A fest and lotsa shorts.

In this week's Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum focuses on one title lined up for the 18th Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival (June 15 through 18). In half an hour, Roads of Kiarostami "starts out as a straightforward and unassuming introduction to a selection of his black-and-white landscape photographs, but it turns into something poetic and frighteningly up-to-date that speaks to a much broader constituency." More.

Christopher Hayes for In These Times:

Progressives have an annoying habit when it comes to pop culture. Anytime they fall for a particular TV show, movie or Top 40 hit, they proceed to spend inordinate amounts of time and mental energy convincing themselves that while most of what the corporate media produces is reactionary crap, this particular product is actually subversive, laced with a cutting critique of capitalism, patriarchy or the Bush administration.

I mention this only because I'm about to do the exact same thing. But of course, in this case, it's really, really true: My current television obsession, UPN's Veronica Mars (Tuesdays at 8 pm CST), is the single most compelling exploration of class anxiety and class friction on the little or big screen today.

Brian Darr among the Cinemarati on a 1934 John Ford movie: "Certainly any good film can springboard a myriad of interpretations, but in 2006 a dominant one surely is to see The Lost Patrol as an eerie premonition of this country's current situation in Iraq." Related: The second part of John McElwee's consideration of The Searchers at Greenbriar Picture Shows.

Ken Loach talks with Time Out's Cath Clarke about being savaged in the British press. Also: Chris Tilly reports that DreamWorks has hired British ad directors Tim and Charlie Guard to remake Kim Ji-woon's A Tale of Two Sisters.

Jon Bentham asks various directors who've made horror films, most of them fairly recently, about their favorites of the genre. Here, all on one page, are, for example, Eli Roth on Audition, Robin Hardy on Psycho, Hideo Nakata on The Haunting, Rob Green on Rosemary's Baby and Neil Marshall on Alien.

Also in the Guardian, Laura Barton asks Jim Jarmusch about his favorite "musical moments in film": "Wild Zero. Guitar Wolf. Where they're killing zombies. Rude Boy. The Clash. Performance which has Mick Jagger..."

Had enough of United 93? One more. Because it's Martin Amis. In the London Times.

Acquarello reviews "Nagisa Oshima's trenchant and acerbic coming-of-age tale, Boy."

Just look at that cast for Zak Penn's poker movie: Ray Liotta, Woody Harrelson, Cheryl Hines, Ray Romano, Jason Alexander - and here's the point, really - Werner Herzog. Cinematical's Martha Fischer has more.

William Goss at Hollywood Bitchslap: "A Scanner Darkly seems to be practically begging for a cult following, but any such appeal can be attributed more to the story beneath than the glossy package it comes in."

In the New York Times:

• Ken Johnson on Douglas Gordon: Timeline (Sunday through September 4 at MoMA): "Though relatively few have seen it, and hardly anyone has sat through the whole thing, Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho has become one of those mythic monuments — like Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty or Vito Acconci's Seedbed — that embody the dreams, anxieties and aspirations of a generation."

• Manohla Dargis on Cars: "At no point does it spin out of control, much less venture off-road. Instead, the film just putt, putt, putts along, a shining model of technological progress and consumer safety." More from Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jette Kernion at Cinematical and Noell Wolfgram Evans in fps. Related: Susan Gerhard's Friday list for SF360; NPR's Michele Norris talks with John Lasseter; and, at Film Fatale, Justine asks, "When did kid and family movies start getting so painfully long?"

• Dargis also reviews the "infectiously enjoyable" Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul and The Heart of the Game. More on that one from Kevin Crust in the LAT.

• AO Scott on A Prairie Home Companion, a "late, minor addition to the Robert Altman collection — but a treasure all the same." More from Michael O'Sullivan, who talks with Meryl Streep in the Washington Post (via Movie City News), Zacharek in Salon, Carina Chocano in the LAT, JR Jones in the Chicago Reader, Ebert in the Sun-Times, Christopher Kelly in the Ft Worth Star-Telegram and Josef Braun in Vue Weekly. Also, The Reeler meets both Streep and Lily Tomlin; and Altman is scheduled to be a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

• Scott also reviews El Perro, "a lovely, rugged neo-realist fable from Argentina about a man and a dog."

• Stephen Holden: "The feverish libidos wreaking emotional havoc in Oskar Roehler's infantile sex comedy Agnes and His Brothers are a quintessentially Germanic mixture of kinky, obsessive and sentimental."

• Laura Kern on the "agreeable" Slow Jam King.

• Nathan Lee on Autumn, "a nearly perfect satire of the pretentious French thriller." More from Kevin Crust in the LAT.

Also in the LAT: Sam Adams on The Whore's Son, "a sub-zero Stella Dallas," and Chocano on The King, "a dark and deeply unsettling movie with its roots in classical tragedy."

So how's the summer going? Moolah-wise? David Poland's got your numbers.

Cineuropa's current "film focus": Anders Thomas Jensen's Adam's Apples.

Anne Thompson: "MySpace is proving to be a new model for personalized participatory grass-roots marketing." Also in the Hollywood Reporter, Tatiana Siegel: Ryan Phillippe will likely star in Kimberly Peirce's Iraq war drama, Stop-Loss.

In the Stranger, Brendan Kiley looks back on that strange, strange relic, Oh! Calcutta!

In the Independent, Gill Pringle talks with William H Macy. In the Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine talks with James Purefoy, Sheila Johnston with Jason Reitman.

Bilge Ebiri at Nerve: "This week's Perfect Pitch entry came to me anonymously, so even I don't know who wrote it. Needless to say, I can't verify it either, so take it with a grain of salt if you want. That said, I'd like to think it's true, cause it's a good 'un..."

For the New Statesman, Richard Cork surveys Los Angeles 1955-1985: The Birth of an Art Capital, an exhibition "as concerned with the seamy underbelly of LA as it is with Hollywood gloss."

Online viewing tip. Rashomon points to "Jean-Luc Godard's [rejected] jean commercials." Are they?

Posted by dwhudson at June 9, 2006 5:19 AM