Shorts, 6/9.

1949. Look sends the young photojournalist Stanley Kubrick to Chicago, arguably the most photogenic city in the US, and the magazine runs eleven shots over five pages. "But Kubrick shot 40 rolls of film. What happened to the other photographs?" asks Mary Panzer? The Chicago Tribune runs her answer (it's a happy one, of course) alongside a gallery of eight.

Spectacular stuff via Coudal Partners and Movie City Indie. Also in the Trib: Mike Hughlett on TiVo to go.

J Hoberman will be introducing the five films he's selected for the series "American Outlaws: Scenes from the Dream Life, 1968 - 72," screening at the Pacific Film Archive from tomorrow through Saturday, June 18. What first strikes Max Goldberg is that Berkeley is a supremely appropriate setting; second, the series "shies away from the Vietnam generation's most oversaturated films in the interest of privileging context over cults of personality that develop around icons like Easy Rider. Indeed, Hoberman is concerned here with the films that didn't live on - those that didn't survive the 60s for a healthy shelf life in Blockbusters the nation over." Third, if The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties is any indication, the lecture and the intros are going to be well worth catching.

Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

• Susan Gerhard on The Power of Nightmares, opening at the Roxie tomorrow and slated for a full week.

• Cheryl Eddy previews the 7th annual San Francisco Black Film Festival, through June 12, and reviews both Mr and Mrs Smith and our collective "Brangelina" moment (whether we asked for it or not).

• Johnny Ray Huston: "High Tension's high profile says something about the changing commercial tides of French cinema. Aja forsakes the art house shock tactics that have been de rigueur of late for outright imitation of - or, in this case, outdoing of - big-budget Hollywood bombast." More on that one from both DK Holm and Alison Veneto at Movie Poop Shoot.

• Rachel Odes on Shake Hands with the Devil: "[Peter] Raymont's documentary raises some relevant questions about whether we should let military leaders off the hook - regardless of how guilty they feel."

Elbert Ventura for the New Republic on "a particularly fecund phase in Hollywood history" and Alan J Pakula's paranoia trilogy, Klute, The Parallax View and All the President's Men:

In films like The Conversation, Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor, and Marathon Man individuals found themselves enmeshed in - and fighting against - schemes of unimaginable proportions. Jake Gittes's stunned retreat from his own quest, with the ineffectual salve, "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," could well be the emblematic ending of the genre. All the President's Men can be seen as a culmination of that string of conspiracy thrillers, not least because it finally gave the good guys an unambiguous victory.... Seeing Pakula's paranoia trilogy now calls to mind an era when the movies dared to be relevant.

At long last, another list of the greatest movies of all time. No, seriously, this one's at the very least notable since it's about to be published in book form as Halliwell's Top 1000, and Alison Willmore's already broken it down at the IFC Blog, based on a series of articles in today's London Times. The big surprise, as she notes, is that Citizen Kane has been knocked down several notches to #6, and at the top? Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. "It's a spectacular victory for those of us who believe that less is more," writes Times critic James Christopher. "The film is as bare as one of Aesop's Fables. It sits at the top of the pile, as inscrutable and compelling as a three-line haiku."

Over three pages, the Times then lists the top 100, with the top ten annotated. Alison on that batch: "The only inclusion we find fault with is Some Like It Hot, which we've never been that fond of, and which has become the kind of comedy version of Citizen Kane, occupying undeservingly high spots on top tens and such because it's a safe comedy title (and comedy is so much more subjective than drama)." Back in the paper, John Walker, who compiled the list, elaborates on how he went about constructing it. A few notables comment briefly on Tokyo Story.

On a far smaller scale but perhaps of more immediate interest, Jeffrey Anderson at Mindjack considers the best of 2005 - so far, of course.

"Dear Hollywood Agents," begins satirist Siamack Baniameri at Muslim WakeUp!, "Years of playing Hamlet and Francisco in small theater houses all over Europe have prepared me for more dynamic and meaningful parts such as hijacker, suicide bomber, kidnapper, rock-throwing fanatic, hostage-taker, insurgent, fundamentalist mullah, or the ringleader of a terrorist sleeper cell in New York City." Via Alternet's Peek.

For his "Beyond the Multiplex" column in Salon, Andrew O'Hehir calls up Pawel Pawlikowski to talk at good, healthy length about My Summer of Love (for trailers, click "passionate") and then reviews François Ozon's 5 x 2, Sébastien Lifshitz's Wild Side, Christophe Honoré's Ma Mère, Pierre Salvadori's Après Vous, Chris Terrio's Heights and Alexandre Aja's High Tension.

Another onstage interview at the National Film Theatre, another terrific transcript in the Guardian. Bonnie Greer has more for Ousmane Sembène than questions, too. When he challenges her to show him "one man who doesn't love women," her immediate reply is, "Well, you are in England." Related: Darren Zenko in Vue Weekly on Moolaadé.

"Over the next three months, Miramax Films, founded and operated by brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, will release at least 10 movies, including seven films that have been gathering dust on the studio's shelves for up to four years." As John Horn reports, among the orphans are:

• The Underclassman and Pretty Persuasion, both directed by Marcos Siega.

• The Libertine, the film it took John Malkovich so long to see realized that he eventually grew too old for the part and Johnny Depp had to step in.

• Proof, reuniting director John Madden and Gwenyth Paltrow; Madden will shoot Killshot for the Weinsteins' new company.

• Lasse Hallström's An Unfinished Life; and Disney will be releasing his Casanova just three months later.

• John Dahl's The Great Raid. Miramax's page for it announces, "In theaters 2004." Oops.

• The Warrior, already out on DVD in Europe. Horn: "Part of The Warrior's delay resulted from a disagreement over whether the film, set in feudal India, should be released with its original subtitles (its few lines of dialogue are in Hindi) or dubbed into English. The film now will be released with subtitles."

• And of course, Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm.

Also in the Los Angeles Times:

• Kevin Thomas previews the series, "Nothing Left to Do But Cry: The Films of Massimo Troisi," June 10 through 15 at the Aero.

• Christine N Ziemba on the many sites taking uploaded screenplays.

• Robert Abele on A League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

"What are viewers to make of a three-hour film about the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and the legacies of human development along the Danube River, technology, and violent ruptures in recent European history from the Holocaust to the collapse of communism to the breakup of Yugoslavia?" asks Peter Monaghan in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "David Barison and Daniel Ross are finding that their 189-minute opus, The Ister, has been winning rave reviews and awards in several countries since its debut last year." Via Arts & Letters Daily.

Nick Rombes: "The democratization of filmmaking means that avant gardes are everywhere, and nowhere."

Matt Zoller Seitz finds Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle "so richly imagined that it makes most American fantasies, animated or live-action, seem thin and stale. It's a storybook dream." Also in the New York Press: Armond White: "You don't have to be Osama bin Laden to think that only a horrible culture would produce an 'entertainment' like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But when a bootleg of this facetious comedy does get satellite-projected to that crazy hermit in a Middle Eastern cave, he'll probably break into an 'I told you so' grin."

Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene on Days of Being Wild:

[I]t's an hour-and-a-half of beautiful actors luxuriating in the visual steam bath of Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography, awash in shadow and sensual heat, as Wong's scenario meanders from action thriller to tragedy along what will become his familiarly unpredictable path. There's a current trend toward "sandbox" video games that let the player wander anywhere and interact with anything in his virtual environment. Wong's plots are similar in that any stray character can tug the movie in a different direction... Indeed, the enigmatic ending introduces a new character (played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai) whose significance may not even be known until Wong's much later In the Mood for Love and his current 2046 - which threads its way back to complete a 14-year circle.

The Sydney Film Festival opens tomorrow and runs through June 25. A perfect opportunity for Sacha Molitorisz to, first, establish that there is indeed a crisis in Australian cinema, and second, ask 'xperts around the world how, for example, Germany and France have made their national film industries so much more successful - relatively speaking. Related: Director Bill Bennett: "Here's a thought - instead of investing tax dollars in bureaucrats paid to make decisions about what films get made irrespective of their outcome, how about we spend that money on providing incentives to producers to make hit movies?" Via Movie City Indie.

There are times when, after a furious rush of clicking from here to there and on, even more words have an almost staggering effect. They silence the noise. The cinetrix is running passages from François Truffaut's "What Do Critics Dream About?"

"[R]are is the case where filmmakers actually set out to do good and can claim to have achieved it." Alan Riding reports on Videoletters, "designed to further reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia who had once been friends and who had been separated and even alienated by the bloody nationalist conflict." A moving clip accompanies the piece.

Also in the New York Times:

• Stephen Holden previews the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, tonight through June 23. More from Alexander Zaitchik in the NYP.

• "Almost by definition, entrepreneurs flirt with disaster in whatever field they choose, but filmmaking is in a class by itself." Regan Morris talks to a few giving it a go anyway.

• Glenn Collins on Steiner Studios; but the real fun of the piece is his take on Brooklynites.

• David M Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner on how the stars are striking back at the paparazzi.

• "Loser chic"? Maybe. Caryn James makes the case.

• A Reuters item on the actors' unions deal to accept higher pay for their work on video games rather than a share of the profits. We'll see how long that lasts. Richard Vernier has much more in the LAT.

Jason Silverman at Wired News: "Along with bloggers and independent journalists, Iraq-based filmmakers are transmitting stories they believe have been neglected by mainstream media outlets." The focus is on Dreams of Sparrows; via the Alternative Film Guide.

At Twitch, Todd has a preview of the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, July 7 through 18.

The honorees at CineVegas, opening tomorrow and running through June 18: Christopher Walken, Ann-Margret, Nicolas Cage, Samantha Morton, George A Romero, Wim Wenders and Rhonda Fleming.

Wendy Mitchell sends a "Dispatch From Europe" to indieWIRE. Of course, some might argue that, since she's in London, the dispatch doesn't get truly European until she previews the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, July 1 through 9. (Wink-wink, etc.)

Never mind the tweaks. It's time to completely reinvent the San Francisco International Film Festival, argues Michael Fox in the SF Weekly. Via Robert Davis.

For Christianity Today, Peter T Chattaway (now there's a Dickensian moniker for an interviewer) asks "self-described 'atheist Christian'" Brian Flemming about The God Who Wasn't There.

The Hollywood Reporter's Stephen Galloway interviews George Lucas.

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, a roundup: Marc Savlov talks with the kids, Taylor Lautner and Taylor Dooley (that's right) for the Austin Chronicle; Ella Taylor reviews the film for the LA Weekly ("Much hair-raising fun is had on the Train of Thought and the Stream of Consciousness, excellent embodiments of the loosely associative world of today's fully digitalized youth.... After the truly horrid Sin City, it's a relief to see [Robert] Rodriguez let his inner Spy Kid out to play again."); and Movie City News passes along a copy of the first legal steps taken against Rodriguez et al. for trademark infringement by a professional wrestler who goes by the name of, yes, Shark Boy.

Also in the LA Weekly: Scott Foundas on Batman Begins, "a more rugged, robust, athletic picture than [Tim] Burton's two contributions to the franchise, and ultimately a more compelling one" (much more from David Lowery who, like many reviewers, you'll notice, seem almost more intrigued by what Christopher Nolan will do with the sequel than with what he's done here; and, from Collin Smith at That Movie Site, a look back at Burton's 1989 Batman), and on two Iranian "crowd pleasers" that "can reveal as much about the fabric of Iranian culture as their more sophisticated art-house brethren," Friday's Soldiers and Soul Mate.

And back to the Austin Chronicle: Marrit Ingman on how the Freaks and Geeks marathon at the Alamo went and Josh Rosenblatt on Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait.

Online browsing tip. The Silent Film Still Archive. Via Rashomon.

Online listening tip. "Present at the Creation: The Graduate." Via Karina Longworth at Cinematical.

Online viewing tip #1. MeaningofLife.tv. Robert Wright's conversations with smart people. Bring time and attention.

Online viewing tip #2. Fingerboarding. Very little time or attention required. Via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip #3. Robert Sanchez's interview at IESB with Bruce Campbell. Via Todd at Twitch.

Online viewing tip #4. Jamie Stuart asks director Don Argott and producer Sheena Joyce about Rock School for Mov..., no, Mutiny City News.

Online viewing tip #5. Alessandro Bavari's "Headcleaner." That it is. Via The Crime in Your Coffee.

And then, sad news. The UbuWeb Project "has finished." Via filmtagebuch.

Posted by dwhudson at June 9, 2005 4:44 PM