Shorts, 11/18.

This time AICN's infamous exclamation marks are right on the money: "Moriarty Sits Down With Spike Jonze For Huge Unfettered Where the Wild Things Are Interview + Exclusive Debut Photos!!"

For BU Today, Robin Berghaus talks with Gerald Peary about writing for the Boston Phoenix, teaching at Suffolk University, curating the BU Cinematheque and about his recently completed documentary, For the Love of Movies: The History of American Film Criticism. Via the Chicago Reader's JR Jones.

"On Saturday and Sunday, in cheerful defiance of the wild-fires that gridlocked much of southern California, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer held its first press screenings of [Valkyrie], which co-stars Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Eddie Izzard," reports Guy Adams in the Independent. "The result was a double triumph. Not only were a handful of industry reporters present able to scotch dark rumors about [Tom] Cruise's German accent (in the event, he does not attempt one), they also gave the film almost shockingly positive reviews."

"If you know anything about the cinema of Dario Argento, 'the Italian Hitchcock,' you'll likely be familiar with the relationship of his third feature film Four Flies on Grey Velvet (4 Mosche di Velluto Grigio, 1971) to the phrases 'neglected,' 'rare' and 'impossible to see,'" writes Richard Harland Smith at Movie Morlocks. "The third and final entry in Argento's so-called 'animal trilogy' (which began with the brilliant The Bird with the Crystal Plumage/L'uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo in 1969 and continued with the less-than-brilliant but nonetheless enjoyable Cat O'Nine Tails/Il Gatto a Nove Code the following year), Four Flies was distributed in the United States by Paramount. Following disappointing box office and a spate of discouraging reviews (Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times hatchet job not only panned the film as 'badly dubbed and incoherent' but credited the direction to Dario Argento's producer father Salvatore), the film was withdrawn and has languished in the vaults ever since. That is... until now." Look for a DVD release in February.

In the London Review of Books, Tim Parks explains why Gomorrah, the book, has "an appeal that goes far beyond a specific interest in Italy or organised crime." And yet Gomorrah, the film, is "disappointing. Often it has a perfunctory, box-ticking feel." What's more, "The film makes clear that Saviano's book would not be so interesting without its author's visceral, obsessive concern, and his consequent vulnerability."

In Foreign Policy, Jerome Chen lists "five missions we'd love Agent 007 to tackle." Via Bookforum. As for Quantum of Solace, for Eileen Jones, "the central problem seems to be [that] the filmmakers themselves don't seem fascinated by physical movement in the world; they shoot and cut filmed action in such a way as to render it oddly inert."

"Until recently, Israeli film was insular, hemmed in by the restrictions of a tiny market for the Hebrew language, the Arab boycott in the Middle East, and a domestic audience that preferred dubbed movies from America," writes Linda Grant in the Guardian:

Last year, however, Israeli cinema experienced an annus mirabilis. Four films - Jellyfish, The Band's Visit, Beaufort and My Father, My Lord - swept the international film festival awards. This was all the more remarkable because two of the four had nothing to do with Middle East politics. The films coming out of Israel in the past two or three years have reflected both the complex fissures in Israeli society and a sense of internal pessimism and unease after the collapse of the Oslo Accords, the start of the second intifada and the 2006 Lebanon war. It was not that Israel had lacked political filmmakers; it had lacked the audiences in Israel and abroad who wanted to see their work. Since the end of Oslo, there has been a sense, as Israeli novelist David Grossman says, of Israel retreating from its hope for itself as a "normal" country, propelled back into being what he calls "a big story". It is this new mood that Israeli cinema is reflecting.

"Who Will Quit Hollywood Next?" asks Logan Hill at New York's Vulture, where he's collected quite a list of recent sayonaras.

"Something died in the movies when TV, wide screen, and the New Wave film made the bit player expendable." That Manny Farber quote gets FilmCatcher's Damon Smith thinking in the filmlinc blog.

"The movie world has been fretting for years about the collapse of stardom," writes Michael Cieply in the New York Times. "Now there are growing fears that another chunk of film architecture is looking wobbly: the story. In league with a handful of former Hollywood executives, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory plans to do something about that on Tuesday, with the creation of a new Center for Future Storytelling."

"Ostensibly framed as a postwar melodrama that loosely evokes Leo McCarey's Love Affair in its story of a shipboard encounter between two emotionally unavailable people, Joseph Morder's L'Arbre mort is also a tone piece that seeks to reconcile the space between love and death, history and memory, documentary and fiction," writes Acquarello.

At the SpoutBlog, Brandon Harris talks with Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) about her "Media Diet."

At Koreanfilm.org, Duncan Mitchel recommends Ahn Seul-ki's Five Is Too Many.

"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have named 15 films that made the short-list in the Documentary Feature category for the 81st Academy Awards, whittling the number down from a record 94 that had originally qualified," reports Brian Brooks at indieWIRE, where he's got the list.

Online listening tip. At the House Next Door: Mike D'Angelo, John Lichman, Vadim Rizov and Keith Uhlich.

Online viewing tip #1. Via Alison Willmore, Michael Tully's Silver Jew - in full at Pitchfork for one week only.

Online viewing tip #2. David Poland talks with Mickey Rourke about The Wrestler... and much more.

Online viewing tip #3. FilmCatcher interviews Arnaud Desplechin.

Online viewing tip #4. At the SpoutBlog, Karina Longworth has Noah Baumbach's SNL short featuring Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen.

Posted by dwhudson at November 18, 2008 10:43 AM