Fanboys and 5-25-77 would be excused for assuming that all films involving teenagers and early cuts of Star Wars films are cursed." At the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth summarizes both nightmares before turning to the world premiere of the second, now called '77, at the Hamptons Film Festival: "But don't get too excited yet - it's still not finished."

Also: A transcription of a conversation among Jameel Jaffer, Alec Baldwin and Naomi Wolf that preceded a screening of The End of America.

"Me Cheeta is a truly terrible idea for a book," writes Carole Cadwalladr in the Observer: "the cover is lousy, the first chapter lame, the entire conceit of a memoir written by a chimpanzee - Cheeta from the Tarzan films and the oldest chimp alive - stomach-churningly cute. And, as it turns out, it's also the best celebrity memoir you'll read this year, and it's not even a memoir. Or only ostensibly: it's actually a rather joyous satire on Hollywood's Golden Age, with Cheeta its simian F Scott Fitzgerald."

Guy Savage has the Noir of the Week: "Directed by Reginald Le Borg, and based on the novel by crime author Max Catto, Bad Blonde throws Barbara Payton into Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye; she hadn't expected believable circumstances but in such an alien environment, she seems wildly out-of-place. She's the best thing in the picture: sensual, cruel, unprincipled and viciously trampy, she pulses with passion and lust amidst a motley assortment of males who don't know how to handle her."

For Newsweek, Ramin Setoodeh talks with Kevin Smith about Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

"The conditions of rural life you present in The Longwang Chronicles are quite harsh, quite brutal. Are they typical of China's countryside?" The WSWS's David Walsh talks with filmmaker Li Yifan.

"Mr Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died," reports the AP's Bob Thomas. "He was 86."

Online listening tip #1. Nathaniel R talks with Boyd Van Hoeij about the race for the Best Foreign Film Oscar and with Joachim Trier about Reprise, "working with non-actors, writing as metaphor, Norway, and even a meeting with Jeanne Moreau."

Online listening tip #2. "Kim's Video, the venerable New York City store famous for its massive, esoteric and not always legal collection of movies as well as its judgmental staff, is shutting down its rental business." Matt Singer and Alison Willmore: "This week on the IFC News podcast, we look at the legend of Kim's, the decline of video stores in general, and, with it, the passing of the fabled video store clerk turned self-taught director."

Online listening tip #3. At the New Yorker: "In this week's issue, Kelefa Sanneh writes about the political parodies of Saturday Night Live, and David Denby writes about Oliver Stone's W. Together, they discuss the pleasures and perils of political impersonation."

Online viewing tip #1. At the DVblog: "Rather fetching art-work-over of Godard's great film Alphaville, by Kurt Ralske."

Online viewing tip #2. David Phelps has found Bruce Conner's Vivian.

Posted by dwhudson at October 20, 2008 2:36 PM