Steven Soderbergh’s baseball statistics movie Moneyball was shelved by Sony a few weeks back, mere days before shooting was to begin. Budgeted at $57 million and with Brad Pitt slated as the lead, its abandonment seemed to signal that mid-range, artistically ambitious projects will suffer the most in the current financial crisis. As ace Variety blogger Anne Thompson has noted, “Hollywood is moving in two simultaneous directions: behemoth event pics, and smaller personal films — with little middle ground.” One would expect that along with Soderbergh, Michael Mann and David Fincher will find it increasingly difficult to get their visions onto the screen. This is lamentable, regardless of your opinion of the filmmakers (I’m partial to Fincher, but an admirer of all), who each bring an ambitious pop sensibility to the screen. But what of the genre directors? These mid to low-budgeted spectacles (the Transporters, House Bunnies, and Hangovers) will always be cranked out, and will generally be profitable. If nothing else, the espousers of the auteur theory taught us to ignore the boundary between “high” and “low” art, to scavenge in every nook and cranny of the American cinema for possible artistry.

The Independent’s Kaleem Aftab expands Thompson’s reasoned analysis into a confusing screed about the lack of “great American directors”, and he ignores genre films as well. Below the fold I offer a list of my favorite contemporary genre operators, a group of under-the-radar auteurs and purveyors of quality pulp. First though, I have to take Aftab to task. Aside from the fact that he lists 20 or so “great” directors in his own piece, he clearly has no idea what an “auteur” is. His definition: “a director whose films had to be watched no matter what they were about or who was in them.” He goes on to say that after the auteur theory hit, “Suddenly, it was the director rather than the producer, the studio or the lead actor who became the star.” Aside from the fact that this is blatantly false (only Hitchcock could be considered a “star”, everyone else the New Wavers or Sarris championed were anonymous genre operators: Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller), it never discusses the films themselves, only their popularity.

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The year 2009 marks several anniversaries that the home viewing and music industries are eagerly acknowledging in order to sell product of some kind. It’s Errol Flynn’s 100th birthday; it’s the 40th anniversary of Elvis’s best album, From Elvis in Memphis; and Tina Turner celebrated 50 years in show business with a year-long tour. Ronald Reagan would have been 100 this year, too, and I wonder if anyone is packaging those boxed sets of the Bonzo movies as we speak.

 I discovered another milestone that seems ripe for celebration — the 50th anniversary of Nikita Khrushchev’s trip to Hollywood. While there, he visited the set of 20th Century Fox’s lavish musical Can-Can, starring Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, and Juliet Prowse. Given the ridiculous marketing campaigns I have seen over the years in the home viewing business, surely a special Nikita edition of Can-Can can’t be long in coming!

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I’m packing my bags and heading out to San Francisco to check out their silent film festival taking place this coming weekend from July 10 – 12. There will be seven different musical performers and includes some folks just down the road from me; the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra (they’re a quintet based in Louisville, Colorado). Here’s the film lineup, with notes from their program:  READ MORE

July 20^th will mark the 40^th anniversary of man’s first moon landing by Apollo 11 and TCM will celebrate the event the same day with a 24-hour festival of space movies including Al Reinert’s documentary of the Apollo space program, FOR ALL MANKIND (1989). The Criterion Collection is also re-releasing a newly mastered version of the film on Blu-Ray and DVD in July. For those who haven’t seen it, FOR ALL MANKIND is not your typical talking heads documentary and mixes together footage from all of the Apollo missions (as well as material from the Gemini missions) in a mesmerizing, impressionistic montage with a sound design of audio bites by various astronauts, mission control personal and newscasters (none of whom are identified on-screen) and eerie music by Brian Eno with the inevitable snippet of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprake Zarathustra” and a rendition of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk.” The emphasis is on the fulfillment of a seemingly impossible quest and not so much the individuals involved but there is one quirky little human interest segment which reveals some of the music which the astronauts carried to the moon….and is probably being enjoyed in some distant galaxy right now.        READ MORE

That’s not a question.  Every now and again I like go take a break from being a big know-it-all (publicly, anyway – I still hurl plenty of invective at my TV) and showcase some of the great writing and great fun that’s going on elsewhere on the Internet.  I wish I had the time to really make a meal of all the film blogs I like but at the very least I can direct your attention to some of the really good ones, because if you’re not frequenting these sites you’re really missing out. READ MORE

I’m not going to try to repeat what’s already been written in past two days about the great Karl Malden, who died yesterday at the age of ninety-seven.  Compared to so many of his show business compadres, Mr. Malden had a tremendously and accomplished long life, filled with artistic triumphs, the respect of his peers, and the devotion of legions of fans.  Instead, we should just look at some of his roles, enjoy him doing what he does best.  Words can hardly compare to watching Malden onscreen, his un-movie star looks always inviting you in to what you know will be an extraordinarily good performance.  I would invite you to read Roger Ebert’s tribute to Malden which he published yesterday, however, and the Los Angeles Times had an excellent extensive obituary with lots of background info.   Let’s watch…

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