Shorts, 10/27.

"The desire for escapism that accompanies rough financial times is real, but boom times are also followed by painful and protracted cultural hangovers, and cultural hangovers are all about artistic reckoning." Carina Chocano: "When good times give way suddenly to bad (or, in this case, when bad times give way suddenly to worse), fashion, materialism and excess suddenly become suspect. The arts revert temporarily (until there's money to be made again) to the starving, the angry and the ugly. There's something cathartic about this - the nihilism of film noir, punk rock, the 'pathetic aesthetic' of the early 90s constitute a jubilant 11th hour yawp against unreflective hedonism in boom times."

You almost have to wonder if Chocano knew this piece would be one of the last, if not the last she'd write for the Los Angeles Times. As Anne Thompson notes, the paper cut 75 jobs in Editorial today, and Chocano's is one of them.

"'Cinema' is, or I should say was, a thing of the 20th century." Via Movie City News, director George Sluizer (The Vanishing), delivering the Variety Cinema Militans Lecture in Utrecht last month: "The film d'auteur died recently with the death of Bergman and Antonioni.... Should we be nostalgic about the avant-garde filmmakers and essayists of the 20th century? No. Their way of filmmaking is now past history: very seldom today can we see films that remind us of the craft of 'direct visual storytelling,' cinema that produces images that in principle need no explanation with words. Cinema is ruled by other media: television, DVDs and the Internet, and whatever is invented next."

"On the Subject of Regrettable Searching - Body to Body, the Filmed Body," by Nicole Brenez, via Mubarak Ali's entry on films by Ben Russell.

"[U]sually, I see over 125 movies a year. In 2008, I've seen 14. And with the exception of one (Tell No One), they have all been less than stellar." Gabriel Shanks sympathizes with Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, who's watching much more television these days than movies.

"[W]hen we speak about the impact of influential works in art cinema, whether it's Citizen Kane or the original Breathless, we're speaking more about the quality of the response than about the quantity of respondents," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum. "However personal some of its origins might be, David Holzman's Diary is in fact a great work of synthesis summarizing the very notions of the film director as subject (and therefore as superstar) and the camera as tool of self-scrutiny that the 60s film explosion inspired. And its ambiguities about the various crossovers between documentary and fiction remain as up to date as the films of Kiarostami."

In the Cinema Echo Chamber, Evan Louison talks with Celia Maysles about Wild Blue Yonder, which documents her struggle to learn more about her father, David Maysles.

"It was one of the most controversial films of the 70s: an English-language biopic of the prophet Muhammad that was bankrolled by Gadafy and went on to trigger a fatal siege ahead of its US premiere. Now The Message could be set for a grand return to the fray courtesy of a 21st-century Hollywood remake." Xan Brooks reports in the Guardian, where Sarah Dempster offers a guide to the British costume drama. Plus, a birthday gallery riffing on Teddy Roosevelt, "the first real movie president."

For the Independent, Jonathan Romney talks with Terence Davies on the eve of what turns out to be the wonderfully successful premiere of Of Time and the City in the city itself: Liverpool. Anthony Quinn talks with him, too.

For the London Times, Tom Charity talks with Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, the director and writer of Slumdog Millionaire.

Emily Nussbaum meets "the dread paparazzo of his era - not the only one, but certainly the most famous, the most dogged": "Our culture has a wishful habit of turning every punk maniac who lives long enough into a wise old man, all the danger leached away by nostalgia: Norman Mailer, Iggy Pop, Roman Polanski. Ron Galella isn't like that. He looks like an Italian grandpa, but his eyes are cagey. He's proud. He's blunt. He's a little bit frightening."

Also in the Observer, Stephanie Merritt talks with Toby Jones and Philip French glances back over the career of Robert Mitchum.

Dina Iordanova reviews the Romanian film, The Outlaws, "a great example of the adventure-cum-history films that were produced in Eastern Europe in the 1960s."

"1234 is perhaps the nicest film I've seen for years, a gentle, modest, airy Brit flick centering on a budding musician," writes James Dennis at Twitch.

At AICN, Capone talks with Mike Leigh about Happy-Go-Lucky. So does Paul Matwychuk; and he reviews the film, too.

For the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher asks Christopher Nolan about the success of The Dark Knight (it's nearing the $1 billion mark worldwide) and the various political readings of the film. Related: Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes report that, "After years of giving plenty of running room to independent film companies or studio art house divisions that set the pace with critic-friendly but limited-audience films like last year's No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, this year the major studios are pushing some of their biggest crowd-pleasers into the thick of the awards race." Including, of course, The Dark Knight.

Also in the New York Times: "Steven Spielberg actually stammered a bit in trying to explain his erstwhile business partner's departure," reports Michael Cieply in the NYT. "No, Mr Spielberg said, he really did not know why [David] Geffen was parting ways with DreamWorks after 14 years."

Via MCN, Bilge Ebiri reports in New York that the Two Boots Pioneer Theater "will most likely close at the end of the month." Ray Privett, who programmed the theater's offerings from June 04 through March 08, comments.

"A measure of how well Disney succeeds at reclaiming its heritage and how the two animation cultures [of Disney and Pixar] coexist will be tested when Bolt opens in theaters Nov 21," report Claudia Eller and Dawn Chmielewski in the Los Angeles Times. "Disney's new computer-animated film is the first entirely overseen by Pixar's creative guru, John Lasseter, and tech whiz Ed Catmull, who took charge of Disney Animation after the acquisition." Meanwhile, for Time, Carla Power explains "How High School Musical Conquered the World."

Today's "Mad Men Mondays" column at the House Next Door is written by Matt Zoller Seitz and is "dedicated to the memory of House contributor, Time Out New York editor and regular Mad Men recapper Andrew Johnston, who passed away Sunday, Oct 26 at age 40, following a long battle with cancer."

"Milton Katselas, director, writer, painter and noted acting teacher at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, has died," writes Scott Marks. "He was 74. During his twenty-plus year tenure at the Playhouse, Katselas's pupils included George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jenna Elfman, Jeffrey Tambor, Giovanni Ribisi, Doris Roberts, Tom Selleck and many others."

Gerard Rocco Damiano died this weekend at the age of 80. Richard Corliss for Time: "With Deep Throat and his second film, Devil in Miss Jones, Damiano launched the 1970s movie craze of porno chic.... Because of Deep Throat, the hardcore movie became a must-see item for the glamorati, a topic for serious debate in newspapers and magazines (including Time; see the 1973 article 'Wonder Woman') and a fun date for ordinary couples who'd never seen a sex movie."

Online viewing tip. The Guardian's Xan Brooks talks with Nanni Moretti.

Posted by dwhudson at October 27, 2008 3:54 PM