Shorts, 6/1.

"I have seen Why Does Herr R Run Amok? probably ten times," writes Nick Pinkerton at Reverse Shot. "If I am gifted with a long life, I may watch it 40 more. I will say just this: If greatness in filmmaking were determined by the sustained clarity of a singular vision alone, this might be one of the greatest movies ever made."

Gary Indiana in Artforum on Richard Linklater: "He is, unquestionably, the Dostoyevsky of movie dialogue, however flighty and paper-thin his interdigitating narratives appear to be.... Sartre once noted that nobody is just a waiter. Linklater has embraced this indisputably true and, for some, uncomfortable realization."

"We've seen 13 horror films released so far and next Tuesday we'll be seeing one more when The Omen hits theaters on the ominous date of 6/6/06," writes Deborah Netburn in the Los Angeles Times. "Most of these films — shot on small budgets with unknowns — grossed more than $40 million.... And so we asked three horror movie directors - John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing), Christophe Gans (Silent Hill) and Courtney Solomon (An American Haunting) — why horror? Why now?"

Koreans will be getting scared this summer, too, reports Kim Tae-jong for the Korea Times.

Mouth to Mouth is "a rough but boldly imaginative first feature by British-Canadian writer-director Alison Murray," writes Ella Taylor, and it has a star: "An intensely direct performer, [Ellen] Page is also subtly adept at hinting at something held back, in this case through the merest tilt of a jaw that hints at a skeptical strength taking root within a girl who has little reason to trust anyone."

Also in the LA Weekly, Joe Donnelly: "Sadly, The Break-Up is simply an exercise in confusion. To call it erratic would be to imply there was a course it went off, but the film's intentions are impossible to fathom." More from Armond White in the New York Press, where Jennifer Merin reviews The War Tapes and talks with Omen John Moore. So, too, does Peter T Chattaway for Christianity Today.

War Tapes is the subject of Reverse Shot's round of reviews at indieWIRE this week. For The Reeler, the doc "reveal[s] the anguish, cynicism and humanity that has always threaded the most memorable war chronicles of film and literature."

In the Independent Weekly, David Fellerath talks with Break-Up director Peyton Reed. Also: "In true, accentuate-the-negative punk fashion, a film that premieres this weekend on the Duke campus suggests that the notion of a harmonious and prosperous creative class is little more than a delusion. For the past two years, a Durham filmmaking concern called Sea Shanty Films has been working on X-Gen, a drama about the assimilation of alternative culture."

Today's Inconvenient Truth package begins with the Boston Phoenix, where you'll not only find Peter Keough reviewing the film and talking with Al Gore but also an entire new special section at the site on global warming.

Also:

• Jonny Leahan tells the background story at indieWIRE, where you can see that, so far, as Steve Rosen reports, the doc's doing remarkably well.

• NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Gore and Truth producer Laurie David.

• Lindsay Beyerstein rounds up blog buzz for Alternet.

• Slate's Jacob Weisberg: "The outcome of the 2000 presidential election looks increasingly like not just a fiasco, but a tragedy." No kidding. "Whether or not one concurs with the judgment of the historian Sean Wilentz that he may be the 'worst President in history,' George W Bush has already done enough damage to America's position in the world and its economic future to earn a spot on the bottom tier. And whether or not Al Gore would have been a successful president, it's improbable that he could have made any mistake as disastrous as Bush's unplanned, go-it-nearly-alone occupation of Iraq."

Also in Slate: John DeFore recommends the best bootleg DVDs.

Acquarello has a fascinating piece on the 2003 doc, Tintin and I.

Time Out's Chris Sullivan talks with Olivier Marchal about 36 Quai des Orfèvres, an "incendiary tale of love, corruption and deceit based on the life of Dominique Loiseau, a senior member of the notorious BRI (Search and Action Squad) in the mid-80s."

At Hollywood is Talking, Jerry Brewington reviews Date Number One, "five stories of diverse characters juggling in and around a cozy bookshop in Kensington, Maryland. It's probably fair to say that [Sujewa] Ekanayake has been inspired by the early work of Richard Linklater and Jim Jarmusch, two filmmakers who patiently take the time to let their characters talk, and perhaps more importantly listen."

In the New York Times:

• In France, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette "has revived a centuries-old fascination with the ancien régime's last queen," reports Elaine Sciolino.

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "In the fiercely critical documentaries Long Knives Night and Reporting From a Rabbit Hutch, the Belarussian director Victor Dashuk casts a cold eye on Aleksandr G Lukashenko, the recently re-elected president of the Republic of Belarus."

• "You're actually receiving MovieBeam's movies at this very moment," notes David Pogue, "but they're invisible unless you have the MovieBeam box." Pogue tells you how it works and measures it against other delivery systems.

In the Guardian, Geoffrey Macnab talks with Robert Towne about Ask the Dust.

The "documentary musical" Songbirds is "is tough-mindedly striking on several levels," writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. Related: David D'Arcy's review from Sundance.

"Social division and categorization is for most of us self-evident," writes Nils Clauss at Koreanfilm.org. "[F]or people like Kim Ki-duk - not only in Birdcage Inn but also throughout his oeuvre - it seems to be the ongoing motivation to make films."

"I still can't get it out of my head. It's the best thing I've seen in months. And my oh my, how the world has changed." Tom Hall on The Passenger.

Steve Uhler talks with Harry Lynch about Ride Around the World, an IMAX extravaganza tracing "the global history of the cowboy culture, from Moorish horsemen to Spanish conquistadores, from vaqueros in Mexico to cowpokes in Texas and up northward into British Columbia."

Also in the Austin Chronicle:

• Spencer Parsons talks with Jay and Mark Duplass about The Puffy Chair; look for more on that one right here very soon. Related online viewing tip: Scrapple, via Michael Tully.

• Like the Roxie in San Francisco, the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown will survive by going nonprofit. Joe O'Connell reports.

• Josh Rosenblatt: "[I]f there are films of real social significance in this world, we can safely count Winter Soldier among them."

In the Nashville Scene, Jim Ridley measures the impact of the Visual Content Act of 2006 on the Nashville Screenwriters Conference and PJ Tobia looks into a bill that's created the Tennessee Motion Picture and Television Grant: "It's a solid piece of legislation that helps everybody - not least, the lawyers of Adams Reese."

Harry Knowles talks with M Night Shyamalan about Lady in the Water.

If you'll be dodging blockbuster wannbes this summer, Andrew O'Hehir points you to several potentially worthy alternatives.

Martha Fischer's got one for you, too, at Cinematical: "In place of contrived storylines and massive stars crisscrossing the globe, District B13 offers the awesome, graceful power of parkour alongside a simple story, sneaky wit and 90 minutes of thrilling, absolutely gleeful action. It might just be the best action movie of the summer." More from Richard Schickel in Time and William Goss at Hollywood Bitchslap. Related: Twitch's giveaway and clips.

Via Anne Thompson, Michael Blowhard on why he never became a movie reviewer.

Wagstaff has a sort of autobiographical comparison of various movie-watching experiences at the House Next Door.

Marilyn Monroe's 80th birthday seems to be a bigger deal in Germany than in the US.

In the New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann reviews "a unique perspective on the early film world," Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters From Inside the Studios of the 1920s. Also, Christopher Orr: "There was a time, not so long ago, when going from TV star to movie star was an unquestioned step upward." Now, it seems, the hierarchy has flipped. Jim Emerson comments.

"After 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace cold-cocked the franchise that Richard Donner launched so reverently in 1978, the Man of Steel went into a 17-year development coma," writes Mike Russell for In Focus. "The behind-the-scenes saga is long, silly and mind-bogglingly pricey." That much you've probably heard. Russell has a long talk with screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris about just what Superman Returns has turned out to be. Says Dougherty, "The comparison I like to make is that they're closer to James Bond films. We had a series that starred Sean Connery, and then the torch is passed to another actor, all the way up to Daniel Craig. But they don't call a sequel 'James Bond 19,' and they don't necessarily refer to events that took place in the previous film. But you do have certain conventions and supporting characters that you're expected to use well."

For the Times Literary Supplement, Richard Vinen reviews Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain.

The BBC: "A US war veteran is suing filmmaker Michael Moore for $85m, alleging TV clips of him were used without his consent in documentary Fahrenheit 9/11."

Independent Lens is seeking submissions. Deadline: September 25.

I love this feature, and James Israel's got another new edition: "Movies I Will Never Ever See Based On The Stills."

John McElwee's got more bad John Wayne for you at Greenbriar Picture Shows.

Online gawking tip. The Architecture of Fight Club. Via Jason Kottke.

Online listening tip. The Guardian talks with Paul Greengrass about United 93.

Online viewing tips. The Orange Open Movie Project claims Elephants Dream "might well be the world's first true 'Open Movie,' which will be published under the Creative Commons license including all production files and used software." Via Screenhead, where you'll also find Brad Neely's George Washington, a favorite of Scott Weinberg's over at Cinematical.

Posted by dwhudson at June 1, 2006 2:19 PM