In what I bet is a not unwelcome development for Apple, who is trying to convince the public that the company's new iPad is not just for early adopting tech geeks, a mini online meme is beginning featuring babies playing with iPads. (Or, perhaps, parents shooting their babies playing with their new iPads. At YouTube a poster called "Seekis" uploads "Baby steals iPad," featuring his very young daughter having a lot of fun with a musical game on the device. My favorite is the second, though, from Todd Lapin of his 2 year-old playing with his new iPad. Hilariously, echoing hundreds of tech reviews, she wants to know where the camera is! 

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LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy has done the music for Noah Baumbach's new L.A.-set Greenberg. Whether the L.A. of the movie bled into his new movie or the recording of his new album bled into his film soundtrack no one can conjecture, but as the below video, taken from the LCD site, shows, Murphy has adapted the town to his needs.

clip 1 from lcd soundsystem on Vimeo.

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In New York magazine this week, Eric Kohn profiles Michael Stuhlbarg, the star of the new film by the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man. Here's the lede, in which Kohn gets to the essence of what makes Stuhlgard's performance work:

Michael Stuhlbarg gets his breakthrough film role with the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. And as far as breakthroughs go, it’s a bravely quiet one. Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a rational physicist forced to deal with all sorts of irrationality when his wife first asks for a divorce, then moves her lover into their house. The film could just as easily have been called The Straight Man, since Stuhlbarg is essentially reacting to everybody else’s outrageousness—his nagging wife Judith (Sari Lennick), a good-for-nothing brother (Richard Kind), and various rabbis consulted for spiritual guidance. In any other actor’s hands, Gopnik’s passivity would be unendurable, but the actor finds so many subtle ways to register bafflement and good-natured exhaustion that his suffering becomes endlessly entertaining. “The danger was that the performance would become some sort of shticky thing,” says Ethan. “The guy’s kind of a schlemiel, and that could be a Woody Allen character. Michael brought a soulfulness that rescued the character from that.” Stuhlbarg read for three parts; he was so perfect for two of them that at one point the brothers joked about having him play both. “It was a weird casting conundrum we’d never had before,” says Ethan. “We would have cloned him if we could have,” adds Joel.

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As part of the Walker Art Center's 50th Dialogue and Regis Retrospective Event on the Coen Brothers, the Minneapolis based institution has asked for its blog a number of critics to cite their favorite Coen Brothers movie. Click here for responses from Kenneth Turan, Howard Feinstein, Rob Nelson and, among others, me...

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No, this is not about a promotion for Shane Acker's upcoming movie 9... or at least we here at FilmInFocus don't think it is. Via the always fascinating blog of the U.K. mentalist Derren Brown comes a link to a story from ABC News in Australia. Titled "9 Hypnotizes Viewers," the story details how the Australian version of A Current Affair, broadcast on Channel 9, booked a hypnotherapist to discuss the use of hypnosis in weight loss. The segment became controversial, however, when it slid into a broadcast of an actual hypnotherapy session, "complete with swelling lights and droning music" designed to put viewers in a hypnotic state. "Get in a comfortable position and trust the process," the therapist told the broadcast audience. The Australian Communications and Media Authority explicitly prohibits programming designed to "induce a hypnotic state" in viewers, referencing the outcry from media critics in the '60s and '70s over so-called subliminal advertising. Channel 9 protested the judgement, claiming that the segment was too short to actually push viewers into a trance, but the communications authority ruled against them and now stations are alerting their staff as to what can be considered simply too transfixing for television.

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After viewing Taking Woodstock at Cannes, Indiewire's Brian Brooks realized that he belongs to "the Woodstock Generation." Never mind that he was born less than a year before the event and that during his childhood he styled himself like Alex Keaton, the improbably conservative youth played by Michael J. Fox on the sitcom Family Ties. And forget the fact that he still bristles when he remembers his mom's love of dressing him in "flower-patterned shirts, plaid bell bottoms and moccasins and a bead necklace" when sending him off to pre-school. (And totally forget his teenage fan letter to Ronald Reagan!) For Brooks, whose taste (and politics) soon shifted away from the traditional to embrace everthing from goth to Godard, Taking Woodstock brought him back to his childhood. "Except this time," he writes, "I could actually appreciate it rather than run away."

His indieWIRE piece, "Rebel, Rebel: Why Taking Woodstock Gave Me Goosebumps," is an eloquent personal testimonial as well as a timely meditation on why the spirit of the '60s still matters. The piece is a great read, a conflation of the personal and the political, that concludes with these words:

Somehow, the film awakened my inner rebel if only for a moment and it taps the inner youth that never completely dies...

Maybe I can’t completely articulate why the era as seen in the story of this film has a special place in my soul. OK, maybe rebellion is just fun, damnit. Maybe it’s worth it to have a focus on fighting against something, if only for the joi d’vivre. I went against the ‘60s when I was really young and became a fan as an adult (maybe I owe a thank you note to George H.W. Bush). The same rebel that made me an Alex Keaton knock-off at 13 is the same spirit that makes me a raging liberal at 40. But then again, as Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick once said back in the ‘60s, “Never trust anyone over 30.”

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Perhaps my favorite current film podcast is The Film Talk, the spirited weekly conversation between Belfast-based Gareth Higgins and Nashville-centered Jett Loe. What's great about their series, which has recently tackled Moon, Public Enemies and Tetro, is the hosts' blend of intelligence and enthusiasm. First and foremost they are movielovers, and their in-depth and personal takes on the films they discuss are both in-depth critiques as well as broader celebrations of film as an art form.  And while they can sometimes be both humorously sardonic and thoughtfully analytical, they steer clear of both snark and pretentiousness.

This week Higgins and Loe, in collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center and timed to the Society's Ang Lee retrospective, devote an entire series to Lee, walking us through their personal take on all (or, most, as there are a couple they haven't seen) films.  Higgins spins an overarching theory on Lee's central theme, both debate The Hulk, and they pick a favorite Lee film that might surprise you.  Subscribe to their podcast here or search for them on iTunes and have them delivered directly every week.

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There's always a weird thing about going to a film festival in a place you've never been to. You travel all the way to get there but then spent most of your time sitting in a multiplex that's just like the one you have at home. Sometimes a film festival offers the exception to this rule, though. I was once a guest at the Sarajevo Film Festival and they encouraged me to travel the region instead of seeing movies, sending me one day on a three-hour bus ride to Mostar.  

But, I don't think I'd feel this movie-viewing guilt at the upcoming Branchage Jersey International Film Festival, and that's because there are no cinemas. Or, rather, no proper cinemas. The island festival screens films in "unusual atmospheric locations" that are intended to be as provocative as the films.  From the fest's recent press release:

Highlights for 2009’s festival will include British Sea Power performing their poignant soundtrack to the renowned 1934 fisherman film Man of Aran; an Icelandic band performing to a classic silhouette fairytale from 1920s Germany and the latest Andrew Kotting film. Branchage Jersey International Film Festival launched in 2008 as a vibrant cross-arts film festival that transformed a number of Jersey’s well recognised landmarks and changed them into unusual screening venues.

No cinemas are used throughout the festival – making the event truly unique in the film festival landscape.

Venues secured for the 2009 festival include: Mount Orgueil Castle, Jersey Museum Cinema, The Town Hall/Magistrates Courts, The island’s animal sanctuary, The War Tunnels, Victoria College Boys School Hall, Jersey Opera House. There will also be screenings inside one of the world’s few remaining Spiegeltents, plus an incredible drive-in screening at People’s Park.

Branchage aims to create new cinema-going experiences by holding screenings at unusual, atmospheric locations - bringing people into environments they wouldn't usually associate with film, and hand-picking the perfect films to screen in these weird locations. The festival is also giving a total of £10,000 in awards for filmmakers.

From the festival's blog is this trailer:

Branchage Jersey International Film Festival 2009 from Branchage Film Festival on Vimeo.

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When FilmInFocus asked five magicians to list their five most mysterious films, we gleaned that there was some kind of connection between conjuring and the culinary arts.  Sleight of hand maestro Roberto Giobbi picked two food-themed movies and proclaimed that “gastronomy is the basis of all art.”  Further confirmation is provided this Wednesday night on Top Chef. The mentalist and magician Max Maven, another contributor to our list, is the guest as the series’ contestants (who include the great New York chef Anita Lo) travel to L.A.’s Magic Castle to prepare a meal.  Below, watch Maven initiate this episode’s challenge, with, you guessed it, a magic trick.

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