Shorts, 6/16.

The 28th annual San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, or Frameline for short, opens tomorrow and runs through June 27. In the Bay Guardian (now happily sporting its long overdue site redesign), Dennis Harvey recounts the sudden rise and just as rapid dissipation of the New Queer Cinema of the 90s and adds, hopefully, "2004's program suggests there really is something happening out there again, this time a little more globally than before, with better budgets involving fewer maxed-out personal credit cards."

Lynn Rapoport recalls the heyday of "teen coming-out flicks" and notes that this year's fest "seems to send the message that we should grow up and get over it." SFBG critics also pick the "hits and misses" of Frameline 28.

Also: Johnny Ray Huston reviews Twentynine Palms, "a work that has made critical responses to the similarly barren-faring Brown Bunny seem tame," and David Fear neither pans nor praises The Terminal: "[T]he cinematic Cerberus just wants to give his populist puppy head free reign."

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Carla Meyer writes up the several marriage-themed movies showing at Frameline this year; the story then segues into the paper's own list of highlights.

The Filmmaker blog, always one of the best, is busting out bountifully all of sudden in the past few days:

• Scott Macaulay points to a simple page posted by the Philip K Dick Trust which is a must-see for all fans of PKD, Richard Linklater, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and/or the great Robert Downey, Jr, looking absolutely smashing in those thick-rimmed glasses. (And here's more on A Scanner Darkly.) Also: Producer Caroline Baron and FilmAid International.

• Steve Gallagher alerts us to Exist, "not a protest film," posts a lengthy entry chock full of news from the Asian horror front.

Time once again for the Fahrenheit 9/11 roundup:

• Filmbrain, Eugene Hernandez and Peter Bowen (who also notes McDonald's attacks on Super Size Me in Australia) all sum up what Move America Forward is up to in its efforts to actually stop the release of the film. As Filmbrain points out, though the blatant hypocrisy of their intentions evidently completely escapes them, this group is not to be sneezed at; they are, after all, headed up by "Howard Kaloogian, the man behind the Recall Gray Davis committee and the Defend Reagan Committee, which was successful in intimidating CBS from airing the miniseries The Reagans." But it is not a grassroots campaign by any means, as Brian Clark explains, pointing to a ProgressiveTrail.org piece by Kurt Nimmo who credits What Really Happened with tracing the site to Russo Marsh & Rogers, a Republican consulting firm. And round and round it goes.

• Tom Hall, the programmer at the Nantucket Film Festival who also happens to hail from Flint, Michigan, shares a bit of hate mail (and his reaction) sent in response to his piece, "In Defense of Michael Moore."
• IndieWIRE's Brian Brooks reports that Mario Cuomo will "spearhead" the appeal to the MPAA seeking a PG-13 rating rather than the R that stands at the moment.

"Mr. Moore was preaching to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir of liberalism, right there at the Ziegfeld Theater," so the New York Observer got no fewer than three reporters on the story. Names are dropped, sounds are bitten. Also in this week's issue, Ron Rosenbaum proposes an adaption of Philip Roth's yet-to-be-published The Plot Against America because "in some subrealm of the collective unconscious, people [want] a response of some kind from Steven Spielberg to The Passion." Well, it looks like he might be making Tintin first.

For Ray Pride, writing in Movie City News, Michael Moore is "a polemicist and all the high dudgeon about nomenclature and taxonomy is a bore. But for now the discussion's simpler, as the highest-grossing-per-screen and best documentary of the summer so far is widening its run June 18 and 25, and there's no question when you watch it: Control Room (****) is a documentary that elevates all the estimable conventions of cinema verite and Jehane Noujaim is a genuinely gifted filmmaker."

Via filmfilter, Mridu Chandra's interview with Noujaim in the Brooklyn Rail, where we find once again that it's very tough talking about docs these days without mentioning the elephant in the room: "I definitely wasn’t for the war, but to make a film about the politics of war versus no war, like something Michael Moore would do, it’s something you make if you really feel sure about all those questions. I would say it was a way to find out what was going on for myself, and I wanted to be around people who are very motivated to think about it."

Also:

• Williams Cole: "Finally, it seems political documentary film is reaching a point of being not only of widespread cultural and political significance but also, probably for the first time, an extremely profitable undertaking." Plus: Bukowski: Born Into This.
• Lisa Rosman finds Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size Me "useful" but "there’s something queasy - yes, queasy - about them, too. You can’t topple the master’s house using his own tools." Hm.
• Theodore Hamm on Jim McKay's Everyday People.
• Michael Rowin on Yvonne Rainer.

Masters of Cinema runs a unique piece by Daryl Chin, who tells a remarkable story about Lillian Gish.

Call for entries: Paris/Berlin International Meetings, deadline: June 30.

Matt Dentler is pleasantly surprised to see long lines in Austin for Saved!, "one of the most objective and hard-to-define films in theaters right now.... Regardless, I think the film will likely be a cult/mainstream crossover in the vein of Election, a film who's tone Saved! certainly echoes." And don't miss our own interview with director Brian Dannelly.

Seattle Maggie returns to Cinecultist with more reviews gleaned from viewings at SIFF.

At filmjourney.org, John Torvi discovers Haibane Renmei - and raves.

The cinetrix posts excellent entries on two stories that have somehow escaped mention around here: Right-wing activists in India have been attacking cinemas showing Girlfriend, which centers on a affair between two women; and smoking on takes another hit.

Stars on drugs: In Alternet, Ellen Komp, who runs the VeryImportantPotheads.com site, quotes a few who've "come out."

Online viewing tip. Crash tests.

Posted by dwhudson at June 16, 2004 1:08 PM