Shorts, 12/11.

"In retrospect, Crash appears to be the best film from Cronenberg's weakest period - post-Dead Ringers to pre-Spider, writes Tim Lucas - "but, as brilliant as it sometimes is, it cannot meet the book's greatness even halfway. But there is something about it that tempts one to imagine that it will play even better on the next viewing - and, in some ways, this hope holds true.... My retrospective interest in the film led me to belatedly acquire [Iain Sinclair's book, Crash], which I can enthusiastically recommend, especially to Ballard fans."

NILFs and more: "Since, in this economy, nobody wants to spend what little money he has on an unenjoyable Holocaust movie, Vulture has devised a fail-safe, flowchart-based guide to help determine which is right for you." Related: Aileen Gallagher talks with Jason Isaacs (as in, "'Hello' to Jason Isaacs") about Good.

Oliver Stone's next project? A doc on Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Ali Jaafar reports in Variety.

"Ben Stiller is set to replace Mark Ruffalo in Greenburg, a comedy-drama Noah Baumbach is writing and directing." The Hollywood Reporter's Steven Zeitchik has more.

"There are entire national cinemas, like West Germany's post-war output, consigned to the recycle bin of history," writes David Cairns in the Auteurs' Notebook:

It's here we find the last films of Siodmak, Dieterle, Pabst; and Edgar Wallace adaptations, so lurid they glow in the dark; and remakes, remakes, remakes!

Alraune, released stateside as Unnatural... The Fruit of Evil, is a warmed-over 1952 version of a creepy novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers, already filmed four times, twice in 1918, and again in 1928 and 1930. Both latter versions starred Brigitte Helm, Fritz Lang's 'virgin star' brought to buzzing life by the electrical apparatus of Metropolis.... A strange nymph like Helm was perfect for this twisted yarn, but the 1952 version suicidally casts a big, rangy, emphatic woman who radiates sturdiness and good health. And she would have to be called Hildegard Knef, a name with the allure of a hockey puck. It's impossible to imagine this galumphing gal driving men to their deaths, except perhaps by physically overpowering them. This leaves an echoing chasm in the film's centre, which all the bad dubbing in the world can't fill. But there are compensations.

Kristin Thompson explains how Das Weib des Pharao would become "a turning point in Lubitsch's career."

"Did Graham Greene invent film noir?" asks the Guardian's Andrew Pulver. "I've always secretly hoped the answer was yes. It would be fitting that Britain's miserable, morally conflicted poet of the third-class railway compartment could be established as the prime mover behind the darkest, nastiest and sourest cinematic style of all - rather than bullish American wordsmiths of the James M Cain and Dashiell Hammett stable."

Movie Morlock moirafinnie celebrates Agnes Moorehead.

"Le Pont du Nord is Jacques Rivette's mystery without a solution, a thriller without a plot, a modern-day Don Quixote/Sancho Panza tale that transforms the streets of Paris into a giant board game, a maze spotted with mysterious traps, puzzling clues, and chance encounters." Ed Howard.

"One can see why [Lars] von Trier found the antirealism of Europa - and its allusions to Fassbinder, Godard, Bergman and American film noir - a dead end." Steve Erickson for Artforum: "What could he have accomplished if he'd continued to plumb this vein instead of devoting himself to tales of female martyrdom drawn from Carl Theodor Dreyer and Roberto Rossellini? Despite its frequent evocations of the Holocaust, Europa is astonishingly playful, an exciting quality - and one missing from most of von Trier's subsequent work." More from Mike Kanin in the Austin Chronicle.

Kevin Lee on The World According to Garp: "Heralded in its day for its audacious envisioning of an American social landscape ravaged by dysfunctional sexuality - featuring an aspiring single mother who impregnates herself upon a dying soldier's genitalia; a transsexual [gasp!]; and a feminist society who protest violent rape by cutting their own tongues off - John Irving's 1978 picaresque now reads like a hysterical (in both senses of the word) male vision of the burgeoning feminist movement. Not much is different in George Roy Hill's 1982 movie version, except that the absurdist imagery no longer drifts along the cooing flow of Irving's prose, but rattles and jerks from one set piece to another."

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

Chip Kidd's "latest book is Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan, which collects a series of previously unseen manga starring the caped crusader." Louis Peitzman in Pixel Vision: "In a phone interview, I spoke to Kidd about Batman's culture shock, the bitchin' Batmobile, and how to pronounce 'manga' without sounding ignorant."

"Deadpan, detached and seeming a bit lonely, Bill Murray is NYC's most unlikely new party guy." Sarah Horne gathers sightings for Page Six Magazine.

Via Ted Johnson, perhaps the shortest entry ever at the Huffington Post: "More than one commentator, including our own Jason Linkins, has compared Gov Rod Blagojevich's obscenity-filled wiretapped conversations to the profane poetry of a David Mamet play. So we asked Mamet for his take on Blagojevich."

Robert Cashill and Edward Copeland remember Robert Prosky, 1930 - 2008.

Online thingie. The DVD Beaver Toolbar, via Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Online scrolling tip. Via Ted Zee, Smashing Magazine's "40 Exquisite Independent Film Posters."

Online browsing tip. The "brightest British young hopefuls," as chosen by Total Film, recreate their favorite screen moments; Alice Jones introduces the next wave of acting talent from Britain.

Online listening tip. The Observer's Jason Solomons talks with Eran Riklis about Lemon Tree.

Online viewing tip. Before this cover version well and truly wears out its welcome (and I say this as a big Pet Shop Boys fan and a moderate admirer of Sam Taylor-Wood), do watch the video. James Seo's got it.

Posted by dwhudson at December 11, 2008 3:43 PM