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Wanna work with Marty Scorsese?

The cinetrix is far too youthful-looking to make the cut, but if this sounds like you, it may be your lucky break!

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese begins shooting the film Ashecliffe, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, next week. For a scene depicting the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany in 1945, Grant Wilfley Casting, Inc. is seeking men and women, generally ages 40-70, thin and with Eastern European features, to play Holocaust camp survivors. The scene will be shot in Taunton, Mass. this coming Tuesday, March 4, and on Monday, March 10. Actors will be paid for both days of filming.

If interested, email a recent photo and your contact information to boston@gwcnyc.com as soon as possible. [via]

Having been to Taunton, the cinetrix can only shake her head that a location scout thought it might double for Dachau. That said, you may know the production by its other name, Shutter Island. It's the latest Lehane adaptation, and it boasts quite a cast, including Mark Ruffalo, Jackie Earl Haley, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, even Max von freakin' Sydow. So getcher Eastern European-looking ass ovah theah.

There is nothin like a dame*

A confession: the cinetrix doesn't think Jonah Hill is more than passingly funny at best. And even then, it's more laughing-at than laughing-with. So it was with a sense of sweet vindication that she stumbled across Slate's Dana Stevens' take on the whole Dame Judi Dench-Halle Berry** bit:

[S]exism and ageism reigned supreme last night: Witness Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill's annoying "No, you be Dame Judi Dench" skit. What the hell's wrong with being Judi Dench?

Hell, yeah. [cough Gothika cough Catwoman] Somebody should sit those smug little fucks down in front of Peter Hall's 1968 take on A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all its hot topless Titania action. Maybe their Flesh of the Stars Web site didn't make it to the 1960s before they learned about Mr. Skin.

*
**Yeah, Halle was a Bond girl, but Judi was freakin' M.

Canon fodder

The following articles and reviews are listing chronologically and without comment. Some are youthful, some are wrongheaded, some are pretty good. - Paul S.

That's right, boys and girls. Paul Schrader has launched a Web site that, among other things, offers "a number of articles and reviews for publications which were not archived by libraries. Not worthy of re-publication but not deserving of oblivion either." Not too shabby for a guy who never even saw a movie til he was well past the onset of puberty.

The cinetrix has barely skimmed the surface, but given her fondness for shouting "Wolverines!" and invoking Lebowski, you could do worse than start with a profile of John Milius from 1973. [via]

Secret Cambridge cinema screenings

Who knew? Not the cinetrix. But apparently the the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study hosts a monthly movie night on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. in the Radcliffe College Room in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Better still, it's my favorite price: FREE.

You've missed Times Square, more's the pity, but you can get Sirkian next week at the screening of All That Heaven Allows. And there's the option of sticking around after for a little book larnin': Lynne Layton, clinical assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and author of Who's That Girl? Who's That Boy? Clinical Practice meets Postmodern Gender Theory, will speak following the film.

If you could opine on a film before an audience, what would it be?

Darkness warshed over the Dude

FOC restlessliz discovered the true international language last weekend in Interlaken, Switzerland. It's not Esperanto, it's Lebowski. Or it least that's what this laundry bar seems to think. How does one say "The Dude abides" in German?

Go raibh míle mile maith agaibh*

It will come as no particular surprise to any long-time habitue of this particular corner of the internets that the cinetrix is a pushover for pop music in film. And over the course of several semesters giving her film class, she's deployed a variety of films for the compilation soundtrack lesson, with varying levels of success.

It's easy pickings to show the kiddies short clips of Natalie Portman insisting to Zach Braff that the Shins will change his life or John Cusack persuading unsuspecting customers that the Beta Band is the purchase they want to take home or even an opening credits sequence that suggests Molly Ringwald is pretty, favors pink, but is not, like Caroline, the protagonist of the titular Psych Furs song, the town bicycle. Tougher is screening Dazed and Confused without derailing into a discussion about how awesome pot is; or Chungking Express, when the last thing the kids want is a postmodern narrative in Mandarin Cantonese featuring reggae and Cranberries covers; or Diva, which sails over the heads of those born long after the "is it live or is it Memorex" era.

But every so often I get it right. Or rightish. See, a few months back I slotted Once into the pop music slot, which we screened Monday afternoon. Yeah, that's right, just after it won Best Song. Still, I suspect it'll be a harder slog than some in class this Wednesday, given that the music is generated by the principals, mostly in the diegesis. But how smart did I feel when it swept under Menken's nose to carry away the Best Song honors?

And then there was this email, waiting for me when I got home tonight:

Hello Prof. Cinetrix,

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the movie we watched this afternoon.  I absolutely loved the music and even downloaded some songs when I got home.

I'm glad you showed it to us.

See you Wednesday.

Damn, it feels good to be an educator.

Incidentally, if you saw this and weren't moved, not only are you made of stone, you should probably unsubscribe from this feed right now. Fair play to those who dream.

* Finally, if you want to lose sleep, may I recommend the Gaeilge iteration of Wikipedia? Irish is truly a language like no other.

It's gotta be the shoes

Question: Do you think Daniel Day-Lewis cobbled those shawl-collar-trim-matching shoes himself?

Like a Hitchcock adaptation of a Conrad novel

The cinetrix has been a fan of A.S. Hamrah's film writing since back in the old Club Havana days. So it is with great delight that I point you to n+1 mag [a phrase I never thought I'd utter], where Scott lets loose with a little Oscar prognosticating. It's scathing in the best possible way. Don't believe me?

Atonement

There was an interview a while ago with Ian McEwan that Zadie Smith did for the Believer in which McEwan said that “cinema is a very inferior, unsophisticated medium.” Like many people, I enjoy movies immensely and I don’t see why I should pay money to see the adaptation of a book by someone who thinks the cinema is very inferior. It was the way McEwan used the word very that really bugged me. If he had just said cinema was inferior and unsophisticated, I wouldn't have minded so much. 

Everything McEwan writes ends up as a movie. Someday his shopping lists will be filmed. I wonder how he’ll feel about the cinema’s inferiority and lack of sophistication when he cashes the check for the Untitled McEwan Shopping List Project.

Juno

I can’t say anything about Juno because I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it because I hated Little Miss Sunshine so much. After I saw Little Miss Sunshine I really wished I hadn’t. I refuse to make that mistake again. If that’s what a feel good movie is, I can’t stand to feel that good. It's physically painful for me to feel that good. 

[Almost as painful, I hope? Those million-buck shoes on Diablo Cody's feet tonight.]

Read the rest here.

Be honest

The cinetrix wants to hear how many of you attended [or hosted] an Oscar-watching party that featured milkshakes on the menu. Chime in tomorrow in the comments.

While we're on the subject of shakes, she thinks Paramount is missing out on a perfect cross-promotional opportunity by not releasing the TWBB DVD about three weeks earlier.

Two men enter...

The cinetrix has nothing profound to say about these images. The similar blocking caught her eye is all.