Shorts, 12/29.

"The recent issue of UCLA's Asia Pacific Arts Magazine has a timely new feature on: 'Social Change in Asian film,'" writes Edwin Mak in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Change in politics and social life has been reflected in film from the earliest days of cinema. And it is by pure thematic coincidence that I have recently been re-watching and discovering more classics of the 1930s Chinese leftist film movement (Zuoyi dianying yundong). Its status as a truly unique movement in film history should be given its due."

"Classic Hong Kong and Japanese action scenes were 'expressionistic' in the sense that their larger-than-life balletics and aerobatics amplified recognizable (if extreme) possibilities of the human body," writes David Bordwell. "The result was a carnal cinema, in which shooting and cutting aimed to enlarge and prolong graceful movement. By contrast, Hollywood action scenes became 'impressionistic,' rendering a combat or pursuit as a blurred confusion. We got a flurry of cuts calibrated not in relation to each other or to the action but suggesting in their flurry a vast busyness. Here camerawork and editing didn't serve the specificity of the action but overwhelmed, even buried it."

"Yoji Yamada, the veteran helmer who has become one of Japan's most consistent exports, will crank up his new pic Younger Brother (Otouto) in Jan," notes Mark Schilling in Variety. "After four period pics, including the 2004 Academy Award nommed The Twilight Samurai, Otouto will be Yamada's first contemporary drama in ten years."

Phil Nugent explains why he does not understand why Stanley Kauffmann, who's been reviewing movies for the New Republic since 1958, "should have turned out to be the one with the monopoly on job security."

"Typically, books on the history of American underground filmmaking follow similar timelines and trajectories and include a previously established canon of films and filmmakers," writes Mike Everleth. "However, Naked Lens, Jack Sargeant's survey of how the Beat literary movement influenced the avant-garde film world, gleefully veers off of the well-trodden path to take a fresh look at old classics and welcome new faces into the fold."

"More than any of his peers [Jim] Carrey makes explicit the need and narcissism that are at the anxious heart of comic performance," writes Dennis Lim. "Implicit in his always-on obnoxiousness is a poignant vulnerability.... In I Love You Phillip Morris, set to have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next month, his character is a cop turned con man who unexpectedly falls for his cellmate, played by Ewan McGregor. The prospect of Mr Carrey playing gay inspires a mix of exhilaration and dread. Will he be vulgar and regressive or flamboyant and transgressive? From this paragon of contradiction, perhaps the best we can hope for is all of the above."

Also in the New York Times:

• Jesse Green reports on the Bridge Project, "a new classical repertory company created by [Kevin] Spacey, [Sam] Mendes and Joseph V Melillo, executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Designed to promote and embody the ideal of international, or at least trans-Atlantic, theater, the project aims to exploit the interpretive potential of artists with different backgrounds working together for many months, rather than merely dropping in for a few weeks on the West End or Broadway, waving as they pass."

• Looking back on The Star Wars Holiday Special and "a much shorter but no-less-cracked 1977 takeoff from Donny and Marie, Frank Decaro notes that these "appealingly tasteless artifacts live on in bits and pieces on YouTube, waiting for the unlikely day that the Force - that is, the seemingly unamused George Lucas - lets them see the light of DVD. Until then there is Quark: The Complete Series, Buck Henry's failed outer space sitcom, whose recent release on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment was greeted largely with disbelief - although not displeasure - by cult TV aficionados, who never imagined the day would come."

• Vivien Schweitzer reports on "recent soundtracks written and performed by classically trained musicians who are finding new outlets for their talents in the booming video game industry.... The field has also attracted major film composers like Danny Elfman, Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer." Related, and via Momus: John Lanchester in the London Review of Books: "It seems clear to me that by the time my children are adults, video gaming will be a medium whose importance and cultural ubiquity are at least as great as that of film or television. Whether it will be an artistic medium of equivalent importance is less clear.... The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we're going to have a whole new art form."

Steven Shaviro: "I finally caught up with Abel Ferrara's 2005 film Mary: it was the one Ferrara feature (excluding his pre-Driller Killer pornos) that I had never seen before. Needless to say (at least for me, since I have expressed my enthusiasm for Ferrara before, and also, long ago here), it's amazing." Related: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on in the Tisch Film Review on Go Go Tales, "a world steeped in shadows that obscure faces, overcast by ethically questionable actions. Sometimes we're monsters, sometimes we do the right thing."

Also in the TFR, Ricky D'Ambrose interviews Ivone Margulies, author of Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman's Hyperrealist Everyday.

"If you watch several Holocaust films back to back, as I did recently (during the most wonderful time of the year, no less), you start to notice patterns," writes Ben Crair. "In fact, by my count, there are really only five basic Holocaust plots. Forthwith, Slate's taxonomy of the genre." Related: The brouhaha brought about by the happy-ed-up Holocaust memoir Angel at the Fence reminds Wyatt Mason "of that obscene farce about which I wrote recently, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas."

"The Easy Life's ambivalent worldview may lack the singular formal curiosity of Antonioni (whose L'Eclisse is the target of the film's biggest punch lines) or the carnivalesque lyricism of Fellini," writes Kevin Lee, "but the way it mixes equal parts hipper-than-thou wisecracks, mainstream morality and tasty dollops of la dolce vita may account for its mass appeal."

James Mottram talks with Steven Soderbergh not only about Benicio Del Toro's performance as Che but also about other performances of historical figures, such as Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I and Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Downfall.

Also in the Independent: Rachel Cooke talks with Debra Winger about Rachel Getting Married and her new book, Undiscovered, "a collection of brief essays and poems with illustrations of doors and windows by her friend, the famous tightrope walker Philippe Petit."

Brandon Harris talks with Lynn Shelton (My Effortless Brilliance and, heading to Sundance in a couple of weeks, Humpday) about her media diet.

Alejandro Adams argues the case for Tuya's Marriage.

John Patterson in the Guardian: "'Gimme a double bourbon, a soda back, none o' your Tejano bullshit and get lost.' That's Warren Oates's idea of calmly ordering a drink in the mythic, phantasmagoric Mexico of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, which leads the BFI's Sam Peckinpah retrospective this week. No wonder he dies in the end. It's amazing Oates lasts as long as he does."

Latest bio-entry at Movie Morlocks: suzidoll on Milos Forman.

"Folks who grew up as television came of age will delight in a 20-stamp set included in the Postal Service's plans for 2009 recalling early memories of the medium," reports Randolph E Schmid for the AP.

"The test of a truly original play may lie in its resistance to becoming easy fodder for films," argues Charles McNulty in a blog entry for the Los Angeles Times on Frost/Nixon and Doubt.

"Amália Rodrigues, the singer who made Portugal's hauntingly melancholic fado music famous worldwide, is drawing big crowds again - to see a controversial film about her life." Alison Roberts reports on Amália for the BBC.

Peter Sobczynski talks with Darren Aronofsky about The Wrestler for Hollywood Bitchslap.

"What about crimes against art and what should be viewed as Mr Cialella's heroic act?" Scott Marks comments on the guy who shot a father who'd been blabbing with his son throughout The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

"I wonder if we are living in the End of Days," writes Roger Ebert. "I do not mean that in a biblical sense. I mean that we seem to be irrevocably screwing things up."

Launching memes: Adam Ross ("New Year Movie Resolution") and Harry Tuttle ("Where is Film Criticism heading to?").

Online gazing tip. "Current Wexner Center Media Arts Residency Award recipient Guy Maddin recently sent us a few screen grabs from his current project which will premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January," notes Dave Filipi. "The work will be presented as a large public projection as part of an 'Urban Screens' initiative that includes Mexican director Carlos Reygadas among others." That top snap of Isabella Rossellini will likely remind you of two films at once, right off the bat.

Online browsing tip #1. In a slide show for the New York Times, Kathryn Shattuck talks with photographer Mary Ellen Mark about a few of the photos she's shot on film sets collected in the book Scene Behind the Scene and on view at the Staley-Wise Gallery starting January 9.

Online browsing tip #2. "British Avant Garde Film Graphic Art 1966 - 1985," via Mike Everleth.

Online viewing tip. The BBC looks back on the life and career of Paul Scofield. Thanks, Jerry!

Online viewing tips. Matt Bradshaw rounds up four notable new trailers at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at December 29, 2008 2:02 PM