Shorts, fests, etc, 11/9.

A screenwriter friend recently introduced Atlantic contributing editor Michael Hirschorn to the films of Peter Watkins: "When I expressed amazement at the uncanny way his films, most of them dating back to the 60s and 70s, presage the contemporary cultural and political landscape - from Fox News to The Daily Show, from reality TV to the coverage of the Iraq War - my friend responded, 'Now you know the secret source. All things come from Watkins. All.'"

"I don't remember the first time I saw Two-Lane Blacktop." Phil Nugent and the read of the day:

I wish I did. Instead, I just remember all those early, early mornings when I realized that I was going to get to see it again. On mornings when my mother happened to be home, I watched it in a dark living room, with the sound turned down way the fuck low, lying on my belly an inch or two from the set. When I had the place to myself, I'd kick out the jams, watching it with the sound up and the lights on, reacting to the commercial breaks by rushing to my bedroom to play one song from whatever drooling punk record I was especially taken with at the time and performing a frantic, epileptic-like ritual that I told myself was not wholly unlike dancing, then switching the stereo off and rushing back to the TV just as Al Scramuzza, patriarch of New Orleans's Seafood City and one of the most endearingly maladroit pitchmen ever to insist on doing his own commercials, was wrapping up his testimonial to the freshness of his crawfish.

"Milk will be the timeliest movie of the year," predicts Mike Rennett at Dr Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope. "Kristopher Tapley even suggests that an earlier release of the film may have swayed Californians to vote against Prop 8."

"William Kentridge: Five Themes, a comprehensive survey of the contemporary South African artist's work, will premiere at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) on March 14, 2009."

Kevin Lee on El Verdugo (Not on Your Life): "The highest debut placement within last December's update of the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? list of 1000 greatest films was this corrosively black comedy by Luis Garcia Berlanga, the long-suffering subversive of Spain's Franco regime."

"Reviewing a film like Go Go Tales is a bit of a losing proposition in some ways, because much like certain ultra-stringent works of the avant-garde, the films of Abel Ferrara, when they're really 'on,' exemplify a good many traits that are going to sound like flaws to the unconvinced," writes Michael Sicinski. "Go Go Tales is Ferrara's best film in years, although this in itself is a bit misleading."

"Bad Lieutenant is a rare contemporary American film in that it wallows in the grimy, pulp details we associate with absorbing crime dramas - drugs, violence, sexual threat, decadence of the soul - yet sets up an oddly plaintive and simple finale in which a doomed man redeems what is left of his eroded soul with a single, anonymous act of kindness." Simon Augustine at FilmCatcher.

To Save and Project: The Sixth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation runs through November 16 and Friday and Saturday sees screenings of Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's 1921 film, Manhatta, a "resolutely modernist work, [which] with its Cubist perspectives and percussive rhythms, most likely was, in the words of the film historian Jan-Christopher Horak, 'the first avant-garde film produced in the United States,'" notes Dave Kehr.

Also in the New York Times:

• "[I]t's not surprising that the debate has heated up over who, or what, in arts and entertainment presaged Barack Obama's election as president," writes Tim Arango. "But one idea seems to be gaining traction, and improbably it has Bill Cosby and Karl Rove in agreement: The Cosby Show, which began on NBC in 1984 and depicted the Huxtables, an upwardly mobile black family - a departure from the dysfunction and bickering that had characterized some previous shows about black families - had succeeded in changing racial attitudes enough to make an Obama candidacy possible."

• Dave Itzkoff profiles Joel Hodgson of MST3K.

• Deborah Solomon talks with Ron Howard for the Magazine.

"The considerable integrity and strength of John Patrick Shanley's play prevail despite a questionable central performance in Doubt," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Stepping back behind the camera for the first time since his misguided Joe Versus the Volcano in 1990, Shanley capably retains the power of his study of unsubstantiated moral convictions gone tragically awry, and the extensive opening up of his four-character, 90-minute 2005 Pulitzer and Tony Award winner adds in social context what it loses in sharply focused intensity.... The film's one iffy element, oddly enough, is [Meryl] Streep." But as Karen at the LAT's Gold Derby notes, Cherry Jones, who played Streep's role on Broadway more than 700 times (and whom McCarthy praises) disagrees. Furthermore, Karina Longworth quite likes Joe Versus the Volcano and notes, too, that she's far from alone. At any rate, more on Doubt from Brent Simon (Screen Daily) and Kirk Honeycutt (Hollywood Reporter).

"[T]he movies of Tennessee Williams (1911-83) suggest that film isn't a director's medium after all," argues Wyatt Mason. "The Pulitzer prizewinning American dramatist - who never directed a film - is credited as writer, co-writer, re-writer or adapted/translated writer of more than five dozen. To watch the best of them is to encounter a commandingly consistent vision. Although scores of people directed - including Elia Kazan, Richard Brooks, John Huston, George Roy Hill, Sydney Pollack and Sidney Lumet, talents of divergent temperament and taste - out of such unruly heterogeneity emerged Williams's singular, overarching sensibility. More than anyone before or since, he made film a writer's medium."

Also in the Guardian: Amy Raphael interviews Kelly Macdonald and John Patterson riffs weirdly on what's made the Red Army Faction glamorous while Islamist terrorists just aren't.

Je Veux Voir "never pretends or aspires to be anything beyond what it is-a document of two actors [Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroué] going on a drive down a somewhat melancholy road," writes Gary Dauphin in Bidoun. "There's a great, bracing honesty in that simplicity, but there is also attendant risk."

Stefan Kanfer in City Journal on Fred Astaire: "[Joseph] Epstein understands the importance of Astaire not only as a terpsichorean but as a musician. Though the performer's vocal range was narrow, he could 'sell' a song because it was never 'his voice alone but the rhythms he felt in his body that meshed so beautifully with the work of these songwriters.'" Via Bookforum. And And American Heritage is running an excerpt from the book.

"At the peak of the 1960s Batman craze, Shonen King, a weekly manga anthology, licensed the rights to publish its own Batman and Robin tales in which the Dynamic Duo brawled with aliens, mutated dinosaurs and immortal villains. But the yearlong run of stories was never collected in Japan nor translated into English... until now." As Yvonne Villarreal reports, Chip Kidd will be at Meltdown Comics on Wednesday to sign copies of Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• "The General, newly re-released by Kino International in a restored and expanded two-disc DVD edition, represents [Buster] Keaton at his absolute best," writes Sam Adams. "Inspired by an incident drawn from the early years of the American Civil War, the movie is, in essence, one long chase scene, with Keaton's Rebel engineer first pursuing and then pursued by a group of Northern spies attempting to stage a sneak attack on Confederate forces. (Keaton thought 1927 audiences would resent a movie that made the South the villain.)"

• "[John] Abraham and [Abhishek] Bachchan, both strapping matinee idols, have built their careers playing sensitive lovers and good sons, but in their upcoming film Dostana (Friendship) they are breaking with tradition, risking their carefully cultivated screen images and testing the sensibilities of Bollywood audiences," writes Anupama Chopra. "Dostana, which will have its worldwide theatrical release Friday, is the first big-budget mainstream Bollywood film to feature gay protagonists."

• John Horn has a long talk with Danny Boyle about making Slumdog Millionaire.

• "Did you hear the one about the Jewish basketball legends?" asks Gary Goldstein. "No, that's not the intro to a Jackie Mason joke or fodder for a Mel Brooks movie, but the basis of the perception-altering new documentary The First Basket, opening Friday in Los Angeles."

• Susan King talks with Robert Conrad about The Wild Wild West.

The Independent is blogging the Dallas Video Festival - and Paul Harrill's "David Lowery's fantastic trailer for the festival."

"Groundhog Day - I'd love to come up with a pitch like that, but we never do. Our films just aren't pitchable." Jonathan Romney meets Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri. Also, the Independent asks playwright and screenwriter Sharman Macdonald about raising Keira Knightley.

"Bush was, I believe, the grandson of Richard Nixon in many ways," writes Oliver Stone. "Now I genuinely hope that Obama can be the heir to John F Kennedy, who was a great spirit and to whom very strong goodwill was granted. I felt that in 1960 and I feel it now with Obama."

Also in the Observer:

• Sean O'Hagan gets an interview with Scott Walker.

• Vanessa Thorpe asks Stephen Daldry about taking Billy Eliot to Broadway.

• Philip French's latest "screen legend": Maureen O'Hara.

Marcy Dermansky on The Guitar: "Amy Redford's film, written by Amos Poe, is divorced from reality. If you find out that you are dying, I don't recommend the path Melody takes. Chances are you won't transform from a little gray mouse to a gorgeous butterfly. Nonetheless, the movie - a fairy tale - pleases enormously."

Online viewing tip. "Coming soon to digital outlets near you from Cinetic Rights Management, will be famed photographer William Eggleston's legendary 1973 documentary piece, Stranded in Canton." Matt Dentler's got two clips and notes that "Eggleston's body of work is also getting the retrospective treatment from now until late January, at the Whitney Museum, in an exhibit called William Eggleston: Democratic Camera - Photographs and Video, 1961 - 2008."

Online viewing tips. Relaunched: CineVegas Shorts Online.

Posted by dwhudson at November 9, 2008 7:47 AM