1. "In Search of Lost Time," or "Who's Afraid of Hou Hsiao-hsien?": A Reverse Shot symposium on the great Taiwanese filmmaker. Link above takes you to the introduction by RS editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert. Here is the main contents page. Among the House contributors involved: Andrew Chan on Cute Girl; Cheerful Wind; & The Green, Green Grass of Home (also The Sandwich Man); Kevin B. Lee on City of Sadness; and Travis Mackenzie Hoover on The Puppetmaster.

["In 1988 a group of international critics voted Hou "one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema," and in another survey completed by Film Comment and the Village Voice at the end of the Nineties, he was named "director of the decade." It's worth questioning, however, what his admittedly rarefied brand of art cinema means to filmmaking and film history—even history itself —if he's not selling tickets anywhere but on the festival circuit. Just how can we support such grand claims for his importance, when he's preaching to a ready choir and largely empty pews? Easy: Wedding political filmmaking with a technique at once naturalistic and highly aestheticized, Hou has made films that wrestle, variously, and either directly or metaphorically, with personal and national histories, the struggles between Taiwan and Chinese nationalism, the encroachment of capital on an ever-evolving way of life, and, most recently, the legacy of cinema itself. "Essential viewing" couldn't be more aptly applied to the works of any other living director, and even if Hou's cascading histories may be consigned solely to posthumous recuperation, we're happy to stand up now and plant a signpost along the way."] Continue Reading »

1. Mike D'Angelo's New York Film Festival page, just updated with his (at the moment) best movie of the year, Afterschool. A prior Cannes wrap-up of Antonio Campos' film at GreenCine.

["Remember in Mulholland Dr. when that creepy dude points at the headshot and says, flatly, "This is the girl"? Try to imagine me heavier and much more intimidating as I tell you with equally unshakable certitude: This is the film."] Continue Reading »

1. Jim Emerson points us to two pieces of note about the critical profession: "Criticizing the Critics" by Kathleen Murphy & ""Critic" is a four-letter word" by Roger Ebert.

["Criticism is a destructive activity. If I like something and the critics didn't, they can't see what's right there before their eyes because they're in love with some theory. They don't have feelings; they have systems. They think they know better than creators. They praise what they would have done, instead of what an artist has done. They use foreign words to show off. They're terrified of being exposed as the empty poseurs they are. They are leeches on the skin of art."] Continue Reading »

1. "Mad Women": House contributor Matt Maul on the ladies of Men.

["One of my minor nits with Mad Men is how often its female characters are depicted as the downtrodden, helpless victims of a male dominated 1960s world. Often, plot elements over exaggerate the plight of these women for the sake of drama and Mad Men's more "progressive" contemporary audience. Despite living in a world of ubiquitous sexism that makes us cringe today, the majority of real women I know from that era managed to live happy, fulfilling lives. And, this happiness, I submit, wasn't a manifestation of some sort of sociological Stockholm Syndrome. Truth be told, these women were as much A PART of the mores of that time as they were its victims. That's why I got a charge out of "A Night to Remember," Mad Men's eighth outing for Season 2. It finally allowed two of the more oppressed characters, Betty and Peggy, to push back. Don't get me wrong; it's still very much a man's world. But this time, these women don't submissively acquiesce to the testosterone induced flogging that society has been dishing out for them on a weekly basis. In fact, a theme running through this episode concerns the power that females, knowingly or not, can wield in that world BECAUSE of their gender."] Continue Reading »

1. "Time for Showdown or Shutdown at The Star-Ledger": From The New York Post. More at The Wall Street Journal and the Ledger itself.

["THE Newhouse family said that it doesn't expect to get the amount of cost-saving concessions it needs to save the Star-Ledger, the largest daily in New Jersey, and said it will issue notices to all employees later this week saying that the paper will be sold or - failing that - closed on Jan. 5. Back on July 31, the company said it needed to get 200 people to accept voluntary severance packages at the Star-Ledger and another 25 buyouts at the Trenton Times, plus concessions from the pressmen, mailers and drivers. While it has reached a tentative pact with mailers and pressmen, the company said negotiations with the drivers have stalled. "Since it is doubtful that the drivers will ratify an agreement by Oct. 8, 2008, we will be sending formal notices to all employees this week. . . advising [them] that the company will be sold or failing that, that it will close operation on Jan. 5, 2009," said Star-Ledger Publisher George Arwady."] Continue Reading »