December 4, 2008
Shorts, 12/4.
"Why is everyone not raving about Me Cheeta: The Autobiography?" asks the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "It really is one of the smartest comic novels of recent years - a devastatingly clever, brilliantly written spoof autobiography supposedly dictated by Cheeta, the ancient chimp (quite genuinely still alive at the age of 76) who starred alongside Johnny Weissmuller in the classic 1930s Tarzan movies, and whose partygoing presence (according to this book) was a sine qua non for any self-respecting Hollywood orgy."
"Self-Styled Siren is where I retreat to write about old Hollywood movies." FilmInFocus interviews Campaspe.
A Vanity Fair item via Fimoculous: "The tragic story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, the inseparable East Village artists who killed themselves last year believing they were being persecuted, will be the subject of a screenplay by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, Page Six magazine has announced. Ithika Films, which is producing the movie along with Lionsgate, has bought the writes to our own Nancy Jo Sales's investigation, a profile of undying love and devastating paranoia."
"Johnny Depp is to take on what is arguably his most challenging role yet: he will star in an adaptation of a modern-day drama based on the life of the Italian Renaissance poet, Dante, during the time he conceived his magnum opus, The Divine Comedy," reports Arifa Akbar in the Independent. "Depp's film production company, Infinitum Nihil, has bought the screen rights to the modern-day mystery novel, In the Hand of Dante, by Nick Tosches."
Via the House Next Door (noting, too, that Godfrey Cheshire is now writing for Metro Magazine), Mike D'Angelo's open letter to the New York Film Critics Circle:
I'll admit that I was personally underwhelmed by this year's crop of award-bait flicks. Hated the sickly-sweet Benjamin Button and the ghetto-chic Slumdog Millionaire. Have little use for Milk, a conventional biopic in an arty suit, or Frost/Nixon, which turns a dubious cultural landmark into a cute underdog-sports flick. Doubt and Revolutionary Road have their moments, but both of these prestige-lit adaptations lack the spark of true creative energy; I can only work up mild enthusiasm. Likewise, most of the performances getting huzzahs strike me as, you know, fine. So I have a vested interest in persuading some of you to champion some of my lost causes.
It won't work. I know that. But here's what I'll be quixotically voting for next Wednesday.
"There's nothing organizers of the two indie-oriented year-end awards - those would be IFP's Gotham Independent Film Awards and Film Independent's Spirit Awards - hate worse than being perennially confused with each other. So that's exactly what I'm going to do." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir sorts out "what you need to know about how the various categories shake out in both awards, and how this may or may not be shaping the contours of the Oscar race."
"The Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader arrived in California in the late 1960s, created a small, potent body of lyric artworks, and then was lost at sea in 1975," writes Brian Sholis for Artforum. "He has received increasing attention in recent years, yet he remains a mystery. Rene Daalder's documentary, Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader (2007), is a useful if pedestrian addition to the spate of exhibitions and publications honoring the artist, and its flaws highlight why we may never come close to understanding Ader's fateful decision to sail across the Atlantic in the Ocean Wave (a twelve-and-a-half-foot sailboat)."
Ben Barnes in the New York Times on Ivo van Hove's "wild and woolly stage version" of John Cassavetes's Opening Night: "Divisions between players and parts, public and private, life and death, madness and sanity, love and hate and - oh, yes - the person you see in the flesh and the one you see on a screen (make that several screens) at the same time: Mr van Hove works his way through these distinctions like a prankish child with a magic eraser."
"Reviewing The Name of the Game is Kill! for Castle of Frankenstein, Joe Dante reported that the film contained 'moments of Bava-like brilliance,' and indeed it does," writes Tim Lucas. "The film is obviously the work of a craftsman with a feeling for the genre, and it's regrettable that [Gunnar] Hellstrom never made another horror picture.... The film ends with a tantalizing freeze-frame of Susan Strasberg, chilling in its beauty, and in the days since I've seen the movie again, what I've most carried away from it is a greater appreciation of what this neglected actress brought to the cult cinema of the 1960s."
Noel Murray talks with Wes Anderson about Bottle Rocket; also at the AV Club is the latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon": Fallen Angels.
Films in Review runs James Robert Haspiel's 1979 on the Jean Harlow-Marilyn Monroe connection.
Bilge Ebiri talks with Dennis Hopper for Vulture.
Clay Smith talks with Gus Van Sant about Milk. Also in the Austin Chronicle, a holiday season guide to DVD box sets:
"There are moments when John Landis's Into the Night feels like the forgotten gem that you want it to be," sighs Victoria Large at Not Coming to a Theater Near You.
"An intricate, kaleidoscopic, all-embracing history of 20th-century music from Mahler to La Monte Young is the winner of this year's Guardian first book award," reports Charlotte Higgins. "Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise was the clear and undisputed winner of the £10,000 prize, which has been presented at a ceremony in central London tonight."
You'll have heard - you may have even already placed your bets - but for the record, here are the nominees for this year's Grammy Awards.
The Austin American-Statesman's Chris Garcia remembers local filmmaker and professor Elizabeth Warnock Fernea.
Online listening tip #1. The Observer's Jason Solomon talks with Tilda Swinton about Julia and with British Independent Film Award-winner Eddie Marsan. Then, Xan Brooks joins him for a few quick reviews.
Online listening tip #2. "Lance Weiler at the Workbook Project was really kind to interview me about the new issue of Filmmaker magazine as part of his regular download series," notes Scott Macaulay.
Online viewing tip #1 The trailer for Nollywood Babylon.
Online viewing tip #2. Again, the Observer's Jason Solomons, this time talking with William Friedkin about The French Connection and The Exorcist.
Online viewing tip #3. Todd Brown's got the Japanese and Korean trailers for Kim Ki-duk's Dream at Twitch.
Online viewing tip #4. Tomorrow, "Chanel.com debuts Coco Avant Chanel, a 10-minute silent film celebrating the legend of Mademoiselle Coco." gellethegreat has a teaser for the film directed by Karl Lagerfeld. Via Coudal Partners.
Online viewing tip #5. Budd Boetticher "is best known for the B westerns he directed for Columbia with his favorite leading man, Randolph Scott," writes Matt Zoller Seitz at Moving Image Source. "They are marvels of economy and elegance - a tutorial in classical narrative cinema."
Posted by dwhudson at December 4, 2008 3:36 PM
Subscribe to GreenCine Daily RSS
Subscribe to GreenCine Daily by email
