Shorts, 4/6.

AICN's Moriarty visits the set of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain as part of a small group of journalists: "The oddest outlet involved was Scientific American, but as the day wore on, it made sense that they were invited." This movie is sounding better and better, isn't it. What's more, there'll be no CGI, evidently, the central communications center sounds amazing and, though "this version of The Fountain may cost less than the originally proposed one... that doesn't make it any less or ambitious." Lots of detail and juice in this one.

Week 2 of the Minneapolis-St Paul International Film Festival, and City Pages crew turns in another collection of swift and sharp blurbs.

The Nashville Film Festival is set to launch next week, April 14, and run through April 21. That calls for more swift and sharp blurbs from a local alternative weekly, and the staff at the Nashville Scene comes through with flying colors. Jim Ridley's take on Mutual Appreciation, for example, a film I enjoyed in Austin far more than that pesky critical apparatus of mine told me I should, is spot on. Also: Jack Silverman asks Harmony Korine about, well, among other things, great American comedy.

Nelson Lyon is bound to have a lot of great stories to tell. One of them goes to Stop Smiling's James Hughes, the one about getting Jake LaMotta's book to Robert De Niro.

Todd at Twitch interviews Paul Spurrier, evidently the first westerner to shoot a film in Thai, P (or "Phii" or "Phi," the Thai expression for "ghost"). You think that's kind of interesting? That's not the half of it. Unless you're already soaking in Thai culture, go, read. Also: Mack hears that Kim Ki-duk's The Bow may be ready for Cannes.

At indieWIRE, Jason Guerrasio checks in on five indies currently in production: Capote biopic Every Word is True; Our Very Own, a 70s-era story of small town teens hoping to make it big; Out of the Broom Closet, a doc on witchcraft; Serial, in which it's a TV reporter who hopes to make it big; Where Love Reigns, about an affair between Carl Jung and his patient.

Wiley Wiggins weighs the rumors floating around that David Lynch might revisit Dune.

"Quietly, gently, My Brother Nikhil has tested the limits of the Indian cinemagoer's sensibility."Somini Sengupta reports from Mumbai for the New York Times on a film about a gay man the ways the team behind it has adeptly avoided stirring the ire of India's conservatives. Also: Ned Martel on David Hockney: The Colors of Music and Anita Gates on In Satmar Custody.

The Guardian runs a second extract from Jane Fonda's My Life So Far:

She... began speaking to me in Vietnamese, not angry, very calm. Quoc translated: "You shouldn't cry for us. We know why we are fighting. The sadness should be for your country, your soldiers. They don't know why they are fighting us." I stared at her. She looked back, right into my eyes.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley finds the book "as beguiling and maddening as Jane Fonda herself." Rebecca Traister in Salon: "Fonda's series of timely transformations combined with her bumbling, slightly daffy attitude make her a Forrest Gump-ian figure."

Also in Salon: Stephanie Zacharek on Major Dundee: "As the picture unfolds, for the first hour at least, it has the look and feel of a masterpiece - it's a picture rushing toward something, and despite the grave disappointment that it never quite gets there, you never doubt you're in the presence of greatness."

Back to the Guardian: Ken Loach: "I'm normally suspicious of the director's cut phenomenon.... But the special edition of Carla's Song is a reduction. It's about 15 minutes shorter, and the whole thing is a lot tighter." Oh, and: Daniel Craig is James Bond. [Update: Or not. See comments.] There's a Bond quiz, too.

In the Independent, Kaleem Aftab interviews Ashley Walters, MC Asher D of the So Solid Crew and star of Bullet Boy.

"DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, whose documentary The War Room changed the way Americans view politics, have begun filming Fernando Ferrer's campaign for Mayor," reports Ben Smith in the New York Observer.

Also:

• Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Television, sent out an email last week soliciting donations for two tickets to Cannes. The idea was that she and Pat Kaufman, director of the Governor's film office, need to be there to, you know, promote the city and all but, as Jake Brooks writes, it did raise "a few eyebrows around the film industry and City Hall, given the ethical issues involved when a government agency makes urgent pleas for money from prominent members of an industry it regulates."

• Joe Hagan gets confirmation from Warren Beatty that he'll "probably" be blogging for Arianna Huffington.

• Andrew Sarris on Sin City and Look at Me.

• "Ah, the 70s: What a great decade it was for onscreen hurling!" Tom Shone on The Amityville Horror.

George Thomas recalls a few films he caught on a recent trip to India.

Cheryl Eddy does triple duty in this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian, reviewing Dust to Glory (no pullquotes here, but she approves), Sahara, "big, silly and eager-to-please" (also meant approvingly) and Look at Me, "a drama whose brilliant wit, pathos, and insight all rise organically out of characters and relationships that couldn't be more credible or intriguing." Also: Kimberly Chun pretty much agrees with everyone else as far as Eros is concerned.

Matt Zoller Seitz, on the other hand, argues that, after Soderbergh's mid-section, the "master steers Eros back on track." Also in the New York Press: Armond White praises Stephen Chow's "moral approach to spectacle" and Saul Austerlitz, briefly, on the Chaplin vs Keaton debate.

Assuming (erroneously) that no one remembers Sprockets (if only that movie had come together), Harmon Leon tries a little conceptual humor. Also in the SF Weekly, by way of Dallas: Robert Wilonsky is underwhelmed by Sin City.

Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog: "As we approach the 25th anniversary of his death, the Times [of London] offers three ways of looking at Alfred Hitchcock, all interesting and fascinatingly inconsistent with each other." Leader, quotes, ready, set, go:

• John Russell Taylor, author of Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock (plus a Hitch top ten in chronological order).

• Andrew Billen's interview with Tippi Hedren

• Helena de Bertodano talks to Hitchcock's daughter, now 76.

"Malba - Coleccion Costantini is proud to present Chantal Akerman, An Autobiography, the first exhibition and comprehensive retrospective in Latin America of one of the most influential filmmakers of her generation." If you won't be in Buenos Aires any time soon, you still might want to read more or maybe even order the catalogue.

"CinemaElectronica announces its first online publication, CE Quarterly. The first issue's theme is 'Lost and Found,' and each piece submitted must reflect this theme in some way, and be no longer than 15 minutes. A supplementary 'exquisite corpse' is also accepting submissions under the theme 'Found,' and must be no longer than 30 seconds and be comprised entirely of found footage." Deadline: May 15.

Mark Cuban: "The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin." And all you film-lovers who did passably well on the analogies section of your SATs do know what this eventually means. More Cuban-related news via Movie City Indie: The rollout for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is going to be a little unusual. Mike Slocombe and Simon Perry report for Digital-Lifestyles.info.

The Cinema + Technology International Conference opens in Lancaster, UK, today and runs through Saturday. Other upcoming conferences, symposiums and the like:

• "Film Style in Question: An International Symposium in Honor of David Bordwell," April 21 through 23 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

• "Cinema, War and a Society of Spectacle," June 9, Cambridge, UK.

• "The Politics of 'Visual Pleasure' 30 Years On: The Work of Laura Mulvey," June 18, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK.

• "Werner Herzog's Cinema: Between the Visionary and the Documentary," September 16 through 18 at the Goethe-Institut in London.

Online listening tip #1. Leonard Lopate plays host to Neil LaBute, Amanda Peet, Ben Stiller, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jim Taylor and Tamara Jenkins. Via Greg Allen.

Online listening tip #2. Radio Days, all month long, live from Amsterdam.

Online viewing and listening tips. Sean Spillane's got a few for you at Bitter Cinema.

Posted by dwhudson at April 6, 2005 2:42 PM