Shorts, fests, etc, 11/29.

"Whatever else it may be, Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma (now available on DVD from Artificial Eye) does not resemble the afternoon bill at the old Plaza or the new Cineplex," writes Michael Wood in the London Review of Books. "This is a man who is making a video work that is a sort of successor to the cinema as an art form, as well as an act of mourning for it. But he sees the art form itself only in its old purity, the New Wave that died without getting old. There is a reason, then, for trusting the images rather than the text, and Godard is right to speak as fondly as he does of montage."

William Friedkin: "Those of us who made films in the 70s were not following the zeitgeist: we shaped it."

Also in the Guardian:

• Richard Price's introduction to the Everyman's Libary edition of collected works by Richard Yates, including, of course, Revolutionary Road: "His deft and miraculously weightless prose was Shaker-simple, a levitation act of declarative sentences, near-neutral observations and unremarkable utterances, as if the author were as powerless as the reader in controlling the destinies of his characters - the slow-motion train wreck of the lives to come, the soul-killing self-realisations that will invariably be their lot. In part, the beauty and the genius of his voice lies in how its gently inexorable tone so eerily mirrors the muffled helplessness of the characters."

• "Far from being a novelty revival of Victorian parlour entertainment, Ken Jacobs's Nervous Magic Lantern is astonishingly radical," argues Mark Webber.

• Simon Hattenstone has a long talk with Benicio Del Toro about Che.

• Audrey Salkeld tells the story - and rather dramatically, too - behind Philipp Stölzl's North Face.

• Stuart Jeffries talks with Erick Zonca about Julia.

• David Thomson profiles Neil LaBute. Related: At Movie Morlocks, Jeff Stafford talks with Thomson about Have You Seen...?.

• Amy Raphael interviews John Cleese.

• "If you're planning to off any children in your movie, the first question is all about your motivation," advises John Patterson.

• Peter Bradshaw reviews The Silence of Lorna ((related: Time Out's Dave Calhoun talks with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne), Jonás Cuarón's Año Uña (related online viewing: Jason Solomons talks with Jonás's father, Alfonso Cuarón; online listening: Ambrose Heron talks with both) and Djamshed Usmonov's To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die.

• As part of the Guardian's "Best Books of the Year" special section, Ginny Hooker gathers tips from dozens of writers and politicians.

Michael Tully announces the winners of the inaugural round of Hammer to Nail Awards: "In order to get the fairest and most comprehensive result possible, we asked H2N's current roster of expert contributors to submit their own top ten lists that fit within the following parameters: American narratives (shorts or features) made for under one million dollars that either premiered or received some form of a theatrical release in 2008."

For the TLS, Ian Thomson reviews John David Rhodes's Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome and Descrizioni di descrizioni, a collection of Pasolini's journalism from the 70s: "Pasolini's Rome was not an aesthete's fantasy, Rhodes argues convincingly, but a real place recorded on celluloid with a gritty 'news-reel' immediacy. Accattone, a work of astounding sensory realism, unfolds amid junkyards and rubbish tips near Pietralata borgata. It remains one of the great works of post-war Italian cinema, a film whose documentary verismo influenced Martin Scorsese as well as the young Bernardo Bertolucci, who was at that time Pasolini's assistant cameraman."

Did Franz Kafka ever see Nosferatu? Might he and FW Murnau have crossed paths in the Tatra Mountains? Peter-André Alt explores the possibilities in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (and in German).

"The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it," writes Roger Ebert. "It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as 'a Hollywood story.' I want to smash something against a wall."

"The fantastical demons that beset Benjamin Christensen's career-defining Häxan may have gone into hiding for the Danish director's second film made in Hollywood, Mockery, but they are not entirely absent," writes Cullen Gallagher at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "They've worked their way into every inch of Christensen's characters, corrupting their morals, perverting their intents, and plaguing their souls."

David Bordwell: "Before he became Fairbanks, he was Doug, the relentlessly cheerful American optimist. This star image was created very quickly, in films and in public events that made him seem the nicest guy in the country. His manic energy came to incarnate the new pace of American cinema, and his films helped shape the emerging precepts of Hollywood storytelling."

"An increasingly common strategy in what I'll call, as a convenient short-hand, the middle-brow art film, the delayed revelation of past event is a highly problematic approach," writes Andrew Schenker. "This structuring device saves for the film's conclusion the full disclosure - either through dialogue or through visual reenactment - of a formative event in the characters' lives about which the audience knows some, but not all, the details. There are two variations to the approach: in one, which generally relies on dialog, the chief function is the imparting of a key piece of information to the audience. In the other, of which Fearless' ending stands as an example, and which relies wholly on reenactment, the audience already knows most of the factual details about the event and the filmmaker's aim is to wring emotion from the viewer by forcing him to experience the moment of tragedy along with the character. Both approaches betray an unpleasant degree of arrogance on the filmmaker's part."

At the House Next Door, Dan Callahan selects five films starring Mia Farrow, who "may still look as frail and defenseless as Rosemary, but this is a woman who knows how to play hardball to get what she wants. Her queasy public life is always going to take precedence over her work in films, but let's not forget her achievements in that area, especially in the movies that Woody Allen built around her in the 80s."

"Salvatore Maira's amazing work Valzer (The Waltz) is such a quietly spectacular achievement that I am flummoxed as to why a film this smart and timely has not seen, at least briefly, a commercial run," writes James Van Maanen.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with The Secrets director Avi Nesher "about the quiet revolution depicted in The Secrets, his 'fluke' of a Hollywood career and the time he nearly gave up on the movies."

Kevin Lee on Luchino Visconti's Sandra of a Thousand Delights: "[A]t best this is a puzzling transitional work, with outstanding gothic atmospherics to recommend it."

In the Independent:

• "'Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea,' is still one of the greatest pay-off lines in British cinema," writes Andy McSmith. "It was uttered by Michael Caine, playing the London villain Charlie Croker, immediately before the credits rolled on the 1969 heist classic, The Italian Job. But for 40 years, no one has known what that 'great idea' could possibly be, until yesterday, when Sir Michael revealed there was another ending."

• Previewing the London African Film Festival (running through December 7) for the Independent, Keith Shiri contrasts Hollywood's depictions of Africa with the ways the continent comes off in its own films.

• Gaynor Flynn talks with Sigourney Weaver.

Glenn Kenny in the Auteurs' Notebook on The Collector's Choice: The Films of Budd Boetticher: "These are very much adult Westerns. Which concept, notionally, some Hardcore Western Fans would sneer at. But the maturity itself is... unobtrusive. Avoiding ostentation is key to winning any Hardcore Western Fan's approval."

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: The Devil's Rejects.

Andy Klein previews the holiday season for LA CityBeat. Also: "Is Hollywood recession-proof?"

"The threat of an actors' strike in Hollywood takes on a somewhat surreal aspect when the global economy is collapsing around our ears." Michael Gubbins in Mediaville.

"[T]here is always a bull market in ego, and the movie business will be celebrating the 81st annual Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb 22, at the Kodak Theater with or without your consent." David Carr sets the stage as he prepares the return of the Carpetbagger.

Also in the New York Times:

• "The Belgian theater director Ivo van Hove swears he has never seen Opening Night, the classic 1977 backstage film by John Cassavetes, but that didn't stop him from adapting the film for the stage," writes Tom Sellar. "His innocence helped rather than hindered him, he said, in imagining his stage version based on Cassavetes's original screenplay."

• John Anderson profiles the "cadre of animators" who prefer the pencil to the computer.

• Dave Itzkoff meets Robert Siegel, the former editor in chief of the Onion who's written the screenplay for The Wrestler.

• Michael Kimmelman on Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?, on view in Oslo through February 1.

"Bruce LaBruce's latest, most adventurous skin flick, Otto, or Up with Dead People (2008), which tracks a fetching young melancholic zombie (played with turgid aplomb by first-time actor Jey Crisfar) on his journey of self-discovery, is not quite a 'zombie porn,' as I'd previously heard it billed," writes David Velasco for Artforum, "though a more suitable appellation eludes me."

Rachel Abramowitz profiles Meryl Streep for the Los Angeles Times.

For FilmInFocus, Richard T Kelly lists the "Top Five So-Called 'Turkeys' That Are Actually Terrific."

"US playwright William Gibson, whose The Miracle Worker documented the story of deaf-blind student Helen Keller, has died in Massachusetts aged 94." The BBC reports.

Online gazing tip. John Coulthart has "Cocteau's sword."

Online browsing tip. Alan Woo's Pie "aims to create an incredibly simple and concise baseline of comparison of films trough one particular trait: colour." Via Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay.

Online listening tip. Via Thomas Groh, Mashed in Plastic, an album of David Lynch mash-ups.

Online viewing tip #1. Sean Penn explains why he felt compelled to travel to Venezuela and Cuba to meet and interview Hugo Chávez and Fidel and Raúl Castro for the Nation.

Online viewing tip #2. Ekkehard Knörer has Chris Marker's Subway Jigsaw.

Online viewing tip #3. "It should come as no surprise, really, that Lukas Moodysson's Mammut - or Mammoth as it will be known in English - seems to have very little in common with the Swedish director’s previous films Container and A Hole In My Heart," writes Todd Brown, introducing the trailer at Twitch. "Really, that much was guaranteed the moment that Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams were cast in the leads."

Posted by dwhudson at November 29, 2008 9:12 AM