Shorts, 5/9.

By David Hudson on 05/09/2009

"It's about time that I let you in on something, faithful readers of my NEWS REEL, before you learn it from some other source," writes Wim Wenders: "I'm planning a movie based on a Japanese novel by the great Ryu Murakami, called: 'In the Miso Soup.' A hell of a thriller, well, you might even think of it as a horror story. Anyway, I was so terrified reading it that the only way to get it out of my system again seemed to actually shoot it! Which I will do now early next year, in Tokyo." And, as an "apprentice of horror," he's attending a "Masters of Horror" dinner with John Landis, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper - and Michael Mann, among others. Guillermo del Toro tells him: "I know the book, Wim. I tell you: you must NOT leave out the gore! You must face it and shoot it, all of it! That's pure cinema!"

Related: FilmInFocus runs a brief extract from Wim Wenders's "The Art of Seeing: Essays and Conversations" on "Wings of Desire."

"Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's fifth narrative feature 'L'Arbre et la Forêt' ('The Tree and the Forest') has won the Jean Vigo Award 2009," reports Fabien Lemercier for Cineuropa. "Presented by a jury composed of former winners, critics and exhibitors, the Jean Vigo Award honors independence of spirit and originality of style."

"Gomorrah" was the big winner at Italy's David di Donatello awards last night. At the Alternative Film Guide, Massimo David has all the nominees and winners.

With "Jerichow" opening at Film Forum on Friday, Dennis Lim calls up Christian Petzold to talk about the film's inspiration - Harun Farocki calls "The Postman Always Rings Twice" the "American class-struggle movie" - and about the rise of the so-called Berlin School: "We told ourselves we need to make realistic movies. There were no movies about '89 in Germany, no movies about the German Democratic Republic, no movies about the new bourgeoisie. It was as if German movies were not paying attention."

Andy Rector posts a series of notes brought on by Adrian Martin's review of Richard Brody's "Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard." Related online viewing: The Auteurs' Daniel Kasman has the trailer for Jean-Luc Godard's "Socialisme."

"Chris Marker's 1977 film 'A Grin Without A Cat' (finally released on DVD this month, by Icarus Films) is, along with Emile de Antonio's work, one of the defining political 'anthology' films of the 60s and 70s (which can also be called a 'compilation' or 'essay' film if you like)," writes Williams Cole, argues that it "should be shown to younger generations of Americans whose understanding of the meaning that socialism had throughout the world doesn't go beyond a kitschy reference to mid-1980s anti-communist films like 'Red Dawn.' The film is a - if not the - visual narrative history of the tremendous popular anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements that swept through Southeast Asia, Latin America, and even western industrial democracies in the 1960s and 70s."

Also in the May issue of the Brooklyn Rail: Ben Travers on Loree Rackstraw's "Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut as I Knew Him," Jessica Loudis on Phillip Lopate's "Notes on Sontag," Lisa Moricoli-Latham on Joe Swanberg's "Alexander the Last," Mary Hanlon on Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" and David N Meyer on Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Three Monkeys," Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo" and Stephen Frears's "The Hit."

"If Hollywood has made another film with as detailed a depiction of class difference and class coexistence as 'Cluny Brown,' I can't think of it offhand," writes Dan Sallitt in The Auteurs' Notebook. "The social structure of 1938 England serves the filmmakers, director Ernst Lubitsch and his screenwriters Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt and James Hilton, less as a platform for political advocacy than as a diorama of established roles, jobs, and relations that characters inhabit with grace even as their adherence to their functions is turned into comedy."

"'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' was made at a time when all crime films seemed to have Dave Grusin scores, when mainstream movies embraced a real world of previously unseen cruminess ('Fat City' and 'The Last Detail' are other examples), a world of strip mall parking lots polka-doted with oil stains, cramped tacky trailers, anonymous functional official buildings, decrepit bars the size of a dirigible hanger, denuded train stations, and sports arenas filled with drunken, hollering morons thirsting for blood." Doug Holm: "It's not a noir really, more a film soleil, but it has the inexorable doom that drenches most noir artifacts.... It's difficult to imagine such a sedate film being made for the big screen by a major studio today, a film that is both quietly internal and all on the surface at the same time."

Meantime, Glenn Kenny follows up on his previous assertion that Grusin is, shall we say, the film's weakest link.

"Asia Argento is a post-cinematic celebrity, and she inhabits movie and video screens in a far different way than older generations of actresses did," argues Steven Shaviro. "Argento fearlessly and knowningly exemplifies what Jean Baudrillard rather hysterically denounces as the 'obscenity' and 'transparency' of postmodern society."

Chul-soo Park will direct an adaptation of his "301/302," reports Dave McNary for Variety. "10A/10B" will star Marisa Tomei and Liv Tyler.

"Universal is developing a modern retelling of the classic novella 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,' with Keanu Reeves attached to star and Justin Haythe, writer of 'Revolutionary Road,' penning the script." Borys Kit and Steven Zeitchik have more in the Hollywood Reporter.

"It's amazing to think that 'King of the Children' [Chen Kaige, 1987] was once considered part of a breakthrough movement to bring the 'real' China to the screen, in opposition to the whitewashed, progagandizing cinema of an idealized China that was the norm (and still is, though in a more sophisticated form)." Kevin Lee: "In its own way 'King of the Children' idealizes the rural peasantry, lensing the dirt-poor environment in lush, romantic hues."

The latest addition to Scott Tobias's "New Cult Canon" at the AV Club: Guy Maddin's "Careful."

"It's not often you come across a revenge thriller driven by God, goodness and mercy - let alone one that's partially set in a Viennese house of prostitution." Ella Taylor on "Revanche" for NPR.

"For the better part of 83 years, Paul Newman made pretty much everything look easy," writes ST VanAirsdale in Movieline. "The iconic roles, the powerful auto-racing interests, the staggering philanthropy, and a half-century of marriage against all Hollywood odds are just the obvious successes, and 'Paul Newman: A Life,' Shawn Levy's sweeping new biography of the actor, doesn't necessarily contradict that conventional wisdom. But what it reveals about Newman - or, more specifically, what it reminds us of -- points out the far more mixed fortunes of one of America's greatest movie stars." Related: Ray Pride interviews Levy.

For the LA Weekly, Ernest Hardy talks with Cheryl Dunye about her "new burst of creative energy."

The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov talks with screenwriter and director Kevin Reynolds.

"With Swine Fl... er, H1N1 running rampant across the globe, GQ sought out the man who first predicted a Flu-Driven apocalypse, Stephen King, for his take on the happenings in the world at large," writes Alex Pappademas. "Shockingly, he's not very optimistic."

Kristin Thompson talks with Nina Paley about "Sita Sings the Blues."

For the Nashville Scene, Jim Ridley reports on the controversy "House of Numbers" has sparked at the recent Nashville and Boston International film festivals. Critics claim the doc promotes an "AIDS denialist agenda."

"Future historians can offer a more complete account of how costumed crusaders came to dominate Hollywood in the early 21st century," writes Jesse Walker in Reason. "But one factor that has to be acknowledged is the superhero film's philosophical flexibility. As comic-book crimefighters found a mass audience at the multiplex, they displayed an almost unerring ability to invoke important issues without clearly coming down on one side or the other. There are many reasons why Peter Parker's alter ego can both strike poses with Rumsfeld and bump fists with Obama. But surely one of them is that Republicans and Democrats alike see their worldviews reflected onscreen when Spider-Man - and Batman, and Iron Man, and others - battle bad guys."

Kevin Sampson: "'Awaydays' producer David Hughes and I are unusual in that we have a background in music - Dave was the keyboard player in Dalek-I and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, I used to write for NME - and we really wanted to clear a glut of new wave classics for that £10,000. We had our work cut out." And Tony Evans talks with Sampson for the London Times.

But back in the Guardian: Simon Louvish reviews Miranda Seymour's "Chaplin's Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill." As the Blind Girl in "City Lights," she "had the distinction of being the only leading lady of Chaplin's silent features whom he had neither married nor been linked to by a romantic affair. In fact, though he cast her for her photogenic beauty - without a screen test - they did not get on and he fired her halfway through the two-year shoot, only to have to woo her back." She "survived Chaplin's ruthless direction to find herself, briefly, world-famous. She became attached to the hypochondriac musician Oscar Levant and the neurotic-but-suave Cary Grant, who was her second husband."

With "Mark of an Angel," an "understated psychological thriller," due in UK theaters on May 22, Angelique Chrisafis profiles Sandrine Bonnaire; Geoffrey Macnab talks with Richard "Jaws" Kiel; and Jerry Morgan tours festivals with a solar-powered cinema.

Tim Murphy talks with Parker Posey about throwing. Pots, that is. Via Movie City News.

The number of calls for boycotting this or that movie has become "almost absurdly routine," reports Michael Cieply in the New York Times.

"Xbox Live has already given the gaming world its equivalent to 'Pulp Fiction' in the guise of 'Braid,'" argues Nick Schager.

Also here at IFC, Michelle Orange, Matt Singer and Alison Willmore issue a "Shout-Out to the Silent Sidekicks," from Teller in "Penn and Teller Get Killed" to Harpo Marx in "Duck Soup."

For Vanity Fair, Julian Sancton presents a guide to the "Seven Circles of Development Hell."

In the Independent, Alice Jones collects comments on favorite movies solicited by school kids from politicians, filmmakers and pop stars.

"10 Best Head-Scratching Stories, Explained." In 140 characters or less. By Mathew Honan for Wired. Via MCN.

"Prolific screen and television writer John Furia Jr, who penned popular series including 'Bonanza,' 'The Waltons' and 'Hawaii Five-O' among many others, has died," reports the AP. "He was 79."

New blog on the block: Southeast Asian Film Studies Institute. Tilman Baumgaertel clarifies.

Online resource. "So you want to study cinema? Free sample introductions to Film Studies" from Catherine Grant.

Online viewing tip #1. Donald Richie at Berkeley. Via Criterion's Current.

Online viewing tip #2. "In this month's episode of "Rewatch," Matt Zoller Seitz shares his thoughts while rewatching Michel Gondry's 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.'"

Online viewing tip #3. Once again, Matt Zoller Seitz, this time on "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" - and actually, a whole lot more, too - for Moving Image Source.

Online viewing tip #4. Empire reunites "The Goonies" - director Richard Donner, too. Steven Spielberg, by the way, has guest-edited Empire's 20th anniversary issue.

Tags: Asia Argento, Chen Kaige, Cheryl Dunye, Chris Marker, Christian Petzold, David Fincher, Gomorrah, Guy Maddin, Jacques Martineau, Jean-Luc Godard, Jerichow, Kevin Reynolds, Michel Gondry, Nina Paley, Olivier Ducastel, Parker Posey, Paul Newman, Sandrine Bonnaire, Virginia Cherrill, Wim Wenders