Shorts, 7/12.

David Poland: "Miami Vice is that summer movie that a lot of people have been waiting for, something for the adults to see, something that demands that you pay attention, something that doesn't pre-chew your experience for you and drop it into your beak like a mama bird, something with adults having relationships (with their clothes on and off) and dealing with some serious issues... and lots of guns & drugs."

For Jeffrey Wells, it's "my kind of two-hour popcorn movie... a crime movie that just roars in and does the job."

"[I]n Stagecoach, John Ford pits the idea of America against the rigidity of Americanism," argues Charles Taylor in the New York Observer.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Andersen: "Stephen Metcalf's iconoclastic assessment of John Ford's The Searchers was blasted with a fusillade of canon ire by outraged film lovers in our Dilettante Fray." Also at Slate: Troy Patterson riffs on the Amanda Congdon-Rocketboom split. Related listening: Future Tense.

If you could read anyone's weekend viewing notes, wouldn't you read Dave Kehr's?

Michael Atkinson does some heavy lifting in this week's Village Voice, reviewing the overlooked Overlord - "[Stuart] Cooper's ambitions were primarily textural" - and Edmond, "a pleasant actor's spectacle, oldfangled and splenetic and self-conscious.... all sizzle and little meat, a veritable tangent act dropped from Glengarry Glen Ross because it was several marks too silly." (More from Jeremiah Kipp at Slant.) Also, with Changing Times, André Téchiné has become "the premier Gallic pilot of high-toned soap opera." (More from Noel Murray at the AV Club.) Plus: Electric Edwardians and Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. More on Haneke from Edward Copeland.

Chris Cagle at Left Center Left on Peter Watkins: "His films can be frustrating, emotionally intense and even politically problematic, but they're also smart, nailbitingly suspenseful, and timely to today's topical issues." Via Paul Harrill, who notes that Cagle "has recently started Category D, a promising new blog that concerns the academic scholarship of film and media studies."

Ed Phillips, in a post to Nettime, on Zizek!: "It's not the jokes per se or even the pop culture references, but what he does with them, how he uses them to try to understand or to short circuit his own and other's understandings of the contemporary condition."

Girish: "Some of my favorite filmmakers both past and present - Renoir, Hou - use long takes, so I thought it might be a good idea to spend some time reflecting on this valuable stylistic device."

Acquarello on Dreyer's 1919 film, The President: "Even at this early juncture, Dreyer incorporates elements that would become immediately identifiable with his cinema."

MS Smith explains why, for him, Susan Sontag's "main achievement was her revision of the purpose of film criticism."

In the Guardian:

• "So why, you scurvy seadogs, are we so fascinated with pirates?" asks Brian Logan, who then traces the myth-making back to 1724.

• John Woodward, chief exec of the UK Film Council, responds to producer Guy de Beaujeu's complaints about the state of the British film industry.

• Laura K Jones talks with Martin Creed about his Sick Film and his Shit Film.

• Audrey Gillan: "Syd Barrett, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd and one of the key figures of the 60s, has died at the Cambridgeshire home to which he retreated as a recluse more than 30 years ago." More from More from Nick Kent, John Harris, Rick Moody and Michael Hann; and in Slate, Jody Rosen: "Barrett was a terrific craftsman, and neither the dissonance and clatter of his soundscapes nor the cheery freakiness of his lyrics could hide the songs' essential classicism. Had Barrett been born 30 years earlier, and done several thousand fewer hits of LSD, he could have made a fine living on Tin Pan Alley." Related online viewing at sharpeworld.

That photo of Constanze Mozart? Probably a hoax. Rats. Via Alex Ross.

In the Independent, Christina Patterson talks briefly with Julia Stiles about her plans to adapt Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar before turning to the question as to why it was to become "one of the most influential novels of the 20th century." Also, Liz Hoggard on high school movies: "Films that tackle cliques and bullying are the backbone of modern independent cinema (probably because so many indie directors grew up feeling like outsiders themselves)."

Jon Lebkowsky: "In March I posted about the detention of filmmaker Hao Wu (or Wu Hao) in China, with a rather bleak update a couple of weeks later. Good news: he's been released."

Billy Golfus's 1994 film When Billy Broke His Head... and Other Tales of Wonder "won Best Documentary at 27 film festivals, played on TV in 17 countries, collected an Emmy nomination, and captured the Freedom of Expression award at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival," notes Britt Robson, who talks with him in the City Pages about why it is he can't get his next project off the ground.

Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "A festival sensation by Australian writer-director and animator Sarah Watt, Look Both Ways isn't actually the feel-bad movie of the year. It's probably the sunniest movie about death you'll ever see, and one that captures the awkwardness of life with unusual accuracy." Also, Rise Above: The Tribe 8 Documentary.

"A major studio film about how corrupt the major movie studios can be for the sake of making a profit... is it corrupt of them to release a movie about how corrupt they are, just to make a profit?" Many try, few succeed - Gwynne Watkins's trailer roundups for Nerve's ScreenGrab are actually funny.

David Austin rounds up Cinema Strikes Back's DVDs of the week; also, Jeff on the Ramsey Brothers and their Bollywood horror movie, Hotel.

Anne Thompson has news of releases of fresh prints of eight films by Pedro Almodóvar in the run-up to the US theatrical release of Volver.

Shawn Levy in the Oregonian: "At 43, with nearly three dozen films to his credit, Johnny Depp is one of a small handful of actors who can do both: dazzle us with perverse displays of witty grotesquerie or inhabit a character so completely that we can't remember what he's really like - or seems really to be like - off-screen."

"The summer blockbuster is back," announces a New York Times editorial. Why? Anyway, also:

• David Carr talks with Dito Montiel about his award-winning debut feature, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, "a movie that is less New York borough set piece - 'Everybody kept thinking I wanted make this "Yo, Vinny" kind of movie, when I was trying to do something exactly opposite' - than a brutal miniature about understanding the place that made you you."

• Jeannette Catsoulis: "With its contemplative tone and haunting images, The Color of Olives may be the most peaceful documentary ever to arrive from a war zone." More from Paul Schrodt at Slant and R Emmet Sweeney in the Voice.

• Anita Gates on Tintin and I "Viewers who are only vaguely aware of the character may come away unconvinced that Tintin was anything special," but it "should be a treat for avid Tintin fans." Related: Besides the clips on the site, director Anders Ostergaard chats on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

• "Apparently nothing [Stephen] King writes is unfilmable." Virginia Heffernan on TNT's eight-part series, Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King. Related: Todd points to clips at Twitch.

Nick Rombes on film stills: "Their 'third meaning' would allow us to trace a different, perhaps secret history, one that takes us into the realm of art - not film - criticism. Someday, these images will be liberated from their films."

Jeffrey M Anderson lists the seven "Oddest Director/Actor Combos" at Cinematical.

Oliver Reed + Hammer = an " attempt at combining horror with a kind of James Dean-Marlon Brando hipness factor." Peter Nellhaus explains.

In the Los Angeles Times:

• Patrick Goldstein reviews Regards, a recent collection of essays by the late John Gregory Dunne, and looks back to his and Joan Didion's "heyday, the 1970s and 1980s, they were the go-to writer team for sophisticated, star-power dramas. It's no coincidence that virtually every movie they wrote ended up with the likes of Streisand, De Niro, Pacino or Redford in the lead."

• Kavita Daswani in the Los Angeles Times on Krrish: "It's already proving to be one of India's most profitable films of the year, despite having one of the largest budgets ever for a Bollywood film."

• Melissa Pamer meets El Capitan Theatre house organist, Rob Richards.

The IFC Blog's Alison Willmore rounds up reactions to Michael Bamberger's The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale.

Joe Bowman lists and annotates 25 films he watched at college.

Up-n-coming:

• Claude Chabrol's La fille coupée en deux (The Girl Cut in Half), with Ludivine Sagnier and François Berléand.

• Claire Danes, Vanessa Redgrave and Toni Collette in a possible adaptation of Susan Minot's Evening.

• Jeff Goldblum in Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected.

• Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower.

"[T]he movie business in Japan generally seems to be picking up, just at a time when the government has instituted new measures to promote filmmaking and film culture and when film schools are sprouting up all over the place." Aaron Gerow takes "a closer look" at Midnight Eye.

Online listening tip #1. Matthew Baldwin (Defective Yeti) talks about movie blogs on The Works, a program on KUOW, Puget Sound Public Radio. Via Posterwire.com, and many thanks to both Matthew Baldwin and Posterwire for the kind words!

Online listening tip #2. At Salon, Thomas Bartlett points to Roommate's "RP (Forget the Metaphors)," "a hilarious, bizarre and strangely moving song about River Phoenix."

Online listening tip #3. Brendon Connelly gathers links to all four parts of Quick Stop's Terry Gilliam interview in one entry.

Online viewing tip #1. wood s lot points to Stan Brakhage.

Online viewing tip #2. Screenhead's found a Soderbergh short.

Online viewing tips, round 1. Filmbrain finally gets his hands on a "forgotten minor-masterpiece of 60s culture" and points to a few clips.

Online viewing tips, round 2. A second edition of Erik Davis's "Eat My Shorts" at Cinematical.

Online viewing tips, round 3. At Twitch, Wolf points to the trailer for The Quiet and Todd's got the trailer and clips for Michele Soavi's Arrivederci Amore Ciao, a trailer for American Hardcore and another for The Illusionist.

Online viewing tips, round 4. Chuck Tryon wonders what's actually going on in these Wal-Mart dance videos.

Online viewing tips, round 5. The latest edition of "Internet Archive Watch" at The Crime in Your Coffee.

Posted by dwhudson at July 12, 2006 6:05 PM