Shorts, 5/18.

First the Road to Guantanamo poster, now Baghdad ER. The Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg reports that Army Secretary Francis Harvey "demanded last-minute changes to the film."

Mission Impossible III, Poseidon, The Da Vinci Code... the summer's off to a pretty rotten start. Next up is X-Men: The Last Stand, which reviewers in New Zealand and Australia have already gotten a peek at. Is it at least entertaining? Yes, writes Caleb Starrenburg for the Lumière Reader, "It's just that The Last Stand could have, and should have, been so much more. And that's why it ultimately disappoints." You'll find more positive takes from Louise Keller and Andrew L Urban at the Urban Cinefile.

"What is the essential list of gay movies?" asks Frameline. Via Jason Kottke.

"Lemming shares a lot of similarities with Michael Haneke's Caché. Both films have these perfect French couples living in their perfect homes, leading perfect lives, and suddenly something unsettling happens. In Caché, it's the strange video tapes and threatening drawings. In Lemming, it's Charlotte Rampling." Jürgen Fauth and Marcy Dermansky chat about Dominik Moll's latest. More from Robert Cashill, who finds Rampling "quite literally haunting the picture."

More than noting that Over the Hedge is "deftly held together by bags of good humor and zany action sequences, tethered to a heartfelt conviction that green is good and family is better," Ella Taylor lists some of the better experiences gathered over "the four or five years that my mini-critic and I have been faithfully attending studio children's movies" and at this year's Sprockets children's film festival - and puts out a call for more screenings of children's films from abroad.

Also in the LA Weekly, Scott Foundas: "[N]o matter how many dozens of movies we've seen about junkies trying to go straight or how the death of a loved one can spark survivors to re-examine their own lives, the emotional truthfulness of Clean enters into our bloodstreams with its muted vigor, and we find ourselves getting hooked by this tale of getting unhooked."

David Lowery finds Steven Soderbergh's alternate cut of Keane "fascinating not because it's a minor failure - which I think it is - but because it goes to show how inseperable inent is from the quality of a film."

Gregg Kilday in the Hollywoood Reporter: "David Strathairn is set to star in Challenger, a drama about Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman's investigation into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that Philip Kaufman will direct from a screenplay by Nicole Perlman."

More up-n-coming news from The Reeler features Martin Scorsese, Lynne Ramsay and Abel Ferrara. Three separate projects, that is.

The Austin Chronicle's Joe O'Connell squirms with the University of Texas Film Institute students pitching movie ideas to industry pros. Also: Wells Dunbar on Carlos Reygadas's Japón and Battle in Heaven.

In the Philadelphia City Paper, Sam Adams calls Eran Riklis's The Syrian Bride "the closest thing to a Middle Eastern Nashville, a social diagnosis masquerading as a domestic melodrama," and Cindy Fuchs is fine with Down in the Valley until it "turns in on itself."

Fresh takes on L'Enfant: David Fellerath in the Independent Weekly and Rob Nelson in the Nashville Scene, where you'll also find Jim Ridley on I Am a Sex Addict: "[Caveh] Zahedi's movie - a funny, inventive, ground-shifting hybrid of essay film, mea culpa and pathological real-life romantic farce - aims for truth by wrecking its own verisimilitude."

Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Jonathan Cecil finds Lee Server's Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing "as sensational as its subject merits without being gloatingly prurient... a gripping study of an elusive character, and a sizeable contribution to the history of mid-twentieth-century cinema."

Michael Wang files an entry in Artforum's Diary: "'When I first started out in the art world in the 70s, the whole idea of a self-respecting artist waiting in line to be in a TV show would have been ridiculous,' asserts Jeffrey Deitch in the opening minutes of the first episode of Artstar, Deitch Projects and VOOM HD Networks' reality television series set in the New York art world."

Online viewing tip #1. The trailer for Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation. Via Jeffrey Overstreet.

Online viewing tip #2. Kevin Smith fills us in on the future of Movie Poop Shoot.

Posted by dwhudson at May 18, 2006 11:54 AM