NUMBER 61

Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani ‘traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it.‘

No, your eyes do not deceive you. Werner Herzog.

via Ebert

Lately, Roger Ebert has been riding a streak of phenomenal—and extremely personal—writing (see: his struggles with alcoholism, the bygone London of his memories, a love letter to a Chicago bar, how he hasn’t been able to eat food since he lost his jaw).

It is, as Chris Jones writes in his brilliant new Esquire article on the subject of Ebert, evidence of a man who has made his peace with lethal time.

An oldie but a goodie: Salman Rushdie interviews Terry Gilliam at the 2002 Telluride Film Festival.

SR: [...] When I was writing Midnight’s Children, I used to work two days a week at an ad agency and five days a week writing my book, and I thought of it, kind of, as industrial sponsorship.

Just in case you missed it—I did—here’s a New Yorker profile of James Cameron from this past October.

The new Black List is out. For those who don’t know, it’s described thusly:

THE BLACK LIST was compiled from the suggestions of over 300 film executives, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2009 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

Something I can really get behind: in anticipation of every year’s Oscar season, more and more Hollywood studios are publishing screenplays for award contenders online for free download.

Rope of Silicone has been keeping a list of links.

You’ll recognize the following six films: 9, District 9, Napoleon Dynamite, The Evil Dead, Bottle Rocket and Boogie Nights.

You may not know, however, that they were all originally filmed as shorts by amateur filmmakers—all of whom began their professional careers by turning the short films in question into features.

Check out the roundup—with embedded YouTube videos—on Mental_Floss.

From (the superlative) Overthinking It: rooting through The Fantastic Mr. Fox for some truly disturbing thematic material.

Caution: mild spoilers ahead!

Filmmaker Werner Herzog recently appeared on KCRW’s The Treatment podcast and talked about his preference for casting animals in main acting roles, about the capricious allure of American football, about conquering fear, about his Spanish opera, about traveling to Southern Ethiopia to film a musical, about getting shot during an interview and being the only guy who didn’t want to call it off. Listen.