Uh-oh. Today is 10/10/10. That sounds binarily ominous…

1. Bill Plympton’s latest animated feature Idiots & Angels opened in New York this week, so there are a bunch of links about him this week. First, we have the New York Times review by longtime reviewer Stephen Holden who says the film is Plympton’s “best animated feature.”
2. Plympton wrote an article for Truly Free Film chastising people for not considering animation a mature art form.
3. IndieWire has a nice profile on Plympton and had the animator write a few words about himself.
4. Zedura Magazine also has a long interview with Plympton.
5. Paul Pritchard at Pulp Movies gives a glowing 4 star review to Carlos Atanes’ Maximum Shame. Pritchard and I agree: Great film, but difficult to write about. Very challenging work by Spain’s Atanes.
6. Chicago’s Gapers Block interviews co-directors Brian Ashby, Ben Kolak and Courtney Prokopas of Scrappers, which won the Best Documentary award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and is currently screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
7. Also in Chicago, Facets tells what they have in store horror film-wise for the spooky month of October.
8. Regular Twitch film reviewer Rodney Perkins has finally started his own blog called Obfuscated, which you must read. (And I say “finally” because I think all film writers should have their own site and not just hand all their shit over to somebody else.) He’s off to a great start doing things like comparing Blu-ray and DVD transfers of the cult Japanese flick House, and compiling links to all the reviews he’s written for others.
9. The student-run magazine The Manitoban interviewed celebrated Winnipeg filmmaker Matthew Rankin on his (painful) decision to leave his hometown for Montreal. (That link takes you to a reprint of the interview on the Cineflyer website. I like to link to original articles as much as possible, but the formatting of the Manitoban site makes it undreadable. But, here’s that link out of fairness’ sake.)
10. Richard Wolstencroft has some set photos from the new feature he’s currently filming in Thailand. The film is called The Second Coming and is based on the Yeats poem, which he reprints here.
11. Michael Varrati thinks you should know all about legendary horror exploitation filmmaker Ted V. Mikels.
12. Speaking of “exploitation,” Bob Moricz suggests that reality TV is our new exploitation cinema. Never thought about it that way before, but I agree.
13. Invisible Cinema has some words of wisdom from Paul Ruiz’s book Poetics of Cinema.
14. Phantom of Pulp reviews the indie horror film Buried starring Ryan Reynolds and loves it.
15. Donna k. has a review of Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me and has a new crush on Casey Affleck.
16. DINCA interviews Internet artist Petra Cortright and has lots of funky examples of her work. Plus, some lovely images of Anna Karina in Pierrot le fou.
17. Mike Rollo profiles The Roxy theater in Saskatoon. Looks like it’s worth it to go to Saskatoon just for that.
18. Andrea Grover expands on her historical art / science collaborations project.
19. Sounds Mike White had a fun time at the recent Cinema Wasteland convention. (Although I totally disagree with him about The Uh-Oh Show.) Plus, White has a startling movie poster comparison.
20. SnuffBox Films alerts us to Babelgum’s newest mini-site called New Video Art. I haven’t explored the site too much yet, but it seems interesting.
21. Austin documentary filmmaker Marcy Garriott gave the Aurora Picture Show some of her favorite links about making docs.
22. Chopping Mall didn’t like Lars von Trier’s The Idiots very much.
23. Chuck Tryon didn’t enjoy the book Freakonomics, nor the movie version.
24. Landscape Suicide examines the films of Straub-Huillet.
25. On Electric Sheep, Virginie Selavy takes an in-depth look at improbable movie star Bruno Schleinstein, who passed away in August and whom Werner Herzog cast as the lead in 1974’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.
26. On Little White Lies, Michael Turnbull interviews filmmaker Bruce La Bruce about his controversial film L.A. Zombie and it’s being banned at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival a few months ago.
27. Rhizome lets us know that there’s a new, free iPhone app replicating Byron Gysin’s Dream Machine flicker device.
28. The popular design blog Smashing Magazine takes a look at film titles throughout history.
29. Not underground: This makes me very sad. Van Snowden, one of the performers within the H.R. Pufnstuf costume — one of my favorite kids shows — has passed away.
30. Not underground: So as not to leave on a sad note, one of my favorite cartoonists, Sam Henderson, has the most awesome parody of The Horse Whisperer ever.