Odds: Wednesday - Marilyn? And Mary Harron.

By Alison Willmore on 08/02/2006

A few bits: At indieWIRE, Eugene Hernandez reports that Lars von Trier's latest, "The Boss of it All," will have its international premiere at the 2006 Festival du Nouveau Cinema. And it's a comedy! Via the Guardian, Helena Bonham Carter will be in the next Harry Potter film, playing, natural, a villain — Bellatrix Lestrange. And, from Gregg Goldstein at the Hollywood Reporter, Paul Dano continues to have one of the hippest careers around. He'll star opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, "There Will Be Blood."

Andrew Sarris reviews "Clerks II" in the New York Observer, and is ever more amusingly removed from current pop culture:

(Though curiously, I must note, there is another “jackass” flick on the moviegoing horizon, and this one seems to pride itself on its bad taste and, since it is a sequel, on the bad notices received by its predecessor. As far as I know, however, there is no interspecies intercourse, simulated or otherwise, in this other jackass movie—though I speak only from having seen its coming attractions. It started out as a television series, I believe, whose point was to show the many ways that human beings will make fools of themselves in order to get some media attention.)

In the Telegraph, director Mary Harron discusses "Mulholland Drive" with Sheila Johnston:

"It's David Lynch's film about Hollywood and the underlying paranoia you always have - I always have - there. You feel your friends can be your enemies and your enemies can be your friends; you can be famous and then you can fall, just like that. It has a phantasmagorical quality, a bit like a dream, and also a bit like a nightmare. It can switch on a dime, and the film caught that brilliantly."

Nathan Rabin interviews Alan Arkin at the Onion AV Club; Michael Guillen at The Evening Class interviews Jenni Olson, whose "The Joy of Life" is one of two films about the Golden Gate Bridge as a suicide landmark making the festival rounds (the other being Eric Steel's "The Bridge"). At the Sydney Morning Herald, George Palathingal interviews Martin Freeman about the upcoming "Confetti" and the burden of being Tim from "The Office," while at The Australian, Rosalie Higson speaks to Michael Apted about "49 Up":

"Had I started the film 10 years later, I think it would have been very different," Apted says by telephone from his base in Los Angeles.

"The film really outgrew its politics and became much more character and human issue-driven, and therefore of more substance than if politics were uppermost. It's still there because their lives are political in a way, but I always say that this is only a snapshot of England through the eyes of people who were born in the mid-'50s, half a century ago. I don't mean that the class system has evaporated, far from it, but I don't think it is quite as striking and as devastating as it used to be."

In the LA Times, Robert W. Welkos writes a lengthy piece on Sherrie Lea Laird, a 43-year-old Canadian woman who believes she's the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, and the "past life regression" therapist who believes her. Ah, August.

Girish has all the links for today's avant-garde blog-a-thon, along with a lovely piece on
Joseph Cornell's The Children's Trilogy.

And at Entertainment Weekly, Gary Susman examines the role Robin Williams' facial hair (or lack thereof) has had on the quality of the films in which he's starred. This is quite similar to a conversation we had with a colleague after a recent screening of "The Night Listener," in which we concluded that the Beard of Seriousness roles don't necessarily encompass all of Williams' attempts at being an actor to be reckoned with. He will sometimes go clean-shaven to play an ominous crazy — see "One Hour Photo" and "Insomnia." Incidentally, in another conversation with another colleague, we decided that a short scene in the aforementioned Patrick Stettner film in which Williams is tasered could have gone on for another hour and a half and been a perfectly enjoyable feature unto itself.

+ Von Trier's "Boss" Set for Montreal Fest (indieWIRE)
+ Bonham Carter's spell with Harry Potter (Guardian)
+ "Sunshine" kid draws "Blood" role (Hollywood Reporter)
+ Intercontinental Intrigue Ravishes Screen in Vice (NY Observer)
+ Film-makers on film: Mary Harron (Telegraph)
+ Alan Arkin (Onion AV Club)
+ THE JOY OF LIFE—The Evening Class Interview With Jenni Olson (The Evening Class)
+ Freeman tries his hand at marriage (Sydney Morning Herald)
+ Apted's seven-year itch scratched again (The Australian)
+ Giving more life to Marilyn? (LA Times)
+ Joseph Cornell (GirishShambu.com)
+ Beard Science (Entertainment Weekly)