Shorts, 5/31.

Pierre Morel, the cinematographer for Luc Besson whose directorial debut is District B13, picks seven favorite European action films for the Los Angeles Times. In Slant, where Ed Gonzalez reviews his film.

Among the other new reviews in Slant is Nick Schager's take on Coastlines. More from Stephen Holden in the New York Times: "Like its two forerunners in the trilogy, Ruby in Paradise, which pushed Ashley Judd toward Hollywood stardom, and Ulee's Gold, which won Peter Fonda the best-actor award from the New York Film Critics Circle, Coastlines features detailed performances that offer unusually intimate glimpses into its characters' mood swings. But if the acting captures their emotional ebbs and flows, the screenplay has discrepancies and lapses that can't be acted around."

Roger Ebert meets Al Gore; as for An Inconvenient Truth: "You owe it to yourself to see this film. If that sounds overdramatic, I understand. I could not have imagined writing that before seeing the film myself." More from Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. Related: Jonathan Freedland interviews Gore in the Guardian and Jim Emerson gets a kick out of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's anti-Gore ads.

Panini Wijesiriwardane opens the WSWS interview with Sri Lankan filmmaker Asoka Handagama thusly: "To begin this discussion could you explain the nature of the government witchhunt against you and your film?"

"[Rick] Popko and [Dan] West hope Monsturd's cult notoriety will aid RetarDEAD, which happens to be its direct sequel," writes Cheryl Eddy in her profile of the DIY filmmakers in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Popko describes the new one as Flowers for Algernon meets Night of the Living Dead. Cheryl Eddy (also the author of our Italian Horror primer, by the way) writes on another page: "No San Francisco-set discussion of reanimated corpses should go without mentioning Bad Date, a work-in-progress by locals Sadie Shaw and Alison Childs."

Girish doesn't mind at all admitting that he finds two or three things to admire about A Woman, Her Men, and Her Futon, "a kick-ass little movie that I encountered years ago on cable one insomniac night when the moon was high and the neighbor's mutt wouldn't shut up."

Stop Smiling chats with Richard E Grant.

Amelie Gillette interviews Paul Rudd for the AV Club.

The BBC: "Disney is to start selling films over the internet via CinemaNow, including new films on the day they come out."

Online listening tip. Simon Winder talks about and reads from his book, The Man Who Saved Britain. That man would be Bond, by the way. James Bond.

Online viewing tip. Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer on Autism Every Day: "It's less than 15 minutes long, but it's a killer. It will break your heart; it will make you cry - I guarantee it. It's skillfully done, in a low-key way that recognizes there's no need to hype the emotionalism. The matter-of-fact-ness is enough, almost too much. The dailiness is the point."

Online viewing tip #2. 2 Monkeys - interesting show! - review I Am a Sex Addict. Via Caveh Zahedi, naturally.

Posted by dwhudson at May 31, 2006 7:01 AM