Shorts, 6/7.

For Assembly International, staging an evening of screenings, talks and so on in Berlin on Friday evening, Darius James chats with Bruce LaBruce. It's a wide-ranging talk with occasional expletives and shout-outs that touches on John Landis, gay porn, Gus Van Sant, the crisis of the American Left, the New York Press, Kenneth Anger and on and on. Also: Nicolas Siepen interviews Azza El-Hassan, a filmmaker from Ramalla, plus Godard with line breaks.

"Does Hollywood need to remain so out of synch with reality?" Edward Jay Epstein isn't talking culture or politics, he's talking money and, at Slate, he maps several of the seismic shifts reshaping the film industry. Also: David Edelstein on why Hal Holbrook made for a more evocative Deep Throat than Mark Felt.

Christopher Doyle shooting for M Night Shyamalan? One can imagine the vivid imagery, but, given their very different working methods, it's a lot harder to imagine them making it through an entire shoot together. Then again, you never know. Via Todd at Twitch.

"It seems that Fox Home Entertainment is suddenly making a bid to rival Warner Home Video and the Criterion Collection for first-rate handling of its library titles." Dave Kehr on Nightmare Alley, The Street With No Name and House of Bamboo. Also in the New York Times: Michael Wilson and Andrew Jacobs on all that Russell Crowe silliness.

Knowing he's going to be interviewing Jane Fonda at considerable and yet not unlimited length at the National Film Theatre, David Puttnam makes a very smart choice: He concentrates on the films between 1969 and 1979. And so, we hear Fonda talk about They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, spend quite a while - and quite justifiably, too - with Klute and get the lowdown on the lowdown in Coming Home. Then Puttnam steers the conversation to her father, segues to politics and opens it up to questions from the audience. Which happens to include Mario Van Peebles. It all wraps with lessons learned from Katharine Hepburn.

Also in the Guardian: Paul Hamilos interviews Taylor Hackford.

Nick Pinkerton kicks off Reverse Shot's trio of reviews of François Ozon's 5 x 2 for indieWIRE. More from Dennis Lim in the Voice.

Speaking of which:

• Lim, who previews a series of Asian City Films (June 11 through July 3), reviews Wild Side - while David Ng talks with director Sébastien Lifshitz - as well as The Big Durian and Mr and Mrs Smith.

• Jessica Winter previews the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (June 9 through 23) and Joshua Land zeroes in on the South American docs.

• And Winter previews another event, the James Dean series at Film Forum, June 10 through 23.

• Michael Atkinson on Howl's Moving Castle: "I haven't in years seen an American film, live action or not, that has attended so carefully to the details of aging, gravity, destruction, and atmosphere... [T]he film is an organic, childlike wonder, fabulously unpredictable and seethingly inventive." At Twitch, Todd points to several clips.

• "Tracking Shots," etc: Matt Singer on Slutty Summer and Paternal Instinct; Ben Kenigsberg on The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D; Marc Holcomb on High Tension; and R Emmet Sweeney on Bustin' Bonaparte: The Story of an African Farm.

Oliver Berry and Ben McCann compile Kamera's "Top 10 Being Watched Movies." You know, Rear Window, The Truman Show, etc. Also: Robert Williamson on The Cinema of the Low Countries: "The latest in Wallflower Press's ambitious series of 24 Frames titles sets out to eschew issues of national cinema in favour of a regional perspective. That it ultimately fails demonstrates how prevalent and important issues of national identity remain in world cinema."

George Fasel on Arnaud Desplechin's Kings and Queen: "I do not know of a film that, for all its allusions to literature and art and classical mythology and philosophy and psychoanalysis, is more a celebration of the concrete, the vast collection of detail that makes up the richness of human life."

Former Miramax publicist Rachel Pine's got a novel coming out, The Twins of Tribeca, and Celia McGee has no problem at all pegging characters' fictional names to some fairly famous ones in the New York Daily News. Via the IFC Blog, where Alison Willmore's rounded up pointers to umpteen interviews, each - and this is the good part - annotated with topics that should have been covered.

In "Women with Guns" at Flickhead, Richard Armstrong discovers that the power of film can side-swipe you in unexpected ways.

Online browsing tip #1. "It is with great pleasure that the Daniel Langlois Foundation presents an Internet project dedicated to an early sketchbook of Sergei M Eisenstein (1898-1948), dating from 1914 when the artist was 16 years old." Which is just amazing once you see these drawings. Anyway: "Eisenstein specialist Oksana Bulgakowa comments on the sketches and draws from her biography of Eisenstein to help us understand the familial, social and political environment in which he grew up and developed as an artist. The visual material also includes a wide variety of documents: drawings, plans, notes, videos, photographs and reproductions of paintings." Related: Matt Clayfield on Alexander Nevsky.

Online browsing tip #2. The Drive-in Museum. Via Coudal Partners, where the Crash Ballets are definitely an online viewing tip.

Online listening tip #1. Zoë Bell, one of two stunt women profiled in the doc Double Dare, is a guest on DVD Talk Radio.

Online listening tip #2. CC Banana has a question for George Lucas. Via Peter Sciretta at Cinematical.

Online viewing tip #1. The trailer for The Aviary, a true indie aimed at countering misconceptions about the lives of flight attendants.

Online viewing tip #2. "In Green" (last link on that page), an excellent video for the song by Volcano, I'm Still Excited!. Via Tom Hall.

Posted by dwhudson at June 7, 2005 3:37 PM