Shorts (and Cannes), 5/17.

Pedro Almodóvar's Cannes opener, Bad Education, gets a review from Ryan Gilbey in the new issue of Sight & Sound, one of the reasons Almodóvar's on the cover. The other reviews online: Edward Lawrenson on Shattered Glass and David Jays on Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring.

But three cheers to the S&S editors for their selection of the two features to make available to the mouse-centric among us. We have B Ruby Rich on Kill Bill, Volume 2, the piece she mentioned she was working when Jennie Rose conducted our recent interview. As for Tarantino's lexicon of references in KB2, BRR freely admits she'd have been at a loss without the press kit.

What I can offer up, instead, is a meditation on what KB2 means to me and what it might mean to viewers, too, if positioned in a radically different cinematic universe - one characterised less by ultraviolence and genre quotations than by a remapping of family, a fusion of the horror movie and the revenge narrative through the central figure of the avenging woman, and an emphasis on the corporeal that makes for a surprisingly old-fashioned view of the body and its mortality.

Deal? Deal. For a second helping, we get the launch of a new series in which S&S asks writers "to respond to actors, not only as icons of their age, but also in terms of their expertise, their physical presence and their importance to the films of their day. We begin with David Robinson on the ultimate star, Rudolph Valentino."

Today is definitely Michael Moore Day in Cannes. As Charlotte Higgins writes in the Guardian, Fahrenheit 9/11 "is without doubt the most flaming-hot ticket at the Cannes film festival." So it's with a sort of now-it-can-be-told flare that Jim Rutenberg reveals: "A reporter for The New York Times was invited to a screening of the film last week." Even so, the paper seems to be taking a cautious approach since it was perceived by some to have done a bit of Moore's rabble-rousing for him by breaking news of his run-in with Disney on the front page almost two weeks ago now and then taking his side in the dispute in an editorial. So rather than cheer him on outright, Rutenberg settles for predicting that the film "is likely to have a galvanizing effect among both conservatives and liberals should the film be widely distributed this summer." In other words, it must pack quite a punch.

For indieWIRE, Peter Brunette presents his initial take after the first official screening for the press in Cannes. In short, Fahrenheit 9/11 is "a powerful, timely, and convincing assault on the family and friends who brought us the current mess in Iraq." The "zaniness" of Bowling for Columbine is gone "in favor of an elegiac approach that is less funny but ultimately, maybe, more politically effective." For example: "The absolutely most chilling part of the film, for this viewer at least, comes in Moore's brilliant juxtaposition of brutal troop activities in Iraq with scenes of Marine recruiters in full formal dress actually prowling Wal-mart parking lots looking for likely prospects."

Eugene Hernandez follows up with a report from a panel where Moore reiterated: "I have a lot of say about Disney and a lot that hasn't been reported, it's very dangerous to give someone like me a peek behind the curtain, and I will tell all as soon as all these negotiations have been concluded."

Back to the New York Times:

• A red letter day for AO Scott's Cannes notebook: Glimpses of a demonstration, the Shrek 2 screening and the arrival of Michael Moore (more and more from the BBC) rapidly give way to first impressions of the new films by Ousmane Sembène and Jean-Luc Godard. Of the first: "I am not alone in thinking that Moolaadé is the finest film shown in Cannes so far." Indeed, thumbs up from Roger Ebert as well. So why isn't it being shown in competition? No one seems to know, but: "Africa, whose filmmakers work under severe financial and political constraints, is the only continent not represented in competition this year." As for Notre Musique, Scott has it both ways. It's "both maddening and bracing." And "some of the ideas are gratingly facile while others are both moving and true." And so on.

• Laura M Holson and Sharon Waxman take stock of DreamWorks, albeit not literally since the only part of the company that may go public, DreamWorks Animation, probably won't until after the October opening of Shark Tale.

• Bernard Weinraub talks to James Caan about his comeback on TV: "I tell you, there's nothing like the power of the boob tube. Nothing. It's mind boggling. But sometimes it's 16 hours a day. I've never worked so hard. I'm not complaining. Look, if the show goes five years, we go into syndication. You can wheel me to my plane."

George the cyclist's Saturday at Cannes was ho-hum, but his Sunday sounds like the sort of day anyone would want to have at a film festival. High marks for Moolaadé, Tarnation and Eléonor Faucher's Brodeuses; a barely passing grade, though, for Chan-wook Park's Old Boy.

It's difficult to discuss The Day After Tomorrow without cracking a joke or two. Especially for Tad Friend, who talks to Roland Emmerich for the New Yorker: "'I finally felt that setting the film in another city would be an even bigger problem, because then the terrorists would have influenced where the catastrophe of weather strikes.' (In other words, the terrorists will have won if they keep us from destroying New York onscreen.)"

In the Guardian:

• Geoffrey Macnab: "A foghorn sounds off the Cannes coast. 'That must be Harvey Weinstein waking up,' Jonathan Nossiter sighs as he sips his double espresso." Conversation then turns, of course, to Mondovino.
• Peter Bradshaw turns in capsule reviews of Shrek 2, Old Boy, Lucrecia Martel's La Niña Santa, Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love and Abbas Kiarostami's Five, "a stunningly experimental movie-art-installation piece."
• Charlotte Higgins has caught a screening of Michael Winterbottom's sexually explicit Nine Songs. She nabs quotes from the director, composer Michael Nyman, who has a cameo, and Guardian film critic Derek Malcolm, who says, "Nine Songs looks like a porn movie, but it feels like a love story. The sex is used as a metaphor for the rest of the couple's relationship. And it is shot with Winterbottom's customary sensitivity."
• Dan De Luce reports from Tehran that The Lizard, Kamal Tabrizi's comedy poking light fun at the clergy, a film which has sparked several stories in the western media on a presumed loosening of the government's tight reins on free expression in Iran... has been banned.
• Despite an injured leg, Eddie Izzard bucks up and does the interview with Emma Brockes to promote The Cat's Meow, just now seeing release in the UK.
• Gary Younge on the financial ruin of Don Johnson.

The Independent's Louise Jury reports that Irvine Welsh has written The Meat Trade, based on the true story of 19th century grave robbers. Antonia Bird will direct and Trainspotting's Robert Carlyle will star. It'll be set in modern-day Edinburgh, a fine segue to her next story: "A Scottish writer and director has achieved a long-held ambition to make a film about the tragic and short life of the bohemian Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani."

As a sort of followup to his piece in the Village Voice on the wave of leftish docs heading towards wider distribution throughout the campaign season, Anthony Kaufman makes note of two fiction features in the same vein: Spike Lee's She Hate Me and John Sayles's Silver City.

And finally, David Kipen poses an intriguing question in the Atlantic Monthly: "If France makes movies for the French, and America makes movies for the world, who's left to make movies for America?" It's not an off-the-cuff concern. A stat that pops up early in the piece: Domestic theatrical admissions were down four percent in 2003, but global box office was up five percent. "The movie business is booming abroad precisely because Hollywood is making pictures for the world market - at the expense of customers in America, where, not surprisingly, business is tanking. It's that hoariest of economic clichés, a zero-sum game." What's more, "In less than thirty years, roughly since the premiere of Star Wars, domestic grosses - once the industry's bread and butter - have become a virtual loss leader."

Sprinkled around all this is an amusing pan of Andrew Horton's book, Screenwriting for a Global Market, an alternative reading to the popular take on American films of the 70s ("not the decade of the director but a golden age of screenwriting"), and observations as to why we'll be seeing more movies like the Matrix trilogy and a lot fewer like Mr Smith Goes to Washington. It's a fun, freewheeling ride, but at least two considerations are left out: First, it's the DVD that's putting the whammy on domestic box office far more directly than Hollywood's "Offshoring the Audience," as the clever title to Kipen's piece reads. Americans have adopted the format earlier and in greater numbers, though Europeans, of course, are catching up fast. (And when they do, by the way, Germany's already bloated theatrical arm of the industry is in serious trouble indeed; it won't matter where the films come from, people will be watching them at home.)

Second, Kipen ignores all the indie filmmakers stepping in to make the sort of films Hollywood has abandoned. Politics is box office poison? Then how do we explain the trend Anthony Kaufman's following in the Voice? For that matter, how do we explain Michael Moore's tremendous popularity in Europe? Europeans aren't just flocking to his films in theaterss and catching his earlier ones on state-funded TV. They're buying his books as well. In part, it's a recognition that "problems of the American scene" (a description of a long-gone WGA award Kipen laments) are problems of the global scene as well. Automatically, like it or not.

But as for what seems to be Kipen's main complaint - that Americans are no longer treated to the cadences of American speech or stories that tackle problems of the contemporary American scene - sure they are. On countless channels of nichified cable and satellite TV. It ain't Capra, but it's real.

Posted by dwhudson at May 17, 2004 9:42 AM