Links for the Day (July 18th, 2008)

1. "SnagFilms launched today": The indieWIRE buyer goes live. Link above is a summary report by Spout's Paul Moore. The site itself is here.

["At SnagFilms.com, you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we also make it easy for you to take our films with you and put them anywhere on the web. When you embed a widget on your web site, you open a virtual movie theater and become a “Filmanthropist.” Donate your pixels and support independent film! And click on “info” on any widget to learn more about that film and a related charity you can also support.
With a library of 225 documentaries, and rapidly growing — browse by topic or go through the alphabet from A-Z — you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. There is a widget for EVERY film, so any film you like can be snagged. To learn more about snagging go here. Enjoy your visit, snag a film, and keep checking back because we’re adding great news titles daily. "]

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2. "Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks as Ian Fleming": Jeffrey Hill Q's up with the new Bond novel.

["Faulks wrote Devil May Care as a facsimile of Fleming's work, designed to fit in Zelig-like as the thirteenth Bond novel. It fits imperfectly, of course. Faulks described his approach as recreating the good things in the series and discarding the bad things. He also noted that Ian Fleming had left Bond in pretty bad mental and physical shape by The Man With the Golden Gun – not just as a result of Bond’s traumatic adventures, but also as a result of Fleming’s own failing health. Faulks takes the initiative to bring Bond back from Fleming’s despair more to give himself breathing room than anything else, and he puts Bond back in his prime. It’s okay that in the transition Faulks forgoes some of the character depth that Fleming had achieved because the imitation has an authenticity about it. Faulks understands and practices expertly the "Fleming sweep", which, I think, saves him from the pitfalls that come with taking all the good stuff and leaving out all the bad. Granted, the plot in Devil May Care is more complicated than it is clever or ingenuous and several of Faulk’s throwbacks to previous sequences are over-the-top, but otherwise it is paced like a Bond novel and has a similar humor about it that makes everything else seem like it could conceivably come from Fleming’s pen."]

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3. A perfect pair on Mamma Mia!. Our own N.P. Thompson and John Simon.

["The first half-hour of Mamma Mia! is so dreadful it suggests an elephantine equivalent of a stoner comedy. The jokes aren’t funny, or even recognizable as jokes (Baranski lifting a towel from a basket and reacting in horror at the open-mouthed fish inside it, or Baranski stumbling about the pier in her white high heels—slapstick isn’t her métier; the hideous, low-cut, sleeveless, tropical watercolor frocks Ann Roth designed for her are similarly unsuitable), and the first two musical numbers range from flat (“Honey, Honey”) to enervated (“Money, Money, Money”). The “Money” production, in which Streep, who lives in a gorgeous setting on a rustic island off the coast of Greece, seems particularly redolent of a marijuana-induced haze. Why would someone who lives in a kind of paradise have glowing fantasies about riding around on a yacht? Surely, she has water access enough as is. Streep’s Donna, quaintly clad in straw hat and blue overalls, isn’t exactly suffering out there, running her inn, with dozens of dancing servants to manage the work for her. It takes a certain level of poshlost to devise a story to wrap around songs that are already (most of them) well established, as opposed to writing songs that grow organically out of a story. What Mamma Mia! must have represented on stage, and definitely represents on screen, is the laziest wish fulfillment bad taste imaginable, a sort of grand-scale paint by numbers kit. Whether it was actually sprung from such a source or not, the very premise of structuring a musical this way implies a sensibility shaped by the contours of divorce courts, Harlequin romance novels, and airport lounges."]

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4. "Two Million Acres, Baby!": The latest installment of "Best Pictures from the Outside In" at The Film Experience. Under discussion: Cimarron and Million Dollar Baby.

["Speaking of final acts that play like funerals, I love M$B more every time I watch it. I think it's a pretty great movie about poverty and desperation, without being overt or didactic about these things -- except in the grating, discordant treatment of Maggie's intolerable family. Certainly a case where it might have behooved Clint to try a little rehearsal, or at least do more than his celebrated one or two takes. But otherwise, the tact and expressive precision of the movie are wondrous to me. That inky cinematography is all the movie often needs to telegraph sadness, limitation, aloneness. (And to signal, too, how much we're not seeing: for example, what DID Frankie do to his daughter? Yikes…)"]

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5. "Maine woman finds 8-foot snake in her washer": From MSNBC.

["Burton reached into the machine wearing a pair of welding gloves, expecting to come out with a 4-foot snake. But when he pulled the animal out, it kept coming and coming — all 8 feet of it. Once out of the machine, the angry snake wrapped itself around Burton's hand, cutting off the blood flow. Burton then wrestled the scaly reptile into a plastic bag, tied it shut and brought it to Lewiston."]

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Quote of the Day: Cullen Hightower

"Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness."

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Image of the Day (click to enlarge): The Siren goes to the Creek.



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Clip of the Day: So there's this little movie called Watchmen... ("visionary director of 300," huh?).

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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.