Shorts, 7/17.

It's a stretch, but Hervé Aubron tries it out: Michael Mann and M Night Shyamalan share a "taste for the lackluster and the dull [which] is fairly remarkable in Hollywood, where the Tarantinian revolution with its brightly colored voracity is never very far off. It is not a question of a simple counterpoint: the worlds of Mann and Shyamalan are gray because they are limbs. Their occupants are already dead." Also in Cahiers du cinéma, Cyril Neyrat: "With La Raison du plus faible [The Right of the Weakest], [Luc] Belvaux pushes the revival of the Hollywood model to its ultimate streamlining. The classicism of his mise-en-scène is of a singular rigor."

Somewhat related is Kathy Fennessy's Siffblog entry on Sam Fuller and Luc Moullet, in which Cahiers has a cameo.

Zidane, Un Portrait du 21e Siecle "is remarkable enough in itself," writes Jason Solomons, "picturing the subject with all the detail, poise and human compassion of a Velasquez or a Degas. It's a work that pierces the soul of the human condition but, more significantly now, it also describes a narrative arc of uncanny prescience.... A French journalist close to Zidane believes that 'Douglas [Gordon and Philippe Parreno]'s film is now a true portrait of Zizou. His actions in the Final stand as testament to the earlier work of art.'" Related: Susan Gerhard at SF360.

Also in the Observer:

• Geraldine Bedell meets Gurinder Chadha as she prepares to shoot the Dallas, based, yes, on the 80s-era series: "She's direct and natural and funny and enthusiastic and, while I'm sure there must be people who don't like her, I haven't met one. They probably stay at home, for fear of having their minds changed by cheerfulness."

• Killian Fox: "Yes: there are now trailers for books and soon, according to Steve Osgoode, director of online marketing at HarperCollins Canada, they will be everywhere."

• Film4 is about to become a free service for UK viewers; Jason Solomons plugs a "list show," 50 Films to See Before You Die.

Acquarello: "Johan van der Keuken's I Love Dollar is an ingeniously conceived, cohesively organic, and provocative exposition into the circulation and financial mechanisms of money in modern civilization and its wide ranging social and geopolitical repercussions."

"Some see Mother Joan of the Angels as a metaphor of the political atmosphere in 1960s Poland, while others detect allusions to the 17th century conflict between religion and the rise in science and reason." For Adam Balz, writing at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, it's "an examination of our willingness to blindly follow devotions."

KJ Doughton talks with Brothers of the Head co-director Keith Fulton for Filmmaker.

"It's an outright masterpiece, easily ranking with my favorite works of the medium." The medium is the graphic novel, the masterpiece is Black Hole, by Charles Burns, and the reviewer is David Lowery, who's "okay" with its being adapted by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman, but not at all okay with Alexandre Aja directing.

"Not a great film, The Devil Wears Prada is nevertheless, and obviously, very bloggable, for more besides its shoes and belts," writes Robert Cashill. Over at Bright Lights, Alan Vanneman would, in his own way, agree.

Snakes on a Plane and what it all means, etc: Chuck Klosterman in Esquire and Aemilia Scott in Salon; Anne Thompson and Chuck Tryon.

David Austin at Cinema Strikes Back on Sogo Ishii's Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts: "It's an audacious punk masterpiece that would fit in as comfortably as an installation in any museum as it does as a narrative film."

"The prescience of the film is quite haunting." ScreenGrab launches a series on "Forgotten Films" with Bilge Ebiri's take on Alex Cox's Walker.

"Russia's movie industry, following a torpid decade that mirrored the country's social, political and economic turbulence after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, is in the midst of a creative renaissance and box-office boom," report Laura M Holson and Steven Lee Myers in the New York Times. "And Hollywood — whose producers, distributors and exhibitors rarely pass up a chance to exploit an opportunity — is spending millions on theaters, distributors and movies themselves."

"Danish film has always punched above its weight." A brisk primer, from the founding of Nordisk Film in 1906 to this year's Princess, from Stephanie Bunbury in the Age. Via Movie City News.

For the Independent, David Thomson records an amusing conversation with a Hollywood veteran about how, with Pirates 2, the "wheel takes one more crazy spin."

Time's Jeff Chu has ten questions for Isabella Rossellini. Related: Susan King's questions in the Los Angeles Times - where Mary McNamara profiles Greg Kinnear.

In Newsweek, Devin Gordon profiles Gil Kenan, director of Monster House, exec produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis: "It's a wisp of a story, but just as his bosses did in their early 1980s adventure films, Kenan tells the stuffing out of it. He shares their gift for evoking the cozy tedium of suburban life - and the flights of imagination that kids use to escape it."

The Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro talks with Kevin Smith about the filmmaker's obsessive tracking of every review. Via Ray Pride at Movie City Indie.

Up-n-coming: Quite possibly, a remake of Witness for the Prosecution with Nicole Kidman and Al Pacino.

At Slant, Ed Gonzalez snickers at Shock to the System, "some kind of victory for giving new meaning to the unintentionally hilarious." Also, DVDs: Paul Schrodt on Queer Duck: The Movie and Eric Henderson on Asphalt.

As East Bay View swerves back towards being a movie blog, Charlie Chan turns in reviews of Police Beat and Ballets Russes.

Jay and Mark Duplass, directors of The Puffy Chair, answer indieWIRE's questions.

Like the rest of us, this Internet thing isn't getting any younger. Along with Ain't It Cool News and indieWIRE, the Onion celebrates ten years online. Via Fimoculous. Meanwhile, Sean Jordan's ZENtertainment returns.

New blog: I'm in a Jess Franco State of Mind. Via Tim Lucas's Video WatchBlog.

Online viewing tip. Good Cinema. Via ticklebooth.

Posted by dwhudson at July 17, 2006 1:30 PM