Critics and shorts.

With few exceptions, critics lambasted The Da Vinci Code pretty much across the board. Hours later, the movie enjoyed a massively successful opening weekend. So how much influence do critics wield after all? asks Philip French in the Observer. AJ Schnack takes a long hard look.

Most American movies are made for and marketed to the very young, and yet, as Carlye Benedict points out in a comment Dave Kehr contextualizes, most of the major critics (and supposedly, majorly influential critics, but who knows) are around 60 or so. What's up with that? A possible partial answer: Many of the critics Benedict cites appear on television programs watched primarily by a demographic skewed toward the golden end of the scale.

Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Dave Kehr reviews the Cecil B DeMille Collection and three films by Richard Fleischer just out on DVD. Related: John McElwee at the remarkable Greenbriar Picture Shows and That Little Round-Headed Boy on Four Frightened People.

Michael Guillen talks with Amir Muhammad about Malaysia's banning his film, The Last Communist.

Movie City News: "Norah Jones In The Next Wong Kar Wai, My Blueberry Nights, Is Old News, But The Film Being In All English And Casting of Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman & Jude Law Is A Hot Variety Break."

John Woo's heading back to Hong Kong, reports the Guardian.

Ray Pride has news of Ang Lee's next one at Movie City Indie.

Cinematical's Sandra Lim: "John Malkovich is replacing Ralph Fiennes as the lead in Disgrace, the big-screen adaptation of JM Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel."

"A paragon of guerrilla resourcefulness and a model citizen of the global village, Cavite is a more anxious and vivid experience than most movies with budgets literally a thousand times bigger," writes Dennis Lim. "Despite its indie ingenuity, Cavite is a blockbuster at heart, a no-budget relation to screenwriter Larry Cohen's beat-the-clock contraptions Cellular and Phone Booth; the filmmakers have proudly cited Speed as a key influence. But the movie's documentary elements are its selling point."

Also, what's left of the Village Voice that isn't already strewn out across the Cannes entries:

• Lim on X-Men: The Last Stand: "Not even the dreaded Brett Ratner can fuck up the template too badly." David Poland agrees.

• Michael Atkinson on La Moustache: "A successful novelist and restrained actor's director, [Emmanuel] Carrére makes the transformation of a silly marital argument into a cosmic upheaval look easy, and profound as well."

• "Tracking Shots": As it happens, Atkinson on What is a Man Without a Mustache - and on Favela Rising; Jorge Morales on Stagedoor and Robert Wilonsky on The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress.

Author, editor, futurist Kevin Kelly's been keeping a list of "true films": "I define true films as documentaries, educational films, instructional how-to's, and what the British call factuals - a non-fiction visual account. The very best of these non-fiction films are as entertaining as the best of Hollywood blockbusters." Via filmtagebuch.

Looker takes note: Werner Herzog is really, really not a fan of psychoanalysis.

For Dennis Cozzalio, Three Times is "a beautiful, lived-in, expressively constructed and visually passionate film."

Peter Nellhaus has been watching Raoul Walsh. For quite a while, actually.

We're seeing more and more Broadway musicals based on movies. Mac Rogers has a few suggestions in Slate as to how to get them right.

Online browsing tip. Another grand movie poster gallery via Coudal Partners: Dominique Besson.

Online viewing tip. Via filmtagebuch, a quite practical list of cartoons at YouTube from Drommels!.

Posted by dwhudson at May 23, 2006 3:22 PM