Shorts, 6/19.

Besides its pointer to James Parker's piece in the Boston Globe on the current whither-film-criticism debate ("as the blurby, slangy, barely-considered Ain't It Cool style becomes the lingua franca of film criticism, we should cherish the last of our old-school film writers"), the cinetrix's latest entry as a whole reminds us why it's felt so empty, her being gone so long til now.

"And so the film went into production and the caravan set off from Notting Hill to Munich to Barcelona to Almeria to Djanet in the Algerian Sahara and then back to the Hotel de la Gloria." Having conjured the milieu, Mark Peploe recalls the realization of The Passenger in Time Out. "Many wondrous things happened along the way. On one occasion Antonioni asked me to write a piece of additional dialogue for Maria Schneider. Without reading it, she rolled it into a ball, popped it into her mouth, and ate it."

Also via Ray Pride at Movie City News, Subhash K Jha at Glamsham on how Sacred Evil references and reveres Satyajit Ray.

At Invisible Cinema, Jennifer MacMillan calls for a Leonard Cohen mini-blog-a-thon for Sunday, June 25. Related: MaryAnn Johanson on Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man: "How odd, that someone would make a documentary about Leonard Cohen with so little Leonard Cohen in it!"

Back in February, the Self-Styled Siren called for a Lana Turner blog-a-thon; Peter Nellhaus reminds us it's set for June 29.

"[T]ime, and film critics and film audiences, may finally have caught up with [Roger] Ebert and [Russ] Meyer." Dennis Cozzalio has a long, appreciative post on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Peter Suderman: "For a low-budget Canadian splatter flick from the 70s, David Cronenberg's Shivers is a remarkable accomplishment. Not only is it a chilly, twisted take on the birthing of a zombie holocaust, it is a startling, early indictment of the modern cult of materialism. Perhaps most interesting, though, is how precisely it foreshadows the rest of Cronenberg’s distinguished career as horror filmmaking's most thoughtful and cold-blooded auteur."

Caveh Zahedi comes around to appreciating Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore in the way Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin did in the early 80s.

"[Bernard] Herrmann believed that in ideal situations there was an exact equivalence between the content of a movie and the melodramatic nature of the medium itself. In other words, music in the dark, music in the air, music apparently played by the screen, or music generated by the same mysterious and sublime force that is making the imagery move - as if it were alive! - on the screen." In the Independent, David Thomson previews July's Bernard Herrmann season at the National Film Theatre.

In the New York Times, David Carr praises the "mordantly effective filmmaking" of The War Tapes, then notes the "rash of current documentaries feeding appetites for information and coverage beyond traditional channels of information," mentioning An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car? and The Road to Guantántamo: "The urrent surge in politically inflected documentaries seems like a mashed-up, digital version of the 1960s, when books like Silent Spring, Unsafe at Any Speed and The Other America came out of nowhere to define public debate."

Nicolas Rapold at Reverse Shot: "Harlan County USA is primary and essential."

New DVD reviews at Slant:

• Fernando F Croce on Yakuza Graveyard, Frenzy, Rope and That Day.

• Jeremiah Kipp on The Beast Must Die and Asylum and And Now the Screaming Starts!.

Ed Gonzalez, in the meantime, has been in the theaters, watching Queens, Boys Briefs 4 and Wondrous Oblivion.

Nick Davis is picking flicks again and has just crossed the halfway point in the countdown of his top 100; today, #48: Irma Vep.

Nice list: Matt Riviera's "top 10 comfort movies."

Roger Ebert adds The Shining to his collection of "Great Movies."

Matt Dentler's top ten Chicago movies.

At Koreanfilm.org, Kyu Hyun Kim reviews Dirty Carnival, "a straightforward rendition of the oft-told narrative of the rise and fall of an underdog criminal, almost Chandler-esque in its quasi-romantic, melancholic appraisal of this rotten world we live in."

David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back on The Uninvited: "Fans of psychological and existential horror will enjoy this well-crafted thriller, but others may find it overlong and somewhat muddled. I look forward to seeing more from Su-Yeon Lee, who clearly possesses an enormous talent."

"No one in Hollywood, it's fair to say, has worked harder at not being a movie star than [Johnny] Depp has, and yet he has evolved into one of the most adored actors of his generation not in spite of that persistence but because of it." Sean Smith talks to Newsweek's cover boy. Related: Captain Jack lookalikes and, at Cinematical, Erik Davis has a few tantalizing hints as to what we might expect to see in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, due next summer. And Kimi Yoshino reports in the Los Angeles Times on how Disney is revamping its Pirates of the Caribbean ride to look more like the movies.

You can't do a cover package on Bombay without a piece on Bollywood. If you're Time, you get to ask Mira Nair to write it for you. Related: Maseeh Rahman reports on a controversial kiss.

Also in the Guardian, Imogen Fox: "Tonight's premiere in New York of The Devil Wears Prada, a satirical view of life at a glossy Manhattan fashion magazine, is going to present a real wardrobe dilemma for its stars."

Thumbs up from Eugene Hernandez on Superman Returns: "[T]hrilling, contemplative, and fun." The BBC rounds up more positive critical reaction and Time's Richard Corliss finds it "an action adventure that's as thrilling for what it means as for what it shows."

Greg Pak talks with Michael Kang about The Motel.

"You're being told there's going to be a train wreck; now sit back and watch the carnage." John Dahl tells the Telegraph's Marc Lee what it is that fascinates him about Sunset Boulevard. Via They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?

At SF360, Glen Helfand talks with Matthew Barney about Drawing Restraint 9, a film David Lowery caught the other day.

Deborah Solomon chats with Jack Black for the New York Times Magazine.

Up-n-coming news from Martha Fischer at Cinematical: a Blackadder movie set in the Russian revolution? Let's hope so. Also: the "long-rumored" film based on Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis "is finally, officially happening."

At Flickhead, Christine Young doesn't so much urge us to watch Ecological Design: Inventing the Future as to engage with the challenges "design outlaws" put forward; learn about them in the film or via the links at the end of her review.

DIY filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake has been doing the math and taking inspiration from Jacques Thelemaque.

Book reviews in the Observer: Carole Cadwalladr on Charlotte Chandler's Bette Davis: The Girl Who Walked Home Alone and Sinclair McKay on Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain.

The Reeler notes that he, the IFC Blog (thanks to the wit and wisdom of Alison Willmore) and the blog you are currently reading are nicely profiled today by Julian Vernet at the Wall Street Journal. And you can be sure we appreciate that.

Online browsing tip #1. Contemporary movies depicted at Russian folk art prints. Via BibliOdyssey.

Online browsing tip #2. Laurent Blachier's film director caricatures. Via Drawn!.

Online listening tip. The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #8 at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger....

Online viewing tip #1. Opening titles for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Deadwood and such by Danny Yount. Via That Little Round-Headed Boy, who also points to Joe Russ's interview with Yount for Computer Arts.

Online viewing tip #2. Stanley Kubrick at the premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey, speculating on the probability of life elsewhere.

Online viewing tip #3. Fantastic Planet, rescored. Via Screenhead.

Online viewing tip #4. An Unfair War is a machinima short (DivX) made using The Sims 2. Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.

Online viewing tip #5. A first entry in the Mutant Chronicles production diary, via Wolf at Twitch.

Online viewing tip #6. Jamie Thraves's video for Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." Via Coudal Partners.

Posted by dwhudson at June 19, 2006 3:34 PM