Shorts, 12/7.

So there's an awful lot of reading to catch up with, including, via Girish, an almost overwhelming new issue of Screening the Past (which might call for a bookmark to return to over the upcoming holidays) and: "Adrian Martin's new column at Filmkrant takes up an issue that is being hotly debated in film studies: should films be studied as self-sufficient artworks or as objects that possess meaning only when examined within their social and historical context?"

"Offscreen returns with a bag of essays that can be loosely collected under the banner of the cinema of the fantastique."

Another new issue: M/C Journal.

More? The Siren's got another fine roundup.

"The recurring imagery of turbulent waters in Teuvo Tulio's films reflect a kinship with early Norwegian (and more broadly, Scandinavian) cinema in the use of rugged landscape as a metaphor for the paradoxical nature of the human condition." Acquarello on Song of the Scarlet Flower and The Way You Wanted Me.

"In The Chaser, viewers' expectations are constantly confounded," writes Matt Riviera. "By the end of the first nerve-jangling act for example, the killer our 'chaser' thought he'd never catch is already in police custody. The narrative engine changes from the search for a perpetrator to the search for evidence, and eventually to the search for Mi-Jin, who's alive but trapped in the killer's lair. Later still, in a vicious, I-never-thought-it-would-happen moment, the film shifts gears yet again, taking a turn into an even darker night where redemption comes only at a steep price."

From Newsweek's "Holiday Movies" package:

• "Wistful, melancholic, steeped in a sense of impermanence and looming mortality, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not a movie one could have predicted from the maker of Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac," writes David Ansen. "David Fincher's haunting and uneven picaresque fable is a radical reimagining of a fanciful, minor F Scott Fitzgerald short story.... And a long and winding tale it is.... But then, with the arrival of Tilda Swinton as a married, upper-class Englishwoman, the movie snaps to life." Related: Ramin Setoodeh, briefly, on why "the movies of [Fitzgerald's] books feel less like a story than a fancy postcard."

• "There are few better portraits of marriage gone wrong than the one depicted in Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road," writes David Ansen. "The movie version, adapted with scrupulous fidelity by Justin Haythe, is directed by Sam Mendes, who dissected suburbia once before in his Oscar-winning American Beauty. The unfortunate Wheelers are played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet: anyone foolish enough to expect Titanic redux is in for a rude awakening. What you will see are two very fine actors willing and able to bare their souls." Related: a conversation with Winslet and Kathy Bates.

• Reviews of Waltz with Bashir, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Australia. More on those last two from Fernando F Croce, plus Quantum of Solace and Twilight.

"Australians love going to the movies, buying between $10 million and $12 million worth of movie tickets a week," reports Jim Schembri in the Age. "But how much of that goes on local fare? The figures vary from 4 per cent in a good, Happy Feet-blessed year, to a laughable 2 per cent in an average year, to a downright dismal 0.9 per cent this year.... After 35 years and an investment of about 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars, Australian cinema still occupies only the margins of the marketplace - something starkly reflected by the 'major' films nominated for this year's AFI Awards."

"The US distribution rights to Christian Petzold's Jerichow have been acquired by The Cinema Guild," reports Peter Knegt at indieWIRE.

"Deepa Mehta first met Salman Rushdie three years ago when friends of hers invited the author to an advance screening in New York of her film Water, the film that went on to an Oscar nomination. The avid reader (Mehta) and the exuberant cinephile (Rushdie) immediately hit it off, and over subsequent months, the two became fast friends." In the Globe and Mail, Gayle MacDonald lays out their plans for an adaptation of Midnight's Children. Via Movie City News.

"Béla Tarr's impressively steely [The Man from London] (a mere doodle at 140 minutes, compared with the same director's 450-minute Sátántangó) played at Cannes a year and a half ago, but is only reaching cinemas next week," writes Ryan Gilbey. "Similarly, Otar Iosseliani's bittersweet comedy Gardens in Autumn was made in 2006, scheduled for release here in 2007 and is finally arriving in the last days of 2008. What's the hold-up? Well, both films are distributed by Artificial Eye, which tends to schedule its predominantly arthouse releases with pernickety care rather than casting them cruelly into the marketplace."

Also in the Guardian:

• Peter Bradshaw on Erick Zonca's Julia: "Like Cate Blanchett, [Tilda] Swinton always looks just too superbly authoritative and grand for this sort of role, yet she certainly brings to it her distinctive, interplanetary charisma." Related: Ryan Gilbey profiles Swinton for the New Statesman.

• Also, Jacques Maillot's Rivals "is an enjoyably rich, gamey stew of crime and family betrayal."

• John Patterson explains to British readers "what makes the release of Gus van Sant's Milk, a passionate, big-budget portrait of San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, so serendipitous in its timing."

• on The Children: "A relentless mood of rising hysteria fuels this British horror film, as the children of two families brought together for a quiet Christmas turn into adult-attacking mini-murderers." Related: Xan Brooks captions a gallery of photos: "Kindergaaarghten: The scariest children in film."

• Cath Clarke on Summer: There are all-round excellent performances in this East Midlands drama." More from Charlotte O'Sullivan (Evening Standard).

• Also, The Girl in the Park: "This ought to be dazzling: a Pulitzer-winning playwright behind the camera, Sigourney Weaver at her most actorly and Kate Bosworth bringing a touch of It Girl shimmer. But while there is a lot to like in [David] Auburn's tightly focused film, it never fully pulls together." More from Jason Solomons (Observer) and Wendy Ide (London Times).

• Plus, a talk with Sam Neill.

• "As Hollywood struggles through the recession, studios are hoping that a full-scale cinematic onslaught over the Christmas season will bounce the movie industry out of the doldrums," reports Dan Glaister.

• Ronald Bergan remembers screenwriter John Michael Hayes.

Kevin Lee on EA Dupont's Varieté: "One of the seminal works of silent cinema, this love-triangle melodrama among vaudeville acrobats was lauded by no less than the likes of Jean Mitry and Gilles Deleuze for infusing German expressionism into the norms of classical film grammar (i.e. shot/reverse shot and subjective-objective cinematography)."

David Walsh talks with Mike Leigh for the WSWS.

Elaine Lipworth talks with Nicole Kidman for the Independent.

Interviews at the AV Club: Steven Hyden with Ray Wise and Noel Murray with William Friedkin.

Brandon Harris interviews A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy director Dennis Dortch, and then, at the SpoutBlog, asks him about his media diet.

"My love for Jess Franco definitely clouds any objective opinion I have about his work, but I truly believe that The Rites of Frankenstein (aka Les Experiences erotiques de Frankenstein, 1972) is one of the director's most surreal and interesting efforts," writes Kimberly Lindbergs.

The Movie Morlocks have been on a Disney kick lately.

"Will Inkheart become the next Harry Potter?" asks James Rampton in the Independent.

Rob Lurie tells Adam Liptak a story about Oliver Stone storming over to him on the set of Nothing But the Truth: "'He puts his beefy fingers around my neck,' Mr Lurie recalled, 'and said, "Don't turn Judy Miller into a hero."' It was at that moment, Mr Lurie said, that he realized just how tough it would be to separate his film from its real-life roots."

Also in the New York Times:

• Ada Calhoun briefly reviews Polanski: A Biography, George Hamilton's Don't Mind If I Do, Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies and Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, Madness and the Mob.

• "'Who punishes you?' someone asks Frank Castle (Ray Stevenson), better known as the Punisher, in the punishing new entertainment called Punisher: War Zone." AO Scott. "It's a fair enough question, but the one I had as I sat through 107 bloody, grinding minutes was a little different: What did I ever do to deserve this?" More from Simon Abrams (New York Press), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Keith Phipps (AV Club), Nick Schager (Slant) and Luke Y Thompson (Voice).

• Martha (Sunny) von Bülow, played by Glenn Close in Reversal of Fortune, has died. Her death "came 27 years, 11 months and 15 days after she was found unconscious on the floor of her bathroom in her mansion in Newport, RI, on Dec 21, 1980," reports Enid Nemy, and she'd remained in a coma ever since. More from Robert Cashill, who's also got a clip from Barbet Schroeder's terrific film.

Nick Davis has been updating his Flick Picks.

Mamma Mia! "has become the most profitable, most sung-along to, most life-enhancing, generally most record-breaking film and DVD event in British history," and it's troubling Catherine Bennett: "If reservations about Mamma Mia! have yet to be formally accepted, in medical circles, as a symptom of female sexual dysfunction, there appear to be few doubts among its millions of supporters about the dodginess of any woman who discovers herself to be immune to its life-affirming effects. Or as the poet once put it: 'Hail to thee blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert...'"

Also in the Observer, Jason Solomons meets Samuel L Jackson, Philip French considers the career of Jean Gabin and Mark Kermode rounds up the latest DVD releases in the UK.

"Paul Benjamin, who died this week at the age of 70, was a character actor in the all but lost tradition of classic Hollywood comedies, the missing link between the likes of Mischa Auer and Franklin Pangborn and the counterculture improv theater of the 1950s and 60s," writes Phil Nugent at Screengrab.

Glenn Kenny bids farewell to Nina Foch and Beverly Garland - and wishes Bettie Page well.

"For anyone working in the Internet video industry, walking into the Revision3 studio is a little like stumbling into Xanadu (Khubla Khan's, not Robert Greenwald's)." Hannah Eaves explains at SF360.

Darren Hughes has relaunched Long Pauses. Do take a look.

Online browsing tips. "Four interesting film sites and blogs have crossed my screen in the last few days," notes Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay.

Online listening tip. Movie Geeks United! celebrates the 25th anniversary of Brian De Palma's Scarface.

Online viewing tip #1. FilmCatcher interviews Ben Kingsley.

Online viewing tip #2. Lynn Hirschberg talks with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes for the NYT Style Magazine.

Online viewing tip #3. The Art Newspaper launches a .tv channel.

Online viewing tip #4. From Damon Smith: "Although the naughty bits from Turkish Delight are to be found elsewhere online (and there are plenty), here's a great meta-clip of some memorable scenes."

Online viewing tip #5. Amir Motlagh's Plain Us "offers a quiet meditation on the challenges of coming home," writes Chuck Tryon. "Much like minimalist fiction, Motlagh's film tells us a lot through fleeting conversations and offhand gestures."

Posted by dwhudson at December 7, 2008 9:31 AM