Shorts, 6/3.

"The Power of Nightmares, a three-hour BBC documentary directed by Adam Curtis, is arguably the most important film about the 'war on terrorism' since the events of September 11," begins Peter Bergen in the Nation. That said, though, Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc (and of these words in Mother Jones last year: "What we have done in Iraq is what bin Laden could not have hoped for in his wildest dreams"), has a few bones to pick with Curtis and they boil down to this: "[H]e blows it when he concludes that Al Qaeda is a phantasmagorical construct of US officials." And that said: "Still, despite my many disagreements with The Power of Nightmares, which sometimes has the feel of a Noam Chomsky lecture channeled by Monty Python, it is a richly rewarding film because it treats its audience as adults capable of following complex arguments."

Also in the Nation, or rather, on the site: Katrina Vanden Heuvel asks, "Will Russell Crowe KO Bush's shameless scam to shred America's most successful antipoverty program?"

"It could only have happened in Los Angeles. It could only have happened in Dogtown." Back in the summer of 2001, when Stacy Peralta's Dogtown and Z-Boys was winning awards on the festival circuit, Joe Donnelly turned in a deep history of the scene that made the cover of the LA Weekly; he also interviewed Jay Adams, "the soul of the Dogtown movement." This week, he interviews Catherine Hardwicke, the vivacious and earthy director of Lords of Dogtown, reviewed in this issue by Scott Foundas. More from AO Scott in the New York Times and Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.

Also:

• An excerpt from Ben Stiller's remarks in Looking at Los Angeles introduces a few choice photos: "I have often felt it to be as lonely and sad a place as I have ever been, and I wake up most mornings thankful to be living here."

• Ella Taylor on the "calamitously miscast" Cinderella Man. More from Manohla Dargis in the NYT, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat, and again, Zacharek in Salon.

• Foundas on Funny Ha Ha, "a generation-defining work about a generation marked by its very lack of definition."

• Warren Beatty speaks and Nikki Finke winces.

• Foundas notes that Lt Gen Roméo Dallaire is "not exactly a typical film festival guest" and asks him what it's been like talking to audiences who've just seen Shake Hands With the Devil. Taylor reviews the doc, as does Klein in the LACB.

Nancy Ramsey talks with Peter Raymont about returning to Rwanda with Dallaire and shooting Shake Hands.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• Chuck Wilson previews Outfest (July 7 through 18).

• Kevin Thomas marvels at the screen tests, outtakes and such to be seen in "Treasures From Cinema's Attic: Rarities From the SabuCat Archives" and plugs Brian Flemming's The God Who Wasn't There, screening as part of the Grassroots Cinema series (June 3 through 9).

• Lewis Segal previews the Dance Camera West Dance Film Festival, through June 25.

• Filming hasn't even begun, but two million people have already watched the teaser trailer for The Da Vinci Code. John Horn passes along this info and reports on the PR campaign in general.

Robert Davis: "[I]f you're anywhere near the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the next couple of weeks, stop in and see [Chris] Marker's latest project, a 19-minute video loop called Owls at Noon.... Marker takes Eliot's evocation of a shapeless, colorless, purposeless existence and applies it to [WWI's] stunned-silent aftermath, the lull and those that came later, as if the 20th century isn't so much defined by its wars but by the brevity of the pauses between them."

A few paragraphs into Sam Adams's piece on Robert and Michael Meeropol, you may wonder what it's doing in the "Movies" section of the Philadelphia City Paper. If you're easily distracted, that is, because it is otherwise a riveting read. "Robert and his brother Michael, who will appear at the Free Library on June 7 as part of the First Person Festival, were 6 and 10 years old when their parents were put to death in June 1953, convicted at the height of the Red Scare of stealing atom bomb secrets for the Soviet Union." Their parents, of course, were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Heir to an Execution, made by Michael's daughter, Ivy, will also be screened.

Already, a handful of festivals have been mentioned, but that's not even the half of what all is going on in June. Eugene Hernandez offers a rough guide. Also at indieWIRE: Brian Brooks on Tim Robbins's unconventional distribution plans for Embedded Live.

"Change is in the air. Seismic change." In the Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson describes the varied ways indie distributors are contemplating shaking up the system. "What everyone knows, but few want to admit on record, is that day-and-date delivery of movies through every platform - with different pricing - is inevitable. As Landmark Theatres marketing chief Ray Price puts it, 'This is the year that the walls of Jericho could come tumbling down.'"

Kevin Maher:

The comic-book geek, long regarded with paternalistic tolerance by mainstream culture, has been cruelly undone by his latest big-screen crush, Sin City. For despite pretences of sophistication - a Cannes premiere, a media charm offensive, and even suggestions of High Art - this computer-generated comic-book adaptation is so steeped in fetishistic adolescent imagery and casual misogyny that it overexposes the sinister appetites of its hardcore fanbase. In fact, such is the sublime level of sexual sadism on display here (paedophilia and slut-killing are big in Sin City), and so relentless is the leering softcore depiction of prostitutes, dancers and slatternly lowlifes, that the movie unwittingly reveals the frank and masturbatory hatred of women that is fundamental to any understanding of the comic-book geek.

Well. Also in the London Times: Sean Macaulay measures the eccentricity of today's directors against the true legends and Christopher Wood interviews Patrick Keiller.

"The SLA affair was, says Robert Stone, the director of the new documentary Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, a media landmark." It was, as Phil Hoad explains, the moment at which the news became subsumed by the entertainment industry.

Also in the Independent:

• Having just put together Halliwell's Top 1000, John Walker presents quite a batch of top tens from 17 directors, beginning with Quentin Tarantino (whose #1 is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). That may seem rather exciting, but the lists are taken directly from Sight & Sound's 2002 poll, so they're hardly news.

• James Rampton on the team behind The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse and what they might be up to next.

• Chris Sullivan meets Thomas Jane.

Doug Cummings: "For my money, Nang Nak is also a lot more fun - and even touching - than any one of the Star Wars prequels or Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (2003), for that matter. Not that it's high art."

An interview with Nicolas Roeg is rare enough, let alone one as full and far-ranging as Jason Wood's. David Lean, the role of chance in several key scenes in his films, his penchant for casting musicians, the Guardian runs the full transcript. Also:

• Reggie Nadelson visits the set of The Producers, the film adapted from the play adapted from the film.

• Richard Jinman profiles Ewan McGregor.

• "There are three main challenges for black British cinema," writes Vanessa Walters in the Guardian. "Funding is the most immediate."

"What we predicted would happen has happened." The news Custodes Lucis Group has to report is not good; but there is still time to do something towards salvaging the work being done by Britain's National Film and Television Archive.

The Stranger blurbs its picks for the current week at the Seattle International Film Festival. And Tablet's Siffblog keeps on rolling. Also: Steve Kirch on ...Loves Martha, "one of three entries at Seattle International Film Festival's annual Fly Films Festival. The event presents local filmmakers with a different set of constraints each year and turns them loose with limited time and resources to make their film 'on the fly.'"

David Lowery interviews Don Hertzfeldt, producer of The Animation Show and director of The Meaning of Life.

"The rules are vague and their application inconsistent. But in most Indian films you won't see French kissing, nudity of any kind, excessive drug use, or representations of Hindu-Muslim romance. Interclass romances are fair game." In the wake of the Indian government's ban on smoking in movies (for more, see Wilfred Lobo over at Cinema Minima), Daniel Engber explains the rules of Bollywood.

Also in Slate:

• Edward Jay Epstein has a few more rules, nine of them, the "common elements of the Midas formula," or: How to make a blockbusting franchise.

• David Edelstein on Cinderella Man: "It's schmaltzy - but it's schmaltz veined with foie gras."

• And David Fellerath on the real Max Baer's Jewishness.

At Filmmaker, Scott Macaulay has word on a new book by Miranda July, The Boy from Lam Kien, and Steve Gallagher notes that Alan Cumming will be hosting the Sundance Channel's "Friday night cult-movie destination, Midnight Snack."

Tom Cruise's weirdness of late may be beginning to have an effect on his career, reports Sharon Waxman. More from Time's Richard Corliss.

Also in the NYT:

• Stephen Holden on Après Vous and Caterina in the Big City.

• AO Scott on The White Diamond; more from Steve Erickson in Gay City News.

• Sharon LaFraniere asks whether Madacascar might have an effect on the tourism industry on the island itself; so far, it hasn't.

MSNBC's John Hartl lists ten remakes that are better than the originals. Via Movie City News, where Gary Dretzka talks to Rock School director Don Argott and his subject, Paul Green: "For me, Zeppelin and Zappa are Plato and Descartes. If I can get the kids to listen to Zeppelin, I try to push them back even further, to Robert Johnson." Reviews: Manohla Dargis in the NYT and JR Jones in the Chicago Reader. Pix and a plea to save CBGB: indieWIRE's Brian Brooks.

"[Premiere critic Glenn] Kenny's good-naturedness is just one of the things you'll discover about him in this dishy, engrossing, and very funny interview," writes Aaron Aradillas, if he does say so himself over at RockCritics.com. It is a great read, though; here's where a big smile broke across my face and I was won over: "Imagine being a 14-year-old in 1973 and trying to defend Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets to a bunch of Deep Purple fans. This is actually hypothetical - the Deep Purple fans were not interested in having the conversation..." Via cinetrix, naturally.

Anne S Lewis describes how the 50th anniversary of Giant will be celebrated in Austin and Marfa, where it was shot. Also in the Austin Chronicle: Spencer Parsons on F for Fake.

Todd at Twitch: "[Douglas] Coupland - famous for Generation X and Life After God - has written an original screenplay titled 'Everything's Gone Green' and it is going into production this month with Paul Fox at the helm and Paulo Costanzo in the lead role."

Annalee Newitz at Alternet: "Interestingly, as the country has grown more conservative, [George] Lucas's films have tipped further toward liberalism."

"The experience of watching movies (videos) on the web is almost painful, and sort of lonely," writes Nick Rombes. Chuck Tryon responds, noting that this loneliness is most likely a phase as online viewing eventually moves to living room screens, plus these up-close experiences strip a film naked and, all in all, it "makes me more aware of the craft that went into the making of the film, the fact that it was made, whereas most Hollywood films do their best to hide that very fact." David Lowery, too, emphasizes that what's unpleasant about online viewing is likely temporary.

Online viewing tip. Clips from the films slated to be broadcast during IFC Pulp Month. Which is this one. June.

Online browsing tip. Chris Hughes's "Video Art Links." Via Wiley Wiggins.

Posted by dwhudson at June 3, 2005 10:53 AM