Shorts, 6/9.

Charles Taylor in Salon on Ronald Reagan's last movie: "The Killers radiates cynicism and contempt and cruddiness.... Forty years later, it also works as a prophetic shadow history of Ronald Reagan's political career and the America that career brought forth. The Killers' window on Reagan's dark side may be the best antidote to the Reagan hagiography."

Steve Gallagher posts an excellent entry at Filmmaker, quoting liberally and sharply from Michael Rogin's book, Ronald Reagan, the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology and Douglas Kellner's essay, "Presidential Politics: The Movie."

Furthermore: "The cinetrix is of an advanced enough age that she remembers full well the actual President Ronald Reagan, as opposed to the water-walking figure even NPR flaks are busily lionizing this week.... This is a cinema blog, not a political one, so I'd just like to tell you about what I saw, because you'd be hard pressed to find a better example of 20th-century Hollywood craftsmanship anywhere."

Meanwhile, a Philippine court has denied Imelda Marcos from attending Reagan's funeral. (That was a segue; here goes...) For indieWIRE, Clairborne Smith asks Ramona Diaz about her documentary, Imelda. Diaz and her team hovered around former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos for a month, asking questions again and again until - not always, but often - she got the answer she was after. Stephen Holden is intrigued by the subject, though he remarks that the doc "offers no new revelations," and in Nancy Ramsey's brief profile of Diaz, also in the New York Times, the director says, "I can understand how people allowed her to get away with things." J Hoberman notes in the Village Voice that Diaz "seems captivated, literally."

Also in the Voice:

• J Hoberman re-introduces Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Blissfully Yours to readers who've already seen it named best undistributed film of 2002 and now have a chance to see the film itself as part of the "Village Voice: Best of 2003" series at BAMcinématek.
• Ed Halter nabs a way too brief interview with David J Robb, author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies and previews the Yvonne Rainer retrospective at theAnthology Film Archives.
• Laura Sinagra thinks ahead to the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival: "[T]he expanded opportunities for image-sharing demand that we look afresh at the boundaries of the digital divide, face new questions about the politics of photography, and re-examine the ethics and expectations of video activism."
• "Tracking Shots": Akiva Gottlieb on Frankie and Johnny Are Married and J Hoberman on The Hunting of the President (note that the premiere has been postponed "out of respect for the family of President Ronald Reagan").
• Michael Atkinson on Napoleon Dynamite, "an epic, magisterially observed pastiche on all-American geekhood, flooring the competition with a petulant shove."
• Dennis Lim on Word Wars, which "serves as a cautionary sequel to last year's Spellbound."
• Charles McNulty on Broadway: The Golden Age.
• "Scanners": Mark Holcomb on two Shinya Tsukamoto films coming out on DVD and Michael Atkinson... well, see yourself. There's a bookmark or two in there, but you didn't hear from us.

Adrian Searle praises the "sophisticated" film and video installations of Anri Sala. Also in the Guardian: Madonna will star in and co-produce Hey Sucker! with Martin Scorsese.

Deryck Swan reviews Edward Buscombe's study of Unforgiven, part of the BFI's Modern Classics series. Also in kamera.co.uk: Chas Turner blurbs 16 films he caught at Cannes.

This week's issue of the New York Press features a thick summer guide, most of which you can take advantage of whether or not you're in New York. That, of course, doesn't hold true for Saul Austerlitz's preview of the season retrospectives, series and so forth, but it certainly does for Armond White's summertime DVD picks: The Leopard, Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Big Wednesday. In a sort of companion piece, White rages strong and well against the f/x of summer. For relief, maybe, he's caught Morrissey at the Apollo.

Today's review of Craig Seligman's Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me is definitely the oddest so far. David Thomson seems to be writing very, very fast these days and, while it does keep things lively, it also seems to keep him from thinking twice before opening his review by submitting these two women to his own not-so-private hot-or-not contest.

At any rate, while you're paging through the Atlantic:

• Joshua Green tries to figure out why political ads on TV are so lousy.
• David Schiff on Cole Porter by way of De-Lovely.
• The editors quote from and point to Aluma Dankowitz's article for the Middle East Media Research Institute on "Reactions in the Arab Media to The Passion of the Christ."

Sean Spillane offers a brief primer on Boca do Lixo films, which might be seen collectively as "the moist and grimier flipside to Brazil's Cinema Novo."

As the O'Hana Gallery in London prepares an exhibition and series of screenings of at least some of the films of Jack Smith, Morgan Falconer gives Independent readers a crash course: "Fellini was said to have been an admirer, and Warhol was certainly indebted.... But today, reviewing Smith's love of trashy excess, of Hollywood flamboyance and eroticism, one thinks first of John Waters, and indeed, Waters says that he 'genuflects' before Smith."

Via Alternet, Noy Thrupkaew in the American Prospect on The Corporation.

There's a piece crying out to be done by someone somewhere on why many, probably most docs currently seeing at least some degree of distribution have a leftish political bent, and for some time now, I've been thinking: The right is not going to sit around and take this much longer. We're going to start seeing conservatives pick up their digital cameras, too, soon enough. Well, via Movie City News, the none-too-subtle Michael Moore Hates America. You can sense that the blog wars are coming soon to a theater near you.

In the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Johnny Ray Huston writes that "even the Rotterdam International Film Festival - a nexus of 'cutting-edge' and digital video work that showcased [Andrew Repasky McElhinney's second film, A Chronicle of] Corpses - passed on Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye, a decision the director took as discouraging proof that his use of Brecht's alienation effect can be all too effective.... Nonetheless, San Francisco - more specifically, Joel Shepard of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Jacques Boyreau of the Werepad - has provided a home for McElhinney's dissent." Also: Camille T Taiara on Control Room, Dennis Harvey on Hickey and Boggs and Huston on Strayed.

Filmbrain introduces a series: "Great Moments from Mediocre Films."

Help defend Britain's National Film and Television Archive. Via Doug Cummings.

Online viewing tip. Photos of New York in the 70s and 80s by Tetsuo Kogawa. Via filmtagebuch .

Posted by dwhudson at June 9, 2004 7:30 AM