Shorts, fests, etc, 12/26.

Yesterday, Peter Nellhaus wished Hanna Schygulla a happy 65th.

"Sometimes I despair." No one remembers Groucho's best lines anymore, laments Paul Krugman.

"Of writing books about Charlie Chaplin there is no end, and much study of them is a weariness after the flesh. But this wonderful work is different." Martin Sieff reviews Stephen Weissman's Chaplin: A Life for the Washington Times.

"One of the best surprises in my overstuffed post box this week was a couple of copies of Robert Shail's new edited collection Seventies British Cinema," writes Dan North. "This book doesn't deny the prominence of crap movies in 70s Britain, but it does take them seriously as historically interesting cultural products."

"In 2001's Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001), [Jack G] Shaheen examined more than 950 Hollywood feature films and concluded that only 12 portrayed Arabs positively," writes Steve G Kellman in the Texas Observer. "His new book [Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs after 9/11] is a sequel, an analysis of the same topic after September 11, 2001, when Arab terrorists attacked the United States. To update his study, Shaheen viewed films produced since 9/11. Although he finds that 29 of these present favorable images of Arabs, he concludes that 'The total number of films that defile Arabs now exceeds 1,150.'"

Also via Bookforum, Joel Stein in the Los Angeles Times: "How deeply Jewish is Hollywood?... The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies.... As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between The 700 Club and Davey and Goliath on TV all day.

And also in the LAT: "Charlton Heston wants to know what I think of his Macbeth?" Nicholas A Salerno, professor emeritus of Victorian literature and film studies at Arizona State University, recalls a chat he can still hardly believe. Related: Anthony Giardina remembers Heston in the "Lives They Lived" issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Again, back to the LAT: "Yen Tan's Ciao is a revelation, a minimalist work of maximum effect," writes Kevin Thomas. "It is determinedly understated and consistently expressive, beautifully composed yet never studied."

"Che's role at La Cabana shortly after the 1959 revolution touches on one of the stranger moments from my time working at the Paris Review with George Plimpton." Helluva story from James Scott Linville in Standpoint.

"I'll just go ahead and say it: Without Preston Sturges, modern movies wouldn't be funny." For the New York Press, Eric Kohn previews Essential Sturges, running at Film Forum through January 1. More on "the Shakespeare of screwball comedy" from Jason Jude Chan in Fanzine; and in the Auteurs' Notebook, David Cairns supposes that rights issues keep Remember the Night from being an It's a Wonderful Life-grade Christmas classic.

More fests and events:

• IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks reports that the International Film Festival Rotterdam will open on January 21 with "the directing debut of scriptwriter, theater director and actor Michael Imperioli," The Hungry Ghosts.

• The Berlinale's Forum expanded will be doing a bit more of that in February as works will be on view in 13 galleries and exhibition spaces throughout the city.

• For those in Seattle, Kathy Fennessy recommends Dreyer's Day of Wrath, screening at Northwest Film Forum through January 1.

• Local roundups: The Cine-File for Chicagoland, Brian Darr for San Franciscans, Susan King for Los Angelenos, Phil Nugent for New Yorkers.

Kevin Lee on The Art of Vision: "In some ways, Stan Brakhage's 4-plus hour magnum opus isn't so much an epic of experimental cinema as the most intensely comprehensive horror movie that hardly anyone has seen." Also: "In terms of scale, Murder by Contract is a modest chamber piece compared to The Killing's multi-character symphony, but it cuts deeper into the same heart of male self-destructiveness underlying its most outrageous aspirations." And: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: "This gently naughty poke at Sherlock Holmes's emotional life and sexual proclivities reveals an inner desolation in its title character (Robert Stephens) that amounts to the most touchingly humanistic portrait of a human being in all of Billy Wilder's work."

"Cory Arcangel's work has almost always played on the logic of the joke in its construction," writes Ed Halter, introducing his interview for Rhizome.

"What better way to celebrate Christmas than to begin filming another mini-masterpiece, God willing?" asks Ken Russell in the London Times. "Yes, my latest biographical romp, Bravetart vs the Loch Ness Monster, began filming last Sunday at the stately Walhampton School, a couple of miles up the road from my home in Lymington."

At the House Next Door, Zachary Wigon talks with Antonio Campos about Afterschool.

Susie Boyt's "My Judy Garland Life is the literary equivalent of one of those Tudor multi-roasts in which a goose is stuffed with a duck, a guinea fowl, a partridge and a quail," writes Frances Wilson in the TLS. "This is a memoir inside a biography inside a novel inside a play inside a meditation on hero worship, loss and excess. The result is a veritable feast, but we might savour most what Judy has taught us about loss: 'its memory and its anticipation lie at the heart of human experience,' and one's sense of it can be reduced by total immersion."

"Even dog lovers may want to take Marley & Me to the pound," writes Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post. "Based on the best-selling book by John Grogan, which chronicled his life with a large, lovable and deeply neurotic dog, Marley & Me proves the obvious: Not every book has a movie lurking in it." More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Stephen Holden (New York Times), Robert Horton (Herald), Jim Ridley (Voice), Nick Schager (Slant), Betsy Sharkey (LAT), Scott Tobias (AV Club) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

"New Year's Eve movies are responsible for perpetuating some of the most pernicious, ridiculous, self-defeating myths in our collective unconscious," argues Josh Rosenblatt in the Austin Chronicle, where Kevin Kelly talks with David Hare about adapting The Reader. Related: James Rocchi talks with Reader director Stephen Daldry for Cinematical.

"The Wrestler's very much first-time dramatic script by Robert D Siegel - and direction by the newly vulnerable Darren Aronofsky - is tailored so gently to [Mickey] Rourke's bloated abdominals and lifted face that the punch-drunk pussyhound redeems even a climactic allegory positing him as both George W Bush and Jesus H Christ," writes Mark Asch in Stop Smiling. More from Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Dennis Harvey (San Francisco Bay Guardian) and Christopher Orr (New Republic). And Michael Guillén interviews Aronofsky.

"With every review I read of Doubt, I get the nagging feeling that I've seen a different film," writes Sean Axmaker in the Parallax View. "I wonder of having seen the stage play is preventing viewers from actually seeing the film."

"[I]n a shift to make fans of highbrow horror cheer, studios are starting to concede that torture as entertainment has run its course," writes Brooks Barnes. If My Bloody Valentine 3D scores, the next big thing, then, may well be, yes, 3D.

Also in the New York Times: "Pageant goes behind the scenes, dreams, breakdowns, freakouts, sequins, glitter and fabulous falsies of the Miss Gay America pageant, an annual competition for female impersonators who are every bit as dedicated (and hysterical) as mainstream beauty queens," writes Nathan Lee. More from Martin Tsai in the Voice.

"The SAG Strike for Dummies" - a helpful FAQ from John Lopez at VF Daily.

Tim Lucas: "A posting by Lee Peterson at the Mobius Home Video Forum reports the sudden death of exploitation cinema expert, fanzine publisher, 42nd Street projectionist and actor Bill Landis from a heart attack." More - and more links, too - from Filmmaker's Scott Macaulay.

Online viewing tips. The Observer's Jason Solomons interviews Baz Luhrmann, but Mark Kermode's take on Australia is a whole lot more fun.

Posted by dwhudson at December 26, 2008 2:33 PM