The MTV generation.

Thursday, February 1, 2007 | 5:13 PM

Blam. An overview of recent quotables:

Talking to Phillip McCarthy at the Sydney Morning Herald, Joe Carnahan, evidently smarting from the critical reception with which "Smokin' Aces" was met, snarls the following about his film's being labeled Tarantinoesque:

"There seems to be this school of know-nothing critics who, when someone so much as touches a gun or utters some variation of the F-word, insist that it was all cribbed from Tarantino," Carnahan says. "I find that absurd. It's as though sliced white bread, the internal combustion engine and the neo-noir pulp thriller were all invented in 1992 by this genius. So what were people like Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah or the Coen brothers doing before that?...It's my big beef at the moment. Since when did everything with an overlay of violence or a hit man become the intellectual property of Tarantino? We bitch about things being derivative but then we act like there's no film history pre-1992. It's really disturbing."

Well, we'll give him this — we'd never have labeled "Smokin' Aces" a Tarantino rip-off. Guy Ritchie, sure, but Tarantino? Meh...too easy. Over at Pullquote, the cinetrix points to Carnahan's blog, where he mocks A.O. Scott's failure to be Tony Scott, and offers a spot that makes use of Scott's scorcher of a negative review to hype the film.

At the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Kimberly Chun talks with Werner Herzog about "The Wild Blue Yonder":

SFBG You talk about long shots being unheard of on TV. But in a lot of ways you've created a music video, though MTV might be considered the polar opposite of what you do. Or do you have an affinity for MTV?

WH I think MTV would love the film. Truly, they would love it. [Pauses] Er, I may be wrong. But I could imagine that the people who watch MTV would love the film.

Kuriko Sato has a lengthy interview with Rinko Kikuchi (now with Oscar nomination!) at Midnight Eye:

What kind of films do you like to watch?

I like John Cassavetes' films a lot. They influenced me strongly. I also like Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, films that describe the fragility of human beings.

That is serious cinema. Do you consider yourself a cinephile?

Yes, cinema is a kind of bible to me. I studied a lot from films - history, music, relationships between man and woman (laughs). I never did much studying in school. I was saved by cinema. So I figured that if I could enter the world of cinema, my life would be saved.

At The Age, Jim Schembri has a punchy Q&A with Chris Noonan of "Babe" and "Miss Potter":

Is it true you actually cried when you read [the screenplay for "Miss Potter"], you big wuss?

I know. I was a very big wuss. But I am a very big wuss. If you make a cute, moving nappy commercial, I will probably cry. I am a sucker. I surrender to the manipulations of anyone with a camera and a soundtrack. When it comes down to a feature film, however, I don't surrender so easily. It has to be pretty good before it gets me.

And over at the Japan Times, Mark Schilling talks with John Williams, a British expat living in Japan who's just directed his second film, "Starfish Hotel."

When you live here, you realize how diverse Japanese society is and how diverse the Japanese film industry is. Other people are working here who are not Japanese, who are Chinese or whatever. But still -- sometimes I think I want to make a film under a Japanese name and see if I get a different reaction (laughs).

Schilling also reviews the film, here.

+ Pulp friction (Sydney Morning Herald)
+ Grizzly spawn (SF Bay Guardian)
+ Rinko Kikuchi (Midnight Eye)
+ One for the wusses (The Age)
+ Tokyo's dark side (Japan Times)