Shorts, 5/16.

Some of the most refreshing Cannes coverage last year came from George the Cyclist, who has once again biked 600 miles from Paris to the Riviera and is turning in short yet sharp reviews of the films he's catching.

A cyclist, Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche in Caché.

Matt Langdon, who noted the other day, by the way, that Kino will be releasing a two-disc collection of avant-garde shorts at the end of June, is posting George the Cyclist's takes at Rashomon.

More previously unmentioned Cannes coverage is coming from Jeremy Mathews at Film Threat.

Eugene Hernandez helpfully gathers highlights of indieWIRE bloggish coverage of the fest in one handy entry.

Also blogging from Cannes at the moment is Evan, General Manager of IFC. Meantime, Vince Keenan calls Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession "the best program on television this month."

Manohla Dargis and AO Scott's Cannes blog rolls on, but Dargis has also shaped her views on Michael Haneke's Caché (Hidden), which "addresses the most urgent of issues - including terrorism both as an abstraction, as the monster under the bed, and as palpable reality," Marco Tullio Giordana's Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti (Once You're Born You Can No Longer Hide), "one of the most highly anticipated selections of this year's program [which] now stands to become one of its gravest disappointments," and briefly, Vimukthi Jayasundara's "moody, beautifully filmed" first feature, Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land).

Also in the New York Times:

• Monday seems an odd day to run Scott's review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, "by far the best film in the more recent trilogy," but there is a sort of Cannes connection, after all. More from Anthony Lane in the New Yorker, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, Ken Tucker and Adam Sternbergh in New York and Neva Chonin and Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• Warner Brothers is getting back into gaming, reports Laura M Holson, and Eric A Taub notes how the industry is looking to HDTV.

• A long-term box office slump could hurt newspapers. Nat Ives explains.

The Guardian's Xan Brooks is also blogging from Cannes, while Charlotte Higgins reports that the hot ticket has been the controversial Batalla en el Cielo (Battle in Heaven); director Carlos Reygadas insists, "I'm not being provocative gratuitously."

Neither is George Lucas, one imagines, but Higgins quotes him chatting about the political undertones of Star Wars. Not only might the story "awaken people to this danger" of democracies slipping into dictatorship, but "the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq are unbelievable." The AP's David Germain has more, while Variety's Gabriel Snyder reports that conservatives are beginning to get ticked off.

At indieWIRE (where Brian Brooks has more info on Pedro Almodóvar's next one), Eugene Hernandez sets Lucas's comments next to fresh ones from Lars von Trier.

Meantime, the Guardian asks scientists for their takes on What the Bleep Do We Know?. Richard Dawkins, for example: "The film is even more pretentious than it is boring."

What exactly went wrong with the British film industry during the New Labour years? Ever so patiently, Nick Cohen explains: "Gradually, as Brit-flick followed Brit-flick, the Inland Revenue began to notice a disconcerting pattern: tax relief on film production wasn't financing film production but being creamed off by middle men."

Also in the Observer:

• Euan Ferguson on why women are "quite thumpingly wrong," in his humble opinion, when it comes to men and their war movies.

• It's time to grok Last Tango in Paris all over again, argues Cristina Odone: "In just under two hours, Bertolucci toppled the taboo of man as invincible sexual machine - and robbed feminists of their great weapon against pornography."

• Jason Solomons on half a dozen films at Cannes.

SFist has been covering the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (through May 22); most recently, for example, you'll find rita's take on POPaganda: The Art and Subversion of Ron English.

Interviews at Hollywood Bitchslap: Greg Ursic with Paul Haggis and Peter Sobczynski with Daniel Craig and with Mad Hot Ballroom director Marilyn Agrelo. More on that film from NP Thompson.

Up and coming:

• Factory Girl, with Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol and Katie Holmes as Edie Sedgwick.

• Children of Men with Clive Owen, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who's also teaming up with Guillermo Del Toro for Pan's Labyrinth.

• Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm is back on this summer's schedule while The Man Who Killed Don Quixote may be resurrected.

• The Black Dahlia, Brian De Palma's adaptation of James Ellroy's novel, with Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank.

• The Night Listener, with Robin Williams and Toni Collette, directed by Patrick Stettner and written by Armistead Maupin and Terry Anderson.

• A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman's adaptation of Garrison Keilor's book, with - get this - Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Lindsay Lohan.

• Woody Allen has said he wants to shoot his next film in London, but the AP reports it may be Barcelona instead. Meantime, take a look at this.

Doug Cummings on White Dog: "[Sam] Fuller's film is a powerful, inspired critique of racism, tapping into the relationship between humans and animals in a way that places it within the ranks of cinematic masterpieces like Au hasard Balthazar (1966)."

Filmbrain: Abdel Kechiche's "L'Esquive is easily one of the most original and vibrant films to come out of France in quite some time."

Nick Rombes revels in Agnès Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7.

Via Movie City News, Shawn Levy in the Oregonian on Henry Fonda.

"How real is 24?" asks Spencer Ackerman in Salon. Says Roger Cressey, "a former White House counterterrorism aide in the Clinton and Bush administrations who admits to TiVo-ing the last couple of episodes: 'Although the real world doesn't offer anything nearly as fast, or as good or bad, it's entertaining as all hell.'"

Anywhere near MIT? Greg Allen recommends catching Alberta Chu's Seeing The Landscape: Richard Serra: Tuhirangi Contour on Wednesday.

Online listening tip. Mike Atherton's podcast from the London Korean Film Festival at Cinema Minima.

Online viewing tips #1 through #4. Cyndi Greening posts four "videocasts," all of them reports from Sundance. One's an overview of the scene; another features Naomi Watts and Scott Coffey talking about Ellie Parker; and the last two feature director Alice Wu and the cast of Saving Face.

Online viewing tip #5. Hot Hot Heat's "Middle of Nowhere," via Fimoculous.

Online browsing and viewing tip #6. The Flux features a fresh indie short weekly. Via CK Sample III at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at May 16, 2005 1:48 PM