Shorts, 5/10.

"Italy, Australia and Romania are the hotbeds of world cinema, with Spain and Mexico not far behind, while Middle Eastern and Asian movies have lost their luster," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "That is, of course, if you believe the films chosen to screen at next week's Cannes Film Festival can be taken as a sign of cinematic prosperity."

Acquarello: "Invoking Rainer Werner Fassbinder's irreverent, artful kitsch, Federico Fellini carnivalesque grotesquerie, and Werner Schroeter's impenetrable, autobiographical self-evidence, Ticket of No Return encapsulates the highly stylized, funny, frustrating, offbeat, decadent, intoxicating, and fevered delirium that is Ulrike Ottinger's cinema."

Charles Taylor in the New York Observer: "It would be nice to think that with the release of the new extended cut of Casualties of War, Brian De Palma's masterpiece and one of the greatest of all American movies, would finally get its due."

Over at Hollywood Bitchslap, lucky Marc Kandel meets Richard E Grant.

Stephen Holden: "Russian Dolls belongs to a long line of airy French films that induce a pleasant buzz of Euro-envy." More from Cinematical's Christopher Campbell. Also in the New York Times, Dana Stevens on the Cartoons: No Laughing Matter? series and Kim Severson talks with Eric Schlosser, who'll be heading to Cannes to see the premiere of Richard Linklater's adaptation of Fast Food Nation.

Terri Sutton in the City Pages: "Part dyke's own Sex and the City, part documentary, and all collage, The Joy of Life provides a lover's look at the pain and bliss of desiring, whether the desired be a beautiful woman, a dead friend, a place called San Francisco, or film itself."

Johnny Ray Huston reviews Drawing Restraint 9, "[p]erhaps the most expensive wedding video ever made." Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, local recommendations: San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (starts Friday; site), San Francisco Cinematheque's Questions Concerning Technology program and Other Cinema's CounterCorp benefit on Saturday.

Ron Hanson tells the story behind Veialu Aila-Unsworth's animated short, Blue Willow at the Lumière Reader.

Elizabeth Bernstein and Kia Simon write at SF360 about realizing their indie feature, Alice.

Besides Cruise fatigue, another problem audiences may be having with Mission Impossible III, argues Julia Turner in Slate, is that TV vet JJ Abrams "recycles [his own] setups, gimmicks, and gags with abandon."

Jim Ridley: "The hot topic in Nashville's film community is the Visual Content Act of 2006, which is scheduled to go before the state Senate tomorrow. This is Tennessee's overdue attempt to put an incentives package in place to lure lucrative film and TV production to the state. It stands a good chance of passing, and if it does, expect it to get a lot of attention outside Tennessee."

Scott Tobias introduces this week's list at the AV Club: "10 Character Actors Who Should Be In Every Movie."

In the Guardian, Anne Rowe remembers Phil Brown, whose career "was bound up in the Hollywood anti-left witchhunts of the late 1940s and 50s." 1916 - 2006.

Online viewing tip #1. The trailer for Tears of the Black Tiger via filmtagebuch.

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for Rampo Noir, via the Gomorrahizer at Twitch.

Posted by dwhudson at May 10, 2006 7:35 AM