Shorts, 5/22.

The phenomenally engaging browse, Ingmar Bergman: Face to Face, is now browse-able in English. "At the moment, it comprises just over half of the original Swedish material," write Jon Asp & Anna Håkansson as they work on translating all the way through.

Alice Jones riffs on Alain Silver and James Ursini's LA Noir: The City as Character: "While the giant, wonky white letters high on the Hollywood hills act as a secular Mecca for wannabe starlets who flock to the city of dreams where human Barbie dolls skate down palm-lined boulevards, silicone-enhanced shopaholics stalk Rodeo Drive and legions of unfeasibly good-looking waiters and waitresses await their break, filmmakers have long been more interested in the seamier side of life in the 'city of flowers and sunshine.'"

Also in the Independent, Kevin Jackson talks with Whit Stillman about his past and future and David Thomson still can't seem to shake Orson Welles; this week, he focuses on the missed opportunities.

Having just taught a class in film history, Caveh Zahedi has revisited a set of titles widely regarded as required viewing and picks out the films that "struck me as the most unassimilably strange and therefore as the most canonical."

Peter Nellhaus presents "Ten Reasons Why 1958 Was the Best Year for American Film."

The latest entry in Roger Ebert's collection of Great Movies: Army of Shadows.

Ian Johnston at Not Coming to a Theater Near You: "Prix de beauté is a minor, and in some ways rather odd film, but it's worth a viewing simply - almost, only - because of Louise Brooks."

That Little Round-Headed Boy on Renaldo and Clara: "Frankly, I've never seen so much arty noodling, numb preciousness and overall wanking-off. I love Dylan... But even worship has its limits."

Nollywood - the Nigerian film industry, that is - carries on booming, reports Frank Bures in the Los Angeles Times.

David Edelstein in New York: "X-Men: The Last Stand is, like The Da Vinci Code, undermined by impersonal direction, but this time it isn’t fatal: There are still lots of neat-o special effects." Related: Anne Thompson in the Hollywood Reporter on how producer Lauren Shuler Donner is stirring up interest in the film in Cannes.

Online listening tip. The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #6 at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger....

Online viewing tip. DVblog: "Realityfilm and Tate Modern present a psychoanalytical, cinematic cabaret with live music by The Real Tuesday Weld with a new original score for the film Dreams That Money Can Buy (1946), by Hans Richter and some of the greatest names in the Dadaist/Surrealist movement, including Man Ray, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger and Alexander Calder." May 27.

Posted by dwhudson at May 22, 2006 11:14 AM