Shorts, fests, etc, 11/10.

"A star vehicle fashioned around the chemistry between Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, Last Chance Harvey is a gentle story of late bloomers falling in love over a summer weekend in London," writes Mike Goodridge in Screen Daily. "While it has it charms, mainly in the actor pairing, it is otherwise unremarkable and easily forgotten - such an old-fashioned picture it could have been made in the 70s, with George Segal and Glenda Jackson starring." You know, on some evening or other, this'll be just the movie. More from John Anderson in Variety and Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter.

"Required Reading" at the filmlinc blog: "Who was Manny Farber? Film bloggers respond."

"After 'intense' discussions with officials at 20th Century Fox, [Baz] Luhrmann agreed to rewrite the final scenes [of Australia] to keep alive [Nicole] Kidman's love interest, played by Hugh Jackman," reports Richard Luscombe. Because, after all, if Titanic proved anything, it's that audiences won't stand for a heroine's lover dying.

Also in the Guardian, Barack Obama "isn't the black president of the movies; this is a character no one foresaw and scripted in advance," argues Mark Ravenhill; and Ronald Bergan remembers producer John Daly.

"Dateline: Halloween 2008, New York City. Cineastes, libertines, and connoisseurs of the weird all took a break from their revelry to attend a special midnight screening of director Ken Russell's notorious masterpiece The Devils, with Mr Russell himself in attendance." And Jeff took notes for Cinema Strikes Back.

"Shortly after I posted my review of Tokyo Sonata," writes Ed Champion, "I was contacted by screenwriter Max Mannix out of the blue. While Mannix was putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming film adaptation of Barry Eisler's Rain Fall (which he also directed), he graciously agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions via email. For full effect, if you missed the Bat Segundo podcast with director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, you can listen to it here. Tokyo Sonata is set for US release on March 11, 2009."

"I first heard the name of René Vautier from Erwan Moalic, the powerhouse behind the remarkable film festival in Douarnenez, a true community-based festival dedicated to working class audiences and featuring films on ethnic and other minorities (in existence since the 1970s)." Dina Iordanova: "I was asking Erwan if he could please identify what was the ideological influence that had informed the establishment of the Douarnenez event, and he named Vautier, whom he described as a hugely important but little known and widely-suppressed Breton filmmaker."

Kevin Lee on The Sun Shines Bright: "Often cited as John Ford's favorite film, this turn-of-the century period piece about folksy Judge Priest, the de facto patriarch of a sleepy Kentucky town, at first seems hopelessly dated with its unrepentant nostalgia for a Confederate society whose implicit bigotry enables a cavalcade of dubious stereotypes, not least of which is the embarrassing jigaboo schtick of African American cultural albatross Stepin Fetchit as Priest's servant. But on formalist terms, this may very well be one of Ford's most perfect achievements."

"While visiting in Os, Norway, I was honoured to be invited by the producer Kjetil Omberg to see the Norwegian Nazi Zombie flick Død Snø in a private screening," writes Iron Sky director Timo Vuorensola. "I've been following the film actively ever since I heard about it through Twitch because, well, it has Nazis, zombies and it's from Scandinavia." To cut to the chase, the film "stands proudly as one of the great examples of Norther horror wave that's going strong right now (with Sauna and Let the Right One In)."

"I enjoyed and was moved by Milk, and I didn't find its conventionality to be problematic," writes Glenn Kenny. "In fact, I found it entirely apt.... [W]hat this picture is, if you'll pardon the phrase, a straight-across-the-plate pitch to midcult audiences fond of event films and potential Oscar contenders. It explicitly posits the gay rights struggle as a civil rights struggle, and uses a cast of charming movie stars to make its case."

New French Films, running at BAM from Wednesday through Sunday, "brilliantly highlights the multiple tendencies at play in contemporary Gallic movies," writes Howard Feinstein at indieWIRE. "Most important, the BAM show includes what is, for me, the finest film of the past year, Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain, which was ignored at Tribeca."

More fests and events:

• For SF360, Michael Guillén talks with San Francisco Film Society programmer about the San Francisco International Animation Festival. Meanwhile, at Michael's place, the Evening Class, Frako Loden previews the San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival. Both festivals, as it happens, run Thursday through Sunday.

• The Big Apple Film Festival: November 19 through 22.

• The Northern Lights Film Festival runs November 30 through December 6 in various locales throughout northeast England.

• The Newport Beach Film Festival, slated for April, is still open for entries.

At PopMatters, Matt Mazur talks with Kristin Scott Thomas and Philippe Claudel about I've Loved You So Long. KST is also a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

"Kurt Kuenne's documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father is many things - a tribute to a murdered friend, a historical record for the deceased's child, a portrait of near-unfathomable love and devotion, and an evisceration of a country's judicial and child protective services systems," writes Nick Schager. "It's also a manipulative, tearjerking thriller that, functioning as a sustained, anguished primal scream, is as emotionally devastating as any film, fiction or non-, released this year."

"With critical plaudits and advertising dollars flowing to Hulu, the popular online hub for television shows and feature films, YouTube finds itself in the unanticipated position of playing catch-up," report Brad Stone and Brooks Barnes in the New York Times. Today, "YouTube will move forward a little, announcing an agreement to show some full-length television shows and films from MGM, the financially troubled 84-year-old film studio." And Saul Hansell compares the services.

You may have seen that Alphabet Meme running around out there. Marilyn Ferdinand takes it a step further by writing a few notes on each of the films she's chosen. Andrew Schenker links to reviews (by other writers) of the films on his list.

"Miriam Makeba, the South African singer known to fans worldwide as 'Mama Africa' who became an international symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle, died early Monday after performing a concert in southern Italy," reports the AP. "She was 76." Related: Catherine Grant presents a list of "some good (mainly South) African cinema web-links follow."

Online browsing tip. Kimberly Lindbergs notes that the English version of Ishiro Honda's site is now up.

Online listening tip #1. From Tom Sutpen: "Steven Bach discusses the life, times and cinema of Leni Riefenstahl; the only woman on earth to give Dr Goebbels a hard time (read that however you wish) and live to tell the tale."

Online listening tip #2. Vinyl Is Heavy, and so is Synecdoche, New York.

Online viewing tips. Jerry Lentz's YouTube playlist, "The Best in Acting!"

Posted by dwhudson at November 10, 2008 1:24 PM