Shorts, 5/16.

A violent immediacy is the key to Homer. His heroes live and die in the present moment. Although tragic figures, they suffer no existential crises. Similarly, Homer's gods argue, feud and express their emotions - happiness and sorrow, laughter and tears - with the vivid, unruly spontaneity of children.

Also in the Observer:

• Obsessed with celebrities? Perfectly healthy, Liz Hoggard discovers (with a dash of skeptical amusement).
• Peter Conrad: "Ever since New York became a global capital we have been dreaming up disasters with which to assail it."
• Philip French reviews Anthony Hayward's Which Side are You On? Ken Loach and his Films: "His conversion, if not exactly Damascene in its suddenness, was complete and enduring... he forged a new kind of social realist style."

On the occasion of a retrospective at the National Film Theatre, David Thomson remembers Diana Dors, who "represented that period between the end of the war and the coming of Lady Chatterley in paperback, a time when sexuality was naughty, repressed and fit to burst." Somewhat related, Matthew Sweet asks, "What ever happened to the great British sex comedy?"

In the New York Times:

• Stephanie Zacharek is disappointed to find that the Beastie Boys' new video, "Ch-Check It Out," "feels reran in all the wrong ways."
• Leslie Camhi meets Rithy Panh, whose S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is "a portrait of unfathomable evil, a testament to the dead and a step toward national reconciliation."
• Jennifer Senior discovers that the project John Cleese is most taken up with at the moment is... well, "It'll make you laugh, but I'm really, really getting interested in a Web site."
• Alan Riding profiles Emmanuelle Béart.

Allison Samuels in Newsweek: "Though Mario [Van Peebles] hesitates to admit it, Baadasssss! is a valentine to Dad - a son's attempt to make sure his old man gets his props." Also Jennifer Barrett interviews Jim Jarmusch (more from Damien Smith in the Boston Globe) and Devin Gordan argues that Jena Malone is not your average teenage starlet.

Posted by dwhudson at May 16, 2004 10:16 AM