Shorts, 7/8.

David Poland on Michael Tucker's Gunner Palace: "If there is a single documentary that you have to see about the war, it's an easy call… this is the one. There are others worth seeing, but this is yours... Someone at some studio must step up and bring the film out no later than September." Hear, hear.

Poland's Movie City News passes along reactions from Lion's Gate's Tom Ortenberg to the recent edition of CNN's Reliable Sources devoted to press reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11 as well as Ortenberg's reply to pieces at CounterPunch slamming the film from the left: "Your 'critique'... proves 2 points. 1) When the left forms a firing squad, it gets in a circle. 2) Why the left will never triumph in America."

But if the left's persistent Weimar-like penchant for imploding in the face of opposition that ought to be making it stronger is actually news to Ortenberg, he hasn't seen the half of it. Writing for ZNet, for example, Stephen Rosenthal and Junaid Ahmad painstakingly outline all the ways Moore fails because he isn't anti-capitalist enough, while Kenyon Farrow and Kil Ja Kim argue in ChickenBones that the real problem, you see, is that Moore is a white nationalist.

And so it goes.

Mike Figgis: "Ten things I love about Jean-Luc Godard." Also in the Guardian: Emma Brockes meets Lila Lipscomb, a piece that'll surely be added to the site's collection of Fahrenheit 9/11 news and comment.

In this week's LA Weekly:

• Steve Mikulan remembers Brando.
• Nikke Finke files the latest dispatch from the "all-out war" between the NYT and the LAT that "went nuclear" last Friday. She also has a few Brando tales.
• Chuck Wilson blurbs a few highlights showing at Outfest 2004 (through July 19).
• Gendy Alimurung spent the July 4 weekend at AnimeExpo2004.
• Reviews: Joe Donnelly on Riding Giants and Ella Taylor on King Arthur.
• "By fluke, a local stage adaptation (by Mark Brown) of Jules Verne's 1872 novel, Around the World in 80 Days (playing at Burbank's Colony Theater), opened the same week that Disney released its new movie remake of the same work, starring executive producer Jackie Chan." Steven Leigh Morris reviews both.

Anne S Lewis talks to Karen Bernstein about her film, Are the Kids Alright?, which takes measure of the state of mental health care in Texas. Also in the Austin Chronicle: Another round with Linklater, Delpy and Hawke, this one a little harried and led by Marrit Ingman. Best line: "Don't write on my pants, OK? I hate that. Sorry, what did you say?"

Bernardo Bertolucci on Brando: "In the darkness I asked him if he'd ever realised how much I was in love with him." And we come full circle, because that's via Movie City News, where Leonard Klady also recalls several tales from the life.

Posted by dwhudson at July 8, 2004 6:08 AM