Shorts, 4/22.

"If you are looking for a good dose of outrage at a theater near you," writes AO Scott, "you won't find a better bargain than Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." At Alternet, Noy Thrupkaew concurs, calling the doc "devilishly entertaining." And in Gay City News, Steve Erickson: "As a cautionary tale, it's vital." More from Jim at Twitch, which, as always, is bulging to the bursting point with amazing stuff.

But Salon's Andrew O'Hehir argues that Enron is crucially flawed in that it degenerates into just another in a series of "lefty agitprop movies." Odd, not simply because director Alex Gibney's tone is far more sober than Michael Moore's while his stance is far less overtly ideological than The Corporation's - O'Hehir's examples - but also because Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who wrote the book the film is based on - and they're reporters for Fortune, after all, not, say, Mother Jones - certainly didn't seem to think the doc wandered too far out in left field when they appeared for a Q&A at SXSW.

Back to the New York Times: Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, playwright Caryl Churchill and actioneer Michael Bay are hardly clones of each other, literally or figuratively, but Caryn James notes all three have taken a keen interest in the topic.

"The transition from powerful studio president to independent producer is not a smooth one." Anne Thompson talks to Kevin Misher about his three-year trek from Universal to The Interpreter. Also in the Hollywood Reporter, Paul Bond talks to studio execs who foresee the day when the window between a film's theatrical and DVD releases is reduced to nil; and Anna McQueen surveys the films lined up for International Critics Week at Cannes.

Peter Keough previews highlights of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, which runs through Sunday. Also in the Boston Phoenix: Gerald Peary: "The guilty amusement of this week, or any week, is Maidstone (1970), which is at the Harvard Film Archive on Saturday (April 23) as part of its 'Death of the Sixties' series. It's Norman Mailer's self-starring, self-promoting, self-indulgent saga about a porno filmmaker who runs for president."

The release of Kung Fu Hustle has Godfrey Cheshire sketching the predicament of Hong Kong cinema in the US for the Independent Weekly.

George Fasel on Errol Flynn: "I thought it might be interesting to look at one actor who did one narrow thing well, but so well that he may deserve a special little niche in a corner of the pantheon."

Walter Addiego for the San Francisco Chronicle: "We've selected a dozen promising offerings from each of the two major categories of the 48th San Francisco International Film Festival." Also: James Sullivan talks to Ken Winokur, a founding member of the Alloy Orchestra about the impact the Lon Cheney version of The Phantom of the Opera must have had in 1925.

Want to see Hal Hartley in person tomorrow at San Francisco's Roxie Theater? RSVP, please.

"Cyber cinema," Kate Stables's monthly round-up of online viewing tips for the Guardian, is an especially good batch this time around.

Also:

• Jimmy Leach: "Michael Moore has established a scholarship for students who defy the administration at California State University - the same institution that cancelled his talk last year."

• Paul Merton is presenting a series of silent comedies at the Barbican this weekend: "One of my best moments was being accosted by a seven-year-old boy, who stood and yelled at me: 'THAT-WAS-FAN-TAS-TIC!' He had just seen a comedy made in the 1910s."

• Reuters: "Sony and Toshiba are in talks to develop a common standard for next-generation DVDs and end a fierce battle over formats that has been threatening to stifle the industry's growth."

• Sam Sarowitz is "hooked" on collecting movie posters.

• Oliver Burkeman meets Rory Culkin.

• Ronald Bergan remembers Ruth Hussey.

Good on Jeffrey Wells for writing up The Beautiful Country. It's not too early.

John Hiscock talks to Emily Mortimer about her latest career move: "Last year, her advisers stepped in with a firm admonition. It was time, they said, for her to stop taking her clothes off in arty, low-budget films, no matter how worthy, and to make the transition to the big time." Also in the Independent: Neil Sinyard probes Hitchcock's penchant for the macabre.

Stephen Leslie: "It may sound like an absurd proposition, but without the contribution of Britain, science fiction cinema would be in the doldrums." More thoughts on sci-fi in the London Times: Ian Johns.

Rosie Millard in the New Statesman: "As ever, the British film industry is trailing behind Hollywood, which has long since collapsed the notion that black actors must always play the sidekick to a white lead."

Mike Atherton is covering London's Raindance East Film Festival through April 28 for Cinema Minima.

In the LA CityBeat, Andy Klein catches three movies that are all, in one way or another, about movies: Torremolinos 73, After Midnight and Double Dare.

Jonathan Rosenbaum previews the series, "Every Man For Himself: The Films of Maurice Pialat," at the Facets Cinémathèque beginning tonight and running through May 3. Facets, by the way, has just announced it'll be bringing out the Edgar Reitz's full 16-hour mini-series, Heimat, on DVD in August. Back to the Chicago Reader: Benjamin Strong is unimpressed by The Amityville Horror while Kevin B Lee has a pretty good time with Kung Fu Hustle.

It's Earth Day and the Marin Environmental Film Festival is off and running through Sunday.

Sam Adams alerts Philadelphia City Paper readers to Secret Cinema's "Re-loaded" Velvet Underground Film Festival, a good portion of which is rarely seen, e.g., Warhol's Screen Tests.

David Ehrenstein, who published his first piece - on Warhol, natch, in Film Culture -straight out of high school, meets David Ehrenstein, editor of Physical Review Focus.

Also in the LA Weekly:

• "I want very much to make a $15-million to $20-million movie where I don't have this daunting, and inhibiting, pressure to reach everyone in the world or the picture’s not considered a success." Sydney Pollack, an incredibly young 70, tells Scott Foundas about his plans.

• And Ella Taylor reviews The Interpreter ("there's fascination in the movie's mapping of a political landscape - part wish, part fear - that reveals as much about the contradictions in liberal American attitudes in the international arena as it does about global terror and diplomacy in a post-9/11 world") and Kontroll ("the movie combines high-speed rail chases and schoolboy prankishness with the kind of romantic alienation that many young people wear with their basic black and assume will see them through the rest of their lives").

• Nikki Finke: "Hypocrisy, thy name is EW's parent company, Time Warner."

Slate offers more on Pollack and his movie. Bryan Curtis: "He can take any scenario - from the ridiculous to the horrific, from Streep to strife - and mold it into benign mush. This is the source of Pollack's enduring popularity and why some of us find his recent pictures so maddening." David Edelstein doesn't have much fun taking in The Interpreter (so he makes his own in an update to his review at the end), but this is fun:

I want to throw my hat in the ring as America's Go-To Movie Guy. Studios, agents, publicists: Think about what you spend on an ad in the New York Times with yet more gush from Peter Travers or drivel from some low-wattage radio flunkie from San Bernardino. Now think about putting a fraction of that money into a critic with proven integrity.

Speaking of... "Oldboy is not [Rex] Reed's first serving of crackpot culinary dish." Ray Pride turns up evidence that the way to this critic's pen is through his stomach.

James Seo caught Michel Gondry's talk at MIT a couple of weeks ago.

Christian Bartels in the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (and in English):

The distinct possibility of getting rid of the tax benefits for the film funds has resulted in an uproar from an illustrious gang of actors, producers and directors, who along with fund managers are bemoaning the end of German cinema. This commotion comes despite the fact that very few in the German film industry have profited from the funds themselves.... "Should a German-financed film do well against all expectations, the Americans always think of some way to make sure the money stays in their hands,” says fund specialist Stefan Loipfinger.

Roger Avary: "I don't know about you (or those of you who've watched it), but for me watching Project Greenlight is a gut-wrenching, nerve-wracking experience."

Daniel Robert Epstein's latest interview for SuicideGirls? Woody Allen. Via Cinematical.

Grady Hendrix recommends Ram Gopal Varma's Sakar.

The International Istanbul Film Festival wrapped on Sunday; at indieWIRE, Kerem Bayrak reports on the awards, the atmo, and of course, the films.

Online browsing tip. "Dressed as Their Favorite Characters from a Wes Anderson Movie" at Never Loved Milk. Via filmtagebuch.

Online viewing tip #1. Frank Hudec's mash-up of Gus Van Sant's and Hitch's Psycho(s). Via Bitter Cinema.

Online viewing tip #2. Sleater-Kinney's "Entertain." Via Tom Hall.

Online viewing tip #3. Greg Allen watches NEC.

Online viewing tip #4. The trailer for Lars von Trier's Manderlay. Via Movie City News, where David Poland looks ahead to this summer's movies and where you'll find Patrick Franklin's Ebertfest blog and The Door in the Floor, a story by John Irving illustrated by Jeff Bridges.

Posted by dwhudson at April 22, 2005 2:46 PM