Odds: "Film is a lying media."

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By Alison Willmore on 08/15/2008

Filed under: Odds

Werner Herzog could have a solid side career doing Q&As -- we certainly tried our hardest to get him to sit down with Guy Maddin back in June, but their schedules couldn't quite work. At Esquire, Stephen Garrett moderates a conversation between the director and his longtime friend, the subject of "Man on Wire," tightrope artist Philippe Petit:

PP: Do you remember the first films you saw?
WH: Yes--both of them bad and disappointing. One was about Eskimos building an igloo, and they did a lousy job. And I could tell right away because I had grown up in the Alps. It didn't impress me at all.

PP: Film is a lying media.

Hou Hsiao-hsien (!) is making a big-budget martial arts epic -- "The Assassin" will reunite "Three Times"'s lovers Shu Qi and Chang Chen. [Variety] And Quentin Tarantino has added Mike Myers (!!) to the cast of "Inglorious Bastards" -- he'll play British General Ed Fenech, "a military mastermind who takes part in hatching a plot to wipe out Nazi leaders." [Variety]

So, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" has been bumped to summer of next year. Alas, Entertainment Weekly already put the film on its fall preview. At the magazine's blog, Sean Smith expresses mild displeasure: "In an irony sure to set blogger hearts beating giddily, the film graces the cover of EW's new fall preview issue, which hits stands today. EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin' information." Well, I wouldn't say my heart is racing, but what the heck: Hee.

Sylvia Adcock at the LA Times checks in on University of North Carolina School of the Arts, creative spawning ground of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and, more recently, Aaron Katz.

Has the AFI Catalog ground to a halt? Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily has posted an email stating "the AFI laid off nearly all of the staff, leaving only two full-time cataloguers and the Executive Editor."

[Photo: "Encounters at the End of the World," THINKFilm, 2008]

+ Werner Herzog Walks the Rope (Esquire)
+ Hou's 'Assassin' secures funds (Variety)
+ Mike Myers enlists in 'Bastards' (Variety)
+ NEWS FLASH: 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' Bumped to Summer 2009 (Entertainment Weekly)
+ A North Carolina film program's distinctive voice (LA Times)
+ AFI Film Catalog Project Delayed: Why? (Deadline Hollywood Daily)