Shorts, 2/25.

By David Hudson on 02/25/2009

"How accurate was Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' about the future?" asks Martin Belam. Via Ideas.

Chris MaGee lists "Our Top Ten Favorite Japanese Horror Films."

"Studios that are trying to fill 2010 release slates are weighing spec packages that would give them either an Adam McKay-directed action comedy starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, or a drama that will reunite Matt Damon with his 'Bourne Ultimatum' scribe George Nolfi," reports Variety's Michael Fleming. Also, Tatiana Siegel reports that Diablo Cody is producing an adaptation of SG Browne's upcoming novel "Breathers: A Zombie's Lament."

And: Cate Blanchett will play Maid Marian in Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" (formerly "Nottingham", still with Russell Crowe in the lead).

The Guardian runs Mike Leigh's Oscar diary, while the New York Observer runs Spencer Morgan's.

"Two days after the awards ceremony in Hollywood, some one thousand people lined up at movie theaters in Tokyo's Marunouchi district to see the film for which director Yojiro Takita brought home an Oscar," reports Coco Masters for Time. "'Departures' ('Okuribito') is the comical and dramatic story of an unemployed cellist who finds work cleaning and preparing the deceased for burial.... he win came as a surprise to many - and none more than Takita, the director, who hadn't prepared an acceptance speech. Not only was it the first time for Japan to take home two Oscars - the 12-minute 'The House of Small Cubes' ('Tsumiki no Ie') won for Best Animated Short - but both films were in categories never before won by Japanese films."

"A rare new documentary that really belongs on the big screen, 'The Betrayal's flowing lyricism gracefully connects a poignant family history to larger socio-political and extra-large spiritual themes," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "It's an almost sinfully beautiful movie about ugly global realities."

Alvaro Vargas Llosa in the New Republic: "What the overly PC critics of 'Slumdog Millionare' still don't understand."

"'Distinguished' is precisely the right word for 'The Fan,' as it is not, as it happens, one of Preminger's great films," writes Glenn Kenny in The Auteurs' Notebook. "For me, what really sells it is that it's at heart an ideal version of 'Lady Windemere's Fan' for people who aren't crazy about 'Lady Windemere's Fan.' And I'm one of those people."

"[B]efore hitting his zenith (everything from 1975's 'Deep Red' through 1987's 'Opera'), even [Dario Argento's] hokier-plotted giallos like 'Four Flies on Grey Velvet' (his third feature and last leg in the so-called 'animal trilogy,' following 'The Bird with the Crystal Plumage' and 'The Cat O' Nine Tails') bare more suspense, panache and memorable sequences than most of what passes for modern American horror and crime thrillers," writes Aaron Hillis. More from Peter Nellhaus.

The news that Peter Chernin would be leaving News Corp has sent "Hollywood and Wall Street into a paroxysm of speculation about the leadership of some of Los Angeles' most powerful movie and television studios and about the whole future of the Murdoch empire," reports Stephen Foley in the Independent.

The AP notes that Philip Roth has two novels in the pipeline: "Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced Wednesday that the Pulitzer Prize-winning author will have a novel out this fall, titled 'The Humbling,' about an aging stage performer. Next year, he'll have another book, 'Nemesis,' set during a polio epidemic in 1944."

At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow remembers Philip José Farmer, one of the great, towering talents of science fiction, the man whose Riverworld' books transported me farther than any other sf I'd read at that point." 1918 - 2009. More from John Coulthart and Lev Grossman (Time).

Online listening tip. Glenn Kenny points to Aaron Aradillas's interview with cinematographer Owen Roizman, who's fairly ticked that William Friedkin didn't even consult him before retiming the color of "The French Connection" for what's become a controversial Blu-ray release.

Online viewing tip #1. Francis Ford Coppola offers a hand-held video introduction to his upcoming film, Tetro, at the new site. Via Movie City News.

Online viewing tip #2. "'The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds' is an experiment in scale," writes Claire L Evans in Seed: "By condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video is a self-contained timepiece." Via the House Next Door.

Online viewing tip #3. At Twitch, Todd Brown has the trailer for "Alejandro Amenábar's massive historical epic 'Agora.'"

[Photos: "2001: A Space Odyssey," MGM, 1968; "The Fan," 20th Century Fox, 1949; "Tetro," American Zoetrope, 2009]

Tags: Dario Argento, Francis Ford Coppola, Mike Leigh, Philip José Farmer, Slumdog Millionaire, Stanley Kubrick, William Friedkin