Shorts, 4/10.

By David Hudson on 04/10/2009

Jahsonic salutes Max von Sydow @ 80. So does Peter Cowie in Criterion's Current: "Not enough people know that Max was among the most gifted Swedish stage actors of his generation, if not the most gifted, and during his years at Malmö Civic Theatre, he appeared in nine productions under the direction of Bergman, who said at the time: 'Max is wonderful. You'll see, posterity will consider him as one of the greatest actors of our time.'" More from Joseph "Jon" Lanthier (Bright Lights) and, in German, Gerhard Midding (Welt) and André Weikard (Tagesspiegel).

Shawn Levy notes that Gus Van Sant has confirmed - via Twitter - that his next film will be Dustin Lance Black's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Update: Alison Willmore notes that the tweet seems to have disappeared. Update, 4/11: Well, that wasn't Gus Van Sant after all. Shawn Levy explains.

"Paolo Sorrentino's 'Il Divo,' a biopic of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti, and Matteo Garrone's organized crime thriller 'Gomorrah,' both starring Toni Servillo, were the top nominees for the Italian Academy's 2009 David di Donatello awards." Massimo David reports for the Alternative Film Guide.

"We're only four months into 2009 and the year is already becoming more interesting in terms of DVD releases than 2008" - particularly for fans of Japanese Cinema, notes Kimberly Lindbergs.

Luke Fowler's work combines the social engagement and fascination with popular culture of Jeremy Deller with Mark Leckey's sense of material, presence and cultural identity," writes George Clark in the new, downloadable issue of Mousse. "Fowler's work has moved to bare the mark and formal aesthetic of filmmakers Gregory J Markopoulos and Robert Beavers while continuing to draw from a range of cultural artifacts and ephemera in an attempt to construct and understand past histories and resurrect abandoned projects and figures."

"'In the City of Sylvia' is a love-letter, of sorts," writes Neil Young: "a love-letter to the city of Strasbourg (particularly the scruffier corners and back-streets of the genteel centre), and a love-letter to love itself, to the idea of romantic pursuit and romantic reverie, romantic recollection, romantic self-delusion, romantic idealism, the powerful evanescence of young love." Related: Adrian Curry collects the posters for The Auteurs' Notebook.

David Cairns on "The Hands of Orlac" (1924): "[Robert] Wiene here achieves delirious effects without overtly contorted or theatrical sets, although the designs by Hans Rouc and Stefan Wessely are glossy, disconcerting and non-ergonomic.... [Conrad] Veidt is extraordinary, a floppy-haired stick insect, his brow furrowed into a taut brainscape of clenched convolutions. He does things in this film no actor has ever even thought of doing. I mean, he tries to throw his hands off!"

Kevin Lee on "The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" (1953): "Made in the middle of his underrated Mexican period, Luis Buñuel's perverse comedy about the world's most inept (or most psychically potent?) serial killer finds Buñuel settling into the style that would dominate the remainder of his career: a deceptively banal mise-en-scene of deadpan performances and surfaces occasionally yielding to eruptions of psychologically charged surreality."

"On his DVD commentary track, Peter Bogdanovich notes, in passing, that some call Fritz Lang's 'Clash by Night' (1952) a film noir, which he refers to as a genre. He dismisses such claims on the ground that it is not 'a thriller or a suspense piece.'" Megan Abbott, writing at Noir of the Week, begs to differ: "[W]hat Bogdanovich misses most is the fever that pulses through the movie is the same one that burns through most classic film noir: that constant, brooding fear of sexual betrayal and loss of power. In fact, few movies better capture the post-war mood of gender anxiety and rage."

"Long live (or is it die?) the zombie: the official monster of the recession." Lev Grossman explains in Time.

"City of Life," Dubai's first big-budget film, is also "an attempt to create a film industry out of the sand; a cultural kickstart you can only imagine happening in Dubai." Phil Hoad reports. Also in the Guardian, David Thomson: "So the new generation of movie experts - the bloggers, the instant pundits - have jumped to the optimistic conclusion that the one good thing about this new depression (Our Depression, they call it) is that the phenomenon of people going back to the movies will lead to new and magical set of films like those made for the 1930s. To quote a great line of the late 1920s, 'Wouldn't it be pretty to think so!'"

In the Daily Beast, Rachel Syme talks with Drew Barrymore about Little Edie Beale and HBO's "Grey Gardens" - plus an excerpt from Ethan Coen's play, "Waiting."

Brendan Kiley in the Stranger: "'Absurdistan' pitches its tent in Euro-whimsy territory, just outside the capital city of 'Amélie': Rube Goldberg contraptions, animal humor (some involving donkeys), sad-sack men with baggy faces, not much dialogue, a happy hooker, true love conquering all."

"Why have the efforts of so many filmmakers to imagine the lives and careers of rockers, headbangers, punks, mods, queercore ranters, glam artists, and other imaginary ax men and preening lead vocalists been so uniformly lackluster?" asks Damon Smith. "Despite my misgivings, there are at least a handful of dramatic films I'd list as current contenders for the Great Fictional Rock Movie title." That shortlist is then followed by another: "B movies and cult classics that, while not great, are at least fun."

Economist Dean Baker picks his top five films about money for FilmInFocus.

Jason Kottke's got some notes on "Objectified."

At GreenCine Daily, Aaron Hillis revisits "La Grande Bouffe": "If the film purposely and perversely evades any editorialization, are we meant to laugh or be thoroughly outraged?"

More on the "Pre-Code Hollywood Collection": Sean Axmaker (Parallax View) and Erich Kuersten (Bright Lights After Dark).

"Killer Films and Massify.com have announced an innovative two-year partnership to develop and produce original content entirely through Massify's online film production network." Peter Knegt calls up Christine Vachon for indieWIRE.

"Indian movie producers and distributors are refusing to release movies to big theater chains until they get a guarantee of 50 percent of the revenue from ticket sales on all movies for the first four weeks of their run," reports Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times. "The dispute, which has been simmering for years, is coming to a boil at a difficult time for Indian movies. The country's big Hindi-language film industry, known as Bollywood, has not produced a big hit in the last three months. Box-office revenue fell 2.3 percent in the first quarter from sales in the period a year earlier, to 2.6 billion rupees, or $52 million, according to IBOS, a film-industry news service."

"If movie producers and consumers both tend to find sequels a win-win proposition - despite the debatable quality of these cash-grab endeavors - then it's no surprise that video game studios view the issue likewise," writes Nick Schager here at IFC. "In the past few years, the combination of hot big-ticket franchises, enormous budgets, tech advances and a more-is-more ethos has finally pushed video games' 'sequelitis' into a distinctly summer movie realm, with the marketplace flooded with - and increasingly defined by - A-list action series installments reminiscent of the slam-bang event pics of Michael Bay."

Suppose Criterion released video games... via Filmoculous.

Online browsing tip. From Jason Kottke: "Josh Poehlein's 'Modern History' project takes screen grabs from YouTube videos and assembles them into collages."

Online viewing tip #1. Today's trailer everyone's talking about: "Moon." Earlier: Reviews from Sundance. Also: Nice poster.

Online viewing tip #2. IFC goes shopping for used VHS tapes with Daniel Johnston.

Online viewing tip #3. IFC again, what can I say. But for one week only, here's "The Water," a new 15-minute short film directed by Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew, starring Feist and Cillian Murphy." And Pitchfork and Drew and Feist discussing the collaboration.

Online viewing tips, round 1. On Tuesday, Michel Gondry will launch a new site and release a new collection of music videos on DVD. In the meantime, Ekkehard Knörer has found 18 of the 20 videos, noting, too, that the quality of the online presentations is often downright terrible, making that DVD "worth every cent." Also via Cargo: B-Movies at AMC.

Online viewing tips, round 2. Here at IFC, Michelle Orange presents "10 Brief Blasts of Radiohead in Pop Culture."

[Photo: Max von Sydow]

Tags: Conrad Veidt, Dustin Lance Black, Fritz Lang, Gomorrah, Gus Van Sant, Il Divo, Italian Cinema, Luis Buñuel, Luke Fowler, Max von Sydow, Robert Wiene